Josh put the idea in my head of getting a guinea pig cam so the twins could peek in on Beorn next year. It would also help us if we were away from home, and I am known for being super lazy and would love a way of seeing that he’s awake while I’m still in bed. Who wouldn’t want Beorn 24/7, 365 days a year?

If you see Josh, please remind him that he promised me a guinea pig cam.

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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:

• “Complicated Choices Lead to Childlessness” (No Kidding in NZ)
• “Feeling Criticized and I’m Just Living My Life” (Infertile Phoenix)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Finding a Different Path talks about not making apologies for taking care of yourself. She has to decline a baby shower, and she writes: “I am getting better at sharing less (outside of this space, of course!) — no one is entitled to my story. I decide when and if to share any part of it in everyday life.” I also love Bryce’s distinction that easier doesn’t mean easy. A great post all-around.

Lastly, The Barreness has started treatments for colitis/Crohn’s, and I like her answer when the nurse asked if she has children: “no we don’t, we just have each other.” I love that framing of what she does have vs. what she doesn’t. Quite a solid dude, as she says (especially the end of the post!).

The roundup to the Roundup: Guinea pig cam! 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 October 7 – October 14) 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.

For those playing along from home and wondering how our flu shot/bivavlent COVID-19 booster played out…

I had the first appointment, so I asked the guy what he recommended — one shot in each arm or both shots in one arm. After hemming and hawing (he really didn’t want to give his opinion on one option over the other), he informed me that I didn’t have a thin arm. I had “a lot to work with” so it was fine to do both in one arm. Okay then.

So I had both in one arm, one after the other.

My arm immediately felt sore as I walked back to my car. I was fine all afternoon and walked with the ChickieNob before dinner. I started feeling a little achy in the later evening, and we went to bed early. I did not sleep well that night, and I took Tylenol around 4 am. I was achy and cranky the next day, running a low fever. I didn’t want to do anything, but I prepared for that by downloading a thriller. Josh and the Wolvog ran errands, so they had sore arms but felt fine. I took Tylenol again before bed, and woke up the day after feeling completely fine. I cleaned the house and got work done.

Your mileage may vary, but getting them both in one arm worked for me, as did stacking vaccines so I only ruined one weekend.

One of the only nice things that has come out of COVID is that for a brief period of time, the world became more inclusive. Instead of expecting all people to be able to read and hold paper books (and get to the library, etc), libraries increased their e-book license purchases, making library books more accessible to a larger portion of the population. Now there were paper books for the paper book crowd, and e-books for the non-paper book crowd.

Meetings and events went online, making it possible or easier for more people to attend and participate — not just people who did not want to risk COVID, but people with a lack of transportation options, people who were caregivers at home, people with health issues. Not every place could adjust and accommodate, but the places that could and did found themselves reaching new people or old people in different ways. Offering in-person and online options made it possible for people to choose the location that fit their needs.

In the last few months, many of those accommodations are going away, especially providing a Zoom option. I understand that the impulse is to get people to return to the building, and I’m sure for some people, it does force them to return if they still want to participate. But who do they lose in the push to get things back to the way they were? The people who are still unwilling to risk COVID as well as all of the ones who had barriers to begin with. It is hard to know an inclusive option exists and people aren’t using it anymore.

Just something I’m thinking about this weekend.

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

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What if you could talk to the books in the bookstore and have them spill their wisdom? Wouldn’t that make a great basis for a story? Google (I think it’s Google) set up a way to search books just like that. You ask the books a question in the search bar, and it returns quotes from books that are part of Google Books. Isn’t that brilliant?

I asked it: “What should I do with my empty nest?”

And it returned this nugget: “You know how to create. Build a new nest. In the south.” Zero chance of that, but see what answers the books give your questions.

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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 that are connected to businesses or are sponsored post.

The rabbi at our shul gave a fascinating d’var Torah on Kol Nidre, and one part of it felt applicable to infertility. He spoke about how when we meet someone new, they only know about the choices we’ve chosen. They see all of the decisions that have brought us to this point, and that’s really all they see.

But as they spend time with you, moving forward, they start to see all of the discarded choices, too. The ones you make from that point forward. At least, the big ones; the ones they know about because you make 35,000 decisions daily.

I liked the idea that people who have known me a long time also know some of my otherwises and roads-not-taken that also shape who I am. I am just as much my ghost child’s mother as I am the twins’ mother. People meeting me now don’t know about that choice that shapes who I am, but Josh certainly does. People who have known me a long time do. You do.

And when you see me, you see what is here (the twins) and what is not here (the ghost child, who became a road not taken) at the same time.

He quoted someone (and I wish I had written it down), pointing out that when you’re looking at a portrait, the background is also part of the painting. It exists, too, even if it isn’t the focus, the thing we see. We all have background, empty space behind us, filled with all of our unchosen roads.