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

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My friend commented last week on how new our carpets look even though we’ve had them for years. The secret is the Dyson. That thing is like a Biore strip for the floor.

But we’re also a shoes off home. We became a shoes off home after we bought a place and realized how (1) expensive and (2) pain-in-the-ass it was to replace carpet. But even if we had hardwood floors or tiling throughout the house, we would be a shoes off home.

The four of us also wash our hands when we enter the house, and it sort of feels like the same thing as taking off our shoes. It’s about not tracking the outside world through the inside world. Leaving the dirt and germs and whatever else we come in contact with by the door.

Are you a shoes off or shoes on home?

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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 read the dek even before I read the headline: “Researchers found that 18 percent of women were experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder nine months after a pregnancy loss.”

It’s unpacked deeper early in the article: “According to a new study published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, nine months after experiencing a pregnancy loss, 18 percent of women had PTSD, 17 percent had anxiety and 6 percent reported having depression.”

18% PTSD

17% anxiety

6% depression

Perhaps due to that overwhelming message from society: Just get over it.

The ultimate quote from the article:

“We have a problem on our hands that we haven’t up until now properly acknowledged or looked to treat,” she said.

In other words, no follow up. No return visits to check on emotional well-being. No protocol to follow beyond suggesting another cycle. This study made me angry because it brought up so much that is wrong in medical world when it comes to women’s bodies.

Life from Scratch is a little over nine years old. Isn’t that bizarre to think? It came out in December 2010. The reason I’m telling you this is that the e-book version is on sale for the next two weeks for 99¢. You can’t even get a gumball anymore for 99¢, and here, the publisher is giving you a whole story.

So if you have missed the old days of blogging or want an easy read to get through the winter months (or, I guess, summer months if you’re in the southern hemisphere), pick up your own copy of Life from Scratch today.

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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 Second Wave” (It’s Inconceivable)
• “Paths Forward” (Stirrup Queens) — thank you, Jess!

Okay, now my choices this week.

Searching for Our Silver Lining has a post about gaps in understanding. While the original situation which kicks off the post is a financial one, it also applies to infertility and the assumptions we make about other people. She writes, “The truth is that though all of us are doing the best we can, most won’t venture outside the comfort of the narrative they’ve been given.” And moreover, that there is “comfort behind not challenging the narrative.” Go read this thought-provoking post.

Life Without Baby threw out a topic that got me thinking: baby pictures at the OB/GYN. Which really doesn’t make sense. Pictures in a pediatrician’s office, of course. But unless OB/GYNs are also going to put up artful shots of vulvas and acknowledge the bodies they deal with directly, should they have pictures of babies? I mean… really… babies make zero sense. OB/GYNs spend months or years dealing with your genitalia. Doesn’t that deserve wall space?

Lastly, My Path to Mommyhood is caught off-guard when she has a twinge of sadness seeing baby items she gave away put to use. As she explains, “It’s one thing to give someone things that were supposed to be for your baby that never existed, and to see them in your own home or a restaurant. It’s quite another to see them in their now-native environment, scattered on a toy-peppered couch, or placed just-so in a gorgeous nursery.” So perfectly understandable.

The roundup to the Roundup: Life from Scratch is on sale. 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 January 10th and January 17th) 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.

As I said last 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 December.

Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts (Kate Racculia): I adored this book. It’s like a grown-up Westing Game in spirit. And I was more than willing to look past any plotline clunkiness because I loved all the characters and the mystery itself. This book is pure fun, but it goes deeper than that. It also made me wistful for old friends.

A Clue for the Puzzle Lady (Parnell Hall) and Last Puzzle and Testament (Parnell Hall): These are the first two books in a crossword cozy mystery series. As in, there are always crossword puzzles in the book, and crossword puzzles feature somewhat (or a lot) in the plot. Are they perfect? No. Are they brilliant? No. But are they so much fun that you will read the whole book in one sitting and not care at all if you guess the ending beforehand? Absolutely yes. I’ve been devouring these because they are the perfect escape.

Reverie (Ryan La Sala): The book is described as Inception meets The Magicians… which isn’t close at all. It’s about a teenaged boy who wakes up with no memories after an accident but quickly learns that he and a group of other teenagers in his school can enter daydreams. The daydreams themselves are so powerful that they suck everyone in the vicinity into the storyline, and terrible things sometimes happen as imaginations run wild. It’s a solid book and an impressive first novel.

Do You Mind If I Cancel (Gary Janetti): I almost didn’t include this because when we got home, ChickieNob found his mean-spirited Instagram account, which sort of spoiled the good feelings from the book. But in the moment, before we realized that, we listened to his essays in the car on the way home from Asheville and laughed the whole way. If you’re planning to read it, I would listen to him read the stories on the audio book version.

What did you read last month?

I am I-don’t-know-who-Billie-Eilish-is years old. I know she’s a singer, but I don’t know what she sings.

The point is that you don’t need to know who Billie Eilish is to find the Vanity Fair interview video fascinating. “Vanity Fair has time capsuled Billie Eilish’s responses to the same questions for the last three years and tracked the almost-18-year-old’s swift rise to pop super stardom.” The magazine interviewed her three years in a row and ran the interviews side-by-side:

You don’t need to watch the whole thing, but jump into the first two or three minutes to get a gist of the layout. She answers the same questions each year, sometimes looking back and commenting on her previous answers.

The answers change (sometimes) drastically because her life has changed drastically year over year. The average person probably wouldn’t show deep changes over the course of 12 months, but I think this would be fascinating to do in five year intervals on the same date, answering the same questions and looking back on all of your previous answers.

It’s a little bit like a video version of Loribeth’s “Right Now” posts. It’s watching a life lived but also capturing a mind’s thoughts.