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

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My brilliant costume idea fell through.  Last November, I decided the whole family would get animal onesies from Target this year.  Josh swung by the Target a few weeks ago and reported they were all out of animal onesies.  Yes, I’m aware that there are other places we could try to make our onesie dreams come true, but we all gave up when they weren’t at the first store.

I went on Facebook to gather Halloween costume ideas (thank you, everyone!), and an old friend reminisced about how I used to make my guinea pig amazing costumes and take him around the neighbourhood trick-or-treating.  He went as Batpig one year, though he kept trying to twist around and eat the cape.  He went as a 15th century minstrel, complete with a tiny felt lute strapped across his powder blue tunic.

Just a few years ago, I was making ornate costumes for the kids.  I took over the dining room table to make a Lady Vastra mask!  I made a sonic screwdriver out of toilet parts!  I cannot tell you how many Queen Esther costumes I made over the years.  But somewhere along the way, I got really really really tired of costume making.

What will you be for Halloween this year?  Or what costumes did you make?

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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.

I read about the Rose-Coloured Roundup on one of my news listservs.  It’s happy news stories, I was promised, and only happy news stories.

My first reaction was sign me up.  I like happy news stories.  I’m more likely to tell Josh about something funny or heartwarming I read on the Internet.  I don’t click on click-baity news, though I certainly absorb the headlines as I scroll past.

But my second reaction was maybe not.  We need to stop thinking about news as negative or positive.  Isn’t it just… the important facts we need to know?  Shouldn’t we just stick to presenting the news and stop trying to manipulate it in one direction or the other?  I refuse to read inflammatory articles that are trying to make me feel scared, so why should I read the opposite; something trying to manipulate me into feeling good?  And… all is not right in the world.  Isn’t it a bit ostrich-like to subscribe to a roundup that is going to curate only the happy news?

But we live in a world where 11 people died in a synagogue yesterday.  Where people are sent bombs and people are shot in grocery stores.

I signed up for the roundup.

Does it make me feel good?  I don’t know.  It doesn’t erase the rest of the news.  It just brings a little breathing space in a very tumultuous world.

103 days after we got back from our last trip, I organized the photos and uploaded them to a photo printing site.  I’ll admit that I’m a bit slow on the post-trip photo-album-making front, but the pressure was on.  Oh, not because the kids were asking when I was planning on getting around to making the album but because I had a fantastic coupon.  I needed to print almost 400 pictures, and it was going to come out to close to $12 plus shipping.

It took me two hours to organize and upload and order the photos.  I went to check out… and shipping was $34.  SERIOUSLY.  The pictures were $12 but the lowest shipping option was $34.  I could bump it up to $76 and get the pictures in two days, or I could pay $34 and get them in ten.

I deleted the pictures, closed the account, muttered in frustration, and then posted to Facebook.

People suggested other photo sites, so I went with the first name I recognized.  Once again, I uploaded the photos, applied the special coupon they sent just for signing up, and went to check out.  The pictures were $17.  So more than the other site, but that’s fine.  But the shipping was $29.  If I opted to pick them up at a store, the cost of the photos rose to $46, but I had no shipping costs.  So I could pay $46 and have them sent or I could pay $46 and pick them up.  My choice.

In the end, I paid the $46 because it came out to 12 cents a print.  They arrived quickly, and they look gorgeous.  The colours are so vivid.  But I’m really cranky with the bait-and-switch of “5 cent prints!” to “Oh, did we forget to mention $30 in shipping, too?”

Clearly the answer is to do enormous orders at once so I can use a free shipping code.  But I’m feeling really done with photo services right about now.

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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:

• “To Those Who Know The Heartbreak Of Pregnancy & Infant Loss–Your Story Is A Blessing” (An Unexpected Family Outing)

Okay, now my choices this week.

My Perfect Breakdown has a frank post about the financial disparity (sometimes) between birth parents and adoptive parents.  There were rules about the exchange of money during the adoption itself, but there is no formal guide for the years after as both families remain knitted together through open adoption.  Do you help with bills as you would any family member?  Is that not the case with this relative?  She writes, “What I do know is that this all comes back to the fact that open adoption has no rule-book. We have no idea what is right or what is wrong, so we are just doing what feels right to us, while trying to speculate what would also feel right to Little MPB’s birth-mother.”  They’re all good questions without simple, black-and-white answers.

Life Without Baby has a post about navigating envy when a family member is pregnant.  She talks about how your comfort level in dealing with that envy may be tied to the way they conveyed their news.  Are they sensitive to the fact that it may be difficult for you to hear their news and give you the space to ramp up to excitement?  Or do they spring it on you, demanding that you squelch your own feelings and put theirs first?  Join the conversation happening in the comment section.

Lastly, By the Brooke went to her reunion and marvels about how things changed.  She explains, “I think after Eliza died, I felt that I would always be the Worst Case and Unluckiest and Least Successful. And now that doesn’t really feel true–but it also feels like such comparisons or superlatives are pointless. I spent ALL of high school comparing myself to other people and feeling like I didn’t measure up.”  The night is wonderful, and it’s an important reminder that things change.  That how you feel in the moment is not how you’ll feel always.

The roundup to the Roundup: Photo sites are making me cranky.  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 October 19th and October 26th) 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.

We were having dinner in a favourite restaurant; one that we go to about six times per year, whenever we’re in this certain town.  The owner knows us by now because Josh and I have been going for 17 years, and we’ve been bringing the twins for at least 10 of those years.  She usually swings by to catch up with us at some point in the meal.

This time, she started asking all sorts of questions about the twins.  Their age.  Whether they got along.  Really, all of the questions were fine, and they were politely answering them, making conversation.  And then she looked at me and said, “These two are your only kids?  A girl and a boy.  Good for you.  You don’t need any more than that.”

And then everything at the table stopped.

It’s as if we all turned into stone people; like someone had stepped on a land mine and we had heard the telltale click and now we were panicked into stillness.  She left the table, flitting over to help someone else.  We stared at each other.

Sometimes you say something.  Sometimes you don’t.  Sometimes you say something back to make them feel what you are feeling.  Sometimes you say nothing at all and carry the feelings with you into the night.

As someone who can’t talk herself into sleeping in a tent anymore (my camping days are over), I was enthralled with GQ’s article about the capture of Christopher Knight.  He lived in the woods for 27 years, supporting himself by stealing — about 40 times per year — from people’s homes while they were away.  He entered the woods when he was 20.  He left the woods at 47.

Knight stated that over all those years he slept only in a tent. He never lit a fire, for fear that smoke would give his camp away. He moved strictly at night. He said he didn’t know if his parents were alive or dead. He’d not made one phone call or driven in a car or spent any money. He had never in his life sent an e-mail or even seen the Internet … He engaged in zero communication with the outside world. He never snapped a photo. He did not keep a journal. His camp was undisclosed to everyone … He was an uncontacted tribe of one.

That’s the starting point.  The rest of the article unpacks what happens when the author tries to connect with Knight; first through letters and then showing up at the prison. (Knight goes to prison due to the break-ins.)  He visits the place in the woods where Knight slept, and explains how he got through 27 Maine winters.

Why.  That’s the question that keeps looping through the article.  What would make someone leave the world behind and live on their own for so many years that they forget how to speak, how to look at people, how to navigate a conversation?

Knight admits:

Isn’t everybody, he said, seeking the same thing in life? Aren’t we all looking for contentment? He was never happy in his youth—not in high school, not with a job, not being around other people. Then he discovered his camp in the woods. “I found a place where I was content,” he said. His own perfect spot. The only place in the world he felt at peace.

When he can’t physically return to that spot post-prison, he recreates it by withdrawing while living in the mainstream world.  He’s here, but he’s not really here.  He has no connections to other people.  No words to share or ones he wants to hear.

It’s an interesting counterbalance to the Instagram world.  If we can accept the idea of someone finding their contentment in gathering followers, we should be able to accept the idea in someone who wants no followers, no friends, no family, no connections.  Not something I would choose for myself, but I was fascinated by the glimpse inside the world.