It feels like I should write something profound at the top of the last Friday Blog Roundup for 2023, but I’ve got nothing except an update on the plant situation.

We replaced the basil plants in September when we returned from college drop-off, and I took three clippings from the ChickieNob’s inch plant when we visited in October. Clippings? Who is this woman who never had a plant in her house before the pandemic?

The ChickieNob’s school gives each student a plant on the first day of school. Many kill their plants in the first few weeks, but the ChickieNob was determined to keep hers alive until graduation. This is probably impossible with an inch plant, but you can keep taking clippings and replanting them to keep the plant “alive” indefinitely, and having clippings at home was also a plant insurance plan.

ChickieNob brought the original inch plant home for winter break, asking me to nurse my sick grandplant back to health. It looked scrawny, especially next to the robust October clippings. But I gently shaped, watered, and cared for it, thinking about how much people can change. They can go from plant-free to plant-full in barely a blink.

May you also notice happy changes in your year.

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:

• None… sniff.

Okay, now my choices this week.

Finding a Different Path writes about establishing new holiday traditions. Read it now so you have months to think up your own. She explains how she took back Christmas: “One thing that has made that possible is a handful of holiday traditions that I am somewhat maniacal about keeping up, because we have to make our own milestones and basically be our own children in a way.” I love so many of them, especially the book flood, but my favourite is the woodland critters countdown.

Lastly, Dear John writes a letter to her late husband, updating him on Christmas and various end-of-year news. I always find these letters touching, but this made me laugh a little: “Speaking of the cookies, S has been making them for her friends lately. She was apparently telling them they were a family recipe. I laughed and told her that the recipe came from an old girlfriend of yours who you ended up hating. Which is why her name is blacked out on the recipe card.” Sending a hug.

The roundup to the Roundup: Plant-less to plant-full. 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 December 22 – 29) 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.

We still mask. Back in early November, we unmasked indoors for the first time since the start of COVID-19 to eat dinner at a Bat Mitzvah. We usually will go outside at a party or not eat at all, but we were in the prime vaccine booster zone and decided to take the risk because there wasn’t an outdoor space we could go, slipping back on our masks between courses.

But other than that time, we mask indoors. We mask in crowds. We go anywhere we want to go and do everything we want to do (except restaurants); we just do it in a mask.

Madeline Miller’s op-ed piece about COVID-19 is why we still mask indoors. Her long COVID stems from the pre-vaccine days, but we know too many people with long COVID symptoms who are vaccinated and boosted.

This is the part that made me say, “Me too.”

So how long am I going to do this? Until indoor air is safe for all, until vaccines prevent transmission, until there’s a cure for long covid. Until I’m not risking my family’s future on a grocery run. Because the truth is that however immortal we feel, we are all just one infection away from a new life.

Thank you for saying it. And I post this because I always appreciate it when I see other people post that they also still mask.

Josh left Twitter long ago and halfheartedly set up a Threads account. I resisted even looking at Threads but finally broke down and set up an account. I followed three or four people I knew were on the site and closed it for the night.

Every few days, I opened the app again, followed another person or two, felt depressed reading the Threads suggested accounts, felt more depressed reading the replies under the posts of people I know, and then closed it down. I felt no fire to set it up, the exact opposite of how I felt back in 2008 when I joined Twitter.

Back then, I wanted to figure it out. I wanted to be part of the conversation. I wanted to hear from everyone all the time. Now, I only want to hear from some people some of the time.

I still feel the same about blogs as in 2006; that hasn’t changed. But social media feels less comfortable right now. Like a shirt I’ve outgrown but have to continue wearing because I don’t have anything else to put on at the moment.

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

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Happy Christmas or Merry Christmas? I grew up hearing Merry Christmas, but Josh thinks that Happy Christmas sounds softer, like merry is a command (be merry) and happy is a hope (hope it’s a happy day). That may not be linguistically true, though it goes hand-in-hand with things like happy birthday, which is more about hoping the person is having a good day rather than commanding them to feel a certain way. (As in, I hope you had a happy birthday.) Happy or merry?

And how are you spending today?

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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.

We are going to have a quiet Sunday today. Everyone else is busy, and places will close down early if they open at all. It’s a day for curling up on the sofa with a book or rewatching Us. (Finally streaming on Prime after running on PBS many years ago.) Eating appetizers for dinner, and staying off of social media. Cocooning for 24 hours, with a fake fire playing on the television.