My friend ended up interviewing one of my old students for a job. At first, I was thinking, “Oh, that’s nice. This is probably her first job after college.” But my friend informed me that no, she’s actually in her thirties and has three kids. THREE KIDS. And she had them in her late twenties.

Clearly, I’m not great with tracking time.

The news came on the heels of Googling for tutorials on photoshopping wrinkles from a photo. I had a picture taken that I liked except for a crease between my eyes — a crease that is always there because I am old and have wrinkles.

But I attempted to photoshop it out and ended up with a final image that looked as if someone had drawn on my face in Microsoft Paint. At least the Microsoft Paint distracted from the white streak through my hair.

At some point, as I was toggling between the tutorial and the photo, I asked myself how I reached this point. Am I that vain, or is that the tools are there so why not use them? Would older generations have done this if it was as easy as clicking a button on a computer? I mean, clearly not that easy since my end result was hideous, but easy for someone more skilled in Photoshop.

I deleted my attempt and decided to live with the crease. I mean, unless I become more skilled at this photoshopping thing. And then all bets are off.

We finally have semi-definitive proof that, in the future, I’m going to become a time traveler.

So back in April, I posted this story on Facebook:

Today I discovered that I may be a time traveler.

I went to the dentist and was being led back to the room by a woman I have never seen before. She said, “You look amazing. You did something different with your hair.”

I murmured, “No.”

And she said, “Well you look ten times younger. Really, you look amazing today. You’ve changed something.”

I wasn’t saying anything so she paused and her mouth dropped open. “Oh my G-d, you think we haven’t met yet. Okay, well, let’s just leave it that you look great today.” And then she walked away.

So either she is a time traveler or I am a time traveler, but there is something weird with our timelines.

Okay, so we already knew from that exchange that I must become a time traveler, correct?

Anyway, I was completely calm during the World Series because I definitively knew that the Nats would win. I didn’t even bother paying attention to most of the games because I knew it so completely.

Josh was freaking out during the last game. It was the third inning, and he was miserable because we were down two. But I told him not to worry; that nothing would happen until the seventh inning, but then we’d get our first run and ultimately win the series. I kept repeating it to him throughout the game, completely calm.

During the seventh inning, I moved away from him on the bed because I knew that when the hit happened, he would inadvertently grab my arm in surprise. But if I moved away from him, he’d jump off the bed instead and scream something like, “How did you do that?” WHICH WAS EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED.

I have never been so calm as I’ve been watching the game. I just knew, without a doubt, that we’d win. As if I had watched the game before. Which the ChickieNob pointed out I probably had, which was how that woman at the dentist’s office knew me. Or I must have told myself the score of the game so I’ll believed myself when I showed up.

Right?

#onlyhalfjokingaboutthis

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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 Lasting Trauma of Infertility” (The Next 15000 Days)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Anabegins has an eye-opening post about how sometimes the people around us reflect back our own communication style. So if we’re not feeling supported, we may want to peek back on whether the other person has ever been feeling something similar and think about how we reacted. It’s a post about dealing with stress and uncertainty; something related to infertility, and I think many people will find this post helpful.

Life Without Baby has a post explaining embracing being child-free by comparing it to playing a trombone. Like the instrument, processing living child-free means sliding around rather than landing soundly on a note. She writes, “One day, you’re content and determined to make the most of your situation, then something happens to trigger all those old emotions and you find yourself sliding back down. Then you get to talk someone who understands you and you feel like you can really figure this out…until your friend announces a pregnancy and back down you go again.” I like the analogy.

Lastly, No Kidding in NZ has a post about belonging. It stems from an interview with a Maori man wanting to be among other Maori, and she applies the idea to her own life of being around other people who also don’t have children. We all have places in life where we are the other, and places where we are among people in a similar situation. And we all need time with the latter to draw in energy.

The roundup to the Roundup: I am a time traveler. 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 October 25th and November 1st) 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 article drew me in with the title: “Most Things You Worry About Will Never Actually Happen.” Which is… true. Though I entered the article with the belief that my worries are still valuable. They help me to be cautious, and that, in and of itself, is not a bad thing.

But the article references a recent study. The researchers had people record all of their worries for one month:

The study participants also recorded the outcomes of their worries. The researchers found that 91% of people’s worries did not come true. For several of the people in the study, exactly none of the things they worried about actually happened.

Oh.

It would probably be eye-opening to do this: to write down everything I’m worried about throughout the day, and then chart it, discovering which worries came true, which worries didn’t (but I intervened so they wouldn’t come true), and which worries simply didn’t come true and they were out of my control.

Of course, this only works for short-term fears. We have no clue if our long-term fears will come true or not until far down the road. But I think I want to try this for the month of November. See what comes of it by the end of the month.

I’m reading Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell about his bookshop in Scotland. I picked it up because it was on sale (and not in our library system) and didn’t know a lot about it. But I’m absolutely smitten by it and have marked three passages so far.

The first came early on in the book––page 31––when he went to clear the estate of a childless/childfree couple and pick up their books for resale in his shop. He explains,

The experience of clearing a deceased estate is one familiar to most people in the second-hand book trade and it is one to which you slowly become desensitised, except in situations like this, in which the dead couple is childless. For some reason the photographs on the wall – the husband in his smart RAF uniform, the wife as a young woman visiting Paris – evoke a kind of melancholy that is not there in deals where couples are survived by their children. Dismantling such a book collection seems to be the ultimate act of destruction of their character – you are responsible for erasing the last piece of evidence of who they were. This woman’s book collection was a record of her character: her interests, as close as anything she left to some kind of genetic inheritance. Perhaps that’s why her nephew waited so long before asking us to look at the books.

I sat with that passage for a long time. It was written by someone who––as far as I know––doesn’t have children, and his experience, perhaps, has informed his beliefs. But I had a hard time tying it to parenthood. Dismantling any person’s book collection is about releasing their character, and hopefully all of us are more than just our book collections.

Meaning, that concept of the ways we announce to the world “This is who I am” happens through our possessions, even when there are children, AND our possessions or children are not the only statement we leave behind.

Moreover, the children we raise aren’t the only carriers of our story. My former students, for example, carry part of my story. And that story of who I am and what matters to me (they would all tell you the French Revolution; it was the one unit where I cried every year, without fail) is no less important than the story that the twins know.

Unless you never leave your home or interact with other people, that evidence continues to exist, whether we like it or not.

What are your thoughts?

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

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Halloween costume motivation lingered at a strong zero throughout the month of October. Back in September, I entertained the idea of going as Random Party Guest at Downton Abbey, but I never bought or made the dress, and now I cannot imagine sitting around outside in thin material in order to celebrate a holiday.

I need a costume that is essentially my pyjamas. Like a onesie but not a onesie because those look hard to pee in. So… my pyjamas. I need to go out as a Person About to Go to Bed.

Are you dressing up this week? What are you going as?

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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.