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

*******

Erin McKeown’s musing on whether they have guts is very brave. I think any time you look internally and weigh your feelings, it is brave; sharing them with others adds another layer of bravery. I thought this was profound:

“i know my gender, i don’t care if the government recognizes it. or do i? because i certainly made the effort to change both license and passport to X when i could. frankly, i feel naive for even wanting my government ID to reflect my actual self.”

And later, when speaking about the actions of a friend: “my gut tells me i wouldn’t have an ounce of her courage. but maybe you don’t know until the circumstances force you into action. maybe there will be a moment when all these thought exercises and essays and pods and gut pangs just will not matter. when the only choice is action, and i won’t think twice.”

I thought the whole piece was gutsy, but Erin is always a brilliant writer.

*******

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 connected to businesses or sponsored posts.

This is a monthly series, published near the end of the month summarizing what I found, ate, watched, googled, and felt this month. New categories added from time to time.

Books Added to My TBR (e.g., books I just learned about that I’m excited to read… maybe)

• Lost Lambs (Madeline Cash)
• Country People (Daniel Mason)
• The Viper’s Nest (Mark Edwards)
• Esther Is Now Following You (Tanya Sweeney)
• Town & Country (Brian Schaefer)
• The Award (Matthew Pearl)
• The Silent Appeal (Janice Hallett)
• And the Corpse Wore Tartan (Stuart MacBride)
• It Could Have Been Her (Lisa Jewell)
• How To Get Away with Murder (Rebecca Philipson)
• Beth Is Dead (Katie Bernet)
• The Heir Apparent (Rebecca Armitage)
• This Is Not About Us (Allegra Goodman)
• The Rest of Our Lives (Ben Markovits)
• The Castle (Jon Ronson)
• It’s Not What You Think (Clare Mackintosh)
• The Parkwood Murders (Chris Chibnall)
• I Can’t Believe I Don’t Have a Boyfriend (Harry Trevaldwyn)
• Sophie, Standing There (Meg Mason)
• The Art of Getting Hammered (Joanna Wallace)

Notable Meals (new recipes, old favorites, and restaurant items we ate this month)

• Vegetarian bacon butty: Real eggs, fake bacon, French butter.
• New York Times ribollita recipe, though I used baby spinach instead of kale, and I made the toast separately and floated it on top of the bowl of soup.
• New York Times chickpea stew. Once again used baby spinach instead of mustard greens, increased the broth to 6 cups, and increased the orzo to 3/4 cup. So so so good. We made it again the next week.

Television, Movies, and Music (watching and listening)

• We finished The Paper on Peacock. Loved, loved, loved this show. It grew on me by the second episode, and now I’m bummed that we have to wait for the next season.
• I saw Freud’s Last Session last spring/summer, but I watched it a second time because it moved from Netflix to Hulu, and we could slip it in before Hulu went away.
• I loved loved loved everything about All of You. The writing and acting are both fantastic.
• It took an episode or two until we were hooked, but we enjoyed The Gold. At first, I couldn’t understand how it was going to have a second season. The story wraps up but clearly more happened after the case.
• I haven’t watched Slow Horses, but we are super into his new show, Down Cemetery Road. I like all of the characters, even the bad guys.
• We’ve watched one episode of The Studio. I avoided it at first because I’m not really into Hollywood and moving making, but it’s pretty funny.
• I love Pluribis as much as I loved Severance. Apple is producing fantastic shows at the moment.

Added To My Ongoing Mix Tape

• “A Girl Like You” (Edwyn Collins)

Tabs I Left Open (things I Googled and left up on the screen)

• A story about CS Lewis and the biscuit tin toy garden his brother made him.
• Tig Notaro tour dates.
• Multiple websites with information about myriorama cards.
• The Wikipedia page for Allantide.
• BBC’s Saturday Kitchen landing page.
• How to make your own Starbucks Iced Via packets.

Micro-Joys

• Seeing a few purple-y states go firmly blue on election day.
• Josh and I were bicycling at the beach, and there were hundreds of egrets standing in the marsh we were riding by. Suddenly, they all took off into the air and flew right at us. For a moment, the only thing we could hear was hundreds of wings flapping over our heads. And zero birds pooped on us in the process. 
• I finally won the final board of one of the card sets in Balatro. I had come close many times before, but had never finished.

Mood

• Feeling end-of-year antsiness.

What about you? Let me know what you’re eating, seeing, listening to, googling, feeling this month.

It’s a good week because the kids came home and I could smoosh them in person. I love it when they’re here, and Quentin is beside himself with excitement.

It’s so hard anticipating that they’re going again in a few days because it’s so hard when they go.

I’m happy that they’ll be home again a few weeks later for winter break. But it doesn’t make the leaving any easier for me.

*******

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.

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:

• “Hope vs. Optimism” (No Kidding in NZ)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Whoa! Infertile Phoenix moved a very far distance. I love this: “But it is done and I am proud. I saved myself once again. I saw what wasn’t working. I saw the direction things were headed, and I made major changes. Did I want to do all of that work? Not at all. Not any of it. But I did it anyway.” There is a lot of power in saving yourself and making things happen.

Lastly, Finding a Different Path explains how she can instantly recall the age of her sofa because they were “part of our ‘things we can have because we’ll never have children’ campaign.” It’s funny how we can date things through these random associations. The simple objects that we see in other people’s homes can carry enormous stories.

The roundup to the Roundup: Good break. 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 November 21 – 28) 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.

[Melissa stands up, taps her fork against her glass, and clears her throat. The conversation around the table dies down. She looks at everyone at the table.]

We do this every year: Come together as a community and have a virtual meal before we scatter to our actual meals. Unless, that is, you do not celebrate Thanksgiving. But I hope that you’ll join the table for virtual food and company even if you don’t follow this tradition offline.

We’ve virtually eaten together since 2009. That’s when this tradition began. There are some people hurting at this table. For some people, this pre-meal is what gets them through their real meal later in the week. People have written that they’ve printed out this yearly post and comments and left the paper in their purse because it helped to have a tangible reminder that there were people out there who got it. Who weren’t going to ask them when they were going to hurry up and have children. Who weren’t going to cringe when someone spoke the name of a child they lost.

We are all so different. All of us. Around this table. But we have this one facet of our lives — and yes, even though it may be a big, overpowering one for you right now, it is only one facet of who you are — where we overlap: infertility or adoption or loss. And I am so thankful, so grateful, that I found all of you. Everyone needs a You-shaped space where they can be themselves. And that’s what I have here.

So every year, I ask people to bring a virtual dish to our meal. Place it in the comment section, explaining what you brought and why. And say anything else you need to say before sitting back down to enjoy the company. Update about where you are; your emotional state.

We’re an international group, hailing from countries all around the world. So while Thanksgiving is an American tradition, I hope that everyone around the world feels as if they can participate. (Especially our Canadian neighbours who celebrated Thanksgiving weeks ago.) I’d love for your dish to come from your culture or country. Don’t worry about the contents on the table clashing.

As always, I am bringing stuffing. It’s comfort food; mushy and soggy and warm.

So what did you bring and what do you want to say to the community?

And please, start eating as everyone is introducing their dish. We don’t want the food to get cold and there are so many of us at this table. Thank you so much for coming, and I’m going to carry the warmth of this meal with me for the rest of this week.

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

*******

I came across this fun site of 1 million screenshots from top sites. You can type in the site name, and if it’s part of the project, it will come up in the list. You click on it, and it takes you to the tiny dot on the screen. This is one of those things that is easier to experience than explain.

It was fun to look up sites I’ve worked on and see the screenshot they grabbed from the front page. But also just to look back on this snapshot of time.

*******

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 connected to businesses or sponsored posts.