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

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The Wolvog introduced me to the BEST game. I love it so much that I save it for after work as a way to relax at night. I love it so much that I signed up for the creator’s newsletter after playing one round. That’s how good it is.

You get a word and a bunch of clues, and you have to decide which clue fits and what the answer would be. You get a little hint on the side of the answer box with the number of letters, so there are a few you can quickly eliminate. For instance, if it’s a five-letter word, and it says to anagram it, but the answer is a four-letter word, you can confidently skip that clue. If you get stuck, they’ll give you a hint and then the answer, but it’s pretty rare that you’ll need it due to all of the other context clues you get.

I’m probably not explaining it well, so go over and play Raddle and let me know what you think.

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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 connected to businesses or sponsored posts.

The Wolvog wanted a desk in his room, but had been dragging his feet on it because he didn’t want the room to look different. I got that. But I recently realized that if we gutted his closet, he could put the desk in his closet. The closet was mostly storage, so the rest of his room would stay as is, and when the door to the closet was closed, it would look exactly the same.

Win-win.

But cleaning out the closet meant dealing with a lot of empty fertility drug bottles and paraphernalia that I had shoved up there 16+ years ago to put off dealing with it. And if we were cleaning out the closet, we were cleaning out the entire closet. The Wolvog dealt with his things, and I was forced to open the box and look at papers and unused sharps and books. The preemie diapers and tiny nail scissors.

So much time has passed, but it still hurts in the exact same way that it hurt when we stopped treatments. It was as if no time had passed. I cried in the same way. It impacted my mood the rest of the day in the same way.

But it feels like I could have waited another 16 years and had the same result. The same feelings.

In the end, the Wolvog had an empty closet, feeling his own feelings about throwing out mementos from his childhood. It was an emotionally hard weekend, but he now has space for a desk.

In addition to having general glasses anxiety, I now have new prescription anxiety because the last eye doctor messed up the prescription. It was my first time going to her, and she refused to listen to me during the appointment, gave me the wrong prescription (which I put in new frames that I lost money returning because I could not see in them), and then refused to correct the prescription.

I got her to return the prescription on file to my old prescription, and then I had to wait a full year for insurance to cover another eye exam. If you’re playing along at home, that means that I went a full year with glasses that barely worked.

They were just good enough to get through life, but it was a daily frustration.

So now I can finally get a new prescription. I went back to my old eye doctor with a sheet where I wrote out my current (too weak) prescription, the wrong prescription from the terrible doctor, and the prescription before that just to have it. I left the office with a prescription that makes sense, but I’m going to be nervous until I put on the next glasses and see how they work.

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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 to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

And now the blogs…

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But first, second, helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week. To read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• None… sniff.

Okay, now my choices this week.

Steal this note idea from Swistle because it’s brilliant. After leaving to-do lists on the counter that were ignored, she left a note for her two kids. “I said would the second of those two children to see the note please empty the dishwasher. Then I put ‘first person to see the note:,’ with a line for them to write their name. You see. This way, the motivation is TO HAVE SEEN THE NOTE.” Read what happened next.

Finally, Jess from Finding a Different Path writes about a book about periods written by Anita Diamant of The Red Tent fame and a podcast about PCOS. Both sound fascinating, so go over and read the post.

The roundup to the Roundup: Wish me luck on new glasses. 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 July 18 – 25) 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.

This was a mind-blowing read.

I first read it on the day of my double vaccine session, when I knew that the best course of action would be to step away from trying to accomplish anything and instead allow myself to mentally disconnect and heal. And, clearly, I was not doing that because I was reading this essay.

I put the post in a folder, signed off the computer, and came back it after I had let myself not accomplish anything but just take care of myself for the sake of taking care of myself that weekend.

We’ve been talking a lot about how it’s not time for accomplishments (thank you, Middle Girl’s commenter, 8thday), and maybe I need to hear the message in multiple ways to really hear it.

I also love this:

So you don’t need to choose between peace of mind and the thrill of pursuing ambitious goals. You just need to understand those goals less as vehicles to get you to a future place of sanity and good feeling, and more as things that unfold from an existing place of sanity and good feeling.

Very wise.

I’ve been rewatching The Good Place, giving myself one episode a week each Friday. I’ve been doing this for years — working through feel-good series, one Friday at a time — and things land differently the second (or third) time around.

For instance, I noticed so many things I missed the first time around with Ted Lasso. Little moments happening in the background that I didn’t look at because I was so focused on following the story in the foreground. It reminded me a little of the end speech in About Time, where he talks about living each day twice: once with all the chaos of trying to keep up, and once by slowing down and really paying attention to the moments you miss while you’re running around.

I liked The Good Place the first time around — loved it, in fact — but I didn’t realize what an amazing show it was until this viewing. Seeing the episodes back-to-back, knowing what is coming next, makes me slow down and notice everything. And I’m also seeing it in context with the current world.

I love the part about how every decision is so complicated that even good decisions lead to bad outcomes. You buy vegetables so you can eat vegan, but those vegetables have an enormous carbon footprint because they came from far away, so this good decision — eat vegan to be good to the world — becomes this decision that harms the world.

Or I just read an article about shoes made from recycled plastic, and how it sounds like a great idea to keep plastic out of landfills. You feel great about your decision. But then those shoes will one day end up in a landfill. You’re just delaying the time when the plastic will be poisoning the earth.

Where am I going with this? I have no idea except that I’ve hit season 4 of The Good Place, which I know will be enormously moving because I remember it from the first time around. Though I hope that this time, I catch all of the tiny details I missed the first time along the way.