Maybe I should wait to see how I feel next year, but I turn 49 at the end of the week (happy birthday to me!), but I don’t feel about the end of my 40s as I did about the end of my 30s.

I struggled with turning 40 and saying goodbye to my 30s, mostly because I saw 30 as the decade that brought me the twins whereas 40 would be the decade that would see the twins leave home.

I don’t feel the same anxiety about switching decades — at least, not yet. I feel grateful that I’ve reached this point. Many don’t. Instead of lamenting my grey hair — greyer than it was a decade ago — I feel lucky that I’m still alive to style my grey hair. I feel lucky that I have Josh and the twins and the rest of my family and friends. I feel lucky that I know what I do well and what I’m okay with not being able to do.

My questions now circle where the twins will be vs. who I will be.

I’m okay. I’m still dreading the twins leaving home, but a birthday won’t change that. So cake at the end of the week along with graduation. I just have to keep reminding myself that I can do hard things.

Substacker (that sounds weird as an adjective, but I guess “blogger” did, too, once upon a time) Haley Nahman writes from time to time about their family-building experience. Her writing reminds me of the early days of the infertility blogosphere. One of her recent newsletters most of all.

She talks about finding the TTC boards and her assumptions about the people writing and answering questions online. Why were they so laser-focused on trying to conceive? “Who else would be so eager to sacrifice their bodies, their autonomy, their time, their freedom? I wasn’t the same, I assured myself, as I exhaustively scrolled their posts, my browser set to incognito.”

You know where this is going. “And so the forums became my little secret. Outwardly, a joke; inwardly, a comfort. Trying to conceive made me feel so nuts and unlike myself that it wasn’t too difficult to split my consciousness this way.”

But the unpacking of how those feelings play out reminds me so much of early IF writing. I don’t mean early in the journey. I mean early IF blogosphere, where we shared a much deeper story than what unfolded on the bulletin boards. Where we admitted deep truths and talked about what they meant. Coming to a deeper understanding of what made us hope or want to hope or how we felt about that hope.

If you’re not reading her, I recommend her Substack. It’s frequently about things other than trying to conceive, but I’ve definitely appreciated these posts.

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

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I knew people built vacations around cooking school experiences. One of our favourite restaurants in London built a cooking school, and we’d try it for a day during a longer trip. But I feel pretty confident in my ability to follow a recipe from afar, so we’ve never explored the whole spend-a-day-cooking-somewhere-interesting thing.

But I just found this — building a vacation around a class with an artist. So you can try out a new skill and make something beautiful while exploring somewhere interesting. I looked at the jewelry-making options because I would love to learn. (Like this one!) Or you can choose the place and then see which artists are there.

I love this idea. What would you learn?

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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 summer, I preemptively told Josh that this would be the summer of hard nos. I had an inkling that I would be having a difficult time with the transition to college, and I knew that social visits or obligations or pretty much doing anything for anyone else that we didn’t choose ourselves would use up my very limited emotional energy. The twins didn’t want to sleep out of their beds or have things added to their plates.

So no plans in July or August beyond college orientation with a few days of vacation tacked on to emotionally recover from the fact that we’re at orientation. Minimal obligations in June.

It is hard not to fill a calendar. Harder than you think. I mean, yes, we will still be busy in the sense that there are 30 tasks to complete before they leave. We work full-time, so we will spend the weekends ticking off tasks. But it’s hard not to look at an empty weekend and think, “Oh, we should fill this with _______.” Fill in the blank with something local or far away. A person, activity, or experience.

It can be hard to give yourself what you need.

I know we won’t regret doing what we need to do in the moment, and I may have regrets if I don’t take care of myself emotionally. But it is so hard to stick to a summer of nos. Even knowing that this stage of life will be over and a new one will begin in August.

Remember those bottle-drinking babies from the beginning of this blog? Today is their last day of high school. They’ve had their last exams, their last award ceremony, and their final moments inside the school building. Graduation is next week.

The Wolvog asked me this week if we wanted to drive them to school on the last full day, for old times’ sake. I always loved pickup, so I burst into tears. Happy tears but also very sad tears that this would be the final time. I put on Tina Turner* to steel myself in the afternoon and drove to our pickup spot. I watched the tops of their heads bobbing down the street, underneath the hill that blocks my view of the road like they’ve done hundreds of times before. But this time was the last time.

I am so grateful they gave me that moment.

* I usually play Tina to steel myself for things, though this week, it was clearly bittersweet.

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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:

• “Choose Your Life” (No Kidding in NZ)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Dubliner in Deutschland recounts a hurtful comment. A stranger keeps questioning why she doesn’t want to have another child, pushing the subject. It’s a fine line between just wanting to be done with the person and driving home the hurtfulness of the conversation so she doesn’t do it again to someone else. She writes, “Emotionally, physically and mentally, I don’t want to put myself through all that again. We have made peace with the fact that we are a family of three and love our little unit.” Amen.

Lastly, Finding a Different Path says farewell to her old knee to get a super new bionic knee. Prepping for the surgery hurt her existing knee, but there’s a metaphor somewhere in this: “It is so, so very angry today. Which I think is good, because it reminds me how much I need this and how the pain will be worth it short-term to have amazing outcomes long-term.” Glad she is now on the other side with a fancy new knee.

The roundup to the Roundup: Last pickup. 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 May 19 – 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.