The headline caught my eye: “Are Parents Enabling Their Grown Children by Paying for Them?” Enabling? That’s a word I usually use for parents who do their child’s homework. So… were these adults refusing to get a job, living in the basement and playing video games while their parents worked?

No. They were just adult kids. Full stop. Any adult kid. And the payment in question was the dinner check. Was it enabling if you took your grown kids out to dinner every once in a while and picked up the check or brought your kids on vacation with you and paid their way?

This was a case where I peeked into the comment section, and… wow… lots of opinions on an optional, family-by-family situation. In other words, I could pay for my kids and you could not pay for your kids (or vice versa) and neither decision affects the way the other family operates.

I mean, yes, it’s an advice column, so it makes sense for people to offer up advice. To state how their family handles the situation and allow the pooling of ideas to inform another person which decision they want to make. But the judgment! The name calling! The commentary on what other people do vs. what the comment writer does!

In the middle of trying to read the comments, a pop up came onto the screen with Oprah’s face asking if I was ready to live my best life and sign up for… something. Her newsletter? Her magazine? I don’t know because I was so distracted by the comment section on her article.

It’s interesting because we’ve been having a lot of face-to-face conversations with people about how we’re handling paying for college. There have been few times when the other person and I have the exact same parameters for covering (or not covering) college, but we both share what we’re doing and why and walk away either unchanged or maybe even rethinking how we planned to do things. It would be lovely if comment sections worked in the same way, especially when it comes to family-by-family situations.

For the record, we pay for the twins now, and we’ll pay for the twins later, choosing to only do both things–go out to dinner or go on vacation–if we can afford it. (Meaning, if we can’t pay for four meals, we probably shouldn’t be spending money on two meals, either, and instead choosing to dine together in a less expensive way.) Not because they expect it or demand it, but because it feels like a small kindness we can do to nurture them. But, of course, that’s not the only way to show a small kindness, so I trust that other families will find their own way.

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

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Do you know what a silent book club is? It’s a book club where you silently read together. So there is socializing beforehand where you can catch up or meet people, a silent reading period, and then another talking section where people can talk about cool things that came up in their book.

Everyone is reading whatever they feel like reading, so you’re never reading a book that isn’t appealing, AND you still find out about books you may have never found otherwise because other people are reading (and talking about) them in the group.

What do you think? Would you join a silent book club?

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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.

This is a story with a happy ending, but it begins with stepping in dog shit.

I didn’t realize I stepped in dog shit until I saw the smear on the tile floor. It was just a tiny blob, but I got the bleach bottle and sprayed the floor to clean it up. Not thinking, I also sprayed the bottom of the shoe, which was a pair of canvas Toms.

The colour immediately started draining from the canvas, turning the back of the shoe a light reddish-brown. The Toms were still wearable in the sense that the bleach didn’t eat a hole through the fabric, but they looked really weird. It had been a hard morning overall, and I walked upstairs to meditate instead of dealing with the ruined shoes.

But when I finished meditating, I realized that I could dye the canvas with silkscreen ink. This was the second time printmaking supplies had come to the rescue that morning. A friend had a broken plastic box top for a large bin she keeps outside, and I told her not to get a new bin because the old one could be resealed with screen tape. (It’s a waterproof tape you use to protect your screens.) Not the most conventional use of screen tape, but I use it for everything that goes outside in addition to protecting my silkscreen frames.

So printmaking was on my mind, and I realized I could dilute some black ink and use it like a dye. I painted it onto the canvas and voila–my shoe is black again.

The kids needed to hold the shoe to the light to see where the colour changed and said it was impossible to see just from wearing them out and about. So… printmaking to the rescue. Twice.

It was strange to think on 9/11 that 18 year olds (and, for that matter, even 24 year olds) have no memory of 9/11. A long time ago, it was only small children who had no memory of that day, but now it’s adults, too. The next generation has a totally different outlook when the date rolls around on the calendar, which is true for every major historical event. My parents don’t remember World War II. I don’t remember the Vietnam War. My kids were born well after 9/11.

I felt very tense leading up to the day. The kids did not. I have a hard time explaining how that day felt.

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It’s Friday the 13th. I feel this compulsion to write that every time the Roundup falls on the 13th. Just ignore me.

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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:

• None… sniff.

Okay, now my choices this week.

In Quest of a Binky Moongee writes about getting together with a friend to celebrate her friend’s 40th birthday. Her friend is thrilled to reach 40 and simultaneously sad that she didn’t hit life goals yet that she had hoped to hit, such as a partner and children. She explains: “It is hard sometimes for her to watch others at her age move forward in one direction while she is going another direction.” She realizes how much she understands based on her own experience with infertility. It’s a reminder of the importance of being there for each other.

No Kidding in NZ highlights an exchange between two US television hosts. One stated “that he thought there was ‘a bigger difference between people with kids and people who don’t have kids, than Red state Blue state’ politics.” I don’t agree, though Mali says things so much better than I do. Everyone should read her answer.

Lastly, Anabegins has a post that I could relate to about coping mechanisms (as a fellow self-distractor and seeker of comfort in easy ways). I liked her first point about how only part of you believes the negative because if you fully believed the negative (and didn’t have a secret nagging suspicion that you’re also sort of okay?), you would make different decisions. It’s an interesting post.

The roundup to the Roundup: Thoughts on 9/11. Friday the 13th. 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 September 6th and 13th) 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.

The title that got under my skin: “Is it Possible to be Child-Free and Content?”

In case you didn’t know, there are multiple routes to happiness. But beyond that, this post is definitive proof of why titles matter. The piece that the post is about is stunning. (“Children felt like both a way to jump-start my real life and a way to end it.”) And has a great title––”How to Build a Life Without Kids.” It is clear. And it points out in no uncertain terms that it is possible (and even probable) to be child-free and content, a question that the poster clearly doesn’t need to ask if they read the piece.

Titles matter because if I had only rolled my eyes and hadn’t clicked, I wouldn’t have read this moment:

I would often catch myself entertaining other people’s fantasies of what it would mean for me to have children and, briefly, intensely wanting those fantasies too. Later, I’d worry about my indecision. I’d be in the shower, or about to fall asleep, and I would question who was right: them or me?

The updated piece (it was republished this summer) is a mixture of women who wanted to have children and couldn’t build their family and people who knew they didn’t want to go the parenthood route, and the whole thing is a great read.

These are questions every person needs to ask themselves with any of the “givens” in life such as go to college/get married/have a career/have children. To not get caught up in other people’s fantasies but instead carefully weigh each decision and go with your own feelings.