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

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CNN had a piece on a couple who built their own island over the last 29 years. The pandemic hasn’t really changed much for them because they’ve set up their lives to be completely sustainable on their floating compound.

It’s not that it’s easy—they have an exhausting number of tasks per day in order to be self-sufficient. But they also don’t have to worry about losing their home because they couldn’t pay the mortgage.

The pandemic has made me take a hard look at what it means to live a sustainable life. What do we actually need vs. what do we want? And then taking a hard look at those wants: how many of them should stay on the list?

I’m always fascinated by people who figure out how to be self-sufficient; in big or small ways.

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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.

Two “mental samplers” two weeks in a row? The virus is giving birth to small thoughts.

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I needed to take my car in for an oil change. At this point in the pandemic, I’ve learned that it’s best not to wait on things that could create more problems in the future. The devil I know (the pandemic today) is better than the devil I don’t know (the pandemic in the future). I didn’t want to damage the car by putting it off too long. So we made an appointment and a plan with the local garage.

I’m taking their word that they wore a mask in the car and wiped down the surfaces they touched afterward. But not taking any chances, I drove home with all windows open and then sprayed down the seats with Lysol fabric spray and wiped every surface with disinfectant. I couldn’t believe that I felt so stressed out about an oil change. I also never want to forget how stressed out I was about an oil change.

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For the first time… ever(?)… I have no paper library books in the house. I have digital books checked out, but we brought back all of the paper books we checked out before the pandemic. It felt very weird to return the final book through the slot. I had an irrational thought to try to stick my arm back through the slot and snatch one back.

We can’t enter the library to browse, but you can request books and do contact-less pick-up from outside the library. But we’re not going to do that for now. We’re sticking to paper books we own and digital library books.

The whole thing just made me feel sad. The library is such a huge part of my life, and it has been weird not to go inside for the last five months.

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One of my mint plants has given birth to a new baby mint plant. I have no clue how it happened because I didn’t root a cutting. It just spontaneously happened. The first day it poked its head out of the dirt, I had no clue what it was. But two days later, I realized that I was seeing tightly packed mint leaves, and now it’s growing at a rapid rate and looking like a normal mint plant. I love it. And a second one popped up its head a day ago, too.

What is new in your world?

At first, I wasn’t worried about Isaias at all. I mean, I was worried for people on the coastline, but I wasn’t worried about our area.

And then the day before the storm was set to hit, we received a bunch of messages about things preemptively closing because Isaias was going to produce heavy winds and a lot of rain. The local government said that people should stay off the roads during the storm. Josh had planned to go grocery shopping the next day, so he moved up the trip and got home before the stores filled.

I spent the evening worrying. We charged devices in case we lost power, but I was more concerned with falling trees.

And then the storm came and went. Our area was okay, so I could have stuck with my original worrying plan to focus all of my anxiety on the coastline. It was weird to worry about something other than coronavirus for a few hours.

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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:

• “The Stories We Make Up About Home” (Stirrup Queens) — thank you, KatherineA
• “A sainthood not extended… virtue (not) bestowed” (The Road Less Travelled)
• “My Unsolicited Advice” (Infertile Phoenix)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Dreaming of Diapers writes about the way the virus has impacted her life. She writes, “Due to the pandemic, my husband got demoted at work and we decided to put our house on the market to adjust to his new salary. And, I’ve tried more of everything to get pregnant and nothing has worked… and I’m terrified to close that chapter of my life for good.” She is writing more now to get out these emotions. For some people, the pandemic isn’t a pause; it’s a completely different path.

Dubliner in Deutschland discovers that distance is relative. Before the pandemic, home didn’t feel far away. During the pandemic, home suddenly feels very distant. I’ve been wondering if the pandemic will change where people live if they haven’t already settled down. I’m sure we’ll be thinking about the impact of the pandemic for years (or generations?) to come.

Lastly, An Engineer Becomes a Mom asks what is your story? She tells her story—the highlight moments—and then points out: “That’s it, it’s just a story. It shaped me, certainly the way I was raised shaped me, yet it’s not me. That’s the part where I think a lot of us get stuck. We get stuck in the story of our lives as if it’s actually us.” She teaches you how to walk through your SFD (you’ll need to click over to understand the acronym).

The roundup to the Roundup: Isaias. 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 July 31 – August 7) 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.

At least once a year (though usually many more times), the twins and I went to the local paint-your-own-pottery place and made a plate. I split the plate in half, and they would each paint one side of the plate. And then I would write the year at the bottom, the store would fire the plate, and we’d pick it up the next week. We did it every spring, and the idea was that we’d use the plates for dessert at their graduation dinner. People could share stories about them from the year on their plate.

The store sent out an email last week that they were closing. While it wasn’t stated outright, the assumption is that it’s another casualty of the virus, like so many restaurants and businesses. People haven’t been able to go in and paint pottery in five months. There is only so long that a store can pay their rent without having any customers.

The email came into my inbox right before bed, and I felt unreasonably sad. I put the emphasis on that word because it’s not my store. It’s not my livelihood. There are other places (hopefully) to paint pottery, and we’ll go to them. Or we won’t, and we’ll just be happy with the plates we have. Or we’ll make a few plates out of paper and display them on the table. I have options. The point is that the owner’s life changed. Their way of supporting their family changed. THEY have a right to be sad. I don’t have a right to be sad.

I curled up in bed, thinking about how we brought the twins to the store when they were four months old to paint the bottoms of their feet and press them to plates. How we stripped them down to their diapers once they could sit up on their own, and how the Wolvog would dip the brush and then immediately swipe it across his face, chest, and legs before we could wrestle the brush away. I thought about all the years of photos I have of them painting plates and cups and even tiny pet dishes to welcome Truman to the family. And I wanted to cry. I am crying now, writing this. I kept the email in my inbox so I would keep seeing it and thinking about it. It’s a digital scab I keep picking at, all the while feeling like I have no right to be anything more than disappointed.

But I’m not just disappointed. I’m sad. My brain can’t wrap itself around the enormous number of ill and dead, but I can mourn the tiny losses; the stores and restaurants. The people who move away. The events missed. The shows unseen.

I am sad because it was in our power to squash this virus, and we didn’t.

We bought a fan that blows directly on me in bed. It is a game changer. (All my middle-aged ladies, amirite?) I’m still waking up from hot flashes, but when I wake up, I am greeted by a cool breeze blowing over me, and I can get back to sleep quickly. I pretend that I am on a beautiful island, and I have left my window open, allowing the cool night wind to blow through our bedroom. I am good at pretending.

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This article by FiveThirtyEight—”Every Decision Is a Risk. Every Risk Is a Decision.”—perfectly sums up how I feel. Every decision I make feels weighty. And everything I do is a choice. It is my choice to wear a mask in the parking lot, my choice to not go on walks with friends, my choice to still do human-free volunteering. There are so few needs out there, and a shit-ton of wants that we pass off as needs. I take a long, hard look at my choices each week and weigh them out; what I can live with. What I can’t.

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The twins school is virtual until late January 2021. I am relieved and sad. The twins had already decided not to go back if school was held in-person, so they knew they would be home. So this makes it easier because everyone will be home, and they won’t feel pulled emotionally in different directions hearing about friends’ experiences. On the other hand, I am really sad for them. Provided they truly go back in January, they will have been home for ten-and-a-half months. If they don’t go back for the second semester, they may miss out on a year or more in a school building. This is just a really weird thought.