Every time I’ve tried Google Cardboard, I’ve ended up feeling queasy for hours afterward.  So I’ve been avoiding all other VR headsets, believing that I’m just not built for virtual reality.  I almost turned down a chance to try an Oculus while at Mom 2.0.

But I had a few minutes before I needed to be at a meeting, so I shrugged and said okay.

The guy said that he would give me a general VR experience so I could see everything the headset could do.  I visited a planet, watched a fox play by a campfire, and examined an abandoned tea party set-up in a castle.  All of it was cool, but right before one of the segments, I heard the guy say, “You’re going to want to take a step back.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.  Honestly, I had forgotten the guy was even there.

But then suddenly the scene changed and I was standing on the ledge of a building in a futuristic cityscape, staring down 50 stories to the ground while spires loomed above me.  And I burst into tears.  I knew I was in a room; I knew I was safe.  But I was so overwhelmed by the sensation of feeling as if I was about to fly.  I could barely see the last few segments because I was so weepy.

I thought about it all night, and I went back to the display in the morning.  “You can get addicted,” he warned me as he adjusted the headset.  Maybe I am.  I mean, I haven’t had a VR experience since I’ve been home, and I haven’t rushed out to the store to purchase one (though I have poked around about it online to judge the cost).  But I think about it a lot.  I talk about it incessantly.  It was one of the coolest things I’ve ever experienced.

Because it feels so real and the images are so gorgeous, it’s easy to spend time there and forget there is anyone else in the room.  There is a part of me that understands the very thin line that divides reality from Ready Player One.

Have you ever tried a VR headset?  What was your experience?

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

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I’m in my last few days of being 42.  I am always bummed out about my birthday and getting older, but in this case, I waited my whole life to be 42, and now it’s almost over.

I was really excited to celebrate my Douglas Adams birthday.

But can I tell you the worst story?  When I was younger, I couldn’t wait to be 19 because it’s a number that is fun to say in Hebrew.  It has a “T” sound in the beginning of the word, but because of the other letters around it, it almost sounds like the word chai (as in “chai tea”) said with a T.  I know, sort of hard to imagine if you don’t know Hebrew, so here is a video of a guy saying the numbers 11 to 19.

Anyway I forgot that I was 19 until a few days before my 20th birthday.  I was washing my hair at my friend’s apartment in Oslo when it dawned on me that I had been 19 the whole year and had never said aloud how old I was.  My diary is entry after entry about how I was finally 19 and blew it.

Remembering that, I sucked the marrow out of being 42.  Thanks, Mr. Adams.

Is there a certain age you always wanted to be?  Why?

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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 just celebrated the 30 year anniversary of my Bat Mitzvah.  By “celebrated,” I mean that I texted my friend who shares the same Bat Mitzvah date and said to her, “Happy Bat Mitzvahversary!”  I intended to get myself a treat, but the day got away from me and then it was time to go to a meeting for the twins’ B’nai Mitzvah.

Because they were born when I was 30, we always celebrate milestone moments 30 years apart.  They started Kindergarten 30 years after I started Kindergarten.  They will graduate 30 years after I graduated.  And they will have their B’nai Mitzvah 30 years after mine.

We’ve had the date for years, but it has always felt remote, like visiting the island of Sark.  It’s one of those places that doesn’t feel that far away (at least it’s not as far as Tibet) and should be accessible, yet I don’t fully believe I’ll ever get to visit.

But here is their B’nai Mitzvah, racing toward us.  Exactly 30 years after I stood on the bimah, pretty much to the hour, I sat at a round table, jotting down notes about assigning honours and ordering cookies for after their service.

It is this weird thing because I still remember sitting on the swing set in my backyard, teaching myself my Torah portion.

I’ve been working with the twins on theirs.  Because I have a translation degree, we’re coming at it from a translation angle.  We sit at the kitchen table, translating their portion together, from Hebrew to English using five dictionaries spread out around us.  We break apart words and look up their etymology and play with form so they can see how different words relate to one another.  As we translate the passage, we keep saying the words in Hebrew.  And that’s how we’re learning it; a few words at a time crawling under their skin, into their bones so that when their day on the bimah finally arrives, it will be like spending time with an old friend.

I still remember chunks of my Torah portion 30 years later.  I can sing the first few sentences without looking at the page.  I wonder if it will be that way for the twins, too, 30 years from now.

Linus loves biting in the same way that I love to sleep in on Saturdays.  A guilty pleasure.  He waits until he has your undivided attention, and then he slowly chomps down on your shirt and yanks his head back in slow motion while he watches you.  When we say, “No!” he drops his mouthful of shirt and looks at us in confusion.  How could we not like that?

He loves to reward me for giving him a back massage by biting my hand, and then follows that up by happily wheeking and jumping about in joy.  He bites the bars of his cage as if he’s attempting a prison break.

The only thing he hates?  Biting things that are meant to be bitten.

I got him a colourful chew toy, but he gives it wide berth.  I bought him chew sticks that I was promised guinea pigs love.  He does not.  And an empty toilet paper roll?  Forget it.  That thing is terrifying.  He makes special care to never walk near it lest the inanimate rubbish attacks him.

He’s lucky he’s super cute.

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I am working on a research project for Reward Volunteers about the intersection of volunteerism and social media.  If you have 3 minutes after reading the Roundup, commenting on all the great posts, and telling me your second helpings, then can you fill out this survey and tell me why you volunteer?  You’ll be entered to win a $200 gift card if you do.  If you’ve already filled it out, thank you!

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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:

• None… sniff.

Okay, now my choices this week.

Not an infertility post but definitely a feel-good post.  Pics and Posts writes about a special teacher as she retires as well as a very cool project she did with her students about freedom quilts and the Underground Railroad.  I love this post because she captures something I have always felt about the special place a former teacher holds in our family: “I love her not only because she is awesome but because she just loves my son, and even today–three years after he finished second grade–she is a friend of his heart.”

With Every Heartbeat recounts a difficult conversation with a clueless couple 9 months after losing her daughter.  As I said in her comment section, we teach kids how to say they are sorry or thank you, but how many people teach their child how to interact with someone in mourning?  How to ask a question and be a good listener?  Offer comfort?  These are the lessons we should be imparting to the next generation because you get clueless, thoughtless adults when you don’t.

Lastly, Bent Not Broken muses on her experience on Mother’s Day.  “But despite all of the love and support from friends there was an intense feeling of being different, especially when it came to my family.  I was caught in the middle of a group chat with my mom and my sisters. Messages were flying back and forth. Plans for the day.  Pictures.  Descriptions of gifts. Not one big hurt, but 100 little hurts.  And not one inquiry about me or how I was doing.”  It’s that death by a thousand paper cuts that makes living with infertility and loss so painful.  Sending a hug.

The roundup to the Roundup: Cutest little biter in the world.  Take the survey.  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 May 19th and 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.

Josh and I went to a gala with a magician, and I was called on stage as a volunteer for one of the tricks.  (I know, I’ve been having great luck lately getting chosen from the audience, but to be fair, I had a front row seat this time.)

He first had six of us each hold a piece of string with a bolt, and he talked us through a trick where he made my string and bolt swing wildly in a circle even though my hand wasn’t moving.

He excused four of the people from the stage, and then he had two of us sit down on chairs about six meters apart.  He proceeded to hypnotize us, and I felt very strange while I sat in the chair.  He brought me out of it and showed me a bunch of cards, asking me to read what they said.  They were just a jumble of letters.  He would turn the card toward the audience, and they would all laugh, apparently seeing something else.  Then he would show me the card and it was just a jumble of letters that I couldn’t form into words.  Like A-P-P-L-S-O-S-S.

He put us back into a trance, and then he tapped my shoulder, but the other woman felt it.  Then he walked across the stage and touched her nose with the edge of a pack of cards, and I recoiled because I could feel someone touching my face.  (And everyone knows that I hate it when people touch my face.)  He brought us out and told us what had happened.  He was nowhere near me, but I had felt the cards travel down my nose, their edge making my whole face scrunch up.

It was such a strange trick.

I spoke to the magician at the end of the night, and he mentioned that I was very susceptible to hypnosis; that I went into that state so easily.  It made me wonder if it would be worth going to a professional hypnotist — a therapist who incorporates hypnotism into their work — to get over some of my fears.  I would love to live without some of my more annoying fears (like, I don’t know, fear of flying), but I’m also afraid of hypnosis itself.

It’s one thing to be in a room with hundreds of other people, participating in a magic trick.  It’s another to be alone in a room with someone and trust that they are changing my brain for the better.  What if I emerge with more fears?  I am not great at giving up control, and being in a vulnerable state like that, all alone, would definitely be about giving up control.

Have you ever tried hypnosis to get over a fear?  Did it work?