One of the best weekends of this year has been a 16-hour SAT cramming session. I didn’t think it would go well, which is probably why its awesomeness was intensified. When you have no clue how something will go and suspect it will not be able to work and fall apart, you are doubly excited when it exceeds your wildest expectations.

I bought an SAT practice book for the twins a few years ago and encouraged them to read it and practice many many many times, including last summer when they had a huge chunk of time to do so. I know they’ve picked it up a few times, but they haven’t really attacked it with the gusto I hoped when I brought it home.

So I set aside the weekend before the SAT for a whole family cram session. We would read the book together, eat snacks, and generally walk away from the table feeling super prepared.

I had no clue how we would accomplish this; just that it involved the four of us, the book, and the kitchen table.

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I kicked it off with a quote: “The great Lionel Ritchie once said, ‘Aptitude plus attitude determines altitude.’ And that is what we need to remember here. You have the aptitude, but you also need to have a good attitude.”

I was pretty freakin’ proud of that opening.

“Who is Lionel Ritchie?” the Wolvog asked.

“You got that from People magazine. I read that same issue,” the ChickieNob informed me.

“It doesn’t matter where I got it,” I rushed on. “What matters is that it’s wise. And it’s our guiding thought for today. There are very few people out there who would give up a weekend to help. Show me you care.”

And they did. They brought their A-game. I’m not sure what exactly an “A-game” is, but whatever it is, that is what they brought. One person served as note-taker. One person made flashcards. One person skimmed the book and read the highlights aloud. One person ate bamba. We moved through the roles seamlessly, accruing 30 pages of typed notes and a huge stack of flashcards. We did the verbal test one day and the math the other, taking a practice test after each cram session. They brought their score up over 100 points.

So they felt amazing. Which was good, but THAT wasn’t the point. The point was that everyone used their strengths to bring the others over the finish line. The twins continued to study together the next two nights, spreading out in one of their rooms to use the flashcards. They went into the test feeling like if they didn’t do well, it wasn’t for lack of trying.

Did I really want to review math formulas I haven’t needed for 30 years? Of course not. But watching them laugh their way through my comma rules, remembering how fleeting time feels right now, that we are coming up to a day where we won’t be around the kitchen table but instead scattered in different locations, made me want to bottle it so I could keep drinking in the moment in the future. The best I can do is capture it for myself with words.

I appreciated this recent piece in Refinery29 asking people to rethink the phrase “starting a family.” Because anytime you have more than one person committed to each other, you have a family. A couple is a family. Three generations under one roof is a family. A single parent with a kid is a family.

Sadhbh O’Sullivan writes,

Family is a surrogate term for having children: bringing in a new generation is ‘starting a family’; a focus of feminist liberation is that women shouldn’t have to choose between work and ‘family’ (aka having children); and questions about whether or not you’re trying to get pregnant are couched in the more indirect phrase: ‘When are you starting your family?’

She points out that once you pause and look at this idea — the idea that children are what makes a family — you are forced to consider all of the implications.

It also makes you wonder about another common phrase in our community — I know I use it all the time — “family building.” On one hand, you’re not implying a starting point or negating the family’s existence before kids. You’re adding on or expanding upon a foundation. But still in the same vein as “starting a family.”

Food for thought. What do you think?

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

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When we go to the beach in the winter, the parking lot is mostly empty. We park, facing the water, and crack the windows so the car doesn’t get stuffy. If it’s not too cold out, the car remains warm enough with the sun streaming through the windshield. We can leave the car off and relax for the day, reading and eating and generally remaining sand-free unless we take a walk.

This article about feeling a sense of community with other car-at-the-beach-goers made me feel a sense of community, though the words on the screen.

As much as I like being on the sand, I think part of me prefers when we’re all hanging out in the car. Enjoying the ocean but everything neat and clean and comfortable.

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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.

I am wearing new glasses.

Four pairs of new glasses, to be exact.

Just not all at the same time.

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On a Monday morning, Josh leaned over to hug me while he was standing and I was sitting. The edge of his glasses hit the lens of my glasses and left a long, deep scratch.

I let my glasses prescription lapse during the pandemic, so the first step was getting an appointment to have an eye exam. Not so easy. They weren’t going to be able to see me for a month. I took an appointment for the end of April with the promise that they would put me on the waitlist for a cancellation. Probably because I was crying. Before I could log off the computer, an appointment popped up for that day. I jumped in the car and drove over immediately wearing my prescription sunglasses.

But that wasn’t the hard part. That was the super easy part, it turns out. Because all of our usual glasses places were taking between one week and three weeks to make glasses.

The first place only allowed me to look during the 20 minutes allowed for my appointment, and I could only try on five pairs. I could only ask to try on the pairs when I had chosen the five pairs I wanted to try. By the time I had chosen a second pair I wanted to try, I forgot where the first pair was located on the wall. I went with the first thing I tried on even though they were purple. Purple! But I was desperate for glasses.

Though I realized after I got home that the man never measured my pupils, and I spent from 2 AM to 4 AM concerned the glasses wouldn’t be properly aligned with my eyes. The man snarled at me over the phone the next day that the information was in my file, and he didn’t need to re-measure. Note to self: Always ask them to measure my pupils… anyway.

I found another place that promised they would make the glasses the same day if I could get there before five o’clock. We got there at 3:30 pm, but the time frame suddenly jumped to 24 hours because… shoulder shrug. The man talked me into trying progressives, something that filled me with dread between the hours (once again) of 2 AM and 4 AM as I worried that I would finally have a pair of glasses and they would make me dizzy.

This was a worry-ful month.

The end of the story is that I ended up with four pairs of glasses: The purple ones, which came in a week later because he put them in as a rush order (probably due to the whole pupil measuring situation). The progressives. The new prescription in my old sunglasses. And a second pair of distance-only glasses with my old frames once I realized the new progressives made me feel dizzy.

Here’s the thing: Humans can make glasses in an hour. There are so many things you can’t make at short notice, but glasses — except for unusual prescriptions — are not one of those things. And people cannot get by without glasses. The world needs to bring back the one-hour eyeglass places. Sloppy huggers depend on them.

888 Roundups! (Okay, really 788 Roundups due to the misnumbering years ago, but still.)

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I’ve been calling this Big Sleep Weekend. It’s probably only Big Sleep Saturday because I have to clean the house on Sunday and I have a call with friends in the middle of the day. But the point is that I scheduled in sleep, reading, and watching television for 24 hours. A salad for dinner that will take no time to pull together.

I cannot wait.

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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:

• “What I Learned From Blogs” (Stirrup Queens) — thank you, Phoenix and Mali

Okay, now my choices this week.

Dubliner in Deutschland is dealing with COVID. The remarkable thing is the way the posts have changed over the two years. By which I mean, the way we talk about COVID has changed. Glad they’re all on the mend, though bummed that she missed St. Patrick’s Day again.

A Blank New Page unpacks some thoughts about Ukraine. She begins, “It seems so inappropriate to talk about me, my lost future as a mother, and my problems with my childless life while a terrible, cruel war is raging in Europe.” It’s a heartbreaking post; giving perspective.

The Road Less Travelled talks about the new designation of prolonged grief disorder. She says it perfectly: “Grief needs to be normalized, not pathologized.” The fact that the designation is being made for insurance purposes is maddening. Grief demands that we allow it to take its own time, it’s own shape.

Lastly, Counting Pink Lines talks about the waiting. She writes, “I forgot how much of TTC was waiting — either for periods to come or to not come.” Especially that period before the period (no pun intended) where you feel like it’s coming any moment… and then doesn’t arrive.

The roundup to the Roundup: Big sleep weekend. 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 March 18 – 25) 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.