Linus is having surgery this morning for the bladder stone. It has been… a lot of stress. We needed to find a different surgeon to perform the surgery, which meant a miserable weekend of trying to coax Linus to eat a few leaves of spring mix while he whimpered. ChickieNob was particularly adept at getting him to accept food. The Wolvog was adept at getting Linus to show glimpses of his old self and stand on his hind legs, sniffing the air to see if the Wolvog was about to give him a treat. I cried a lot. I worried a lot. I second-guessed myself and ran through worst-case-scenarios and didn’t sleep.

But Monday morning, our top pick for surgeon returned my call and walked us through what would happen. He is going to do the post-op care, but the main surgeon will be a vet I saw many years ago with my high school guinea pig. He was kind and gentle then, so I’m hoping that the man is kind and gentle now with my boy. I am so grateful this hospital fit him in.

The vet spent 18 minutes on the phone walking us through facts about the surgery and preventing bladder stones in the future. He put Linus on a low-calcium diet, which meant the end to his alfalfa treats. Our local pet store let me exchange the unopened bags for orchard grass, which he loves. It felt good to take care of the things I could take care of.

Because this past weekend was so defeating. I didn’t know how to convey how much my pig meant to me. He’s the center of our family—of course, like any pet—but he is also my stand-in baby. He is my morning coffee companion and meditation interrupter. He is this small, hairy beast tethering me to sanity during COVID-19. But I sense that yesterday’s surgeon got it, and he’s in good hands today.

Hopefully, he will be home tonight. I cannot wait to have my happy boy back.

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

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A friend posted a link to an article about the four stages of comfort that correspond to the four states of distress. In other words, the best way to give comfort changes on where the person is in their processing of grief.

So people start out feeling shocked and confused, move to feeling bad (and not ready to feel better), then enter feeling bad AND wanting to feel better, and finally, open to solutions.

While it’s helpful in early days to encourage them to talk things through to wrap their brain around what happened, it’s not helpful to jump to fixing things when they’re still reeling from grief. Whereas validating feelings needs to come after the person understands what they’re feeling.

What do you think of their theory?

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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.

Eight months into the pandemic, we’ve finally caught on that if we want something for November, we should start trying to get it in September. Which is how I already have a can of pumpkin puree ready to go for Thanksgiving. Maybe pumpkin puree will be plentiful in November. Or maybe it won’t. We didn’t know, and it’s not like the can is going to go bad between now and next month.

We were trying to figure out what would make staying at home through the winter easier. Our list was brief because we already own so many books (plus we got our flu shot and our mail-in ballot). Comfortable slippers. Lounge pants. A lap desk. A back wedge for sitting in bed. (Before you ask what this is, this is a back wedge. And it feels awesome.)

We were pretty proud of the hygge we were building at home when the ChickieNob informed us that it looked like we had robbed a nursing home. “What is with the back wedges?” Um… a lack of bad pain? We’re old.

So easier. But still… not an easy winter.

Linus has a bladder stone. We noticed that his wheek changed. A few days after that, he started doing the strange wheek whenever he peed or pooped. We took him to the vet—a new vet because our vet retired (this new doctor is wonderful and caring)—and she found a bladder stone when she took an x-ray. He will need an operation to remove it.

This was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I keep hearing a mantra in my head: “I cannot do this.” I think it when we’re driving to the vet, when we’re waiting in the parking lot because we can’t go inside, when we’re driving home. When I’m sitting beside him or giving him medicine. Clearly, I am doing this, but my heart feels like I cannot do this. I cannot lose my pig.

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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:

• None… sniff.

Okay, now my choices this week.

Inconceivable! has a post about resolution that comes with an espresso machine. Her doctor provides an amazing perspective on being 90% sure: “So, so much of what I’ve heard over the years and read has been people saying ‘you want to be 100% certain.  You don’t regret the children you do have, you regret the children you don’t.’  Maybe this is good advice for fairly fertile women who haven’t been dragged through h*ll and back on fertility issues.” It is a must-read post. For everyone. Even if you don’t drink coffee. (I promise the espresso machine part is explained in the post.)

Hopelessly Infertile and Surrounded by Fertiles has a post about what happens when you keep things low-key. After a frustrating Rosh Hashanah, she decides to do Yom Kippur differently and it ends up being exactly what she needs: “And inside my heart, I felt just a tiny spark. I would go for Kol Nidre. I would hear the voice of my childhood. I would be present in that moment. And I was. And I stayed for the rest of the service too. And a few minutes afterwards talking to my old next door neighbor and the mom of one of my very good friends.” And I love that she “lit up every part of [her] soul.” We all need that.

Lastly, Infertile Phoenix also talks about taking things down a notch, a lesson in self-care that she learned during infertility that also applies to the pandemic. She writes, “But no, no, no to most everything else and to anything extra right now. I can’t do it. I cannot. There’s already too much to process on a daily basis.” I love the idea of holding back some of your energy for yourself.

The roundup to the Roundup: Linus is sick. 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 September 25 – October 2) 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.

If I had to choose one word to define the moment, it’s velleity. It’s a wish or desire that isn’t quite strong enough to lead to action. So… wanting the pandemic to be over, but not enough to enter a complete lockdown for four weeks. Wanting a different president or lawmakers, but not enough to vote.

Velleity—at least the way I’ve always heard it used—is an internal impulse. The individual doesn’t want to use the energy to take the logical steps to turn the wish into reality, separating it from situations where the person would like to move the wish to reality but can’t because there is an obstacle such as time or money or a lack of knowledge.

So it’s a situation where the person has five dollars and says they would love to get a drink, but they take no steps to purchase said drink, even though they have the means and initial desire to do so. Which is different from the person who has no money and is thirsty and can’t take care of that want or need.

Because I’ve had nothing but time to think and plenty of velleity examples around me, I’ve been trying to separate out what comes from not enough internal energy vs. being influenced by external actions. For instance, with the pandemic, I think the reason so many people dine out or go on trips or get together with friends—all things we’ve been both cautioned not to do by medical professionals and encouraged to do by politicians—is because they know an individual’s actions can’t create the impact to solve the problem. I can stay home, and that (hopefully) keeps me from getting it, but it doesn’t make a true dent in getting rid of the pandemic. We need everyone to do the same for that to happen, and if they’re not, it’s hard to keep up the energy to keep taking action to turn the wish into reality. Which is why we’re in our eighth month of this.

In that case, the impulse is external. It’s the other people around you. If they were doing something different, you’d find the energy to turn that wish (ending the pandemic) into a reality. You’d be fueled by the energy of others. Sure, it’s equally possible that your actions are tied to guilt, but that’s a different post. I’m talking about harnessing energy from the collective (external) to power the individual (internal) and get over the gap inherent in the term velleity.

It’s the million dollar question: how do you convert the “won’ts?” The can’ts are a different story, but the won’ts—that lack of desire to expend the energy to create the change you wish to see—can change. We know that people vote when we create voting options or help people get to the polls. We know there are ways to get people to act when they have the initial spark of intention.

We are a little bit more than one month away from an election. Do not count on other people to turn your wishes into action. If you have the wish, make things happen.