Introducing Linus Winston:

He’s a three-week-old, tricolour, American shorthair, and he is so sweet and chill.  The woman let us know on Friday afternoon that we were getting the pig, but my stomach was still in knots despite the promise.  This year has been so shitty; it didn’t seem possible that things would actually work out.

But after shul, we drove an hour to the farm and picked up Linus.  He is very different from Truman.  First of all, he loves to be carried.  He spent the whole day being held, and he let me walk around, cleaning up the house one-handed.  On the other hand, he hates being held under his arms, which was the only way to carry Tru.  Linus is willing to go into any room.  Truman hated going upstairs unless it was to meet his nemesis, rake. (And, even then, he loved fighting rake but he hated the process of getting upstairs to pounce on him.)  Truman was silent for the first few days, and Linus has been talking non-stop.  Both are definitely lap pigs; they are content to curl up in my lap while I read a book.

So we’re missing Truman and his sweetness at the same time as we’re loving on Linus.

So, his name.  It was really hard to name Linus.  We had a few other names picked out, but we ultimately felt that Linus was the best one.  (Not just because now there is someone else in the house with a Greek name.)

Linus is named after Linus Pauling; a two-time Nobel laureate, once for chemistry and once for peace.  In this time when the country seems to be at war with science, we thought someone who brought both clarity to the nature of the chemical bond as well as spoke about nuclear disarmament was a good role model.  Also, he is named after Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, which is the Wolvog’s operating system obsession of the moment.

His middle name is Winston, after Winston Smith and Winston Churchill.  Smith because 1984 feels very close at the moment, and Churchill for his work during the war.  In both cases, our fond feelings lessen towards the end of the book and the second round as Prime Minister, hence why we made it his middle name (and not his first name, which was being considered).

So this is our new babykins.  My heart is exploding right now.

I’m going to find out tomorrow if we get to bring home the baby guinea pig or not.  I checked in with the woman mid-week, and she promised to send me a message the moment she heard from the other person.  So you’ll either get a picture of a really cute guinea pig on Sunday, or you’ll get a weepy post from me about how we didn’t bring home said guinea pig.  Either way, at least I’ll know in a few days.

I bought a new carrier, feeling hopeful.  We’ll use it at some point, and it’s better to be ready than scrambling.  We have a Plan B and C and D in case this particular pig doesn’t work out.

I’m getting all my guinea pig names lined up.  ChickieNob named Cozy.  Josh mostly named Truman.  I have already been told that while the first name I’m offering up will be under consideration, the middle name I paired with it is off the table because it’s “awful.” (No, it’s not, ChickieNob.)  We’ll see.  I plan to fight hard for naming rights.

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The house has been very quiet without Truman.  It is weird to chop vegetables and not hear him begging for a few pieces of carrot.  It is weird to leave the house and not say goodbye to him.  It is weird to enter the house and not call out hello.

We talk about him as if he is still here.

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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:

• “Nothing Shameful to See Here” (Alaskan Blueberry)
• “Inauguration 2017” (Family Building with a Twist)
• “Why We Chose Agency Adoption, and Not Private” (My Path to Mommyhood)
• “About Those Shoes We’ve All Been In” (My Path to Mommyhood)
• “Five Years After My Daughter’s Death…” (Inkling Post)
• “Writing About Those with Different Outcomes” (No Kidding in NZ)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Bent Not Broken has a post about privilege, recognizing your own, and the recent marches.  She writes: “I know what it is like to struggle every single day.  I vow never to forget this.  I also know privilege. I vow to not use my position of privilege to judge others, and instead to use my voice to advocate for them.”  I got chills reading down her refrain of “The march was important to me.”

A+ Effort has an eye-opening list on her blog about representation — from the first female senator to the first Native American Supreme Court Justice.  If you’re wondering about that last one, click over to read the whole list.

Anabegins has a sweet post about belonging.  Okay, so it’s also about not belonging, but the sweet part comes near the end when she talks about three fictional fish.  “The other day I was telling him one in which the 3 were hanging out together on a holiday. He looked up at me and said, ‘I wish I had friends like that, that I could see everyday, and do things with,’ and I said, ‘I know buddy, it seems like it’d be really cool, huh’.”  It’s about the difference between having friends and being part of a group.

Lastly, A Half Baked Life also has thoughts on the women’s march.  It was inspiring, but there were also things she noticed that stuck with her long after she got home.  “The march was an unprecedented crowd of people with no arrests, kindness and civility.  It was incredibly diverse, but it was largely white. Imagine what would have happened if that many Black women showed up in one space?  The police would have come in riot gear, not in yellow vests.”  She verbalizes the things that gave her pause as well as the things that lifted her up.  It’s a great, well-rounded post about her experience.

The roundup to the Roundup: Update about the new guinea pig coming Sunday.  I miss Truman.  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 20th and January 27th) 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 week’s Reply All is about John R. Brinkley, American trickster who treated infertility using goat testicles.

I’m only halfway through, but I’m going to start it over this afternoon so the twins can listen to it, too.  There is a twist about twenty minutes into the episode where I internally said, “Oh… this is why you’re telling this story.  Clever.”  It has nothing to do with infertility.  I’m fairly certain you’ll arrive to the same thought at the same time (if not sooner).

Anyway, back to infertility: one of his first treatments was surgically opening the person and tossing in a goat testicle.  The person was sewn up and went on their way.  If they were successful in having a child, they considered their infertility “cured.”  Remember, the number of people who conceive after being diagnosed as infertile but continue trying to add to their family without intervention is about 8%.*  If they weren’t successful in having a child, they generally didn’t talk about it ever again due to the stigma of infertility.

Hence why you heard the success stories but never heard the opposite.  Sound familiar?

Anyway, I was listening to this episode and thinking to myself that I would never allow someone to throw a goat testicle into my body.  And then it occurred to me, as I made my way home, that goat testicle inclusion is EXACTLY what I was willing to do.

Okay, not literal goat testicles (though, to be fair, I have zero clue how one goes about making Follistim), but the equivalent to goat testicles.  The people treated by Brinkley (almost exactly 100 years ago in 1918), were last-century versions of myself; willing to do anything in order to build their family.  When I take a step back and think about where I would place my line in the sand, it was well beyond anything I would do to my body.  The line was only drawn around the child.  I wasn’t willing to harm the child — physically or emotionally — but if you had told me that tossing a goat testicle into my body would work… well… I would have probably opted for the goat testicle.

It is interesting to think about what stories the podcasts of the future will tell about us a hundred years from now (provided that we still have podcasts and are not, in fact, extinct).  Will humans 100 years into the future think we were bizarre?  Our doctors barbaric?  Will they understand that we operated within limitations of knowledge?  That we made the best decisions with the options presented to us?

The side note, of course, is to not judge others for their choices.  Until we have walked in their actual shoes (and spoiler alert: we can’t), understood the actual options at their disposal, we can’t know what sort of decision we would make except thinking we know where we’d draw our line in the sand.

* I covered this in Navigating the Land of If on page 95: “The number of those who conceive after adoption is the exact same as the number of those who are infertile and conceive without treatments after not adopting: around 8 percent.”  In other words, if you continue to have unprotected, well-timed sex, you have an 8% chance of getting pregnant.  Of course, some people will never get pregnant because they have no ovaries or uterus, and some people will get pregnant because their problem wasn’t really infertility (despite the diagnosis) but more poor timing.  But this percentage applies to children conceived after adoption, children conceived spontaneously after a person has stopped trying, and children conceived after a goat’s testicle has been tossed into their mother’s body.

We have started the process of adding another guinea pig to our family.  Before you say anything, it is early.  It is soon.  But I also know that I’m not the kind of person who can be without a pet.  In weighing out the mental health factors in taking time to mourn but being without a guinea pig vs. trying to mourn and care for a new pig at the same time, I’ve opted to go the latter route.

Is it the recommended option?  No.  Is it what I need to do?  Yes.

The woman who gave us Cozy and Truman retired in the fall.  I spent many hours Googling guinea pig breeders within a two hour drive and found only one.  I contacted various clubs in the area that involved animals, and I’m still waiting to hear back if they know about private breeders.  We drove to four different pet stores, but I couldn’t connect emotionally with any of the pigs.  Plus I felt squeamish getting a pig where the store knew nothing about its origins.  They couldn’t tell me age or breed.  Probably not a good sign.

There were a few older pigs in area rescues, but we don’t want an older pig.  We want a baby.  We want as much time as possible with the pig.  Plus all the rescues require you to adopt two pigs, and we only have room for one and have always kept pigs, one at a time.

During my third round of Googling, I found a woman about a half hour away who needs to rehome two infant guinea pigs.  She posted four pictures of the male twins, and my heart exploded.  One was spoken for according to the listing.  The other was available.

I wrote her and she wrote back immediately, admitting that there is a possible person in front of us.  They are on the fence and will decide next weekend.  If that placement falls through, we can bring the pig into our family.  I went to bed staring at his picture.  I woke up and alternated between thinking about Truman and this new pig.

It is hard not to be hopeful, but I keep reminding myself that this is — at best — a 50/50 chance.  Until he is in our family, he is not part of our family.

Part of me wishes that I hadn’t found this pig until the other person had made a decision.  Part of me feels relieved to experience something akin to love toward another pig, even if that pig doesn’t remain in my life.  It means it can happen.  It means we can find another pig who fits into our family, who fills the hole, the missing piece, with its own unique sweetness rather than trying to replace the irreplaceable Truman.

Because I’ve had this fear that my heart wouldn’t let another pig in.  It’s always the fear until it isn’t the fear; that idea that maybe our heart can’t bounce back.  Maybe it’s too broken and this is it.  Or maybe our heart will heal in the surface sense; we’ll be able to coo at other people’s pets even if we know that we won’t be bringing another pet into our own house.

The ChickieNob keeps telling me that our pig is out there.  Maybe it’s the infant pig that we saw in the listing (we’ll know between now and this Saturday).  Maybe it’s a completely different pig we don’t know about yet.  Either way, we’ve started the process.  We’re mourning and filling at the same time.

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

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I miss Truman.  I am not shy about crying in front of the kids or Josh.  I am not shy about crying in public.  I cried in the grocery store buying parsley because it was unusually crisp, and it made me so sad to think about making soup stock without my baby wheeking through the whole thing.

I cry when I’m driving, especially if I see someone walking their dog.  I am aware that Truman wasn’t a dog, but that person has their pet and I don’t.  I cry when I walk downstairs and there is no one greeting me in the morning, and I cry when I look in the corner of the room and realize anew that there is no one to say goodnight to in the living room.

But I mostly cry in the shower.  I am a shower crier.  Sometimes I can feel my sadness or frustration building in the morning, and I wait to shower until it feels like every emotion is going to spill over.  Then I get under the water and wail.  I’m not just saying now, mourning Truman, but always.  I have always been a shower crier.

Do you cry in the shower, too?  Is it safe because you’re alone?  Because the sound of the water covers up any sounds of tears?  Because you can wash your face before stepping back out of the bathroom and facing the day?

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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.