It began with a call from my doctor’s office to schedule my mammogram.  My first instinct is to procrastinate, but my friend posts reminders on Facebook all the time about not putting off your annual physical or mammogram.  She was diagnosed with cancer during a routine mammogram, her life saved because she didn’t procrastinate.  So I make the appointment for the mammogram AND the physical.  I am in the adult zone.

My doctor wants me to have blood drawn before my appointment, so I take off work and go to the lab.  When I’m called back, I give the phlebotomist my usual spiel: this arm is better than the other arm, this vein is better than this one.  I apologize for my tiny, rolling veins, letting her know the best way to show them who is boss is to use a butterfly needle.

She ignores everything I tell her and insists that she knows what she’s doing.

Two needle sticks later, and it’s clear that she doesn’t know what she’s doing.

But she finally gets some blood, and I go on my way.

Days later, I’m washing the dishes and realize that I haven’t seen the test results.  They’re usually sent within 48 hours.  And I start to worry: what if the doctor isn’t releasing the test results because something is wrong with the test results?  What if she wants to tell me the results in person rather than having me read them on the screen?

So I call the lab to find out if they ran the tests and why the results haven’t been sent.  “If you don’t have them, it means your doctor hasn’t released them,” the man tells me.  I knew it!  I’m dying, and my doctor wants to be there when I hear the big news, just like my friend years ago who refused to tell me her pregnancy news via email because she “wanted to see my face.”  Seriously?  Why did she want to see me cry in jealousy?

Anyway, I’m dying.

But wait… I’m not dying.  The man checks my records and tells me that the blood tests were cancelled.  Why were the blood tests cancelled?  Because the phlebotomist didn’t draw the blood properly and it clotted.  So it was unusable.  We needed to start over.

So I went back to the lab this weekend.  And I explained what happened to the new phlebotomist.  She listened to my spiel and looked at my arm, telling me that she was going to try THE SAME THING THE OTHER WOMAN DID.  I explained how it hadn’t worked last time, and I have the bruises to prove it, and that if she would just listen to me and use a butterfly needle on the vein I’m pointing at, we’ll all be done with this in two minutes.  She takes out a large needle, insisting I’m wrong and that she has 38 years experience drawing blood.  I stand up and tell her that I am going because I have 44 years experience living in this body with these tiny, rolling baby veins and I am done being ignored.  Finished.  Beyond finished.  I don’t care about the blood test.  She can explain to my doctor why we don’t have the results.

She tells me to sit down  and takes out a butterfly need.  She doesn’t speak to me when I thank her for finally using the butterfly needle in the vein of my choosing and getting the blood easily on the first try.  30 seconds later, after thanking her for the third time and being ignored, I walk out and burst into tears in the hallway.

I go in the bathroom and have a long cry in the bathroom stall, sobbing in frustration at being ignored.  This second blood draw is the final straw in a string of upsetting encounters in a crappy week.

I decide to swing by the comic store on my way home, and I have a long conversation with the owner about various characters and series.  Finally!  A positive experience with another human being, who goes above and beyond to not only get me the comic I want, but engages in happy, geeky conversation about Mark Waid’s awesome new Doctor Strange series.  I make my purchase and thank him for turning the end of my bad week around.  I leave feeling ten times better.

Then I get home and look in the mirror while I’m washing my hands.  There is an enormous wad of toilet paper stuck to my face, and IT WAS THERE THE WHOLE TIME THAT I WAS SPEAKING TO THE OWNER OF THE COMIC BOOK STORE.  And he hadn’t said anything.  Because he’s that kind of a mensch.

Thank G-d for nice comic owners.

So remember back in December when I told you my New Year’s resolution?  I was going to spend 15 minutes every weekday morning doing something to “better” myself, and I was going to find the time by not mindlessly scrolling through Facebook?  Well, I’ve done it.  I guess I can’t really say “done” because we’re only a month into the new year, but I have completed a month + a week with gold stars.  No missed days.

It’s now a habit, and it’s my favourite habit.  It makes me feel productive, especially because I do it first thing in the morning.  I’ve managed to squeeze an extra 1 1/2 books into the first month, and it has sparked pages of ideas.  So, yeah, I’d call this one a win, even if it’s only February.

I plan on keeping this going indefinitely.

Totally easy if you want to do it, too.  Choose something you’ve been meaning to do to make yourself better.  Set aside 15 minutes every weekday morning.  Track it in a notebook or with an app.  Done — you’re like 15 minutes closer to your best you.

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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:

• “Menopause… It’s Not a Musical” (Inconceivable)
• “A Millennial and a Gen Xer Discuss Burnout” (Too Many Fish to Fry)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Infertile Fantasies posts the end of her embryo donation story.  The final transfer was cancelled; the embryo didn’t thaw.  She writes, “We are now left to navigate a new transition in our friendship with our recipients (somehow I only thought that would be a thing if the donation succeeded).”  It’s a story about endings.

Jewish IVF explains the curve her emotions go through during a cycle.  Of course, the curve doesn’t always stay the same: “Each time we lost a pregnancy, the dip went a little lower and made it harder to climb back up. Almost as though the baggage of previous losses weighed us down and helped gravity sink us even deeper.”  Which is why the curve has changed by this cycle, why it’s harder to climb back up to the peak of hope.

Infertile Phoenix has an amazing moment: her sister apologized.  She writes, “Here was my sister who was completely obsessed with her own child, almost her whole being seemed to be wrapped up in being my niece’s mother, and she could not empathize with my pain of not having children.”  A situation made her sister realize how she had potentially hurt her, and she called her with an apology.  It’s a great moment of closure.

Lastly, One Step at a Time has a beautiful post about playing the hand she was dealt after losing her husband.  Playing games with her child makes her realize that it’s the perfect opportunity to teach him that life is about continuing on.  “I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’ve been dealt a difficult situation lately. But I’m working with what I’ve got to build something new.  I’ve also learnt a lot from my son’s Monopoly ways. To invest where it brings the most returns, and not to waste time on those that don’t.”  Go read the whole thing.

The roundup to the Roundup: I’m sticking to my resolution.  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 1st and 8th) 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 subscribe to Mindful, and curiously clicked when a post came up this week promising to help me tell the difference between a bad day and burnout.  (Though, before I clicked, I sang to myself, “Maybe she’s born with it.  Maybe it’s Maybelline.”  Because that’s what I always sing to myself when articles present me with two possibilities.)

I walked away not knowing if it’s a bad day or burnout because I am always a pessimist.  That’s my default outlook.  And it didn’t give me enough to go on to distinguish regular tired from burnout tired.  Still, it jogged the question in my brain; what am I feeling right now?

I am going through a hard streak.  During a hard streak, everything just feels hard.  I feel like I’m waiting on too many things and no one is getting back to me.  My insecurity is high and my output is low.  My imposter syndrome is berating me even when all I’m doing is pulling together a peanut butter and jam sandwich.  (“You think you’re a good sandwich maker?  Everyone can tell your sandwiches are sub-par.  You’re not fooling anyone.”)

When I’m in a hard streak, I rationally know that hard streaks are followed (at some point) by easy streaks where everything slips easily into place.  Where I get a dozen affirmative answers all at once and good surprises fall into my lap.  I get my work done early and have a relaxing reading day.  There are meals at the ready in the freezer.  My to do list checkboxes are checked.

Or they’re followed by neutral streaks that feel like easy streaks in comparison to the hard streaks.  Where every day pretty much meets expectations.  And while nothing particularly exciting is happening, I know what I need to do when I wake up every morning, and I accomplish it by the time I go to bed.  And I count that as a good day.  Those times are not as fun as the easy streaks where life keeps giving me green lights, but I’m okay with neutral.

I guess I’m okay with anything other than a hard streak.

This week, I needed to run errands.  I didn’t want to run errands because I’m cognizant that I’m currently in a hard streak, which means even errands end up being difficult.  And these did not disappoint.  A task that should have taken 15 minutes was dragged out over two hours due to malfunctioning equipment and human error.  I ran into the pet store, and the pet store was not only out of bedding but would not be getting any in for a week.  I ran into the grocery store and they were out of the soup I needed for dinner.  The Wolvog offered to pick me up something at Starbucks as a treat, but I told him it was too risky.  During a hard streak, it was likely that I would spill the drink on myself vs. get it into my mouth.  He nodded and ordered a hot chocolate for himself without comment.

The problem with hard streaks is that you need to press through them.  You can’t hit pause and wait for them to be over or the work will pile up and you’ll never be on the other side of the streak.  So you plug away and peek up at the figurative traffic lights of life, hoping they’ll change to green.

It was a throwaway line in an Anthony Horowitz book, but I jumped onto Google to see if it was a real thing.  Do people really host Death Cafes?

Yes, they do.

The idea is that you get together with other people for a social event where you discuss your thoughts on death, wishes for your remains, your fears.  There is a format, recommended questions, and always cake.  (The cake thing came up in every piece of literature I found about Death Cafes.  Apparently cake is part of the process.)  The goal is to treat the end of life in the same way we treat the beginning of life, with great thought given to the process instead of sticking our heads in the sand.

It made me think about a part in Tig Notaro’s book I’m Just a Person.  Her mother is dying, and her friend Maxine comes to sit with Tig in the hospital.  She writes on page 103.

A year later, Maxine would reveal that she had wanted to take a photo of my mother that day, because she felt like even that moment was a part of my mother’s story, and she wanted me to have a picture of it because every moment of my mother’s life was important. And I would have loved to have that photo, but I know my mother wouldn’t have wanted a picture of herself taken when she was in that condition — no matter how good her skin looked.

A long time ago, people only took pictures after death because photographs were so expensive, so certainly, there was precedence.  Why do we take so many photos at a birth, but we don’t take any photos to mark a death, another moment in a life?

I dread specific deaths, and admit that I don’t like to think too deeply about people I love not being here anymore.  But I do think it’s important to think and speak hypothetically about death.  To treat it as part of a life in the same way that we talk about other milestones.

I scanned the offerings in my area on the Death Cafe site, and there were a few popping up in the next few weeks.  But I felt reluctant to go talk about this with strangers.  With friends and family, absolutely.  But I’m not great about speaking to strangers about books I like or menus at restaurants.  It felt like a big jump to go into a room of strangers and talk about what I want to have happen after death while eating cake.

We (you and I) talk a lot about creating and sustaining life when we talk about family building.  But what do you think of this set-up?  Would you feel comfortable participating in a discussion about another stage of life?

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

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Is this a post about Marie Kondo and books? Um… sort of.

I was trying to understand her concept of sparking joy. Watching the video immediately brought certain books to mind.  The Magicians trilogy is a joy sparker.  All of my copies of The Phantom Tollbooth?  Each and every one fill me with joy.  Tolkien, joy.  Lewis, joy.  My Crazy Rich Asians books, joy joy joy.

But should reading always be joyful?  I don’t feel joy at all when I pick up Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz but wasn’t it important to read it and important to keep it?  Fine, we can equate gratitude (for Levi writing the book) with joy and it remains on the bookshelf, but there are so many others that don’t fill me with any emotion, and I would still never give them away.  They represent a moment in time or a story I may want to return to in the future or simply a good receptacle of knowledge.  My reading isn’t always joyful or even enjoyable; there is plenty I read because I think there is a good reason to read it.  Like the math book I’m reading right now; zero joy, 100% still think I should read it.

This isn’t commentary on Kondo’s method — I’m sure there is some nuanced loophole that allows you to keep as many books as you please.  It’s more the thought over whether reading should always be enjoyable.  Should we be aiming for pleasure or aiming for a different target?

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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.