One thing I love is bothering Josh, and there is nothing better than making your own Wordle with a made-up word, texting it to him, and watching him agonize over trying to figure it out.

That’s love!

You can make your own with any 5-letter word, send the link to play to a friend, and enjoy being a master word game creator.

Or make your own, leave it in the comment section below, and let us all play it. Maybe more telling than anything else is seeing which word you chose to give us. Here is mine.

A video to watch before reading the rest of this:

How cool is that? I ended up seeing the video after I read most the article on visual stability, so I knew what to look for when the video started. But I love this idea of our brain averages what it sees in multi-second intervals and delivers something close to that average so we can handle it.

It goes hand-in-hand with the changing room illusion:

I only noticed two things change in the whole room. How did you do?

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

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I spent most of Saturday (before and after my date) hitting refresh on my Libby hold list. A watched library list never gives you your hold. But I had convinced myself that the only book in the entire world I wanted to read next was Janice Hallett’s The Appeal.

Why?

I have no clue. I know nothing about it. But I convinced myself as I neared the end of the book I was reading that it was the only thing that could make me happy despite having several other holds sent my way and hundreds of unread books in my home. We didn’t want to drive into the city to get to the bookstore because of the trucking convoy. So I had to just hit refresh on the list and make a plan B.

Sometimes I just hit a reading mood. Based on nothing.

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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.

Back near the beginning of the pandemic, or maybe it was right when restaurants started to get their takeaway plans settled, our favourite vegan restaurant brought back their “chicken” sandwich. I had been waiting for this moment for years, leaving them helpful little nudges on their Facebook wall, and the “chicken” sandwich was finally back, but my heart wasn’t ready to eat it.

Getting takeaway from there felt like too much work. It wouldn’t travel well, and we were certainly not going to crouch in the parking lot, eating fake chicken. I mean, secretly, I was totally willing to do this, but the twins convinced me that this was “sad” and “unhealthy.” So we left it as one more thing we couldn’t do due to the pandemic.

And then this week, they posted that for two days only, they were bringing back their “chicken” sandwich. It was going to be a gorgeous day, and we’re vaccinated and boosted. We could do this. So Josh and I called in our order, picked it up, and went to eat it in the car with the windows down, enjoying the breeze.

It was the best fake chicken sandwich ever.

Mostly because while things still felt abnormal, eating a really good meal in the car felt like a triumph. We had done it — we had grabbed back a moment of normal life and done it as safely as possible. It was like having our cake/chicken sandwich and eating it, too.

Afterward, we drove to a park and walked around the fake lake — it was an ersatz afternoon — and talked about everything and nothing. A date day, instead of a date night.

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.