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

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I’ve written before about my fake meat squeamishness. Most of these Beyond Meat or Impossible products feel too real. They make me feel panicked after I eat them, even though I rationally know that they’re not real meat. But they feel very real to me.

At the same time, I love Morningstar bacon. I love it with the intensity of a thousand suns. And I love Beyond Meat breakfast sausage links. And their bratwurst. We probably end up having them alone or in something every other week.

But this new Impossible pork? It really squicks me out. I know it makes no sense, and I’d probably be fine ordering it in a restaurant. But I haven’t been mentally able to bring the Impossible beef patties into the house. It’s something about seeing it uncooked that makes me feel woozy.

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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 are the type of family who buys toiletries in bulk. We go to the store once or twice a year and purchase all the toothpaste and shampoo we’ll need for the next 6 – 8 months. It’s efficient, we’re never left soap-less, and we save tons of money because we use a 25%-off-your-whole-trip coupon.

The exception is my hair gel. It’s only sold online. I purchase a half dozen tubes at a time and store them with the rest of the toiletries.

Whenever I open a new one, I check—usually by feel because it has a distinctive cap—how many I have left. I was down to one and knew I had to order soon, but imagine my horror when I went to grab the last one and it wasn’t there. There was no gel. Doing this by feel instead of opening the box and looking inside had failed me.

Ordering it wasn’t a problem—it was in stock and would ship immediately, arriving a few days later. But what would I do in the meantime?

I found a half-used bottle of an old hair product under the sink that seemed to be okay. I rubbed it through my hair and sniffed at a curl. My hair smelled like 2018. Like pre-pandemic. Like getting ready to leave the house instead of debate whether I really need to walk out the front door. It smelled like a no-mask life. Like college-is-years-away life.

I used it for two days until the regular gel arrived, and then I tucked the old bottle of hair product under the sink. It’s not 2018 anymore.

Josh and I went on a book date because I had a panicked reaction to all of the book shortage reports. (I am the media’s target audience.) Yes, I know that I often read e-books and those copies will still be available. Yes, I know I can check the books out of the library, or borrow them from a friend. Yes, I know that the book shortage may not impact the books that I want to read or buy. I know all of these things. I panicked anyway.

“How will I know what sort of reading mood I’ll be in come January? I barely know what reading mood I’m going to be in next week,” I wailed.

So we went to the bookstore and bought books. Because there is a chance that I will read through the several hundred books on my TBR, and I want to be prepared.

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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 in order 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:

• “Views” (A Blank New Page)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Family Building With a Twist writes about being dragged down by entropy. She writes: “And I know: I’ve been through a lot in the last year and should cut myself some slack or give myself some grace. But at some point, you have to stop making excuses and step up (woman up?).” And I LOVE the end of the post—one flower at a time, indeed.

Infertile Phoenix writes about when the world feels like too much and not enough. My favourite part is when she eats some cookies because we all need small, good things. She explains: “There’s still a pandemic, inflation, a shipping crisis, and climate change, but I also enjoyed my cookies. I don’t know how I endured infertility. I couldn’t enjoy the little things back then. I don’t know how I got through those years.” That is how you make it through hard things—moment by moment.

Lastly, Scientist on the Roof sums up the mood of the moment. I think a lot of us are feeling this type of frustration. Especially the swing from “everything is okay” to “everything is not okay,” and how it seems to happen so quickly lately. She writes, “I find the disconnect between anticipation and reality so jarring, it is sometimes (always?) better to just not to put much time into looking forward to things.” It’s so hard not to anticipate, but it is also the root of so much frustration.

The roundup to the Roundup: I now have all the books. 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 15 – October 22) 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.

I went to meet a friend for coffee early in the morning, and my tire pressure light came on right as I pulled off the street. I am someone who has always taken my car to the local garage and had someone there fill up my tires or convinced Josh to drive out and meet me at a gas station. Which is kind of embarrassing because it’s not that difficult. The last time Josh helped me, I made myself an audio note with step-by-step instructions.

I drove to the nearest gas station telling myself that I can do hard things. I have an audio note, and it’s early in the morning. Sure enough, when I pulled into the gas station, there was no one in sight. Except for the man watering the plants right next to the air pump. No problem. I’m not embarrassed that I am a middle-aged woman standing next to my car, listening to an audio note telling me how to take care of my tires.

I started with the tire that looked lower than the others. The gauge confirmed this, and I started to fill the tire with air, becoming flustered because I really wanted to listen to the audio note again, but the watering can man (WHY ARE YOU WATERING PLANTS WHEN IT IS CLEARLY ABOUT TO RAIN?) is looking at me strangely. So I decide that I’m going to pull to the side of the station, listen to my note a few times, and then loop back to the air pump.

I go to reattach the cap, and it flies out of my fingers and through the tire, landing somewhere beneath my car. I’m scrambling around, looking for it, when another car (of course) pulls up behind, waiting to use the pump.

A sixty-something-year-old man climbs out of the car and immediately starts offering to help. Do I need him to fill my tires? No. I’m just trying to find the cap. Do I need him to find the cap? No, I am perfectly capable of finding a cap. Do I need him to…

Listen, I get that he was just being helpful, but sometimes being helpful is giving someone time to do something. Not rushing them along when there are two other gas stations within eyesight that you can go to if you’re in a hurry and need an air pump now. Instead, he hovered as close as he could with COVID-19 in mind and made me feel panicked.

A minute later, I found the cap, attached it, and drove away without checking the other three tires. I would have to loop back to the station later or risk being late to meet my friend. And, frankly, I was too embarrassed at that point to drive back in and test the other three tires without a clear and immediate reason.

The moral of the story; I will be cognizant when waiting in line that I don’t make another person feel rushed. You never know when they’re trying to follow steps from an audio note for the first time.

Erin McKeown is one of the most honest songwriters on the planet, and she writes the best newsletter. I’ve been thinking nonstop about her recent newsletter—”hold your nerve.” She recounts how hard it is to put yourself out there artistically at the best of times. During the pandemic, it’s near impossible.

She has a new album out, and she’s currently touring as safely as she can. But ticket sales are down because audiences aren’t coming, and she talks about the balance she faces between continuing with what she needs to do and pulling back—something everyone faces at some point with the pandemic. Everyone has to hold their nerve and do something:

Maybe you have to as well in whatever your situation is. Maybe you have to hold your nerve and send your kids to school even though it worries you sick. Maybe you have to hold your nerve and keep working at a job you hate because there is no other option.

She also fears—”I have probably scuttled my career further by not writing you a cheery essay about how great everything is going.” Except the opposite is true. Someone pointing how hard it is to be creative in the best of times and comparing it to being creative in a pandemic is exactly what I wanted to read. It’s what makes her such a great songwriter; her deep honesty and vulnerability.

P.S. Her upcoming tour dates (masked and vaccinated) are at the bottom of the newsletter.