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

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It took us 20 seconds of conversation to choose whether to combine finances but it has been over 20 years, and we still haven’t fully integrated our bookshelves. We also haven’t completely de-duped our shelves. When the twins were little, they liked to play match-up with our duplicates. They would touch one spine on one bookcase and then touch the identical spine on another bookcase. Two copies of Dubliners by James Joyce. Two copies of every A. B. Yehoshua.

A few years ago, we attempted to de-dupe, but I dragged a bunch of copies out of the donate pile. (It’s good to have two Anne Enrights! What if we both need to read it at the same time?) We also attempted to integrate without much success. Four bookcases are fully mine. Two bookcases are mostly Josh. Three bookcases are a mix, though the books run in clumps — three of mine followed by fours of Josh’s followed by a few more of mine. Our books hang out together, but they’re just friends.

The stacks of books behave in similar ways, almost like they learned how to behave from the books on the shelves.

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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 managed to get through the pandemic with only a handful of cases at the school until now. We’re notified each time the school is notified about a case, and there have been three letters since the kids returned to the school in September after being out of the building for 16 months.

Go us.

And then a few days ago, we received a letter listing 13 cases. All in the same letter. They were one after the other.

A day or two after that, another letter with another 14 cases. Different from the ones before because they list the dates the person was last in the school and the date they tested positive.

The twins told me that people are missing — a lot of people are missing; sometimes half their class. And it isn’t clear if those people are missing because they’re sick or got their booster or are choosing not to re-enter the building with active cases in the community.

The horse is out of the barn at this point, so they’re still attending school. The cases seem to be mostly on the sports teams where they take off their masks to play or from Thanksgiving dinners where people gathered and took off their masks to eat. It’s a testament to mandatory masking in the classroom that more people aren’t ill. Thank you, masks.

But it’s nerve-wracking to get the letters. Even though they’re fully vaccinated. Even though they’re almost boosted. Even though we’re fully vaccinated and boosted. None of that matters when you see the long list of positive tests.

We are crawling towards winter break. Josh was able to schedule booster appointments for the twins because it’s the hap-happiest season of all. Part of me didn’t want to wait — we can do walk-in appointments at the pharmacy — but they were worried about feeling crappy afterward and not wanting to miss school before break. So we’ll kickoff break with a protection celebration.

We are not going anywhere, and we do not have anything we need to do. So we’re going to take break to watch television, go through old photos, read books, and laze about eating candy. 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. In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “Ufmünterli” (Elaine ohne Kind)
• “Review: Reclaiming the Childless Holidays” (Infertile Phoenix)

Okay, now my choices this week.

No Kidding in NZ has some seasonal thoughts of the reclaiming-the-holiday variety. She talks about her upcoming holiday and states: “I like to honour those little sparks of life who never made it here, but who helped make me who I am today. The best way I can do that is to embrace the life I have now, and live a good life.” I love that.

Grumpy Rumblings has some seasonal thoughts of the pandemic variety. She is forced to do COVID-math over and over again as plans change due to both new, external risks — omicron — and different choices by family members. It’s such stressful math because you’re balancing safety and feelings. I’m just glad people are writing about it and talking it out. Especially smart: “We’ve been going through potential scenarios so we don’t have to make decisions in the moment. What if SIL’s kids have obvious colds? What do we do? What if one of us gets sick, what do we do?”

Lastly, FinallyMyLinesNow returns with an update, a new baby, and a missing uterus. She tells the story over a few parts. It’s just a relief that they’re home and everyone is well.

The roundup to the Roundup: Winter break is coming. 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 December 10 – December 17) 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.

As I say every month, I’m shamelessly stealing this idea from Jessica Lahey. She has a recurring monthly date where she reviews all the books she read that month. Book reviews are important for authors, and I want to get better about doing this.

So. I’m going to review them here and also online, but I’m going to do it a little differently. I’m only going to review the stuff I really liked. I don’t see a reason to spend my time writing about something I didn’t love; it’s just using up more of my energy. So only positive reviews.

These are the books I liked (or mostly liked) from November.

As Good as Dead (Holly Jackson): This was the third and final book in a trilogy. I’m so impressed by this first-time author. This final book was a little rough in places, and I didn’t find all of the choices believable. But she wrapped up everything, and she wrote something fascinating — similar to Serial, which inspired this series.

The Man Who Died Twice (Richard Osman): His first book (and the first book in this series) was one of my favourite books last year. This book is one of my favourite books this year. Quirky, wonderful characters. A good mystery. A very moving ending. There were so many times I laughed aloud. I’ll buy the third one in this series, sight-unseen.

The Hawthorne Legacy (Jennifer Lynn Barnes): This was also a book in a series. I also read books this month that weren’t part of a series, but they weren’t enjoyable so I’m not going to mention them here. Anyway. Another series, and this was a second book just as exceptional as the first. Maybe more exceptional because she skillfully reminds you of everything you read in the first book while you read the second — not an easy trick to pull off without being annoying. It meant that I never felt like I had to work hard to remember things. Well done.

What did you read last month?

The kids walked into the house and said that they smelled gas. I had been in the house all day and smelled nothing, but they were insistent that they smelled gas. So we called the gas company and they sent out a man with a very cool gas-detecting tool, and he assured me that we had a gas leak. Somewhere.

“Where is it?” I asked, frantic, because I thought the house was going to explode ANY SECOND.

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” the man assured me.

“Is it the oven?” I questioned.

“Do you have a gas oven? That looks like an electric oven.”

“It is. It’s an electric oven.”

“No,” the man said patiently. “An electric oven cannot suddenly turn into a gas oven and become the source of a gas leak.”

We went down into the basement where his machine starting going bananapants, and he found the gas leak immediately — the new furnace. The people who installed it didn’t tighten a screw. It was so loose that he could turn it by hand, and that was where the gas was leaking.

“Come here,” he said. “I want to show you this.”

“I can’t,” I told him. “Because there is a cricket.”

“Where is a cricket?”

“On the floor. Between us. On the floor.”

“I don’t see it.”

“It is there. Right there. It is on the floor. Look on the floor. Between us. On the floor. Over there. Right there! That is a cricket. And I cannot see the gas leak thing because of the cricket.”

“Do you want me to take care of the cricket?”

“That would be amazing because I’m terrified right now,” I admitted.

“You do realize that the cricket was already dead,” the man told me as he picked it up, saving my life.

“I don’t think so. It moved. Very slightly. But it moved at one point while you were looking for it.”

He did not tell me that I was wrong. Because he’s smart. He showed me the gas leak. He fixed the gas leak.

“So how far away were we from the house exploding?” I asked.

“Oh you’d need like 50 times that amount of gas for your house to explode. You’d smell it outside if you were in a situation where you had such an enormous gas leak that the house would explode.”

“So we were super close,” I told him.

He once again didn’t say anything. I like to think that it’s because he was too busy thinking about the myriad ways he saved my life.