Many years ago, we started the twins’ Grand Tour, except we based our trip on a favourite David Nicholls book (Us), which goes through the art backwards. We’ve done another section each year, and this year’s trip covered Belgium and the Netherlands — two weeks of making up inappropriate captions for beloved paintings, Liege waffles, and dodging bicycles.

But we started in London because the twins suggested this trip as something I could look forward to in the fall while they were away at college. They did nothing to plan it beyond listing the cities, but I loved the idea of starting in London because it would be familiar, AND I could go on a book-buying spree.

Our big splurge was a 30-person tour of Buckingham Palace. No photos because they do not allow you to take pictures inside, but they DO give you a photo book at the end of your tour. It was like being in a Crown episode (and, yes, now when I watch The Crown, I can tell exactly where they were in the palace or whether.)

After a few days in London at the National Gallery, Portrait Gallery, and British Museum, we jumped on the Eurostar and headed to Amsterdam. When I was little, I had a camp counselor sign my camp autograph book with “Score some smoke in Amsterdam” (because that was apparently a normal thing to say to a child in the 1980s). While we did not score some smoke, we did eat at Upstairs Pannenkoeken, the smallest restaurant in Europe.

We toured Anne Frank House and the Jewish Quarter.

We saw art at the Rijksmuseum, Van Gogh Museum, Moco Museum, and Stedelijk Museum.

When you travel in winter, you can get alone time with The Night Watch.

We toured Rembrandt’s house and took a canal ride to see some of the Amsterdam Light Festival.

But mostly, we dodged bicyclists. They whip around the bend, and it never felt like a safe time to cross the bike path. You know how the Muppets run with their arms flailing over their heads? Imagine that energy, but on a bike. That is Amsterdam. And we loved the city so much and could have spent many, many, many more weeks there. But more Flemish painters were waiting for us in Belgium.

To be continued…

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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For the last ten or so years, we’ve been tied to the school calendar, needing to tuck travel either into the time between Christmas and New Year or wait until summer. When the kids were in early elementary school, we pulled them out of school for trips, but they stopped wanting to do that because catching up was so difficult on the other end.

This was our first year released from the school schedule. We have a long winter and spring break, and it was much better than summer. No crowds. No lines. The weather was fine — we could sit outside drinking hot chocolate.

Winter travel may be risky with cold temperatures or snow, but summer travel can also be risky with extreme heat or closures. (We’ve seen temperatures so high that the road melted.) We walked straight into places we’ve stood in long lines for in the past. We’re now Team Winter/Spring Travel, all the way.

What about you?

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts connected to businesses or sponsored posts.

Apple News keeps delivering the same type of news story: Bringing a child into the world has grown unaffordable. Salaries haven’t kept up with the cost of raising a child, and more people are choosing not to have children because they cannot afford them.

A CBS article put the estimated yearly cost around $21,681 in 2021, and it is likely slightly higher in 2023.

That is the estimate before college, which you’ll want to start saving for as soon as the child is born because the average in-state tuition is $26,027 per year and private college tuition is $55,840 per year. So let’s average that to $40,933 per year or $163,734 that you need to save over 18 years. Assuming you don’t have a 529 plan (and we can’t predict the performance of the plan), that comes out to an additional $9096 you need to save per year beginning at birth to send your child to college, based on 2023 prices.

So it’s expensive — even if you take college savings out of the mix.

The birth rate has been dropping for years, but we’re also asking people to take on enormous costs to ensure we have a future population of little Generation Alphas to support the Gen Xers and Millenials and beyond without giving the societal support needed to make this happen.

I’m not sure why Apple News keeps delivering stories about this to me except that the algorithm connects infertility with any lack of reproduction?

Back in December, I joined a brilliant community — the brain-child of two BlogHer co-founders — called Optionality. I’ve been calling Optionality “WeWork for Introverts” because it has all of the benefits of being around people without needing to be around people. I keep the Slack community on all day, and people post interesting things or job openings or questions, and other people chime in — a network of smart, accomplished co-workers.

There’s a Substack and podcast and dozens of other nooks and crannies. Some people spend a lot of time participating. Other people drop in and out of conversations.

Like the concept of optionality itself, the community is up to you to choose how you want to engage in it.

Elisa and Jory officially opened it to new members after the soft launch, and they told me that I’m allowed to write about it. So the cat is out of the bag. I feel lucky to be a part of it.

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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 to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

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And now the blogs…

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

• “A Childless Holiday Can Be Anything You Want It To Be” (Childless by Marriage)
• “My Wish for 2024” (No Kidding in NZ)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Andmom is asked about silver linings of the pandemic, and she writes: “We spend a lot more time together than we ever would have otherwise, and it turns out we actually like each other as people. Go figure.” Sometimes you need to embrace and acknowledge the small good things.

The Barreness has a stream-of-conscious post about life in the new year. I especially love this update: “I submitted work a day before the deadline and walked away knowing that I had tried everything in my power and wheelhouse to create something new, unique and that I loved.” That’s a good feeling. And to answer the question: “Even if I am beaten down over and over again, I still greet the next day with hope for something better. Does this qualify as insanity?” Not insanity, but a beautiful life filled with hope.

Lastly, A Half Baked Life writes about her massage experience, and it has me wanting to find a local person trained in CST, too. Especially to experience something like this: “In that moment, it took my breath away and touched a place somewhere deep within me to be present to this connection: one woman acknowledging everything that another woman was holding, holding these things for her just for a little while, offering healing to hands that feel full of burden.” I love the imagery of what we convey through our hands and touch.

The roundup to the Roundup: Optionality is awesome. 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 January 5 – 26) 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.

In addition to undigging from the trip, the kids are slowly returning to school. Just as they came home on different days, they’re returning on different days, so I need to go through the departure twice. Two times of having my stomach in knots for days. Two times of feeling so empty, blinking as they disappear around the bend.

When we were in Amsterdam, we went to the Rijksmuseum. They’ve gathered their greatest hits in a single gallery. It’s a long hall with open pods on either side of the walkway, and you crisscross the room, going from one pod to another, until you end at Rembrandt’s The Night Watch.

We were heading for The Night Watch, but I noticed a different painting in the third pod as I crossed from one side of the room to the other. It was an enormous bird at the edge of a pod in the middle of the room. I tried to go back to concentrating on the art in front of me, but I finally gave up and headed to what I wanted to see because the ChickieNob always reminds us that you should spend time with the art that moves you vs. the art that you’re told you should like.

So I went to spend time with The Threatened Swan by Jan Asselijn.

It’s over five feet across and over four feet high, painted around 1650. It’s hard to see, but there is a dog in the lower left corner, and the swan is protecting her eggs in the nest. The dog looks playful — maybe a Portuguese Water Dog? — but the swan is clearly in mid-scream, sensing danger even if everyone else would look at the situation and say, “What is the problem? The dog is curious. He’s in the water. Not doing anything wrong. Why are you freaking out?”

I felt so seen. So incredibly seen.

I couldn’t leave the painting, and I doubled back when I was done with The Night Watch, returned in the middle of another room, and returned a third time when we had to leave the museum. We bought a postcard of it and a magnet, though neither invoked the sensation I felt standing in front of the canvas.

The next day, we had a little time before our tickets at the Stedelijk Museum, and Josh suggested we swing by the swan as a consolation prize for skipping the tulip museum. But when we got to the door, even though we could book tickets online, they wouldn’t let us in because our iAmsterdam card only worked once per museum.

I think the woman at the door sensed how crushed I was when I said I wanted to see one painting, and she whispered, “Just go. Be quick. See your painting.” As I walked past her, thanking her repeatedly, I told her the painting was the swan, and she beamed with approval. “Go up; it’s in the gallery of honour. Enjoy it.”

Being in front of it feels like the release I get when the twins return home, and we cleave together once more as a family. Cleaving is such a funny word, meaning both to separate and come together. It’s what we’ve done all year, what we’ll have to do for the rest of our lives.

I was worried about traveling again. Would it be different now that they’ve been away? Would we continue to mesh well? It was the same but better. None of my fears came true, but we could divide and conquer in ways that we wouldn’t have tried when they were little. I had two uninterrupted weeks of looking at art, eating waffles, and hyperventilating my way to the top of towers.

My heart hurts knowing we’re home and so far away from the picture of the swan. Even with an enormous poster that Josh got me on that second visit, it’s not the same as being in front of the real thing. Knowing it’s in another country makes my heart hurt in the same way of knowing how good I had it for eighteen years when the twins were with me every day but they now live far away. I am happy knowing they’re in the world, and we’ll be together again in the future. But it hurts to cleave apart at the end of each break.

It makes my swan heart scream at playful, seemingly undangerous time. I know its true nature.