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

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I think I have found my secret skill: listing unconnected words. I keep playing the Divergent Association Task exercise, and I’ve been able to come up with randomness:

You list unrelated nouns (single word; no proper nouns) and it tells you how unrelated those words are. And how well you do this task related to other people taking the quiz. I believe only your first score counts for the research, but you can take the quiz over and over again, trying to best your own score.

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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.

1000 internet years ago (which is like 18 years in human years), my greatest internet pain and joy was reading “Bringing Up Ben and Birdy.” The author blogged for Babycenter—remember when websites had in-house blogging columns because blogging was the next! big! thing?

It felt so intimate to read something akin to a person’s diary on the web. And it was so incredibly painful because she was clearly successful in building her family, and I was not. Reading it was like picking at a scab on my heart.

After Babycenter shuttered the column—around the same time I started this blog in 2006, I think—she moved over to a blogspot site that I’ve read ever since. Birdy was a few years older than the twins at that point. Last week, Catherine (the author) wrote about Birdy leaving for college, posting about back when she dropped off Ben.

Picking at the scab on my heart again.

She writes:

He came into our lives two weeks late, but now he’s leaving right on time, and we’re supposed to graciously show him the door. We’ve been running alongside his bike for 18 years and we’re supposed to wave cheerfully as he turns into a pedaling speck in the distance.

Cue tears.

Ten years ago, I wrote my 9/11 story—everyone over a certain age has one. I was thinking today about how raw it still feels; how recent. The events of that day and the time afterward. How my entire marriage fits inside the aftermath of that day. It’s impossible for me to mentally separate them.

Sending a lot of love out into the universe tomorrow.

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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:

• None… sniff…

Okay, now my choices this week.

No Kidding in NZ draws a comparison between two unrelated communities, pointing out the similar statements people make to the members. And, at the same time, the positives of the two communities are similar, too. She writes: “How wonderful it is that there are people who care, and spend their time and energy in helping others, who want to make sense of their pain by helping others. There is so much love in these communities, it gives me hope for the world when we normally see so much division.” I love that and feel it, too.

Infertilityhonesty writes about the human tendency to think things can’t happen to us. But she points out that infertility can happen to anyone: “The number of things that take place on a cellular level that determine life outcomes AND that we don’t control is endless, after all. The short of it is that a few minute aspects of my reproductive programming figuratively turned left instead of right. That’s all.” It is sobering to think how little stands between reality and the otherwise, and it would do all of us well to remember that we should acknowledge that chance.

Lastly, Jewish IVF is waiting for her FET results. But it’s a different world. She writes: “I don’t have any pee sticks. I may have learned my lesson with the mind games they cause and didn’t restock after the last round. Instead, we’re running around town looking for other tests: covid testing kits are once again in short supply.” Sending her good thoughts for the post-holiday results.

The roundup to the Roundup: The 20th anniversary of 9/11. 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 3 – 10) 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.

All summer long, we’ve been compiling a list of possible colleges as a family. We started closest to home, filling out a spreadsheet with key facts about each school, and then we circled outward, farther and farther from home.

College Night is always an exciting night in the sense that it’s fun to watch the twins mentally try on schools and see if they’re a good fit. But it’s also a bittersweet night. College signals the start of the next chapter of life.

I am having a really hard time with it. I’m also right there with them, swept up in the dreaming.

A few schools are emerging as early favourites, but I keep reminding them not to get their heart set on a single program. They need to keep a handful of different options open as equally good if they don’t want to have a miserable time waiting to hear where they get in. And then I secretly go and Google those schools to try to imagine my kids that far away. Hanging out at that campus. Starting this next stage of life.

I just want them to be happy.

Today is Rosh Hashanah, so I wrote this early knowing that I probably wouldn’t go online except to attend… you guessed it… Zoom services. This is our second round of holiday services via Zoom. There are the pros and cons.

Pros: Protected from COVID-19, can attend in our pyjamas while drinking coffee, no issue if we enter late, and Beorn can be part of the activity.

Cons: We are trying to have a meaningful community experience from our living room.

But something is better than nothing, so we’ll participate in our pyjamas, facing the houseplants, while Beorn wheeks in the background.

Happy new year!