I’ve always baked bread. As in, for the last 20+ years, I’ve baked bread about once or twice a week. I am both amused and confused by the number of people posting the bread they’re baking online, seemingly for the first time. Except for this week because it’s still Pesach. This week, I’m totally jealous of all the bread. I want bread.

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I’ve had standing video lunches or phone dates with several people all year. It started with my cousin. We used to get lunch together once a month. When she moved, we started holding our lunches via Skype. Because we don’t need to travel to the restaurant, we decided to do them every other week instead of once a month. We just grab our lunches and sit in front of the computer camera, and it feels like we’re together in the same room.

Due to the success of those lunches, I set up video lunches with a few friends. We’ve clearly been keeping them because they are how everyone is holding lunch dates. So I nod to all the other people who have discovered the joy of the Zoom lunch.

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What has changed:

Outside clothes vs inside clothes. We change the moment we step into the house, even if we’ve only gone on a short walk and haven’t seen a single person.

Face masks. I am pretty reluctant about putting anything on my face, including make-up. At first I was resigned to never leaving the house if it meant wearing a mask. But I wanted to drop off my parent’s groceries so I could see them from afar. So I put on my first face mask, a homemade one that looked like a polartec maxipad.

Disinfecting phones. For someone who loves to clean—even down to my normal bleaching-of-the-doorknobs—I never thought to disinfect my phone. And I use it while I’m out of the house so… Needless to say, I have begun disinfecting everyone’s phone on a regular basis, even if the only time it leaves the house is to go on a walk.

What hasn’t changed / has changed for you?

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

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Josh is doing grocery shopping for a few people every two weeks. We have been telling people to give us all their acceptable alternatives because things are often sold-out or missing from the shelves.

One thing this has taught me is how little brand matters at the end of the day. I mean, yes, there are times when something isn’t kosher, so we can’t get it, or it contains an extra ingredient that makes it unusable. But for the most part, while I went in with strong brand preferences, I am walking out of it not caring anymore.

Or not caring as much anymore.

I’m just grateful for my brand-I’ve-never-heard-of cooking spray and generic toilet paper.

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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.

I made a list in my bullet journal of all the things one needs to have on-hand if there is ever another extended shelter-in-place. We were mostly in good shape due to my natural state of emergency preparedness. (For example, I carry a first aid kit on me whenever we leave home. Why? I don’t know. But it seems like a good idea.) We won’t be in great shape if this goes on for another three months or more, but that’s not what this post is about. This post is about the list I’m keeping and my obsession with everyone’s hair.

ChickieNob and I both have long hair. We were overdue for a haircut before this, but it’s not like you’d know with a quick glance. We also have the ability to tie up our hair and hide the fact that it’s a mess right now. I’ve never dyed my hair, so there will not be a shocking colour reveal. All in all, the women are in good shape.

But Josh and Wolvog both have short hair, and their need for a haircut was growing clearer by the second. By the millisecond. They were long overdue for a haircut.

So I watched haircut tutorials on YouTube—the comb-over-scissors technique looked do-able while the clipper action was way beyond my abilities. I’m not saying that I could shape it or make it look good. But I could make it look shorter. Josh bought me a pair of hair cutting scissors and a comb that looked like the one owned by the barber in the video. I was ready for this.

Until he sat down in the backyard, a towel around his shoulders.

It is really nerve-wracking to have someone else’s hair in your hands. Even though he reassured me that it was just hair, it would grow back, I didn’t want to doom him to weeks of awkward Zoom calls. But I took a deep breath and started snipping. I will never be able to get a job doing this for a living, but it didn’t look terrible. It was still a little too long, but it definitely looked neater. He said we’d try again next week and keep going shorter.

The Wolvog has told me there will never be a day—not even if this goes through next fall—when he allows me to try something with his hair. Apparently too long is a better option than anything his mother could do.

He may be correct.

The manager of a grocery store in our town started an amazing Facebook account. She posts what they have in stock several times per day, letting people know when new trucks have come in and what time she thinks things will be on the shelves. If you are looking for a particular item, you can DM her and she’ll set it aside for you. She’s dropping off groceries for house-bound people who can’t do curbside pickup. And she posts news about opening or closing times or new policies for the store (such as low-capacity and a new line system).

But beyond all of that, she has become the town cheerleader. Her updates are funny, and she keep reminding us that we’ll get through this if we work together. She encourages people to reach out to neighbours and not take more than what they need. She is keeping us calm, so I look forward to her updates, even though we’re not shopping right now.

I get emotional talking about her because it’s such a small thing. It’s just a woman reminding us to smile and telling us that the toilet paper aisle is filled. But it’s so much more than that. I’ve been staying offline because there seems to be an incessant need to shit on everyone else’s thoughts and feelings right now. And she’s the opposite of that: In a sea of negativity, she’s a voice who is always upbeat, always positive, always supportive, even when it’s just to say that the supply truck didn’t arrive for the third day in a row.

I’ve thanked her personally, and I’ve thanked her publicly, but I want to do something bigger once all of this is done. Because she’s my Mister-Rogers-look-for-the-helpers right now, keeping us feeling like someone has our back when everything feels tumultuous and unknown. People like that are awesome.

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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:

• “From the Front Lines” (Looking for My Silver Lining)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Infertile Phoenix feels like we’re all in separate realities; or, maybe just that everyone’s COVID-19 lens shows a different (but related) reality. Some people joke, some people are upset. She comments: “And it’s not unlike my experience with infertility. My family made light of it while the rest of society just assumed that, since I dreamed of raising children, I’d follow the norm and become a mom eventually, one way or another.” I agree—sometimes things just suck.

My Path to Mommyhood has a series of quick pandemic updates. I loved this little snapshot into life at the moment. From teaching from afar to the hard choices we’re making to follow the rules, I love hearing first-hand accounts of how people are processing. Thank G-d for blogs.

Lastly, speaking of blogs, I love it when people start writing again. A Half Baked Life has an update from her corner of the sofa. She writes, “What new hobbies are you cultivating, they ask? Old hobbies, I answer, under my breath. Anxiety. Long work days. Ignoring my kids. I feel unreasonably angry at people who are quilting and bread baking and learning to play the ukulele, at the same time as I feel deeply grateful for a job that lets me work remotely.” Yesssssss. To all of it. Plus she gives you a delicious-looking recipe in the end.

The roundup to the Roundup: Thankful for the upbeat, calm voices. 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 April 3 – April 10) 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.

Remember how I told you that I won an advance copy of Sophie Hannah’s upcoming book (it comes out in May), Happiness, a Mystery? It was the perfect book to read during this really tumultuous, unhappy time. Not only is it a fun read—Hannah is like a verbal cup of tea—but she gives you plenty of ways of viewing the external factors that affect your happiness.

And one of them should fit your world view.

So one of the most interesting questions she poses in the book comes on page 106. She tells the story of her dog, Brewster, and a person (called Charles) who keeps risking the dog’s death by leaving her front door open on purpose. Before she got the dog, Charles closed the front door 100% of the time. After she got the dog, Charles started leaving the door open regularly, and she has proof that it is a conscious decision to leave the door open and not forgetfulness.

She talks about the line between the person who deliberately murders a dog and the person who sets up a situation where a dog could die. While people fall emphatically on the side of “that is wrong” when it comes to dog murder and would stop seeing Charles if he shot the dog, they make up a lot of excuses so they can remain friends with Charles even when given proof that he is setting up a dangerous situation for the dog. They’re willing to forgive his intentions right up until he steps over the line into out-and-out murder.

It made me think about behaviour in our current situation, and the line between forgivable/explainable vs. unforgivable. Where we make excuses even though we know it’s the wrong thing, and where we’re not willing to make excuses anymore.

Anyway, I’ll have a review of the book in the March reading roundup mid-month, but I wanted to throw that thought out there because I’ve been chewing it over in my mind.