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

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Most intriguing line I’ve read this week: “Over the past 35 years, MacNamara has read more than 8,000 strangers’ diaries.” She buys them online or through antique shops. She’s a diary hunter, reading other people’s private thoughts.

I went down a rabbit hole, ending up The Great Diary Project that has amassed 9000 unpublished diaries. They’re not cleaned up for public consumption, or written like a blog with a reader in mind. They are private thoughts that were tossed out by loved ones after a person died (or sometimes sold by the writer while they’re still alive) and ended up in a stranger’s hands.

I love this idea—reading someone’s unfiltered thoughts. Though I’m not sure how I would feel if my diaries ended up in someone else’s hands. Which makes me wonder if I should write up a plan for my diaries or get rid of them at some point.

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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.

I was talking to Leah over Zoom, and we were discussing what happens after the election is over. And I said, “Hopefully, we live.” And she responded, “Yes, hopefully!” But then we just stared at each other through the screen because… while I meant that everything will hopefully be fine—life as normal (or, at least, as normal as it can be with a pandemic)—it also sounded like we were entering the Hunger Games arena. May the odds be ever in our favour.

And then we mused how that statement sort of sums up 2020. Hopefully, we live. Hopefully, we get to the end of this pandemic. Hopefully, we get to the end of the political nightmare. Hopefully, we stop systemic racism. Hopefully, we restore families separated at the border. Hopefully, hopefully, hopefully, because the alternative is that we don’t live.

I am trying so hard to live right now. I am trying to plot out meals to lessen the number of trips to the grocery store. I am trying to make sure the masks are clean. I am trying not to scroll through the polls and obsessively think about the future.

Sending good thoughts to everyone for this stressful week and life beyond.

Halloween finally falls on a weekend, and no one can enjoy it. Instead of Daylight Saving Time, we should have a do-over on the calendar so we can have a second chance to get a Saturday night Halloween.

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The vet made us a paw print, and Josh picked it up when he went over to pay the vet bill. I’m definitely glad I have it, but I immediately slipped it into a drawer because I didn’t want to look at it right now. I made the mistake of asking Josh to read off the itemized bill, and it was a long list of what they did for the surgery. And that broke my heart; thinking about his tiny body going through so many steps.

It is weird to feel sad about Linus while, at the same time, feeling happy about Beorn. Which is sort of infertility in a nutshell.

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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:

• “Fragile (with comfort food: Arroz con Pollo)” (A Half Baked Life)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Chrissy Teigen wrote about her loss, and there was a line that struck me: “Silently twisting their negative words into positives, thinking that everything might still turn out okay.” That action of knowing things aren’t going to be okay, and then working to convince yourself that maybe—just maybe—you’re wrong or the doctors are wrong or someone is wrong.

The Barreness has a very moving post about her breast scan. She made me feel like I was sitting there with her, holding my breath, waiting for the news.

Lavender Luz has a post about oversharing an adoptee’s story. While it’s framed around adoption, a lot of the advice is applicable to all parents and all kids, so I encourage everyone to read it. But it’s especially eye-opening from the adoption perspective. Especially this: “Unfortunately, my mom’s adoption story was not really “our” story. My story was a different one. And each time my mom shared her story, she unknowingly pushed my story to the background—so much so, that there was no space for me to make sense of it.”

Lastly, FinallyMyLinesNow has an amazing open letter to an embryologist who refused to give her information while they were on the phone. She gently explains: “Information isn’t control. But information is about as close to control as I can get. Information lets me plan my next steps. It lets me prepare for the most probable outcomes. Information is pretty much the only panacea for the pain that comes from the lack of control of something so fundamentally important.” I seriously hope that people read this and remember how much we can positively or negatively impact someone.

The roundup to the Roundup: Weekend Halloween wasted. Linus and Beorn. 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 October 23 – October 30) 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.

Once upon a time, I lived a big life. I traveled. A lot. I went to faraway places on my own or with a friend. We would split up, and I would wander the streets in foreign cities by myself. I would learn enough of the language to get by. I had great adventures.

Josh and I were only together a few months when we hit the road to drive to the Maritimes in Canada with only a loose plan of where we would go and what we would do. We purchased spur-of-the-moment tickets to Paris, saw theater in London, and drove to beach to beach to beach. We thought nothing of hopping in the car and driving many hours to see my siblings.

And once the twins were here, we involved them in the adventures, too. They have already had two passports, and they’ll renew for their third before they go to college because they’re game to go anywhere and everywhere. The ChickieNob organizes us, creating Google forms so the family can vote on the next place we go. The Wolvog takes 360 videos so we can watch them in VR once we’re home and feel like we’re still somewhere else.

We don’t really spend money on anything else. It’s just books and travel.

And then COVID-19 stopped travel. So now it’s just books.

My world has become so tiny.

It is partially tiny due to logistics. We can’t cross borders right now, and the places we’d go have their countries in lockdown. And it is partially tiny by choice. Or… choice doesn’t feel like the right word. It is tiny because it is overwhelming to be out-and-about right now.

Planes feel off-limits, and where would we even go? We’re not entering buildings or homes. Traveling on the highway feels overwhelming. The cars are moving so quickly, and it all feels too bright and too loud. We thought we’d go to the beach off-season this fall—it’s generally empty by the end of September. But it feels… too much. Just driving to the beach and reading on the sand feels like a Herculean task. So I’m staying home and reading with my pig.

That’s what I feel like I can do right now: Read with my pig.

See, everything is tiny.

Sometimes, when I have a difficult email to write, I ask the ChickieNob to tell me what to say. She is excellent at setting firm, unapologetic boundaries. She is like a mini, young Violet from Downton Abbey—never complain, never explain—but she is fantastically polite and words things so succinctly that there is zero room for pushback afterward. I want to be her when I grow up.

I told her she should offer this service to others. People would pay $5 to have her draft the perfect response to an email that has been sitting, unanswered, in an inbox for days, producing high anxiety. But she insists that she can only do it for people and situations she knows.

It has been extremely useful to have her at home because I can hover on the stairs while she’s working and hoarsely whisper, “Wait, what am I supposed to say again?” See, a small, silver lining.

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I need to get it on video, but Beorn LOVES bedtime. Loves it with his whole body. We have a ritual, and when I start it, his whole body starts quivering in anticipation. First, I make a little extra pile of hay in case he wants a midnight snack and doesn’t feel like walking to the hay bowl. Then I plump up the bedding near the hay so he’s comfortable. Finally, I put down his hidey house so he can sip from his water bottle without exiting.

And then he goes bananas with happiness.

First, he runs into the hidey house to check everything out. Then he runs out and popcorns while wheeking. Then he jumps on top of the hidey house. Then he jumps off and runs around in circles for five solid minutes, pausing for a second to nibble a particularly delicious-looking piece of hay, and then return to expressing his happiness that it’s bedtime.

We’ve tried softly telling him to calm down. And we’ve tried sternly telling him that it’s time for bed. But he cannot stop expressing his excitement. Especially if the Wolvog is watching him. Especially if the Wolvog laughs. It’s like the whole thing is a performance to make the Wolvog crack up.

Josh muses that it is good someone is happy to go to bed in the house. The rest of us are terrible at getting to sleep.

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I am rewatching season 3 of The Crown in anticipation of season 4 coming out in mid-November. I forgot major pieces of the story because we originally watched the season quickly. It is much more enjoyable the second time around.