March 9th is coming up, and if you’ve been part of the ALI (that’s adoption, loss, infertility) community for a while, you know that March 9th is Random Act of Kindness for Thomas day. Thomas would have been 17 this birthday, and you can celebrate him by putting good into the world. Everything is hard right now. The news is awful. We’re still dealing with the pandemic. Take a moment to do something kind, just because. And do it in his name.

As she writes on her page — and click over to understand the owl reference: “We aren’t trying to reach a specific goal in 2022, but we are still hoping that a huge flock of owls will once again take flight and help us spread kindness on March 9.” So I know what I’m doing March 9.

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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:

• “Saying Something in the Moment” (Infertile Phoenix)

Okay, now my choices this week.

No Kidding in NZ explains how she feels when someone asks her if she has children. She talks about everything that goes through her mind, including: “But when I tense myself on hearing the question, and go through all those options for replying, what I am really doing is remembering previous, difficult moments, and hoping to avoid them this time.” But most striking, while people ask the question and want the answer, she points out that they simultaneously “don’t really want to listen to my discomfort over the question.” Food for thought.

PocoBrat laments the size and excitement of birthday celebrations past. She writes: “I’ve been yearning for one of those all-out bashes that used to happen–usually planned and hosted by someone else.” It’s not just the pandemic. It feels like those big birthday bashes dry up in middle age or are only held on milestone birthdays.

Lastly, Movable Type talks about the pond of her mind, “kicking up detritus and sediment to swirl murkily under the serene surface of lily pads and lotus. I remembered a story a friend told me years ago, when we were in college together in the upper Midwest.” It is a moving story that will stick with you as she continues on, explaining how we all have those bruised parts. I love this post.

The roundup to the Roundup: Be kind on March 9. 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 February 25 – March 4) 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.

Josh turned 50 recently. For his 40th birthday, we got together our friends and family for a massive all-day volunteer project downtown, repainting and repairing a building. In the summer, we went to London, which is what we’ve done to kickoff every decade.

This year had to be a quieter, COVID-cognizant affair — his second pandemic birthday since his 48th birthday was our last time going out before the shutdown — but we’re considering whether we can keep on schedule and slip away to the UK this summer. It will need to look different from how we originally planned it years ago. We asked the kids if they’d be okay doing only takeaway in the hotel room or wearing a mask if everyone else around them was mask-less. I think we’re okay with it. Maybe. It’s so hard to know.

But I do know that 50 sounds old. It sounded very far away at one point, and now it’s here. And we don’t feel old. We don’t feel 50, or however we imagined 50 feeling. I still have time, so perhaps 50ness will kick in as I get closer. But as of right now, it feels like everything is just starting. We’re still so young.

Happiest birthday, Josh.

I recently read about this idea to die with zero dollars. As in use it up or give it away before you die. I’m sure if I read the book that it would explain how to ensure that you don’t have zero before you die. And it certainly makes sense that waiting to do things until late in life means you may have the money and time but not the health or strength.

But I kind of love the idea of passing along wealth and not knowing what people are doing with it but getting to assume they’re happy and having a great time. Giving it away while I’m living means that I end up knowing vs. getting to believe the happy ending.

Plus, I kind of like the idea of dropping a big unexpected donation on a nonprofit. Making donations while you’re alive means being asked to make more donations, year after year. Or being asked to join a board or give your opinion. I would like to give a donation and have the development person not know where or how to send the thank you because I also make it under a ridiculous fake name. That would amuse me to no end.

What do you think of this idea of dying with zero?

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

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Our culture is terrible with endings. Beginnings — we go above and beyond. Endings — not so much. Like everyone else, I was drawn into the recent Atlantic article about friendships that begins: “Our culture lacks the proper script for ending friendships. We have no rituals to observe, no paperwork to do, no boilerplate dialogue to crib from.”

You can divorce a spouse, but we don’t have a method for uncoupling a friendship. The article tries to give a blueprint (or a reason for a blueprint) to that.

It is worth the very long read because it unpacks this truth: “What makes friendship so fragile is also exactly what makes it so special. You have to continually opt in. That you choose it is what gives it its value.”

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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.

We’re once again entering a state of COVID whiplash. It’s those periods of time when they announce the end of COVID restrictions or masking while simultaneously announcing a new variant. Is it problematic? This doctor says no. These doctors say yes. And this doctor says we just don’t know enough yet, but we’ve seen this situation before and can look at country X and learn Y…

THIS. This more than the unknowns at the beginning of the pandemic is exhausting. The conversation around removing masks is exhausting. Our area is moving to optional masking this weekend because case loads are going down and the CDC issued new guidance. But we’ve been here before. At least three times so far.

The Atlantic captured where I am right now: “The pandemic is not over. But if we let it, this stretch may be defined less by what we can’t do, and more by what we safely, carefully, finally can.”

I don’t feel limited at all by my limits. I mean, yes, I do not do as much as I did pre-COVID, but that makes sense because we’re not pre-COVID. We’re still in the pandemic. Life has changed, and I’ve changed with it. But I don’t feel limited like I did pre-vaccine when I went nowhere and did nothing. I now go to the theater regularly. The kids go to school. We visit people indoors while masked. We socialize outdoors unmasked and distanced. We are considering traveling.

The only things we don’t do are things that require us to remove our masks while near people. So we still only do takeaway and not dine-in (or even dine outside because most tables are too close together). We don’t socialize with food or drink indoors. And we’re waiting for caseloads to be low enough for maskless sleepovers. All things we’d love to do, but we’re willing to wait to keep ourselves and others safer.

Others may make other decisions, and I think all decisions are valid when they are made using the information we have (eg. I am triple-vaccinated and always wear a KN-95 mask tightly to my face, and these two things make me less likely to infect anyone else or become infected while socializing) vs. ignoring information that we don’t like and hoping for an outcome that may or may not happen. At this point, we know what spreads the virus.

It all falls under the Atlantic’s advice at the end that we need to: “come to a mutual understanding about taking risks wisely, about selecting joys judiciously, about distributing protection as widely and equitably as we can.”

I am tired thinking about this next variant and watching the stories move from “nothing to worry about” to “wait, should we be worried?” to “yes, we should be worried” to “the hospitals are full but how could we have ever known this would happen?” I wish we could just skip from “yes, we should be worried” to “look at us — we stopped a spike from happening and saved X number of lives.” THAT would be amazing — a chance to actually stamp down the pandemic vs. ignoring the still glowing embers.