I rarely get sick but I had something this week.  The doctor agrees that it was either food poisoning or a GI bug.  Either way, I was in intense pain all day Tuesday to the point where I couldn’t talk.  I considered going to the emergency room, but Josh was at a work event an hour away, and it felt dramatic to call for an ambulance if I could call for an ambulance.  I know, that doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it was totally reasonable in my altered state.  If I could moan “help” into a phone, it meant I was okay enough to stay home.

We spoke to an urgent care nurse later in the evening, and I panted that the pain ranged from a 7 to a 9.  9 is that point where you fear you will go into cardiac arrest because the pain is crashing over you in waves and you can’t catch your breath.  But I stopped at 9 because there is only one thing I have ever experienced that warranted a 10: my HSG.  That sucker will forever be the pain I measure all other pain by.

The next day, I spoke to the doctor’s assistant who also wanted me to describe the pain.  I once again explained it was between a 7 and a 9, but I felt shy explaining that my HSG was my 10.  But you guys get that pain scale, even if you were lucky enough to have your ink pass through the tube.  There’s something about pain that comes with being raw and emotional on the table that makes it stick in your brain forever.

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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:

• “Female Fatigue” (Family Building with a Twist)

Okay, now my choices this week.

I also had Family Building with a Twist’s post for this week.  She writes about listening to Dr. Ford’s testimony and sums up what so many of us are thinking: “I’m tired of being thought of as nothing more than a uterus with legs whose only worthwhile job is having babies.  I’m tired of being dismissed as inconsequential.  I’m tired of the burden of proof being extraordinary and always on the female victim.”  Yes, yes, and yes.

Life Without Baby applies the concept of Ring Theory to living child-free after infertility.  Though I’d argue that if there’s a partner, they’re also in the center of the ring, she explains the idea: “The rule is that that if people have something mean or insensitive or opinionated to say, they say it to someone on a bigger ring. When speaking to someone on a smaller ring, they can only listen or—if they must say something—offer help, support, or comfort.”  It’s good life advice in general, and it works particularly well here.

Lastly, My Path to Mommyhood laughs at the idea that getting a mortgage is invasive after going through the adoption process.  She outlines all the additional things she needed to produce in order to be eligible to be considered for adoption, and it’s a long list.  Perspective is everything.

The roundup to the Roundup: Still not feeling great.  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 September 28th and October 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.

First and foremost, even if you don’t plan to click over to read the article itself, click over just to see one of the coolest uses of special effects on a webpage.  I know.  I’m totally distracted by shiny tricks.  And this story is about the shiniest trick of all.

So what if you were given a score — a number like a credit score — but instead of it measuring how responsible you are in paying off purchases, it measured your behaviour.  So you get points for the times you hold open the door for someone and you lose points for the times you cut off someone in traffic.  And the world works exactly as we always claim we want the world to work: the good get rewarded and the bad get punished.

Except, unlike a credit score, which is black-and-white (you’re either on-time with payments or you’re not), behaviour is in the eye of the beholder.  Who decides that holding open the door is a mark of good manners rather than a way of demonstrating control?  Who decides what is polite and what is rude and what is the right thing to do and what is clearly in the wrong?

The article reports:

What may sound like a dystopian vision of the future is already happening in China. And it’s making and breaking lives.  The Communist Party calls it “social credit” and says it will be fully operational by 2020.  Within years, an official Party outline claims, it will “allow the trustworthy to roam freely under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step.”

The system is already in place and it’s mandatory, though it won’t be fully operational for a few more years.  Your score updates in real-time, so there is clear cause and effect — you can trace what you just did to the drop or rise in your social credit score.  Live a decent life and you’re rewarded.  Be a bad citizen and you’re punished.  Again, exactly as we hope life will work.  We want good things to happen to good people and bad things to happen to bad people.  Don’t we?

Except: “Who your friends and family are will affect your score. If your best friend or your dad says something negative about the government, you’ll lose points too. Who you date and ultimately partner with will also affect social credit.”

Of course, as the article points out, I’m seeing this system through American eyes.  And that does carry weight because I have a feeling we may not understand this system in the same way an insider understands the system:

For many in China, privacy doesn’t have the same premium as it does in the West.  The Chinese place a higher value on community good versus individual rights, so most feel that, if social credit will bring a safer, more secure, more stable society, then bring it on.

I already give up my privacy when I participate in social media or walk around outside where there are cameras, so I can’t say that we have the privacy we crave here.

I don’t know how this will unfold when it’s fully implemented.  If other countries will follow suit.

What do you think?

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I want to be a librarian when I grow up.  (1) I want to work the scanner.  I volunteered at a library and got to do that, and it was AMAZING.  (2) I want to choose the books.  (3) I want to talk to people about books.  (4) And now, I want to be a library detective.

It started with a thread where people were listing books they sort of remembered but couldn’t name (and clearly wanted to find again) or books they had heard about but hadn’t read yet, and these librarians tracked down the books based on whatever details you could give them.  The thread is still going, and it’s now in the thousands.

This sounds like my ideal job.  It’s like solving a murderless, crimeless mystery; the best sort of mystery for someone squeamish like me.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

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

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I really love this idea: If you can’t coordinate dinner to fall for everyone in your home at the same time, set up a family snack.  Like let’s say your partner always needs to work late.  Have a snack with them when they return home.  Or if you have kids and they’re ensconced in evening activities, don’t stress it.  Just plan a family snack.

I wish I had read this years ago when we couldn’t get family dinners going because of bed times bumping up against work hours.  Instead of feeling like we were failing, we could have shifted the focus to a family snack and accomplished the same thing of talking about our day over food.

Does everyone in your home eat a meal at the same time?

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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.

We just started watching Downton Abbey for the first time (sans Wolvog because he didn’t find the idea of a period drama appealing) and… why didn’t any of you tell me how good it was?  You all let me miss its entire run.  We love it so hardcore that we call watching it, “Spending time with our Castle family.”

The ChickieNob and I cannot stop ourselves from looking up spoilers, so we know a large chunk of what will happen in the series, but it doesn’t make it any less enjoyable.  In fact, it’s making me race through the episodes because we’re so eager to see it all play out.

New life goal: visiting Highclere Castle.

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I am also beyond excited for the new season of Daredevil.  I love Matt Murdock, and I’m so excited to see that Kingpin is back.  (At least, I’m assuming he’s back since they featured him in the teaser video.). Is anyone else watching?

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I posted about this on Facebook, but it sparked a bunch of interesting side conversations.  ChickieNob and I were at a red light and two moths having sex landed on the windshield.  You may be asking me how I know the moths were having sex.  I guess if you have to ask that question, you’ve clearly never see moths making love.

It was like the squirrels all over again.

I ended up squirting the moths with wiper fluid, and they were stunned for a moment but then flew off, still having sex IN THE AIR.  Life goals.