A friend unpacked the term “empty nest” recently in her Substack. “I’m still shocked by the inadequacy of our language for this phase. Should we even call this a phase? Empty nesting lasts for the rest of our lives.”

Because that’s sort of the thing. I had an empty nest before I had kids. I had prepared a life, arranging the twigs just so in anticipation of an arrival that took a long time to manifest (and a lot of drugs and procedures). Their empty bedrooms felt more like empty nests.

But I am now in the time that people refer to the empty nest because the twins have flown away. And it doesn’t really feel like the term fits because it’s forever. I mean, yes, the twins may move back, but the idea that they’ve reached adulthood is forever. Are my parents still empty nesters? Are yours? When does a person stop being an empty nester and become someone who has family members who exist in other places?

It wasn’t something I thought about prior to reading it in her Substack.

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

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What time do you eat dinner, and is it the usual time for where you live?

I’m not sure where I found this, but it’s a breakdown of when people eat dinner in your state. We eat later than the people in our state, but we’re closer to DC than other parts of Maryland, so maybe that impacts our dinner time. We’re usually closer to 7 pm than 6 pm, but it was funny to see and think, “Oh, if I lived in Pennsylvania or Maine, I would be eating dinner while I’m still at work.” I also thought California would be much later.

So what time do you eat?

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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.

Last week, I set a timer for five minutes before the test alarm was set to go off across the United States. The alarm I set to help me not jump when the big alarm went off made me jump instead, and I went into the living room to protect Beorn.

“Sweetie, in a few minutes, an alarm will go off. And it’s going to be loud. And you are going to hate it. But I am here to protect you.”

He stood and stared at me, and I looked down at my arm and realized that I was WEARING A WATCH THAT PROJECTED ANYTHING THAT HAPPENED ON MY PHONE. In other words, my arm was about to make an explosive noise, and I had brought said arm right next to the pig.

I ran out of the room, trying to get as far away from him as possible, and the test alarm went off two minutes early, blaring out of the devices I put on silent. (So much for testing the idea that my phone would just buzz to warn me that the world was coming apart.)

Beorn hated it, as predicted. And I had to give him 1.5 alfalfa cookies to coax him out of the corner of his habitat. Actually, I tried with the half cookie, and he accepted it. But he also thought a half cookie was bullshit, hence the second full cookie.

Worst guinea pig mum.

We’re now in October, which means I’m officially closer to seeing the twins again than school drop-off. I’ve been living for this visit, trying to leave the schedule open so we can see where the day takes us. I miss them so much, and I will be able to hug them in a few weeks. I am trying to keep it chill. I cannot keep it chill. I do not have a chill bone in my body.

Did I mention I’m excited to see the twins?

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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:

• None… sniff.

Okay, now my choices this week.

PocoBrat outlines some good excitements and bad excitements. It’s funny how this one thing — excitement — can present so differently depending on context. And I love that the day ended on a good note.

Finding a Different Path speaks truth about work-life balance. As she points out: “Often the reason why work-life balance is so hard is because the job is just never-ending and we keep getting new initiatives to implement and new hats to put on and new crises to avert.” Cough. Though she is taking excellent steps toward a better day.

Lastly, Infertile Phoenix says goodbye forever to pediatrics work. I love this self-knowledge about what she has learned by returning to the work: “I have moved on in terms of what I want to learn, how I want to grow, and whom I want to serve.” Congratulations on the end of the era.

The roundup to the Roundup: I get to see the twins soon. 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 September 29 – October 6) 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.

The twins have never been to an internet cafe. They were a staple of my post-college travel world. Finding the internet cafe in a new city, paying the fee, buying a coffee, using the hour to try to log in and see one or two messages while chatting with the person next to you, who was also waiting for their email to slowly load on the screen.

We now travel with portable wifi, and while slower than the internet speeds at home, the twins have no clue what life was like in the late 90s and decade beyond.

It was slow communication even though it was technically fast communication because there were long pauses between messages. Now, you expect people to get your message instantly or within a few hours. Back then, it could be days before I ventured into an internet cafe, plunked down the money, and logged in to see what was waiting in my inbox. Emails were closer to letters than text messages. You had to prioritize how you spent your time online because it was so expensive.

We’re planning a trip, and I thought about how we used to plan our itinerary, noting where the internet cafes were in a country. And now we can FaceTime someone across the Atlantic, whenever we want, wherever we want if we can get a signal. It’s a bizarre world.