Let’s just kick this off by saying that (1) we’re not rich and (2) we don’t have a cleaning service.  But we ARE watching Downton Abbey right now AND I read this old post and wondered what a housekeeper would say about our lives.  It’s one thing to write or even photograph your life and put it online.  It’s another thing to have someone move through your home, observing every square inch.

On one hand, that housekeeper only knows the version she imagines by looking at clues.  On the other hand, you can pick up a lot of details if you’re opening and closing drawers, reading receipts, noticing which objects move and which stay in the same place, week after week.

And then there was this:

A week or two after she told me about the pregnancy, I noticed spots of blood by the toilet. She told me about the miscarriage when I left. I acted as if I didn’t already know. She slouched. I wasn’t sure what to say.

What story does my house tell?  A person who keeps a broken laundry basket but neatly recopies lists if they grow too messy.  The labeled meals in the freezer.  The bar of chocolate, several years expired, that I can’t seem to toss when we clean out the pantry.  The lack of televisions.  The multiple vacuum cleaners.  The stacks of books.  The wooden ducks.

All of it tells a story; though would everyone tell themselves the same story by walking through the same house?

Hey, remember my super-awesome new glasses?  They’re actually not that awesome.  They are the ones that broke while we were at Disney, which was actually the second time they broke since getting them in November.  So they went back to the store this week.

I have a great deal of broken glasses anxiety after this experience.  I have an up-to-date copy of my prescription on me at all times.  I always travel with a backup pair of glasses.  But the fact that I needed to use those backup glasses less than six weeks into using the new glasses made me feel like if I was going to keep these frames, I needed a backup pair of glasses for my backup pair of glasses.  Which seemed a bit much.

We returned to the store this week, and they exchanged them for the other pair that I had been considering.  They told me that it would take a few days to get the new pair made, so for the time being, I don’t truly have backup glasses.  I have an old prescription I could use in a pinch, but… yikes.  That one beach trip has left me with never-ending speculaphobia.  Unless that means “fear of glasses,” in which I don’t fear my glasses.  I just fear being away from home and holding a lens in my hand.

My fellow glasses-wearers know exactly what I mean.

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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:

• “Last of 2018” (Weathering Storms)
• “House of Broken Dreams, Home of New Dreams” (My Path to Mommyhood)
• “Take All Your Chances” (Stirrup Queens) — thank you, Cristy!
• “Top 5” (Lavender Luz)
• “In Defense of Pink” (Leah Campbell)

Okay, now my choices this week.

By the Brooke is expecting again, and she writes about that bittersweet state between enjoying the current moment and living on the edge of fear.  She writes, “As my friend Sarah kindly reminded me, planning for and talking about a baby is not a cause of pregnancy loss.  But when your baby dies before she is born, causation and correlation get really murky.”  So circle the wagons; she could use support and celebration.

No Kidding in NZ has a post about needing an advocate in old age and not having children.  She makes good points about the lack of guarantees with kids, but outlines what everyone needs to do to be protected: “If we won’t have people to advocate for us, then we need to advocate for ourselves. We can do this, as much as possible, simply by planning and then – most importantly – making our wishes known in advance. Time-travel advocacy!”  Not the cheeriest topic, but an important post to read and think about.

Lastly, Searching for Our Silver Lining has a post about guardianship.  Again, an important post to read and think about.  She brings up the question of how to choose guardians — do you go with someone who already has children in their home, or do you go with someone who isn’t parenting and can dedicate their time and energy to your children?  She writes, “Because the reality is Maddy’s and Teddy’s role isn’t to fill some void; no more than people who are not parenting should be waiting in the wings to take on child-raising responsibilities.”  It’s a fine line to walk and an interesting situation to consider, too.

The roundup to the Roundup: I have broken glasses anxiety.  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 January 4th and 11th) 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.

Lifehacker had a fantastic article that we just used with one of the kids to help them make a decision.  It’s the two questions you need to be able to answer affirmatively to find out if you’re ready to grow.  Because I think everyone would answer that they’d like to be the prettiest flower in the garden; tall, vibrant, noticed.  But not everyone wants to go through the pain of becoming that flower — the uncertainty of the seed sprouting, the long days waiting for water, the pruning.

Growth is painful.  It takes time.  It takes energy.  And there’s nothing wrong with taking a good, hard look at the goal and saying, “not ready right now to put in the work.”

The two questions:

1. Do you want to do better? (We changed this to “do you want the achievement?”)
2. Are you willing to feel uncomfortable or frustrated or disappointed as you do the work to reach your goal?

I think we get so bogged down looking at the goal and focusing on the goal that our eye glosses over everything that lies in the path between here and there.  This part of the article rang true:

Bregman is saying to confront what it means to do something new first and ask yourself if you’re really willing to do it. Saying yes is no guarantee you will succeed, of course, but in the tough moments you can remember that you believed it was worth it. Then push through.

Stating something’s worth can make the difference between pushing forward or stopping the work.

So what do you want to do better?  And what are you willing to feel frustration over?

I love rocky, barren islands.  I’m okay with patches of grass and a few spindly trees, but you know that scene in the first Harry Potter movie where the family goes to hide out in the ramshackle island house so the Hogwarts letters can’t find them?  THAT would be like my ideal vacation home space.  A close second would be Vardø, Norway.

Listen to this description:

Once the cod capital of the Arctic, Vardø, population 1,875, perches like a fish-scented mirage on the edge of the Arctic Circle in Finnmark, Norway’s northernmost county. While the Visit Vardø website makes the town look like Williamsburg with puffins and Aurora Borealis, it isn’t. There are only four ways to Vardø — none are good, and all originate at Kirkenes, a shithole in the way that only towns that are waystations to other places can be.

Heaven.

It’s Wolf Island.  It is known for its snowball fights.  (Wait, scratch that, I don’t like snowball fights.)  They have puffins!  It’s light almost 24 hours per day in the summer.  (Which I know means that it’s dark almost 24 hours per day in the winter.)

The kids will be sad that they turned down my request for Newfoundland because they left the door open and now my heart is set on Vardø.

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

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On the heels of the “Finnish don’t do small talk” article comes another one summing up an entire country in a single statement: The French don’t show excitement.  I’m going to call bullshit on this one, BBC, because the twins have a fantastic French teacher who is dynamic and passionate.

When she is speaking about something that excites her, you can see — clearly — that she is excited.  She makes the kids excited about the language.  They come home speaking about French culture just as often as they come home speaking in French.  I would even go so far as to describe her as exuberant.  Ebullient.  She fizzes with happiness for France and teaching French.

So while you may not be able to express this in French doesn’t mean that excitement does not exist in France.  After all, we have dozens of types of snow, even though English only has one word for snow, unlike the Inuit’s 50+.

I’m thinking the BBC may be stretching with this series.

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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.