I read the best piece of advice.  It was about controlling your emotions when you’re getting annoyed by the small things in life. ” Annoyances are small, not serious problems, and it would make all of us and the people around us happier if we could learn to stop being bothered by them.”  Amen.

And the advice was spot on and all do-able, especially the idea of telling yourself you’re being watched and acting accordingly.  Or not telling yourself the story of your annoyance while you’re annoyed because constructing the story you’re going to tell others actually gets you more irritated.  (Um… so I shouldn’t write blog posts in my head when I discover Wallaby maple yogurt has been discontinued.)  And I like the idea of giving my imaginary self what I want even if my actual self can’t have it.

The problem, of course, is dividing the annoyances from the more-than-just-annoyances.  I’m sure there is a scientific scale that ranks irritants from neutral to boiling rage, so there has to be a term for something that is more than being annoyed that you have to wait in line but less than having a screaming match with someone or watching the news.  (What?  Am I the only person who feels like screaming every time she looks at the news?)

All of those listed steps helped to curb my frustration when it was at a low, manageable level.  But rage sort of feels like that episode of I Love Lucy when they’re working in the chocolate factory.  When the chocolates (or annoyances) first start moving down the conveyor belt, it’s simple to deal with them quickly and effectively.  It’s when the chocolates (or annoyances) start moving at a brisk clip that pretending someone is watching or giving my imaginary self what I want is too flimsy to hold up to the irritant.

Still.  Better than being annoyed at the truly little things?  Now I just need help figuring out the annoyances that are truly annoyances and the things that are more than annoyances.  And the annoyances that stem from strangers vs. people I know; the impersonal from the personal, which adds an additional layer to an annoyance.

Read the advice in the articles and tell me what you think.

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

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I’ve been celebrating International Blog Delurking Week (the first week in January) for 11 years.  11 times I’ve asked the people who silently read to raise their hand for one comment and then go back to silently reading.

And then this year I forgot.  We were all the way through the week when Parul wrote and said, “Uh, aren’t you doing International Blog Delurking Week?”  Thank you, Parul, for reminding me AND for making the badge this year.

So if you are reading, let me know you are reading by simply saying, “here!” or anything else you want to say.

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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.

The slot in the grocery store was empty; a gaping open mouth that should be holding a row of maple Wallaby yogurt containers.  But I wasn’t panicked yet.  I just asked the guy who was stocking the shelves if they had any in the back.

He checked and then walked up to me, empty-handed.  “This doesn’t bode well,” I nervously laughed.  “I know this because your arms are empty, and if you had yogurt, you would have brought it with you.”

“Yes,” he said.  “We’re out of maple yogurt.”

Before I could ask him when the next shipment would arrive, he continued, speaking slowly and staring deep into my eyes in order to drive home the seriousness of this situation.  “The distributor said that there will never be another container of maple Wallaby yogurt.  He is no longer carrying the maple Wallaby yogurt.  He can no longer ship the maple Wallaby yogurt.”

I almost fell backwards, unconscious, against the shelves, but I gathered my wits and ran out of the store to my car, pausing only to purchase the wild rice sticks that Josh requested.

I drove to Whole Foods, the only other store in the area to carry maple Wallaby yogurt.  Surely Jeff Bezos would have a superior distributor, one that stocks ALL the yogurt flavours.

But as my eyes scanned the shelves, the truth became clear.  There was no maple yogurt.  No space for a maple yogurt.  I knelt down on the floor and wept, by which I mean that I went to pick up the kids from school and broke the news.

I needed to understand why, so I called the customer care hotline number for Wallaby I found online.  “Why?” I asked the man on the other end of the line.  “Why?”

“Um… I think because it wasn’t a popular flavour.  Didn’t sell well.  They discontinued it.”

No.  No.  That is not how this works.  This is not how “shopping” and “food consumption” works.  You do not hook us on a yogurt flavour and then snatch it away when it becomes the only yogurt flavour my child will eat.  Once you release that maple yogurt into the wild, you keep making that maple yogurt until we tell you to stop making that maple yogurt.

Said child does not agree with me that pouring maple syrup into unflavoured yogurt achieves the same taste, though the child is willing to entertain the idea of a different brand of maple yogurt now that we know that our brand of maple yogurt has sailed.  But still.

(Could said child have chosen a more pain-in-the-ass, hard to find flavour?)

This hurt comes during a week when I also discovered our stain stick AND soap refill has been discontinued.

Discontinuations always happen in threes, they say.  I guess it was maple yogurt’s time to go.

Feel free to leave your own discontinuation story.

Oprah Winfrey rocks as a television personality and actress.  I get chills down both arms every time I see the trailer for A Wrinkle in Time, and she knocked that speech at the Golden Globes out of the park.  When I first saw the rumblings of a 2020 presidential run, I wrote it off as people just super excited about that speech.  But… instead of the rumbling dying off, it seems to have gotten louder later in the week.  Which makes me want to run across Washington with both hands outstretched while screaming, “STOOOOOOOOOOOOOP.”

Electing a television personality to the role of president hasn’t worked for Republicans, so I’m not sure why we think we’d get a different result with a Democrat.  Running a network is not the same thing as running a country.  Do I support celebrities getting politically involved on the local and state level?  Sure.  But president shouldn’t be the first public office anyone in any party holds.

I hope Oprah lends her eloquence to someone else’s presidency bid, campaigning hard for them with speeches and fundraisers.  I hope she serves in an advisory role for another person, helping them to be comfortable speaking their mind.  I hope our next president inspires us in the way Oprah inspired us last Sunday night.  But I really really really hope that our next nominee isn’t Oprah; at least, not until she has had experience in government at the local or state level.  I hope it isn’t Tom Hanks or the Rock or any other human being who has never held public office.

Please, for the love, we don’t have to elect unqualified people to get fresh ideas in government.  There are so many other roles that smart people can play.  Let’s make sure we use everyone’s strengths and put people in positions of power who understand the scope of that power.

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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:

• “Yuletide” (Different Shores)
• “You’re Not Allowed to Be Busy” (My Path to Mommyhood)

Okay, now my choices this week.

The Road Less Travelled has a post about her cousin sharing a picture of an old friend from high school, which breaks through the neat compartments of her life, mixing up people from unrelated areas.  She writes, “Each compartment comes with its own cast of characters and presumably its own perceptions of me, and seldom the twain has met. Or did. The advent of the Internet, and social media in particular, has brought together the various strands of my life in sometimes weird and sometimes wonderful ways.”  The Internet makes life messy, which is sometimes good, sometimes bad, usually interesting, especially when you poke around and see — at least on the surface — how someone’s life has turned out.

Different Shores has a post about IKEA’s new pregnancy test.  Yes, the page in the catalogue is a real, functioning pregnancy test.  Does it step over a line? (Yes.) Provide people with something helpful? (I’ll admit that once upon a time I would have hoarded those catalogues and urinated on them every chance I got.) Jump into her comment section and discuss.

Lavender Luz has started a book club on Facebook, and the first book is Perfect Little World by Kevin Wilson.  And you can join along, too.  Click over to read how to be part of the discussion.

Lastly, Bent Not Broken has a moving post about her sister’s child and her mother’s response.  She writes, “If there is time to take a gazillion pictures and gloat about a new grandbaby on social media, there is time to send a text to the one you know is hurting.”  It is good advice — something we all need to hear from time to time — to reach out to those that we know need our kind words.

The roundup to the Roundup: Please, Oprah.  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 5th and 12th) 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 clicked on a Lifehacker article because it promised to tell me ways to reward myself that do not involve food OR spending money.  I do not like to use food as a reward because one cookie is never enough, and I’m a big fan of not spending money.  But the activities outlined in the article didn’t feel like rewards.  They felt like things you should work into your life regardless of whether you’ve done something fantastic or not.

Like going on a walk or reading a book or playing a video game or getting together with friends.

Rewards should be something unusual that you only get because you’ve done X, not something you get whether or not you do X.  The only one that truly fit the bill was taking a day off.  I mean, yes, you also get that on the weekend, but grabbing a day for yourself when you should be at work feels properly celebratory.

But you can’t do that one very often.

The point is that I haven’t come up with anything better.  There are things I enjoy doing that do not involve food or money, such as going to the library and taking out a big stack of books just so I can feel like the owner for a few weeks.  Or doing crossword puzzles.  Or annoying the twins.  But I do all of those things regardless of whether I’ve accomplished anything else.

Do you have anything that you do that is an actual reward or treat that (1) does not involve food or money and (2) does not happen at any other time except when you accomplish something that deserves a reward or treat?