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

*******

I like to remind the kids that my big plan is to haunt people after I’m gone. It may take awhile to learn how to haunt, but that’s where I’m placing my energy.

Popular Science ruined things—slightly—by pointing out this month seven reasons why people may think they experience ghosts. I say slightly because I’m using those ideas to better direct my future hauntings. For instance, I will never come to people if they are in a dark and scary place. I will only contact them while they are sitting in a brightly lit breakfast nook with a bowl of Cheerios. Scratch that. I would hate for the Cheerios to go soggy. I will only haunt after the Cheerios have been eaten. Try to explain THAT Popular Science: Considerate ghost waiting until you’re done with breakfast and in a well-lit space to do the haunting.

*******

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.

Justine and I started fretting about this back in July or August—how would kids do Halloween this year? We came up with elaborate ideas from hanging candy from trees outside and inviting kids to harvest them to tossing candy out the window to using a remote-controlled car to deliver treats to kids waiting at the end of the walkway. Would anyone even come? Were there any safe options?

The twins probably weren’t going trick-or-treating, but we were looking forward to passing out candy. We want to be a good neighbour, and it’s fun to see the costumes. Plus my heart went out to all the little kids who had been looking forward to this. It was going to be a little island of not-suck in a sea of suck.

But then our town canceled Halloween.

Some people said it’s for the best. Others said they were going to take their kids around anyway. Some of us sat there and said, “Uh… if you’re showing up here, I need to get candy. But getting candy means that I’m ignoring the town ruling. Uh… what am I supposed to do? Strong leadership, where are you?”

It rained one Halloween when the twins were little, so we went trick-or-treating inside. I went into one room and closed the door, and the twins knocked and said, “trick or treat!” And I gave them candy. Then I ran to a different room while they were trick-or-treating at Josh’s room. We went from room to room like this for a while until they felt done.

The best idea I’ve seen so far is to hide the candy in the house a la Easter and have a candy hunt indoors. Of course, it helps to number all the candies so you know you’ve found them all. But I think it’s fun because the kid has to wait in another room, counting to 100, while older kids hide the candy. And then they get the joy of actually finding stuff vs. being handed a piece of candy from their parent for the tenth time in the same night.

What are you doing for Halloween?

My ballot has been accepted. First, my to-do list included, “Request mail-in ballot.” Then it was, “Check that ballot arrived.” Then, “Fill out ballot and return to polling box.” And finally, “Check if ballot has been accepted.”

In Maryland, you can track your ballot. And it was a sigh of relief when I knew it arrived and was accepted and counted.

I like to go to the polls on voting day—I’m not even a vote early kind of girl—but it made no sense to ask poll workers to risk their lives for me so I could be there in person when there is a perfectly acceptable alternative. So I voted from home, and now there is nothing to do except wait and worry.

I am worried about the results. I am worried about what comes next. I am just worried. Full stop.

*******

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.

*******

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:

• “Two Weeks and Then Some” (Chasing the Gerber Dragon)
• “Schrödinger’s Happiness” (Stirrup Queens)—thanks, Jess!

Okay, now my choices this week.

Jewish IVF sums up how I feel. Exactly. Drained is the perfect word. “I definitely feel mentally and emotionally drained. Feeling like fewer people are taking the pandemic seriously, even while numbers continue to rise, is draining. The political climate is draining. The state of the world — nay, the UNIVERSE (hello asteroid) — is draining. Will it ever feel like the sky isn’t falling?” Yes. To all of it.

Infertile Phoenix recounts two separate moments of… oof. For lack of a better word, I leave you with a sound. She begins by pointing out: “I refuse to explain anything to satisfy someone’s fleeting questions about my personal life and trauma. It took me years to get where I am today physically, emotionally, spiritually, socially, and geographically. Why should I and how could I possibly satiate their curiosity in five to ten minutes?” And then goes into two things said to her recently. You completely understand why she needs to set those boundaries in place. And I love this: “I don’t like it when people don’t let me have my ending to my own story.”

Lastly, speaking of “oof” moments (there’s that sound again!), Hopelessly Infertile and Surrounded by Fertiles recounts an exchange with a kid, who inadvertently presses against an emotional bruise. It’s a short post with a profound ending on the perspective of aloneness.

The roundup to the Roundup: Worried about the election. 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 16 – October 23) 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 love love love love love (yes, I need to write it five times) this article in the Guardian, summarizing a lifetime of lessons learned from writing a column about happiness. The writer states: “These are the principles that surfaced again and again, and that now seem to me most useful for navigating times as baffling and stress-inducing as ours.”

It is an incredibly helpful list. These nuggets of wisdom spoke to me:

In regards to the idea that there isn’t enough time to do everything you want to do each day: “The only viable solution is to make a shift: from a life spent trying not to neglect anything, to one spent proactively and consciously choosing what to neglect, in favour of what matters most.” Yes.

Also: “The capacity to tolerate minor discomfort is a superpower.” The whole paragraph attached to this is a brilliant statement on how much we do to avoid something uncomfortable, which is something we can deal with because that’s the whole point of minor discomfort—it’s minor.

And this, right now. This statement is getting me through the right-now: “The spiritual teacher Jiddu Krishnamurti said his secret was simple: ‘I don’t mind what happens.’ That needn’t mean not trying to make life better, for yourself or others. It just means not living each day anxiously braced to see if things work out as you hoped.” What is outside our control is outside our control. Fretting about things is not action.

What spoke to you in the article?

Adrienne LaFrance (from The Atlantic) asked on Twitter: “What’s the first magazine you ever loved?” What follows is a long list of magazines—some still operating, some defunct—that is an amazing stroll down memory lane.

It reminded me that Mad magazine was my elementary school crush. I wanted a subscription so badly, but I felt awkward asking for it because I also had to have my sister explain a lot of the jokes in it. Our dentist had it at his office, and that was the pure joy of going to the dentist—time in the waiting room trying to fold in the back picture, creased by so many prior patients.

But my first true love, my first mature magazine relationship, was Sassy magazine. I started reading it with the first issue (purchased at People’s drug on the lower level of the mall), and I kept reading it long after I left the demographic. At some point, my mother made me cull my collection and only keep the most important articles. I still have them today.

That magazine was incredible. I wish girls today had Sassy. It was truly a life-changing, empowering, mind-expanding paper companion.

What was your first favourite magazine?