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

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I found out about the fish doorbell too late to participate this year, but this is the Internet at its best. Migrating fish get caught at a lock, a problem solved if the lock operator opens the gates. But one human can’t sit day in and day out, watching for fish who may need to move through. Instead, the city has hooked up an underwater camera, and anyone anywhere in the world can watch the camera. When you see a fish, you push a button, and it signals to the lock operator that they should check the camera, too, and open the lock.

I love the idea of a fish doorbell.

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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 down to measuring in weeks.

We measured in months, but now that there are only two months left until the twins go, we’re measuring in weeks. Soon, we will be measuring in days. And then hours. Minutes. Seconds.

No, I couldn’t write that without crying.

The closer the day gets, the harder it gets. It feels like the goodbye has its own gravity, like a massive planet that looms larger as I move closer, making my body slow down and feel heavy. I can’t move off this path; time is magnetic. So I have to stare at it in front of me as weeks turn into days, which turn into hours.

I don’t think I’m going to listen, but Serial Productions is tackling an IVF story out of a Yale clinic where the nurse was replacing the pain killers used during retrieval with saline.

Once upon a time, I would have listened, but treatment stories have been hitting hard with the twins leaving home, similar to the early days after we stopped treatments the second time. It feels like the time in between was a mountain that I could stand on and get some distance from those stories, understanding them and feeling a kinship with the women, but also far enough away that it doesn’t hurt. But now, I feel like I’m back in a valley. It’s hard to hear about cycling.

But I leave it here in case anyone else wants to hear 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:

• “Life Just Goes On Without Them” (Bereaved and Blessed)

Okay, now my choices this week.

I had Bereaved and Blessed’s post for this week because I read it on Friday evening. She marks the two years since she last saw her father alive and how a concert led her to find a profound line about life and loss. This line made me cry: “Life does go on without them and I am doing my best to live mine with intention and meaning, one day at a time, while not taking things for granted.” Sending peace of heart.

Lastly, The Road Less Travelled tackles childlessness and religion. She writes, “Churches can be wonderful, welcoming places with lots of programming and activities geared towards children and families — but they’re not so great when you don’t fit that particular mold.” At the same time, they provide structure and community. Here’s to a future of organizations welcoming everyone.

The roundup to the Roundup: IVF podcast. 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 June 23 – 30) 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.

Erin McKeown had an essay that spoke so deeply to my heart about the aftermath of an accomplishment, something I’m staring down in a few weeks. In some ways, the twins are an accomplishment, even though their success shifted from our efforts to their own years ago. But it’s the thing I’m most proud of — more than work, books, or other things. I’ve gotten two people ready for the world; others find them kind and helpful.

She couches the discussion on work accomplishments, of which she has many. She writes:

Yes, these things are shiny and awesome, but that’s exactly the problem. They are so extremely shiny and awesome that now they are done, that I didn’t get the jobs, they leave a shiny and awesome void, an emptiness not just on my calendar, which had been packed for the last 10 months, but in my artistic practice, also known as, my soul.

“A shiny and awesome void.” How perfect is that?

I am scared of the quiet periods. The quiet periods in work, the quiet periods in relationships, and now this quiet period of parenthood. I know what to do in the active portion of life. The loud portion. But I don’t know what to do with myself during these quiet periods.

It’s July 4th, which makes me feel like I should write something patriotic, acknowledging the day. But I’m not feeling very patriotic. My mind is focused on the twins attending orientation, getting things together for college, and going over lists and lists and lists for my lists of things we need to do to get them ready.

Independence, indeed.

It’s this strange idea that you turn a certain age, and you’re encouraged to be independent, whether you’re ready or not. I mean, yes, the twins will be fine. They will be ready. But it’s kind of strange when you step back and think about independence vs. interdependence. Why we cheer on one and barely mention the other.