Lifehacker proposed an idea to do with kids that feels like it would be interesting to do with a partner or friend. Maybe more interesting?

So the idea is to leave a journal on the table and write notes to each other, back-and-forth. Sort of like how you passed notes in high school, answering back and forth on the same piece of loose leaf paper.

The first person writes whatever is on their heart and then leaves the journal in an agreed-upon space with some indicator on the cover that there’s a new note inside. The second person reads it and responds or writes their own thoughts. The journal goes back and forth, giving you a space to look back on for advice or how you felt on a given day.

We haven’t implemented this yet, and I don’t know if anyone in the house would be as into it as I would be. I think there would need to be ground rules. Like the journal doesn’t feel like a space where you bring up issues you’re having with the other person unless you both already know about the issue. And it can’t be things that are super time sensitive.

What do you think?

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

*******

ChickieNob and I have started our own mocktail hour. The boys are not into our concoctions or ruining their appetite for dinner. But we are working our way through several bottles of Torani syrups and seltzer.

The best combinations so far have been chocolate-covered raspberries (splash of raspberry syrup, splash of chocolate syrup, dilute with seltzer) and coconut-lime spritz (splash of coconut syrup, a twist of real lime, dilute with seltzer). We put out olives or crackers or cherries and pretend we have all the time in the world before I begin making dinner. We are so fancy.

Though we never want to eat dinner because we’re full of seltzer. The boys may be on to something.

*******

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 should not be here right now. By this point in my summer, I was supposed to be in Ireland and Northern Ireland. I was supposed to be showing the twins the Book of Kells and taking them to Bewley’s and listening to buskers on Grafton Street. We were supposed to be traveling to the Giant’s Causeway and seeing castles and learning Irish at Áras na nGael.

We shouldn’t be home.

But we are.

Back in March, we couldn’t imagine that COVID-19 would still be around in July. Back in April, we started getting nervous that we wouldn’t be able to go and plotted out Montreal as a Plan B. Back in May we realized Montreal was not going to be possible, but we hoped we would get to a nearby beach. Back in June we realized that we were not going to go anywhere. At all.

We consider ourselves lucky because as long as we keep staying home, there will hopefully be a point in the future when travel opens back up again. In the meantime, we will stay home as much as possible, wear our masks whenever we need to go out, and keep planning our trip.

Hovering somewhere between sad and resigned.

Today is the 800th (really 700th—the numbering went off by 100 many years ago, and I never fixed it) Friday Blog Roundup. Which means there are 699 other posts on this blog that are all Friday Blog Roundups. I highlight—on average—four posts per Roundup, which means I’ve highlighted about 2,800 posts.

2,800 posts!

Let’s pretend that it takes eight minutes to read each post, re-read the post again before I write the Roundup, and write the paragraph. That’s 22,400 minutes or 373.3 hours. Which comes out to 15.5 days. Of course, that assumes that I do nothing else except read and write for 24 hours. But still. You get the point.

I have put a lot of my life into the Roundup.

Thank you for writing.

*******

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:

• “Adoption, Discomfort, Ethics” (My Path to Mommyhood)
• “The Fine Line Between Adoption & Trafficking: Ashley Mitchell on the Paul Peterson Case” (Lavender Luz)
• “No Kidding 2020 Project: Day 20 – Celebrate” (No Kidding in NZ)
• “Summer Without Summer” (Res Cogitatae)

Okay, now my choices this week.

No Kidding in NZ asks if there will be greater cultural acceptance of childlessness in the future. She goes through several possible scenarios, ranging from pessimistic to semi-optimistic. While she thinks that she ends on a down note, I actually think her fourth scenario is a hopeful one. She writes, “Maybe society will recognise the dangers of unmitigated population increases and realise the value of the childless population, and the contribution we make towards the next generations.” If we believe that it takes a village to raise a child, we need to acknowledge every contribution—the visible ones and the invisible ones. And yes, there is a very real contribution we make when we take care of the earth. So thank you. And thank you for making me think.

An Unexpected Family Outing has a post about helping someone who is grieving while maintaining social distancing. When her friend loses her mother, she thinks she doesn’t know how to help her. But she writes, “But, having been the aggrieved myself (my daughter was stillborn in 2016), I took a moment to think about all the ways I know to show up for someone after a loss. There was no need to play by a rule book. There’s no one way to grieve and, in turn, there is no one way to support those who are grieving.” She has pulled together a list to pass along what she knows.

Finally, I had Res Cogitatae’s post about summer for this week. She sums up so much of what we’re feeling in our house, too. It’s summer, but it doesn’t feel like summer because it contains none of the things we associate with summer. But she ends on a hopeful note: “We will have a different sort of summer. A slower, simpler summer. In the grand scheme of things, just like always, we will be fine. But I hope this will be our only stay-at-home-summer.” Me too.

The roundup to the Roundup: This is the 800th (really, 700th) Roundup. 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 June 26 – July 3) 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.

Hax does it again. This week’s posts have been a little weak—they’re reruns of columns from many years ago while she’s out on vacation—but Carolyn Hax was on fire in the days leading up to her absence.

Her column provided a formula for any hard decision you need to make, and it’s brilliant. As someone who spends too many time and energy in places where it is not worth it—where I am not getting back what I put in—it is a game changer.

Hax’s advice is directed at a woman who has a difficult relationship with her in-laws, but the advice is applicable to any relationship—whether it is to an individual or an organization. This is Hax’s formula:

Ask for what you want, kindly and plainly; don’t live and die (emotionally speaking) on whether you get these things; and invest most of your energy in people who welcome it.

So let’s say that you ask for what you need—here are my feelings and here is what I need you to do. Then you release yourself because your part is done. Ta-da! You don’t need to be invested in what they do because that is within their control.

In other words, your emotions should be tied to whether you asked for what you wanted clearly. If you did, feel good no matter how they respond. If they respond positively, you have your answer: this is a place to keep investing your emotions so continue the relationship as is. If they respond negatively, you have your answer: this is not a place to keep investing your emotions. Continue or don’t continue the relationship, but at the very least, find better places to invest your energy even if you’re remaining connected to this person or organization.

Does it feel good to let something go? No. But it feels better than letting something go and feeling as if your emotions were trampled on. Letting things go is hard enough. Don’t give them control of your emotions, too.

Thanks, Hax.