We had to put Truman to sleep.  And now the house is very quiet; so still that it feels like even I am not really here.

On his last day, he watched me do yoga.  He wasn’t eating despite wheeking for food and nosing his bowl every few minutes, seeing if I gave him something different.  He didn’t want lettuce, but I had given him carrots the night before (and he ate all of his overnight food), and didn’t want to give them again.  He even rejected critical care.  The pig never rejected critical care.

I gave him some water by hand and called the vet.

There were two appointments; one if I could get there in the next fifteen minutes and the other in the late afternoon.  I took the one in the afternoon because we live more than fifteen minutes from the vet.  He continued to snuffle around the rest of the day, but was pretty subdued.

And then he lay down on his side and his limbs started shaking.  He arched his head back and his eyes were wide open, but I don’t think he was seeing anything.  I called the vet’s office and was told to bring him in immediately.

I cried the whole drive over there and told him how much I loved him.

The doctor said his heart was barely beating and that it was cruel to keep him alive and let him die slowly over the next hour.  So I picked him up and gave him three kisses — I always gave him three kisses — and stroked him for a little while, repeating how much we love him.  He was so limp, half-gone, and letting out little, shuddering breaths from time to time.  His head never moved from that tilted back position.

After he was gone, she wrapped him in a purple towel and I drove him home.  I didn’t play his vet music in the car because he couldn’t hear it.  I didn’t have to drive with one hand on his back telling him not to climb out of his box because he could no longer climb out of his box.

It was just me, alone, going home to meet Josh and tell the kids that our guinea pig was gone.

They were devastated.  My parents came over and we buried Truman, each of us giving him a last cookie.  I cleaned out his cage and washed his dishes.  And then there was nothing left to do except say, “I can’t believe he’s gone.”

I am so sad.  A few nights ago, ChickieNob and I were fooling around with Truman, and I took a bunch of pictures of them puckering their lips at one another.  I can’t believe that’s all I have left of my little moo.

I am sitting here, feeling a vague wave of nausea, waiting for everyone to wake up so we can face this day together.  We will not be watching the Inauguration.  We don’t normalize hate in this house, and unlike our local Girl Scouts, we don’t participate in events just for history’s sake.  We make mindful decisions based on the facts we have on hand, and those facts point us directly in the opposite direction of this administration.  Where they hate, we’ll help.

We’ll start by not participating in today’s event.  It’s a small step, but it’s an important one because if we don’t take this first step, that normalization paves the way for a lot of other small steps that lead nowhere good.

Wishing everyone a deep breath today.

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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:

• “The Other Side” (Searching for Our Silver Lining)
• “Just a Normal Day in the Backyard” (Persnickety Chickadee)
• “Wordless Wednesday” (Persnickety Chickadee)
• “Nicht Mein Problem” (Elaine Ohne Kind)
• “Adoption on Screen: ‘This is Us’ and ‘Lion’ Give New Focus” (Lavender Luz)
• “IVF vs Adoption Waiting” (My Path to Mommyhood)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Biogirl’s post on keeping (or not keeping) resolutions cracked me up, especially the part about her journal from childhood.  Yes, you will need to click over to find out the diary entry because it’s too brief to write about without ruining the punchline.

Notes from the Ninth Circle brings in a baseball analogy when she gets bumped down to the fertility minor league for a cycle while her body recuperates.  I kept returning to this line: “But it feels weird to have a new plan and be waiting to implement it.”

My Path to Mommyhood reassures all good-hearted people that yes, she has considered it; “it” being whatever is about to come out of their mouth.  She points out: “That question feels like it is a judgment on our choices, which were difficult beyond measure and individual to our circumstance.”  It’s a great post, and one that people should read before they pose the question.

Lastly, Lavender Luz has a post about adoption reform.  She states: “Reforming policy and law is one necessary step, but it’s not the last step. Not until ideas of respect, empathy, and inherent value of others also take root in people’s hearts can true and enduring change happen” while drawing a line between reforms that brought about equality in regards to law but not full application in every facet of society.  The post begins in the link above and continues to a second space.

The roundup to the Roundup: Abnormal times call for an abnormal response.  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 13th and January 20th) 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 don’t have regrets — Norway was great — but the story is still sort of funny when I admit it aloud.  I gave up a trip to a place I had wanted to go just because I didn’t think it could match the dream version.  It probably can’t — that dream still makes me happy — and my fake Australia did not contain spiders, snakes, or anything that would freak me out during waking hours.

The Atlantic recently had an article about false memories; things we believe with all our heart to be true, but they never happened (or they didn’t happen like that).  We insist that we know for certain the order of events or who was there or what we wore.  It feels so real, and yet scientists can prove that some of our strongest memories still turn out to be false.  They have even been able to easily plant false memories or manipulate memories with just a few words.

Harrington, now a professor of literary journalism the University of Illinois, once said, “Truth is a documentary, physical reality, as well as the meaning we make of that reality, the perceptions we have of it.”

A true story is always filtered through the teller’s take on it.

I guess the article struck me, especially because I read it while I was thinking about the dream.  If I wouldn’t accurately recall the experience regardless, what was the difference between the dream trip and a real trip once we got beyond the logistics of travel?  After the trip was over, my brain would fictionalize my memories of Australia.  Was it worth messing with the perfect Australia in my dream if both dream and real Australia were going to end up as fiction?

There is clearly a lot of worth in travel (beyond getting to spend time with my friend), and I’m being tongue-in-cheek about our memories becoming fictionalized, but the article made me feel a little less embarrassed that I didn’t want to give up the warm, happy memory of my dream for a reality that could never match how I felt winding around the islands.

Does it bother you to think that some of your favourite memories may not be real?  Or are you so happy with the memory that it’s okay if it didn’t exactly happen as you imagine (as long as you never find out otherwise)?

I’ve heard both that the Sherlock episode that aired on Sunday was the last episode ever and that everyone would be open to continuing the series.  I watched it, waiting the entire time for the ending so I could judge whether things felt neatly wrapped up.  I decided that if things were neatly wrapped up, it would mean the series was over, and if there was a cliffhanger, the series would continue.

My mind only half-watched the episode.  The other half was worrying about whether things would be ending.

I think we’ve established over the years that I’m not good with endings — even when I am looking forward to whatever is next.  For instance, I start mourning books when I’m about midway through the novel.  I start thinking about how happy I am with the characters, and how much fun it is to spend time with them, and how it will be sad when it all comes to an end and I will never ever find characters that I like as much as the characters in front of me.  I think that even when I have numerous books lined up to read, all of which I am equally excited to tackle.  I think that despite having proven myself wrong between the last book and the current book.

I don’t know why I do this every single time.

Sherlock is a weird show because there are long breaks between the episodes.  The last one was last winter, and then the rest of the season unrolled over the last three weeks.  Before that, you got three episodes every two years.  So it’s not as if I’ve spent time with them, week after week, and now saying goodbye to them will mean an end to a routine.

Still, the idea of never seeing these characters come together in new storylines made me feel anxious through the whole episode.  Movies come and go, but book characters and television characters get under my skin and start to feel like people I’m Facebook stalking; unable to interact with them but enjoying trying to figure out their life from a few photos.

It was nice to hang out with Sherlock and Watson for an hour and a half at a time.

And I have no clue if that was the last episode or not.

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

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Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day (usually called MLK Day) in America.  It feels particularly poignant this year because we’re moving between two very different types of leaders.  Obama guided by pointing out the positive.  And Trump… well… I can’t say that we are being guided anywhere good.  Insurance companies will benefit greatly from his administration.  Individuals, not so much.

King wasn’t a perfect leader or a perfect person, but he showed up and he cared and he tried his best to guide the nation towards a better place where one group of people didn’t need to be down for another group of people to be up.

I think I miss him a little extra this year because we need leaders like that — leaders who can speak eloquently to express our hearts and energize us to keep fighting for equality.  There are strong leaders out there (Elizabeth Warren comes to mind).  We need them to get a lot louder now that Trump is leading us backwards instead of forwards.

To me, King is a great reminder that it’s not about perfection.  It’s about humanness; looking for the good in others and understanding that we’re all in this together.

What do you think makes a great leader?

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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.