There’s a vegan restaurant nearby that changes its menu four times per year.  There are one or two items that remain constant, but most of them change from season to season.  I know this would be a big plus for some people, but I hate it.  If I like something, I want to be able to get it again, and there have been too many times  when I can’t find anything I want on their menu.  When that happens, I need to either avoid the restaurant or go with a salad I could make at home until they change their menu again, three months later.

Today is the menu changing day.  They finally had something I really liked on their menu and now it’s gone.  I’m going to spend the morning hitting refresh on their site until they post, moping that they took away my sandwich.

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Our amazing vet sent a letter that she is retiring this summer. I immediately called the office, trying to keep the tears out of my voice. Why did she have to retire? Why did she have to enjoy golf and hanging out with her husband? Why did she need to purchase a house in a different state?

They don’t have anyone else on staff who can take care of Linus. They are working to get another vet who specializes in small mammals, but baring that, I need to go to a different practice. We have a backup vet that we used for Truman once when our main vet wanted a second opinion, so we’ll go to her if they don’t get another vet in our main office, but I’m really sad.

A theme to my week may be “I don’t like change,” but it’s more than that. She coached me through Cozy’s death and Truman’s death. She was there in my hardest moments, when I was all alone in the office, needing to make a terrible end-of-life decisions. She was so caring, with Cozy and Truman AND with me. And I’m going to miss her. I’ll miss her guidance, but I’ll also miss her care.

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

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I just learned a new word: Waldeinsamkeit.  It means “the feeling of being alone in the woods” or something close to that.  Which implies peace: finding a peaceful moment while you’re on your own in a dense forest.  Which doesn’t sound peaceful to me… at all.

I’m an indoor kid.

I don’t really cherish my time in nature.  I like bodies of water, so if there was a word in German that captured the feeling of being engaged in a good book while on the beach, I’m all over that.  But barring that, I don’t really crave finding solitude in the woods.  While I am fond of the concept of trees, I don’t spend a lot of time with them.

What’s a new word you’ve learned recently?

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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.

Many years ago, I told the story about the only three-way symmetrical stack interchange in the world, which turned out to be one of many three-way symmetrical stack interchanges in the world.  So that mystery was solved due to a drive.

This week, I solved another, thanks to the Internet.

When I was eight years old, I went on the camping trip with the trumpet-playing boy.  That camping trip was to a beach.  Things I remember about the beach: There were horseshoe crabs.  Some kids got stung by jellyfish. We got ices one night after playing mini golf.  It rained really hard right after we set up the tents so we got to snuggle down in our sleep bags and read which the counselors ran from tent to tent wearing trash bags as rain ponchos to drop off snacks of peanuts and raisins.  The counselors sang, “You Are the Sun, You Are the Rain” by Lionel Richie.  And a staircase down to the sand from the bathrooms.

That staircase down to the sand has bothered me for 18 years.

I thought the beach we went to was Chincoteague.  It was the only semi-local beach that fit the beach in my mind.  I could even point to the place where we played mini golf and the campgrounds where we stayed.  But there was no staircase down to the beach.  The parking lot was flat with sand meeting asphalt.  The bathhouses were portables set up on the other side of the lot, away from the beach.  So it must have been another beach, but which other beach?  I would loop through everything I remembered again and again, always getting hung up about the staircase.  Everything fit except that.

I’m in a Chincoteague Facebook group and someone posted a picture this week of THE STAIRCASE IN MY BRAIN.  The copy: “Found this picture of the old bathhouses.  Circa 1997” and then a picture of the stairs.  It was like spending 18 years in a slot machine, spinning around, and finally landing on three cherries.  They must have removed the stairs and bathhouses some time between 1997 and 2001 when we started going each summer to Chincoteague.

Counting the “mango and orange” mystery that I solved in 2015, this counts as the third big life mystery that I solved completely by accident.  This is when I love the Internet.

April Fool’s Day, which I’ve redubbed in my head “Avoid the Internet Day,” happened at the beginning of the week.  Despite many impassioned pleas by people to NOT post fake pregnancy announcements, people posted fake pregnancy announcements.  Justin Bieber’s ended up hitting the news, and his apology was stunning:

“There’s always gonna be people offended, there’s also people who don’t take jokes very well, I am a prankster and it was APRIL FOOLS. I didn’t at all mean to be insensitive to people who can’t have children. A lot of people I know, their first go to prank on April fools is telling their parents they are pregnant to get a big reaction. But I will apologize anyway and take responsibility and say sorry to people who were offended.”

I speak Bieberese, so let me translate: “If you’re offended, it’s your own damn fault for being so sensitive because you’ve experienced something devastating.  Lots of people do this so I shouldn’t get backlash because of the “everyone is doing it” argument.  Fine, I’ll apologize to get you off my back.  Sorry.  (Not sorry.)”

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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:

• “I Saw The Photo Of The 8 Pregnant Nurses And It Made Me Wonder–Who Is Missing From The Picture?” (An Unexpected Family Outing)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Not So Mommy made an olive green Childless Not By Choice ribbon.  She explains: “We hope others will acknowledge our pain and our resilience.  Because of this, it became apparent that we needed an awareness ribbon.”  She has an additional post about why the ribbon is olive green, and it’s lovely.  Spread awareness.

An Engineer Becomes a Mom has a post about adoptee-therapists.  Why now?  She writes: “I’ve been learning some important things that are never taught by the adoption agencies. Or, being in the throes of the process doesn’t allow us to assimilate all the information that’s being thrown at us as we try to navigate through the emotions and logistics.”  They’re now in a space where they can catch their breath and they’ve realized how valuable an informed therapist can be in helping navigate life.  She also links to an adoptee-therapist directory in case you’re curious if there is one who lives near you.

Lastly, Dreaming of Diapers has a post about Endometrial Receptivity Array (ERA).  Her post outlines her first four attempts as well as why she’s moving on to attempt five.  It’s a fascinating post and very informative.

The roundup to the Roundup: Sometimes people need an apology coach.  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 March 29th and April 5th) 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.

I host a bunch of holidays at my house, and by now, I’ve fallen into menu rhythms for each of them.  But a long time ago, I tried new themes for each holiday, and for one Pesach, we had Argentinian food. I made this steak dish in a pan that I finished in the oven. I wasn’t paying attention when I went to serve it, and I grabbed the metal handle, just as I would if the pan was on the stove top. I burned two fingertips and the soft skin at the base of my thumb.

I was okay if I held my hand under cold water, but the moment I dried my hand, all I could focus on was the intense pain. I ended up filling a surgical glove with burn ointment and slipping my hand inside (a hack that I thought was brilliant at the time). It allowed me to use my hand, but most of my concentration was focused on the pain for the rest of the meal. I couldn’t think about anything else. Pain demands that you think about it.

First-degree burns are funny things in that way. You know, rationally, that once the skin begins to heal, the pain will diminish and––over time––all will go back to normal. It isn’t permanent. It isn’t chronic. You just have to let the ointment do its work, and you’ll be able to use the hand again. Maybe there will be a small scar. Usually there won’t. And, one day, you’ll forget about the incident entirely except for times when you have a metal pan in the oven or you’re making Argentinian food. Those times, you remind yourself to be careful.

I was thinking about this because someone I love is moving. Unlike the hot pan, it has been a burn that has built slowly with the knowledge unfolding over time––from possibility to definite. And now that we’re in the definite stage with a moving month on the horizon, it feels like that time when I was sitting at the dinner table, unable to concentrate in the moment on anything else. It hurts to think about her five hours away when she has been anywhere from two floors (in an apartment building) to 45 minutes away for the last 20+ years.

(I am trying to keep my shit together for her. I am not doing a great job with that, but she has been forgiving about it.)

I know that in time, we will find our new normal. We’ll make plans to meet in the middle somewhere 2 or 3 hours from each of our homes. We’ll visit her in her new town. She’ll return to see us in ours. We will have FaceTime lunch dates to replace our face-to-face lunch dates. Our daughters will have their own texting chains. It will all be okay. She will always be my heart, no matter where she is living.

But right now, that sadness is a first-degree burn, demanding that I think about it. There are no clever hacks; I’ll just need to wait to find our new rhythm. And in the meantime, help her pack and clean and do all the tasks that come with moving. Tell my brain that it will be okay later even if it doesn’t feel okay now. This will heal.