Sometimes in the off-season, Josh and I like to go to the beach, park facing the water, and read. The sun warms the car through the windshield, and we don’t usually need our coats.

I’ve watched the beach dwindle down over the last 43 years (I was 8 the first time I went to this particular beach, and it looks very different from how it looked when I was a kid), and lose various structures to the ocean.

When the twins were little, the parking lot was huge. It now has space for about 4 rows of cars. Two rows face the ocean. The other two rows face the flat waters of the bay. The beach has sustained a lot of damage over the years from various storms, and the ocean and bay are closing over the small strip of land. A few years from now, there will not be a parking lot unless they do continual, expensive maintenance. The less expensive option is to move the beach. Or, more accurately, to move to a new part of the beach and start with a new lot.

When we went last weekend, I realized that it may be the final time we get to see the beach as the kids saw it growing up. We decided to come back over winter break so they could say goodbye to this version.

I’m sure we’ll grow accustomed to the new beach quickly. We’ll grumble for a bit about how we can’t park facing the water (the lot will be farther from the shoreline). And how it’s different, and different is bad. But over time, we’ll forget things about the old beach and come to love the new beach. I know this.

I know this because on this trip, we couldn’t face the ocean. They built the dunes too high, and it was impossible to see over them. Our choices were to look at a big pile of sand or turn the car around and face the flat bay. We had never faced the flat bay before — it’s a salt marsh that barely moves. But this time, we faced the bay so we could see water. And within a few minutes, I loved it as much as the ocean. It was quiet. It was calm. It had interesting birds diving into the bay to grab crabs. The reeds moved in the heavy winds. We read our books. We ate junk food. We talked about random things.

And all was well.

If you can get past the accusatory title, this essay provides an entirely new (to me) way of looking at purchases. Every object is your time.

They state it perfectly: “Stuff I didn’t particularly love. Stuff with no serious meaning to it. Stuff I didn’t care about. Stuff that, if you had secretly tossed, I wouldn’t even realize went missing … Standing in front of all my stuff, it hit me that all of it used to be money, and all of that used to be time.”

Whoa.

I mean, it’s absolutely true. Every object you hold represents the money spent on the object. The book is $22.99. That $22.99 can take the form of paper bills or it can take the form of the book, but in either case, it is $22.99. But what is money except a tangible version of your time and effort? 8 hours of work = x amount. So when you spend money on an object, you are also spending a representation of your time.

I don’t buy a lot of things that I don’t use up pretty much immediately (food, toiletries, etc). The exception would be books, and I feel okay about the books I buy. Or the fact that I buy books. If I buy clothing, I try to make it as timeless as possible. Zero articles of clothing that mark a moment. We wear out things before we replace them. But sure, there are things that we’ve collected through the years that feel like clutter, but I don’t really have an “appetite for novelty” or a “fear of missing out,” though I assume many people do.

I also wouldn’t say that my lack of purchases comes from values. As I said, the thought above blew my mind. I just have a lack of desire for new things. Unless they’re books. I like familiar things, not new things. So that is not a value system; that is just a fact of my personality. And it’s not better or worse. Though it probably does inadvertently save me money.

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

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You know how, on The Good Place, the characters sometimes kill Janet by pressing a button, and doing so makes her come back with enhanced features? Killing Janet is usually Janet’s idea. But as they walk up to the button to press it, she is also programmed to beg them not to do it. So they walk up to the button and then have doubts because she’s crying out to them to stop. So they pause, and then she points out that she is programmed to do this, and they should ignore her. And the whole dance starts again until they finally go through with it?

That is how I feel about cutting off a streaming service. Today is our last day with one of them, and I feel like I will be better off after it’s done (more money in my pocket, more time for things I actually want to see on other services). But in this scenario, I am also the Janet screaming my head off. “Don’t close the account!”

I am going to ignore my inner Janet and close the account. I’ve done this with other streaming services, and I find that the day after I lose access, I never think about it again. But that day before, oof, my inner Janet is working overtime.

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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.

As I say every month, I’m shamelessly stealing this idea from Jessica Lahey. She has a recurring monthly date where she reviews all the books she reads that month. Book reviews are important for authors, and I want to get better at doing this.

So. I’m going to review them here and also online, but I’m going to do it a little differently. I’m only going to review the stuff I really liked. I don’t see a reason to spend my time writing about something I didn’t love; it’s just using up more of my energy. So only positive reviews.

These are the books I liked (or mostly liked) from October.

What We Can Know (Ian McEwan): This book is an excellent reminder that sometimes you feel bored or want to stop something or don’t know where it is going, but if you hang in there, you will have your mind blown. What a fantastic ride. What a hard gulp of a thought about what we leave behind and how it will be interpreted in the future. This is one of my favourite reads of 2025.

Lyra’s Oxford (Philip Pullman): A bit thinner as a story than the Collectors or the novels. Enjoyed it because I enjoy all time with Lyra in Oxford, but it feels more like a sketch than a finished drawing. Still, as a completist, I felt like I had to read this one before getting to The Rose Field.

A Particularly Nasty Case (Adam Kay): I liked this but didn’t love it because it felt like a repeat of This Is Going To Hurt without the emotional bits. On the plus side, I laughed quite a few times. It’s a cute cozy mystery with an unlikeable narrator but I wanted to like him. There is a moment early on when the narrator points out why he and Nina should be friends on paper, and that’s kind of how I felt about the book. We should connect on paper.

Serpentine (Philip Pullman): Again, His Dark Materials completist, so I needed to read this tiny novella before continuing on to The Secret Commonwealth. Each tiny Lyra story hurts and heals my heart. This one was no different. I love this world so much. I’m glad I decided to reread and catch up on the novellas I missed on the way to the Rose Field. It is a great way to spend time in this tumultuous world.

Guilty by Definition (Susie Dent): Word nerds, rejoice. I read two books set in Oxford at the same time — The Secret Commonwealth (Philip Pullman, fantasy) and this — and they often visited the same places: The Trout or Cornmarket or Godstow. So it was a very strange experience jumping back and forth from real Oxford to fantasy Oxford, and a great way to experience the word play of this mystery. I loved being in the CED (or… alternate OED) offices, learning about the world, and following the twisting path of the story.

What did you read last month?

Guess who is phasing out of baby food? Quentin Aeneas is now a big boy, and we’re weaning him onto adult food. He likes it because Quentin pretty much likes everything with the exception of birds. He passionately hates birds and still growls whenever he hears one, which is about 30 times per day. And then he looks at me as if to say, “Am I wrong?” And I respond, “I know. Birds are the worst.”

He still loves Josh so much and gets excited when he comes home. Bedtime is the best. That makes him so excited that he has to popcorn around in a circle and yank all of his hay out of his bowl. Just because. And then run through it because there is that much joy in his heart.

He is super patient when I’m doing yoga, and though he often talks to himself, he never begs for his vitamin C cookie until I’m finished and closed the iPad. He loves the weekend when we share an apple for breakfast. And while he will eat carrots, peppers, and cucumber on his own, he likes an audience when he eats lettuce, and he’ll sometimes wait until I can sit down with him to begin eating, even if it means waiting a long time.

But best of all, he loves having his head rubbed, and he finally does what I loved so much about Beorn: He rests his head in my palm while I stroke between his eyes. I love to watch him get blissed out and then become so happy that he has to run around in a circle to let it all out.

Be yourself, Quentin!

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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:

• “On the Road with Those Who Get It” (The Next 15000 Days)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Another blogging milestone. No Kidding in NZ reached 15 years of blogging. I love this thought: “Thanks for reading, being here, writing in parallel on your own blogs, being part of my No Kidding life. I’m not sure how much longer I will continue, as blogs seem to fall out of favour, and readers dwindle. But if I can reach one new person, it’s worth continuing.” It is about reaching one person at a time. And very happy to be one of those people who have learned from you.

Lastly, Middle Girl writes about meeting up with her cousin, whom she hadn’t seen in decades due to divorce. She explains: “While we are close in age, we have people and experiences in common, the second half of our childhoods and a large chunk of our adulthoods were spent in separate worlds. Her memories and my memories did not align.” It’s a story with a bit of a twist, and it brings out thoughts on family and the meaning of those ties.

The roundup to the Roundup: Eternally happy Quentin Aeneas. 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 November 7 – 14) 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.