My stomach dropped when I saw the news alert on Friday about Prince Philip. I had woken up the ChickieNob a few minutes earlier and had to double back to her room to give her the news. It was a hard morning made a little easier by a cousin who texted her before school to let her know that she was sad for the Queen, too.

Years ago, we came up with a plan—our own Tay Bridge—for what happens in the event of a royal death. The ChickieNob worked out which royals meant the most to her; the ones she would want to leave school for and process at home and the ones where she would feel sad but could ultimately keep moving through her day. Prince Philip was near the top of the list, just under the Queen.

He’s a complicated person, the Queen’s “strength and stay” and everyone else’s untranslatable. But he was the first royal who wrote back the ChickieNob, which bumped up his placement in her heart. She wrote him before Scotland because our trip coincided with Holyrood Week, and he wrote back after she returned. At that point, he had retired from public life, and she didn’t think there was a chance that he would answer. But there was the return letter in our mailbox, stamped from the palace. He hoped she had been able to partake in the Holyrood Week festivities.

With a letter, he created a tiny thread in history. And there is nothing that the ChickieNob loves more than history and its complicated, interesting humans.

Right on the heels (well, several weeks on the heels, but time has no meaning this year) of my sister’s visit, we got to see my brother and sister-in-law and nephew. We met them outside my parents’ house, masked and distanced. Which felt much stranger than my visit with my sister and niece due to the age difference in the children. My niece is older, so it didn’t feel odd not to pick her up. Honestly, she is almost my height, so I’m not sure I could pick her up.

But my nephew is a tiny toddler, so it felt odd not to scoop him up. But we take what we can get, and it was still fun to watch him paint the trees with his stick or go up and down the slide at the playground.

Someday. Soon-ish. We’ll get to have normal visits again. And we’ve just given him amazing fodder for future therapy sessions. “Well, there was that time when all the adults stood eighteen feet away from me, masks over their face, while they gazed at me…”

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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:

• “Persistence” (Finding a Different Path)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Searching for Our Silver Lining has a moving post about grief. Her twins’ teacher died suddenly in a car accident on the heels of a beloved cat. They go to the beach while she figures out how to tell them. She writes, “As they played, I watched the waves, allowing the rhythm of water catching on the shore to calm my spirit and unjumble the thoughts and emotions from all the loss from this past week. From this past year. From a lifetime.” Send her some love.

No Kidding in NZ has a post about reading infertility and loss blogs (and message boards) in secret. She admits that she didn’t talk about the trying-to-conceive boards with her husband. She explains: “Perhaps it was because I was trying to figure out what it was I was thinking and feeling before I discussed it with him, or anyone? Perhaps it was shame? Perhaps it was nervousness that he (or others) wouldn’t understand, or would mock it?” I think many will nod along to this post, whether you entered the infertility internet almost two decades ago, or whether it was after social media became commonplace.

Lastly, Empty Arms and Broken Heart writes about surviving this past year. The whole family has had to go through multiple adjustments, but she points out: “Going back will feel like as much of a shock as being sent home was last year. I know I will re-adapt. I feel exhausted from all the adapting I’ve done since March 2020. But, if I could live through 2020, I can live through anything.” So true.

The roundup to the Roundup: Another outdoor visit. 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 April 2 – 9) 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 have run out of words. At the beginning of the pandemic, there were tons of words. Every conversation was about COVID-19. Even in the middle of the pandemic, there were many words. We were discussing the people who were behaving as if we weren’t in a pandemic and the variants and the vaccine rollout. We were talking about in-person school vs. remote learning.

But I’ve run out of words. I feel like I’ve hit a word wall.

More than any other time in the pandemic, I feel depleted, like I’m a battery being charged with the wrong cord. It’s getting the job done, but it’s not getting the job done well. And the device is getting messed up in the process.

Introverts need alone time to recharge, and I haven’t gotten much of it this past year. I can be alone in our room, but I still know other people are in the house. And the truth is, I don’t want them to go out. So I am continuing to recharge using the figurative wrong cord. And it leaves me tired and without words.

It has been 13 months since we’ve eaten at a restaurant. I think about it a lot; that last meal. We went to an Irish pub to hear music for Josh’s birthday. The Wolvog ate there because he doesn’t like ramen, which was where we tried to go afterward, but the wait was too long. We ended up down the road at a favourite Vietnamese restaurant. That vegetarian pho was the last meal I ate at a restaurant.

We’ve gotten takeout a few times. So far, we’ve stuck to three places that were all wearing masks and doing curbside pickup long before masks were required in our area. All three restaurants create food that travels well and re-heats easily. There are other restaurants that fit that criteria; we just need to make time for carry out.

Eater recently had a compelling headline: “The Responsibility of Saving Restaurants Should Never Have Been Ours.” So true.

It is the balance between wanting to help restaurants so they can remain afloat, and worrying that by ordering from a restaurant, I’m staying safe at home while someone else is exposed to risk. This paragraph summed it up:

When it comes to restaurants, I’m not sure there have been any good choices at all: dine indoors, try to keep your mask on whenever a server’s nearby. Dine outside, make sure the tables are far enough apart. Dine at home from takeout boxes an underpaid delivery driver brought to you. Do none of these, and your favorite restaurant closes, putting its employees out of work, probably without a sufficient social safety net.

There is no good answer. The food industry is suffering. The events industry is suffering. The travel industry is suffering. The performance industry is suffering. This sentence from the article is haunting: “These failures are rooted in one of America’s most toxic core beliefs: that the economy matters more than the people who create it.”

Food for thought.

I am aware that many people are currently dining at restaurants—some inside and some outside. But what was your last meal out before the pandemic began?

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

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Cutchicle: a small, rounded lump or crust; as in, “the roasted chicken was crusted with glistening cutchicles.”

Or not.

That word does not exist.

You can find your own non-exist word on the site. My favourites so far are thimblet—though I’m not loving the definition (“fish of a predatory family that includes the sea bass, tuna, and king trout”)—and quintuque (“the first paragraph or so of a book, chapter, or speech as a whole”).

Which words did you find?

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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.