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

*******

Cup of Jo asked if you have a lucky meal. A lucky meal? Like a meal we eat when we need good luck? How would that work? Like the food would somehow signal to the universe that we need X to happen? That’s a bizarre thought. Food can’t do that. Unlike my lucky socks, which can and do influence the universe.

We have recurring meals—rigatoni pomodorini makes it into the rotation at least once every two weeks. And during the pandemic, we’ve indulged in tacos from Tuesday all the way through Friday (always different kinds) because… mood. But we don’t think these meals will do anything more than make us feel good for thirty minutes when the world doesn’t feel good. So not really lucky.

But it made me want a lucky meal; something I could eat and believe that it would change the course of events.

*******

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.

Carolyn Hax has a way of putting things that is so simple and straightforward that you know you can put the advice into action. The question was about taking someone’s last name during marriage, but the advice applies to all of the invasive questions that accompany infertility or family building.

She writes:

The answer to your question about sharing “without getting into all the reasons” is actually the easy part of this whole thing: You never owe people an accounting of your private thoughts. “This is what works for us.” Done and done. Intrusive questions aren’t invoices.

“Intrusive questions aren’t invoices.” That is BRILLIANT. You don’t have to answer every question just because someone asked it. I know this but I clearly don’t know this because I often feel anxious when I feel like I’m being pushed to answer something that I don’t want to answer. I need to stop thinking of every question as an invoice that needs to be paid in full so I can move it to the done pile. It’s also possible to move the question to the rubbish bin. Or just file it away, unanswered.

As much as I love Carolyn Hax and advice columns in general, I love the idea of fake letters sent to advice columnists even more. What an art form! “I learned that a good letter is defined by two opposing values: it must be plausible, but it must also be ridiculous.” To write a letter that sounds just this side of real with a heaping tablespoon of “this can’t be real… right?” to boot—and to get 12 out of 25 answered. That is an impressive feat.

This article amused me to no end.

*******

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.

*******

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:

• “You’re the Expert” (Infertile Phoenix)
• “Convincing Myself” (Stirrup Queens)—thanks, Jess!

Okay, now my choices this week.

A Half-Baked Life has a post about heavy thoughts and dessert. She unpacks her daughter’s fear about death and about one day losing her mother. She writes, “We did not talk about pregnancy loss, but we’ve talked about it before, and she knows that this is there too, the specter in the background.” It’s a heavy post, made lighter by cake. But yes, it’s hard to keep your brain in the here and now.

Family Building with a Twist processes the feelings that Mondays kick off, that stand in place of all the larger emotions that follow her the rest of the week. She explains about Mondays: “And it includes garbage needing to be dealt with. It sounds silly, but I don’t know…garbage symbolizes so much, and it is a huge pain. Garbage night symbolizes to me one of those tasks that I didn’t have to do previously but now must do now. And I fucking hate it.” It is a raw post (with a scary incident in the water), and the only thing to do is abide.

Hopelessly Infertile and Surrounded by Fertiles writes about daughter and son days on Facebook (who made up these holidays?) and how the posts make her feel. All I can say is that she’s not alone. I bet a lot of other people would raise their hand and say, “Me too.”

Lastly, Kmina’s Blog writes about anxiety and the pandemic. She says, “I keep letting little things ruin my mood. Why? Well, a leaking sink might or might not be a little thing, it all depends – my most favourite answers to most questions.” And I love the wish at the end: “I hope your anxiety is manageable and not giving you too much of a hard time.” Sometimes that is the best we can hope for.

The roundup to the Roundup: Fake letters. 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 September 24 – October 1) 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.

Not counting the meals cooked by people I know (with the exception of the last entry) because that food is infused with love and has an unfair advantage:

1. The grilled red pepper burrito at Bueno y Sano: It has since been removed from the menu, but I ate one every Thursday for four straight years. (Plus extra weekly burritos when I really really needed one.) I got it with rice and lettuce and mild sauce at first. I added sour cream once I started eating dairy later in grad school.
2. Passion fruit vinaigrette salad: I ate it on my honeymoon. I begged the waitstaff for the recipe. They wrote it out without any amounts. I’ve never been able to recreate it. It was so salty and fresh and I still dream about this salad.
3. The wonton soup at Apropos: You have to understand as a vegetarian, I saw a lot of foods that I couldn’t try in the US. But Israel has always been vegetarian-friendly with tons of vegan options. The soup consisted of one or two massive fried vegetarian wontons with tons of other veggies in the bowl. Amazing broth. I loved that restaurant so much.
4. Vegetable egg rolls in Shepherdstown, WV. This is the only time I’ve ever seen a vegetarian egg roll that was truly an egg roll and not a fried spring roll. They were so good that I’ve dragged many people out there with me for egg rolls—as in, a whole meal of just egg rolls.
5. Jo’s meal of Linda McCartney sausages: I got off the plane in Ireland, jet-lagged and hungry, and Jo made me a meal of Linda McCartney vegetarian sausages, toast, and tea. We can’t get Linda’s sausages in the US, and for years, I’ve tried to make something that tastes similar. There are plenty of vegetarian sausage options, but none are as good as Linda’s, which tasted amazing after a long flight while we picnicked on his apartment floor. The new Beyond Sausage breakfast links are a close re-creation, and we’ve been having Jo dinners: sausages, toast, and tea.

What are the best things you’ve ever eaten?

I love Goodreads when it helps me make reading decisions. A book with a 4.1 average rating and tons of good reviews? It’s a quick decision to move ahead with the book if it’s already on my massive TBR. A book with 3.2 rating? Maybe I should hold off and read something else first.

The issue is that everyone has their own star system. We don’t give four stars for the same reasons. Knowing that, I generally glance at the stars but read the first few reviews. Are people saying the same thing?

The issue, of course, is that I often enter Goodreads excited to read a book only to find that other people have said negative things about the story. It clouds my experience of the book, generally making me feel lukewarm about it before I’ve begun the first page. How can a book recover from that when you’ve already been told that it’s boring?

It happened with a book recently—I wanted to read it because the description sounded great. But then the reviews were all over the place, so I kept delaying taking the book when it came up on my holds list. And now the e-book is gone from the library system. E-books, unlike paper books, are purchased with a certain number of downloads or time on the license.

It’s a hard line to walk: Using reviews to use my reading time wisely but not having reviews move me away from things I may have enjoyed if I didn’t know how anyone else felt.