As Beorn grows more comfortable, he reveals more of his personality. He is a calm, cautious pig, currently about the size of a stick of butter. He likes to sit in my lap—he sometimes sits there for hours while I work—but when he’s done, he walks off and goes back into his cage without a goodbye.

He knows vegetables go in his purple bowl, so he checks it every few minutes to see if I placed something inside. (I didn’t.) But he won’t try a new vegetable unless he first sits on my lap and I rub it against his mouth for about 30 seconds to prove that it’s edible. He also refuses to eat a vegetable if he hasn’t encountered it in a day or two. So, for instance, we did this dance with romaine hearts, then he ate them with gusto, and two days later, we needed to do it again because he wasn’t quite sure the leaves of romaine in his food bowl were actually “food.” But once we reassured him that they were food, he once again ate them with gusto.

If the twins come upstairs on a break from their school day, he works himself into a frenzy, popcorning around his cage with 180 degree hops. He doesn’t wheek a lot yet, and while he enjoys his vitamin tablets, he doesn’t beg for them.

As much as I miss Linus, he was not a chill pig. I would have never allowed him to walk off my lap, over the arm of the sofa, and let himself back in the cage because there was a 100% chance that he would pause and chew a hole in the sofa on the way to his food bowl. He would have never sat on my lap through a meeting, choosing instead to climb all over my keyboard and beg for cookies. He was well behaved in the sense that I could leave his cage open, tell him not to exit it, walk out of the room for ten minutes, and he would be sitting inside (next to the door), waiting my return. But he wasn’t join-me-for-a-meeting material. He was more of a let’s-play-after-my-work-is-done kind of pig. There’s a reason we always called him Puppy. He was a tiny pig who thought he was a tiny dog.

I miss wrestling with my loud, silly Linus, but it’s nice to get to know someone new. Especially a chill pig like Beorn.

*******

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:

• “Does the Grief Stay with You?” (No Kidding in NZ)

Okay, now my choices this week.

There were a lot of posts on the theme of optimism/hope and pessimism this week. No Kidding in NZ has a post about feeling hope, even when she’s being realistic about the chances or mourning the loss of a different choice. She makes a fair point: “There’s no point in being pessimistic. We’ve lost the life we wanted. But there’s no point in letting pessimism steal the wonder and joy of the life that is waiting for us.” Different doesn’t equal bad, and hope can make the unknown a little easier.

My Path to Mommyhood also comments on the idea of hope and compares it to a spice. “Too much and it’s overpowering, too little and nothing tastes good. Finding that just-right balance can be tricky.” And managing hope is easier in some places more than others.

Finally, FinallyMyLinesNow is a woman with a similar heart (and we have a lot of jokes in this house over the word “yet”) whose mind wonders when the bad news will arrive. This is how I think: “I really do feel like I’m just waiting for the bad news. Maybe it didn’t come today. Maybe it won’t come before retrieval. It’s coming, though.” At the same time, hoping her bad news doesn’t arrive.

The roundup to the Roundup: Beorn continues to settle in. 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 9 – October 16) 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.

We brought a new guinea pig into our home. We’re still mourning Linus, so it’s a lot of mixed emotions right now, and it’s likely too soon. But this is how things aligned.

Wait. This is not the way I want to do this. First, meet Beorn Hazel:

He is a 9-week-old mixed breed—half teddy, half American shorthair. A mix of Truman and Linus. His fur is the best of both breeds—thick like a teddy and soft like an American—and a little wavy. He is technically a tricolour because he has a caramel stripe on his head, just like Linus.

We had been looking at baby guinea pigs to bring another pig into the house, and a breeder I follow posted an August litter a little before Linus died. We had been looking at him, and after Linus died, I wrote her to see if he was still available and paid her once she said he could be ours. We made arrangements to pick him up a few days later because she lives an hour away.

During those days, I went back and forth. He was cute, but I didn’t know if I was ready for this. I wanted my pig—my Linus—not a different pig. Baby food was sold out in three different stores, which felt like a sign from the universe. It was too soon.

So we made up a series of code words to each other before we left to pick him up. We had a word that meant absolutely not. If anyone said that word during the pickup, we were going to forfeit the fee and go home to regroup. We had a word that meant absolutely yes. We each had to say that word before we would leave with the pig. And we had a final code word that meant, “A decision needs to be made” if anyone hadn’t voiced their opinion and it was time to go.

I was so unsure of what we would do that I didn’t set up the cage before we left. I cleaned it out, crying the entire time, but left it empty with the food bowls stacked outside. It could have gone either way. But when she brought him out, every word left my head. He was tiny and sweet and terrified. Even though the code word was my idea, I was so discombobulated that I was the final person to use it. We were all in agreement within the first fifteen seconds of seeing him—this pig was coming home with us.

That’s a piece of red pepper behind him

The first day was hard. I cried a lot. He was not Linus. He was very shy and didn’t want to eat anything beyond hay. He was fine being picked up and cuddled, but he wasn’t talkative. He didn’t drink from the water bottle. He didn’t popcorn. He didn’t explore. It was the opposite of our first day with Linus.

We left him alone for a few hours, and then the ChickieNob coaxed him to eat. And the Wolvog got him to start chutting while he was being cuddled. And by the next morning, he was happy to have spring mix for breakfast and nibble some baby food and explore his cage and wheek a few times and play in our laps. We’re getting to know one another. He’s still awful with the water bottle—he cannot seem to master drinking from it—and he needs to be hand-fed every new food in order to believe that it’s really food. But he’s settling in with us, and we’re settling in with him. It will take time.

So his name… Beorn is from The Hobbit, the shape-shifter who would turn from a man (American shorthair) into a bear (teddy)*. He helps Gandalf, Bilbo, and the dwarves when they need supplies and respite. And Hazel is a translation of the Ogham month—Coll—that he was born in. It’s also a nod to Umbrella Academy.

We are trying to be fair to Beorn. He’s our new sweet boy in his own right, not a replacement for Linus. We’ve shown him videos of the friend who should be here with him, and I think Linus would have liked bossing him around. It’s nice to have a pig in the house again.

And taking glamour shots.

* Of course, we’ve been calling him ManBearPig.

As I say every month, I’m shamelessly stealing this idea from Jessica Lahey. She has a recurring monthly date where she reviews all the books she read that month. Book reviews are important for authors, and I want to get better about doing this.

So. I’m going to review them here and also online, but I’m going to do it a little differently. I’m only going to review the stuff I really liked. I don’t see a reason to spend my time writing about something I didn’t love; it’s just using up more of my energy. So only positive reviews.

These are the books I liked (or mostly liked) from September.

Boyfriend Material (Alexis Hall): I laughed aloud reading this book. Like fall-over-snorting-and-have-Josh-stare-at-me kind of laughing. I spent every day texting my cousin favourite lines. I’ll admit that I almost didn’t read this book because it wasn’t grabbing me in the first page or two. But then he mentioned the 80s boy band, Bros, and I was sold. If you are looking for something light that actually contains a lot of depth (and is a completely sweet love story to boot), read this one.

So You Want to Talk About Race (Ijeoma Oluo): This is the best book I’ve ever read about race. She provides solid examples to give everyone a clear understanding of common situations. She’s unflinching but kind. Patient and thoughtful. A fantastic writer. I think this book should be a must-read for every student in America.

I Killed Zoe Spanos (Kit Frick): This book had such an intriguing set-up. A woman confesses to a crime that she couldn’t have committed… or maybe she could. And she looks like the victim. The end is a little sloppy—actually, very sloppy—but I still enjoyed this book so much. It’s a quick read, and totally worth grabbing if you liked the podcast Serial or the book, A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder.

One by One (Ruth Ware): This was my first Ruth Ware, and it won’t be my last Ruth Ware. This book was a totally enjoyable read about tech executives being picked off, one-by-one, at a ski resort. Most of the characters felt pretty interchangeable, but it didn’t detract from the enjoyment of wondering who would be next and who was the killer.

When No One Is Watching (Alyssa Cole): I’m not a fan of romance books, though I’ve always heard great things about Cole. So I was excited to see that she had a non-romance book coming out, and read it on the first day it released. It was so good. She’s a fantastic writer. This book was sort of Stranger Things meets Rear Window about the gentrification of a neighbourhood in New York. So mystery, but with a weird Stepford element. Did I mention it was good? It was so good that I’m going to try her romance books, too.

What did you read last month?

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

*******

When you send someone an email asking for advice, would you rather get a super quick response to a question, or would you rather wait and get a long, thoughtful, perfect response? For instance, if you wrote Carolyn Hax, would you rather have her write you back a completely sufficient, usable answer the same day, or would you rather have her send back an insightful, mind-changing response a week later? As in, not so late that you don’t need the answer anymore, but a longer wait time than perhaps one wants when they’re on pins-and-needles in the middle of a problem.

No one writes me for advice, but they often write me with questions. Sometimes I am super quick in returning the answer. Other times, I have good intentions to be super quick, but I’m slow AND don’t return an amazing answer. Which is sort of the worst way to be.

I think the two ways above are equally good, but I would take quick response over amazing response. What about you?

*******

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 am 100% a pessimist. The second I get a shred of hope about something, I can talk myself into believing the worst will happen. I point out all the times that it has (ignoring the times that it hasn’t) and allow myself to feel miserable twice. The first bout of misery is assuming the worst. The second bout of misery is when I need to actually deal with the worst. And if the worst doesn’t happen, I chalk it up to a good day that I was only miserable once.

But I tried to be different when it came to Linus.

When the operation began, I had no information. For me, he was essentially Schrödinger’s cat—alive and dead at the same time. The doctor clearly knew which one was true, but I didn’t. Without any other facts skewing the results (because there were no facts), there was a 50% chance that everything was okay and a 50% chance that everything was terrible. Both were equally possible, so I opted (doing better during some minutes than others) to believe that everything was good because it was my choice at the moment.

I guess it’s always my choice. But in this case, it really felt like my choice. And I was going to choose to believe that Linus would be home that night.

Even as we learned facts from the doctor during surgery, each time the equation reset. Yes, things were going sideways, but at this moment, it was equally possible that things would be okay or that things would not be okay. And I should keep choosing okay.

It gets harder once you have facts, but I kept saying to myself, “Choose okay.” It was like that recurring phrase in Wonder—”choose kind.” You can do anything, all possibilities being equal, so why not choose the kind option rather than the jerk option?

It was hard to put this mentality into practice. I found myself tossing it aside with each setback we encountered. And ultimately, I went through a lot of thought as to whether choosing hope was actually the better option when we were driving back to the animal hospital to pick him up for burial. Because everything, in the end, was not okay. The pessimist would have been correct.

Yet despite that, I keep trying to apply it as we navigate the days after without him and COVID-19 and the terribleness that is 2020. It’s sort of like breathing exercises where you have to keep bringing your focus back to the breath when your mind wanders. I have no information about the future, so all possibilities are equally likely. I’m choosing right now that everything will be okay. Even though my heart knows that the other possibility also exists, even if I’m not choosing it.