My second pandemic birthday coincides with the date that mask restrictions will be lifted in our area. Of course. It feels like each change in the pandemic makes the maze a little more twisty to navigate. We had a great system with takeaway, knew which restaurants took masking seriously, and now we need to see which ones will keep up masking because there is no way to know whether or not someone is vaccinated. The only thing we know is whether or not they’re wearing a mask.

So.

We’ll figure it out. Either we’ll get takeaway because one of the restaurants we’ve been patroning will continue to mask, or we’ll skip the takeaway and eat cereal for dinner instead. Cereal and cookies. All things tan.

Because we’re still masking. Because careful is cool. Because it feels right. Because we like to live in a zero regrets zone, and removing our mask—especially indoors—would fill us with regrets. Emphasis on the us. We’ve read. We’ve thought. We’ve decided. And we know everyone else is doing this, too, and may come to a different decision. We all see the world through our invisible lens.

Ten Percent Happier had a great piece on predatory listening, which in blog form would be more predatory reading. It’s that idea of forming how you feel about the words on the screen (or the words coming into your ears) before you’ve read the words on the screen or heard the words. It’s forming your response before you even know what you’re responding to.

Every stage of the pandemic has been a whirlpool of predatory reading—myself included. It includes listening or reading “with a hypercritical focus rather than with curiosity. If I don’t pay attention, my mind switches into offense mode, poised to build a case, selecting only things that validate my narrative.” To continue to mask or not to mask. Most people—like the election—have already decided what they’re going to do. They relax into reading what confirms their decision. Form arguments while reading (or, in some cases, before reading) what they suspect or know goes against their decision.

I like the end thought in the article—how to get out of the cycle of predatory listening and reading. It was food for thought in stressful times.

The twins are taking exams from our basement, which is a sentence I never thought I’d write. They had to clear the room of any and all notes. Pop in earphones to create quiet, and start an app that freezes their computer on the exam. This is their 15th month of school from home, which I know is totally normal if you’re homeschooled. But the twins aren’t homeschooled. They are just home and schooled.

This has been a very weird year.

But it now feels more normal to have them doing school from home than thinking about having them go to school in a classroom again. Next year is currently set to be in-person. I know I will once again grow accustomed to having everyone out of the house, but I sense that it will take me months to go back to feeling like it is “normal” in the same way that it took me months to come to a place where everyone at home felt “normal.”

I’m in a liminal space, trying to figure out how I feel about everything.

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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:

• “Between the Lilac and the Birch” (Mrs. Spit… Still Spouting Off)
• “Parenthood and Grandparenthood in the Pandemic” (InfertilityHonesty)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Jewish IVF asks when those twinges of jealousy will ever go away. She writes: “For me it’s more like a tug in my heart, the sting in my eyes, the pull in my gut. Then guilt that I feel it at all instead of just being happy for someone when they share their news.” For her, it’s pregnancy-related more than baby-related, but this idea hit home for me, too. I still feel those twinges sometimes.

The Uterus Monologues was asked when they’re planning to have another child. She explains: “I think the single most surprising thing for me about having a baby has been how quickly people ask when you’re going to do it all over again.” She does the mental math of what it will take to go through pregnancy again after loss. It’s a fascinating post on where the brain goes when you have so much more to consider.

Lastly, Infertile Phoenix goes through what may be the most awkward and inappropriate icebreaker situation ever when someone decides it will be a fantastic idea to ask all of the people at a new place about whether they have children. Though I love this line: “I didn’t say anything else. No explanation. No elaboration.”

The roundup to the Roundup: The end of the school year at home. 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 May 14 – May 21) 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.

My Sweet Dumb Brain had a beautiful essay unpacking an idea from Glennon Doyle’s book about life as a game of chutes and ladders, and how social media amplifies the squares we’re all on.

She was on a figurative high square moving towards the next milestone when her husband died suddenly, sending her down a chute that changed her relationship status, friendships, career, and adoption application. And then there were all the “ladders” that friends were posting on social media:

While I was coming to terms with the fact that my husband was dead, everyone else seemed to be living their best lives—and making sure the world knew about it … all of these posts made me feel woefully alone. While I had fallen down a never-ending chute, it seemed it was all ladders for everyone else I followed.

The point, she explains, is that “I usually focus on the chute part. I forget to look for the ladders.” Because it’s easy to feel the impact of a chute. Your stomach is plummeting. Your heart is in your throat. You are upset, and it blots out everything else. It is much harder to feel the elation of a ladder. We climb them, enjoying the fact that we’re going up while simultaneously looking for the next ladder. Climbs don’t have the same physical response.

Anyway, I love her essay. Give it a read.

I sent the ChickieNob outside last week to meet up with a friend. There is a clearing between our houses, and they can remain 12 feet apart on picnic blankets. An hour or so later, she came back into the house. “They are here. They are here. They are everywhere.”

The cicadas.

I had been looking in our yard, assuming that if they weren’t in our yard, they weren’t in our neighbourhood. Not quite. It turns out that they were just a few streets away. Some of my friends’ yards are swarming with them.

We had our first on the front step this weekend—both the actual cicada (which I mostly missed as Josh nudged it away with his foot) and its shell (which I jumped over, shrieking). And I saw them on some of the trees while we were driving.

Since then, I’ve been standing by the window with my birding binoculars, searching the trees like a curtain twitcher (a term I learned from fellow former blogger, MsPrufrock, aka BarrenAlbion, that I think of any time I stand by the window). The twins tell me that I’m creepy, and if anyone looked at me while I was standing at my bedroom window, binoculars glued to my face, they would think I’m weird. Think I’m weird? Is that the worst that would happen? Because do you know that the alternative is that I will not know when the cicadas come to our actual yard?

I forgot that they emerge slowly at first and then pick up steam.

I took a few minutes to sit outside yesterday. It may be the last time for awhile.

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

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I recently learned that in the US, Sunday is considered the first day of the week. Which is funny because the days of the week in Hebrew are literally “first day,” “second day,” “third day,” etc. And Sunday is Yom Rishon or “first day.” But even with that linguistic fact, I’ve always thought of Monday as the first day.

I purposefully chose a calendar that has the week set up as Monday to Sunday so it fit my mental counting of the first day of the week.

What do you consider the first day of the week, and do you match up with your country??

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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.