Category — Friday Blog Roundup

Okay, Riddle me this, Batpeople.  We were driving over a bridge on the way to the Kennedy Center, and I saw the sparkly lights of a restaurant on the water in the distance.

“What was the name of that restaurant we loved in Georgetown?” I asked.  “It was on the waterfront.”

“You must have gone there with your other boyfriend,” Josh commented.

“No, it was you.  I mean, we haven’t been in years, but it was very early on in our relationship… it was on the water and it had sparkle lights… We also went there after a graduation or something like that…”

“Now you’re really talking about another boyfriend,” Josh repeated.

That was all that we said about the restaurant.  That it was in Georgetown, on the waterfront, and had sparkle lights.  Plus Josh insisted that we’ve never eaten there together, so he had zero clue what this restaurant was called.

The next day, Josh was scrolling through Facebook and his face changed.  “Melissa… Is this the restaurant you were thinking about yesterday?”  He flipped his phone around, and it was an ad for Sequoia — THE RESTAURANT I DIDN’T KNOW THE NAME OF.

If you Google “waterfront, Georgetown, restaurant,” it pops up as the second hit.  So if we had ever bothered Googling it, we would have had our answer but

1. No one Googled it.
2. No one said the name.
3. Microphone access is off for Facebook.

So either (1) Facebook is telling the truth — when you deny it access to your microphone, it cannot listen — or (2) Facebook is lying and it absolutely listened and the algorithm spat out the most likely option, or (3) it is just the most amazing coincidence in the world.

Which option do you think is correct?  I’m going with door #2…

*******

Stop procrastinating.  Go make your backups.  Don’t have regrets.

Seriously.  Stop what you’re doing for a moment.  It will take you fifteen minutes, tops.  But you will have peace of mind for days and days.  It’s the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.

As always, add any new thoughts to the Friday Backup post and peruse new comments in order to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

*******

And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “Pan.dora’s Box” (An Engineer Becomes a Mom)
• “Day 12 – The Best $150ish I Ever Spent” (Anne Heffron)
• “#Microblog Mondays: How We Take Pictures” (My Path to Mommyhood)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Life Without Baby has a post about letting go of the life you wanted when the road that leads there is an unhappy, stressful path.  In other words, it’s not just about the destination.  It’s about being okay with the road to get there, and when you’re not okay with it, having the ability to remove yourself from that path, even if you really really really want the final destination.  It’s such a good post about how it’s not all about the ending.  It’s about the beginning and the middle, too.

Much Ado About Nothing has a post about grief.  It is a post about how her grief about her own father’s death mixed with her sister’s father’s death this summer (same mother, different fathers).  She writes about the loss: “I held up my nieces and nephews and sister, all while feeling these huge waves of grief for the loss I knew and was now watching someone I loved deeply feel. I didn’t have any words other than ‘I am so sorry.’ But I guess that is the truest life lesson… love hard and show up for the people you love when they need you.”  Such a simple and true life rule.  It’s a gorgeous, heartbreaking post with a beautiful ending: “My grief allowed her to be more loving in her father’s last months.”  Go read the whole thing.

Risakerslake has the ability to make me crack up about the beginning of a cycle.  From quietly plotting her day 3 monitoring from a coffee shop to the goat rodeo that comes from coordinating care between clinics, she makes you laugh as often as she makes you groan in sympathy.  And I love what she writes about returning to the clinic: “Some women experience PTSD going back to the fertility clinic. For me, I don’t know. I didn’t feel any of that. It was more like coming home.”  Sending really good thoughts for this go-around on baby making.

Lastly, My Path to Mommyhood explains why inspirational messages sometimes aren’t so… inspirational.  In fact, they can be downright unhelpful.  My personal pet peeve is “quitters never win and winner never quit.”  But she points out how with just a little more explanation, these quotes CAN get someone started on something difficult.  Though… it’s sort of as if we need to sweep the truth under the rug sometimes to get people to try.  I don’t know.  That feels wrong, too.  As she points out, this is kinda sorta complicated when what you need to convey can be twisted and simplified.  And I love how she ties in the frustration and accomplishment pieces.

The roundup to the Roundup: Facebook is the creepiest kid on the block.  Your weekly backup nudge.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between August 24th and 31st) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.

This is a tale of an amazing blood draw.  The ChickieNob needed to have blood drawn, and she was nervous.  She sat down in the chair and gave her arm.  The phlebotomist felt around for a bit, and finally admitted that she didn’t feel confident and wanted a second opinion.

Another phlebotomist came over, and she felt around, trying a heating pad to coax out her veins.  After a minute or two, she also asked if she could involve another phlebotomist.

A third woman came over and found a good vein.  She was about to use a larger needle when I commented that a butterfly would work better.  Without missing a beat, she popped off the longer needle, snapped on the butterfly, and slid in the needle.  The actual taking of the blood took about 30 painless seconds.  The ChickieNob was so relieved.  I love collaboration and the fact that each woman drew in knowledge from another woman in order to deliver the best experience to the patient.  Imagine if all people operated in that manner, with the focus being on the goal instead of on ego…

Now if only I could have releasing the test results go as smoothly.  That, unfortunately, is always a case of knocking my head against the wall for a week.

*******

Stop procrastinating.  Go make your backups.  Don’t have regrets.

Seriously.  Stop what you’re doing for a moment.  It will take you fifteen minutes, tops.  But you will have peace of mind for days and days.  It’s the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.

As always, add any new thoughts to the Friday Backup post and peruse new comments in order to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

*******

And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “Surviving Failure, Redefining Success” (My Path to Mommyhood)

Okay, now my choices this week.

My Perfect Breakdown has a post about an exchange that came about because she’s open about how hard it was to build their family.  She talks about the importance of continuing to be an advocate: “Once you’ve been through struggles to have children, the impacts last forever. And, I cannot not just pretend it never happened, even if I wanted to. Instead, I must continue to raise a voice.”  It’s a great reminder of connections that can be made when you tell your story.

HopefullyMyLinesNow has a post about tempering her excitement now that she’s pregnant.  She outlines what she’s doing with a series of great scenarios.  It is seriously the most helpful read to pass along to anyone who tells you that you should be out celebrating when you’re feeling a little raw and cautious.  She’s happy and hopeful, but she also knows that she needs to do what she needs to do to protect her heart.

Lastly, Empty Arms, Broken Heart has a bittersweet exchange with her daughter.  It’s about sitting with someone else’s wish, and how it affects your own heart.  To say any more than that would ruin the emotional impact of this post, so click over to read it.

The roundup to the Roundup: This is what collaboration looks like.  Your weekly backup nudge.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between August 17th and 24th) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.

Crazy Rich Asians has been in my “to read” pile for months, but I pushed up its place in line when I realized the movie opening was one week away.  I knew the book had a cast of thousands — mostly in the same family — and I’d want to figure out all of those relationships in book form before I had to track it on the screen.  I finished the book 24 hours before our date night and felt pretty damn proud of myself.

Until I realized I wasn’t sure I wanted to see the movie anymore.

The book is fantastic, and I can’t wait to dive into parts two and three in the trilogy.  Could the movie be as good as the book?  The trouble with turning books into movies is that what feels natural to include in narrative feels stilted when it’s added to dialogue so characters can reveal details that can’t be conveyed otherwise.

To go or not to go.

What ultimately won out was a desire to see the fictional Indonesian island resort for Araminta’s bachelorette party and the scenery around Singapore.

So we went with all of the grandmas last night to see Crazy Rich Asians.  (I’m not joking.  Apparently elderly women love to go to the movies on a Thursday night.)  It was so much fun.  (Even though no one clapped with me when the bride and groom kissed at the wedding.  Apparently elderly women do not like to clap in the movie theater.)

It’s not like the book, and I spent half the movie leaning over and hissing, “they changed that, too!”  But that’s okay.  It is fantastic in its own right.

Kwan is a gifted storyteller so if you have time to pick up the book first, read it.  But even if you don’t, it’s a great movie.  I bawled at the wedding.  I laughed with Peik Lin.  And that ending… that ending actually surprised me.

*******

Stop procrastinating.  Go make your backups.  Don’t have regrets.

Seriously.  Stop what you’re doing for a moment.  It will take you fifteen minutes, tops.  But you will have peace of mind for days and days.  It’s the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.

As always, add any new thoughts to the Friday Backup post and peruse new comments in order to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

*******

And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “The Lens of Infertility” (Stirrup Queens) — thank you, Cristy and Jess!
• “#Microblog Mondays: Firsts” (My Path to Mommyhood)
• “Into the Breach” (Weathering Storms)
• “Three passions #MicroblogMonday” (Dubliner in Deutschland)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Life As I Know It has a beautiful but sad post that has a line that sat with me all week: “The people I belong to are no longer here.”  It’s about missing the people who would have been invested in our stories.  It’s a brief post that packs a big punch if you’re missing somebody.

Baby Ridley Bump explains why she uses the term “mother” when speaking about her egg donor.  I love this post because it begins with this idea: “There is nothing wrong with respectfully disagreeing with someone, it’s one of the beauties of free thinking. I’m glad that she reached out to me instead of taking offense to what I said and not speaking up about it.”  She then explains her way of thinking and why “mother” fits in her situation.  It’s a great post that will get you thinking about language and relationships.

Lastly, Life Without Baby has a post about owning your childlessness; mentioning it without explaining it.  She talks about a woman telling a story and mentioning that she couldn’t have children.  “She didn’t pause for people to give her sympathetic looks, she didn’t elaborate on why she couldn’t have children, and she didn’t explain that she’d wanted to have them or tried to.”  It was merely a fact and not the defining characteristic of her life.  It’s owning who you are without apologies or explanations.

The roundup to the Roundup: Two thumbs up for Crazy Rich Asians.  Your weekly backup nudge.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between August 10th and 17th) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.

I clean when I’m anxious.  Everyone knows that when you’re losing your mind about global warming, the next best thing to fixing that situation is having a neat desk.

I spent one night this week removing books from my MTBR list.  That’s my Maybe To Be Read list.  All books that end up TBR (to actually be read) pass through this list.  It’s like the Ellis Island for books.  I hear about a book I want to read, I download the sample from iBooks, and then I read the sample and if it’s good enough, I buy the book (or reserve it at the library) and it goes on the TBR list.

I ended up removing over 120 books from the list because iBooks had become so cluttered that I couldn’t easily find the full books among the book samples.  I wrote the removed titles in my bullet journal because these books had been in a limbo state between getting approved and getting purchased, but I doubt I’ll ever return to them.

I left about 16 samples on the list to either purchase or check out from the library.  A much more manageable amount.

*******

Stop procrastinating.  Go make your backups.  Don’t have regrets.

Seriously.  Stop what you’re doing for a moment.  It will take you fifteen minutes, tops.  But you will have peace of mind for days and days.  It’s the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.

As always, add any new thoughts to the Friday Backup post and peruse new comments in order to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

*******

And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “A Different Mindset” (Inconceivable!)
• “Stolen Bases” (NotMyLinesYet)
• “Recital” (Once a Family of Four)
• “Prayers for Charlotte” (Carolina Charm)
• “Tired (Literally) of Sharing My Story” (Infertile Phoenix)

Okay, now my choices this week.

This week marked 20 years since The Road Less Travelled’s daughter, Katie, died.  She writes, “I wish things were different. I wish she was here. She’d be all grown up now, a young adult, likely at university, maybe with a boyfriend. (I was 20 when I first met her father, after all…) I wonder what she’d look like, and who she’d look like, and how she’d be like me and how she’d be like her dad.”  It is an aching post of what ifs and memories and thank yous.

Jewish IVF writes on the eve of her next IVF cycle.  The first cycle is hard because you don’t know what to expect.  But the 8th IVF cycle is hard because you do know what to expect.  She writes, “It hit me like a ton of bricks last night and now I’m terrified of another failure. The thought that we did all that we did to get to this point, and made all those changes in hopes for a better outcome, only to be dealt the same story is terrifying.”  Sending so many good thoughts for this cycle.

Lastly, By the Brooke has a post about Harry Potter that made my heart hurt (in a good way because it also made my brain think).  She explains: “It was a tragedy, to be certain, but it was one that made narrative sense. This was the way things worked. No one was writing a story about a wizard baby who died and how his parents had to limp along and figure out how and why to go on living without him.”  Wow.  What would the series be like if it was his mother avenging her son’s death?  His father grieving his son?  And maybe a bookend to Lori’s post above: “So I mourned Harry Potter and the lost opportunity to share those books–and every book I’d loved–with my daughter.”

The roundup to the Roundup: Cleaned up the Maybe To Be Read list.  Your weekly backup nudge.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between August 3rd and 10th) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.

I’m currently lamenting the fact that I do not live in London because the people who make the BBC Sherlock Homes show made an escape game.  (Wait, does this mean there may be a fifth season?)  It sounds like more than one room — like you run around the city, going to various locations from the show, to solve the crime.  I am jeaaaaaaaaaloooooooous.

Londeners, please go on this for me and let me live vicariously through you.

The UK gets everything good.  You get Sherlock games.  You get better chocolate, better television shows, AND the Jasper Fforde book I want to read is coming out in the UK in August but won’t be published in the US until February.  These are all tempting reasons to move across the pond.

*******

Stop procrastinating.  Go make your backups.  Don’t have regrets.

Seriously.  Stop what you’re doing for a moment.  It will take you fifteen minutes, tops.  But you will have peace of mind for days and days.  It’s the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.

As always, add any new thoughts to the Friday Backup post and peruse new comments in order to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

*******

And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “Guest Post: My Cathartic Moment Captured” (The Childless Life)
• “The Life I Thought I’d Have” (My Path to Mommyhood)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Yes, you see it above, but I read it this week because it was posted on Friday… My Path to Mommyhood has a bittersweet post about the life she thought she would have.  A woman from her tap class was talking about house hunting and outlines the way she thinks her life will play out.  She writes, “But it has put me in a bit of a funk hearing that on replay in my mind since last night, because once upon a time I felt that way too — so sure of how things would work out.”  You hope it does for your friends (or even acquaintances), but at the same time, it stings knowing that you didn’t get the life you thought you’d have.  Jess brilliantly captures the tiny ways that plays out in her world.  And I had chills reading these lines: “I wept for the mother trapped inside me who will only ever parent indirectly, sideways. I wept for the life I thought I’d have.”

Bereaved and Blessed has a post about the theme of missed opportunities that runs through her grief.  This week, it looped through the death of an old friend, one that happened four years ago, but she only discovered it recently.  She is stunned to learn about it via social media when she clicked on his wall to find out how he was.  She explains: “That said, how did I manage to not visit his timeline or notice he wasn’t showing up in my news feed for over 4 years?  It happens, especially when we connect/reconnect with a lot of people online, both old friends and family, as well as develop new relationships with those we meet in person or find we have shared interests.”  It’s about the flaws of social media — that curated feed that doesn’t always let you know as much as you think it’s letting you know — but it’s also the story of an old friend.

One Step at a Time has a moving post about the good and the bad while she processes her husband’s stroke.  The good people who cross her path, making things a little bit easier.  The bad that happens because you’re making quick choices with your mind somewhere else.  It’s a very powerful post about your world being blown apart and the people (and objects) who help you hold it together.

Lastly, Searching for Our Silver Lining has a happy post that she could have never imagined when she was in the throes of infertility.  She captures a very sweet moment between two sets of twins: the ones who triggered her own desire for parenthood and the ones who made her a mother.

The roundup to the Roundup: The UK gets everything good.  Your weekly backup nudge.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between July 27th and August 3rd) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.