How many female animals live beyond their reproductive years? 

Which animals experience menopause?

Those were my Google searches after reading NPR’s story on the grandmother hypothesis.  Because I had never given this fact consideration… at all:

Killer whales, Japanese aphids and Homo sapiens — they’re among the few organisms whose females live on long past the age of reproduction.  Since the name of the evolutionary game is survival and reproduction, the phenomenon begs explanation — why live longer than you can reproduce?

Apparently “um” is not an answer.

The hypothesis is that these older women help the younger women have more children.  Having a child or multiple children is a lot of work.  Having another set of hands around makes parenthood easier.

Which gives grandmothers a clear role: give help and support.  So why does society not give equal consideration to women (and, frankly, men) living without children?  Aunts make parenthood easier.  Fictive kin makes parenthood easier.  Friends make parenthood easier.  In all these cases, parenthood is easier due to the other women in your life supporting your children.

I am not reducing the role that grandmothers play in the world.  The grandmothers who support me are awesome.  I just wish researchers would also turn their eye to other women who are not currently raising children who play a vital role in helping and supporting, exploring the aunt hypothesis or the fictive kin hypothesis, too.  It really does take a village.

I have been dealing with a paperwork balagan for two weeks.  Like… think goat rodeo involving very long hold times followed by repeating the same story over and over again to people who all state, “whoa, this is a problem,” but do not seem to be able to get to the solution for said problem.

There are issues that don’t have a solution.  Like… for instance… infertility.  But my situation has a fairly straightforward solution.  It just needs to be implemented.  And sooner would be better.

I feel a little bit like Alice in Wonderland, trying to get the hookah-smoking caterpillar or the Mad Hatter to have a rational conversation with me.  And like Alice, I feel a little bit apart from everything right now because all of my emotional energy is either going toward dealing with this situation or deep breathing to keep my blood pressure down.

Hopefully I’ll emerge soon.  I mean, this has to end at some point… right?  There will be a day that I won’t have to listen to hold music.  I think.

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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.

A Separate Life has a post about life, in general, but it contains a moment of attending an aunt-in-law’s memorial service and being unable to tell the people around her that it’s also the anniversary of her mother’s death.  She writes, “It felt weird to be unable to honour my mother by mentioning the anniversary or by talking about her. But I knew – as set out in the Circles of Grief principle – that this day was not about me.”  It’s a wonderful insight, but it made me think about all the times we need to squelch our own feelings.  Maybe squelch isn’t the right word, but I think about all the things we hide in order to not dump them in someone else’s lap.  It’s just food for thought.

My Path to Mommyhood has a post about leaving behind items they didn’t want to bring into their new house.  She has been driving around with them in her trunk, but a visit to a cabin over the weekend gave her the idea of giving them a new home.  She writes, “This was a way to give those books a home where they’ll be loved in a getaway setting, loved by lots of tiny hands.  And it got my backseat to be a little less weighed down with sadness and heartbreak.”  Letting go, as she says, is a process.

Lastly, In Search of a Binky Moongee has a post about seeing a sight she thought she’d never get to see: her children running back and forth.  So many people take those small moments for granted.  She explains, “I don’t always think about my past of trying so hard to have these kids. But that day I did, especially hearing the sounds of those little feet pounding on the floor.”  It’s a sweet moment tying back to an earlier wish from a friend.  It’s nice when you see someone’s wish come true.

The roundup to the Roundup: Can’t someone compose better hold music?  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 February 8th and 15th) 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.

“There are known knowns. There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don’t know.” –Donald Rumsfeld

I never thought I’d quote Donald Rumsfeld.  At least, not in this manner.

I’ve been thinking about the real unknown unknowns; the things that we don’t know about; the everyday problems that lurk out there and we don’t realize or notice because they don’t affect us.  Some of them never come to fruition because a decision or two switches the path you’re on, saving you from disaster.  And others come to light through circumstance.  I was infertile before I knew I was infertile.  I didn’t suddenly become infertile when we tried to conceive.  I was infertile, but it was an unknown unknown until we were forced to know it.

There are thousands of moments every day when you avoid a crash that you have no clue you would have been in otherwise, or don’t have your bag stolen, or don’t meet the person you could have started a conversations with… all unknown unknowns that will always remain unrealized possibilities.

We don’t think of ourselves as lucky, even though we’ve potentially missed a host of terrible things just because don’t know what we’ve missed.  And at the same time, we don’t think of ourselves as unlucky, even though we may have missed out on absolutely fantastic things that we’ll never know about.

Something I’m mentally chewing over right now.

Our library system asks fun questions in their Facebook feed.  This week’s question: “If you were transported to the setting of your current book, where would you be? (…and what’s the name of the book!?)”

I was in Singapore because I was reading Rich People Problems by Kevin Kwan.  So much fun.  And I also found out/traveled to Palawan in that book.  So amazingly gorgeous.

Because isn’t reading a form of armchair travel?  You’re transported somewhere entirely new through the story.

I’m currently in a nameless space for The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness.  I’m a little disappointed to not have a defined setting, especially after traveling all over the globe with Kwan’s book.  I have got to go somewhere good with my next book.

Where are you traveling to right now in your book?  No book?  Then where are you traveling to in the television series you’re watching?

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

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As I said last year, Josh and I do not celebrate Valentine’s Day.  At all.  Every day is Valentine’s Day in our house.  Not that… like… I make heart-shaped pancakes all the time.  But I let everyone know how I feel every day of the year.

But what struck me this weekend was thinking about how damn important Valentine’s Day was for me back in high school or college.  If I was dating someone, I wanted to know how we were going to celebrate it.  If I wasn’t dating someone, it was a chance to get a really good mope going.  The worst was starting to date someone in January.  Was it too soon to do something for Valentine’s Day?  Would it look weird if I suggested it?

Elementary school was easy: it was class parties and paper Valentines.  But those high school and college years were a killer.

What are your Valentine’s Day memories from your teens/twenties?

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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.