Josh likes to tell people that I talk about waste in the same way that other people talk about murder.  I waste nothing.  I do not even waste the 30 seconds as a meal heats up in the microwave.  I use that time to put away measuring cups from the drying rack.  I do not waste food.  I don’t always eat it myself, but if you stare at Josh long enough, he will make a meal out of the remaining three bites from fifteen lingering Tupperware containers.  I don’t even waste receipts.  I use them as bookmarks.

So I just want to explain the eighty-five open bottles of dish soap, the thirty-one open bottles of shampoo, and the small army of almost-empty hair gel bottles parading across the front of our bathroom cabinet.

They’re all because I waste nothing.

Because I plan to cut open the top of the hair gel container and scoop out the last precious drop with the tip of my finger before I recycle the container.  But the scissors are downstairs and the hair gel container is upstairs.  So I place the almost-empty container in the cabinet and open a new bottle because my hand hurts from trying to squeeze something out of the almost-empty container.  And the next morning, I grab the new bottle because the scissors are still downstairs and therefore too far away if I want to cut open the old bottle.  The cycle continues.

The same thing happens with the dish soap.  When we get towards the bottom of a container, I generally flip it upside down so the contents gather in the top and come out easier.  But I can’t do that with the dish soap because the soap tends to leak out the top of the container.  So when it gets close to the end, I tell myself that I’m going to dedicate an evening to standing in the kitchen, holding the bottle upside down over the sponge so it fills with that soapy goodness.  But that doesn’t happen.  Opening a new bottle on the other hand, does.

Actually, it does happen — all the old stuff eventually gets used — but it’s not before I’ve amassed a giant collection of mostly used bottles.

I’ll admit it — it is really annoying to live with me.

(But I bake cookies.)

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

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I read an interesting thought from Abraham Twerski (The Enemy Within).  It was part of a larger commentary on self-love; not in the positive sense, but in the “putting yourself before others” sense:

The Rebbe of Kotzk noticed a young man thoroughly enjoying a dish of fish.  “Why are you eating fish?” the Rebbe asked.

The young man responded, “Why?  Because I love fish, that’s why.”

“So it was your love for the fish that caused you to take it from the water, kill it and cook it!  If you really loved the fish, you would have let it live.  Do not delude yourself, young man.  What you really love is yourself, and because the fish satisfies your palate, you eat it.”

A fitting thought considering the political climate where so many of us are the fish, and we’re being told that work is being done to make our lives better when we feel like we’re being devoured, all for someone else’s enjoyment.  It’s words not matching up with actions.

Chew on that.

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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 really loved the BBC video last week where the guy was doing a live broadcast and his kids entered.  I loved it for that first kid’s dance she did as she entered the room.  Everyone should aspire to internally (or, frankly, externally) do that dance at some point in their day.

What I didn’t love were the various parody videos, especially the one that showed a woman on air, feeding a baby, cooking a chicken, and tending to the laundry, all while running through her talking points.  Yes, I’m aware that it’s a parody.  I’ve already been told that I need to lighten up when I talked about it on Facebook.

But comedy is a trick thing.  Sometimes we laugh because we recognize a universal truth, and other times we laugh because the piece has pointed out something we never realized.  And sometimes we don’t laugh because the parody misses the mark on both counts.  There’s a big difference between comedy that moves the conversation forward vs. comedy that moves the conversation backwards.

It’s hard to laugh when it’s the latter option.

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Men — totally incompetent, amiright?  That bumbling dad in the original video put out his arm in his panic and stammered around.  If a woman had been in that chair, she would have executed dance-like grace, scooping up the child without missing a beat and using the moment to deliver a witty bon mot about work-life balance.

Except she wouldn’t have.

The parody is unfunny on so many different levels.  For every woman who struggles to get everything done, implying that real women have it all together makes them feel like shit.  I don’t know about you, but I do not operate like the woman in that video.  Does that make me as bad as the man in the original video?  Do I lose my woman card?

For every woman who would like to be known for something more than her child-rearing, meal-cooking, laundry-doing skills, it sticks our socially prescribed roles front and center.  Do you remember anything she said?  I’m guessing not because the focus was on the bottle feeding, chicken-sniffing, lint-brushing actions.  Sure, the portrayal is flattering on the surface — she’s supermum! — until you realize that you didn’t listen to anything she was saying due to the distracting exterior.  It’s a gotcha! moment; you think it’s women empowerment… but it’s not.

For every man who does an excellent job co-parenting (or, in some cases, single parenting) their kids, it turns them into a bumbling fool who can’t take care of the kids OR matching their socks.  How did that man get through life before marrying that smart, savvy, accomplished woman?  Or, the alternative is that we look at the man in the original video, who was doing the best job he could in the moment, and sneer at his inability to somehow stay the course when everything is going off track.

I don’t like being reduced to a stereotype — mostly because it makes me feel like crap about myself because I really don’t fit that calm, cool, collected supermum stereotype — nor do I like to reduce other people to a stereotype.  And that’s where the conversation went this week in terms of the roles of men and women (not to mention the various other discussions that came out of commentary on that video).  I want to blow those stereotypes out of the water; not reinforce them.  Even when it’s just a parody video.

So we got a snow day, but we lost our Yayoi Kusama exhibit tickets.

There were three scenarios that could have happened: (1) The storm was smaller than anticipated so we could get downtown and see the show, (2) The museum closed due to the snow and we could use the tickets on the proposed snow date, (3) The museum opened late due to the snow and they wouldn’t honour the tickets on another date.

Guess which scenario happened?

We couldn’t safely get downtown — the roads were too slick — and the Hirshhorn said they wouldn’t honour the tickets on their proposed snow day.  It was use them now or lose them forever.

We had a moment where we asked ourselves whether or not we were willing to risk our lives in order to use the tickets and see some art, and then realized that was a horrible idea.  The Hirshhorn stating that our only option was to traverse unsafe roads in order to see the exhibit made me feel like the point wasn’t really the people seeing the art.  I mean, if it’s about the audience — the human beings giving their attention to the piece — you try to keep them safe.  If it’s about the museum, you tell people to get on unsafe roads or miss out.

So we let the tickets go.  We may try again to get tickets, but not sure if we’ll end up seeing it after all.

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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:

• “Kinda Childfree in a Child-Full World” (By the Grace of Chocolate Go I)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Searching for Our Silver Lining has a post about trying to get back into writing again after being away from her blog for a bit.  I’ll be honest: The reason why I never take a break from my blog is that I know how hard it would be to get started again.  This post confirms it.  She writes, “Originally the break in writing was meant to be temporary; a hiatus to focus on all the turmoil. Coming out of that required more activation energy then I anticipated.”  Plus I really love the ending of the post.

Bent Not Broken has a post titled “Struggle Bus” that I loved for its name and simplicity (though not the situation).  I latched onto the title because it immediately conjured an understanding of those times when your feelings are at the wheel, moving you through life, and you’re not really the one in control of getting from Point A to Point B.  Plus this: “This is grief.  It’s not pretty.  It’s not always logical.  It always sucks.  But I always get through it.”  Sending a hug.

Lastly, Infertilityhonesty has a post about emotional labour, an idea that has been bouncing around the blogs a lot for the last few weeks.  There is a longer definition in the post (and a roundup of some of those posts I mentioned), but emotional labour “includes the things we do to support people emotionally, the willingness and effort to enter into another’s world view, the ability to acknowledge another person’s pain and attentiveness shown to another person’s experience.”  It is a long post but an important post.  Read it all the way through and then think about it a lot.

The roundup to the Roundup: Not seeing Yayoi Kusama’s exhibit.  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 March 10th and 17th) 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.

Speaking of the KonMari method in terms of my ugly couch, Forbes from time to time presents the idea of KonMari-ing your calendar.

The point, it seems, to saying no is that it frees you up to say yes to what you really want to do (vs. what others want you to do).  And that’s great but… what about not filling up the calendar at all?  Like what about saying no so you have an empty space in your calendar and then not filling it with anything that needs to be written down on a calendar and is tied to a certain block of time?

Anyway.

I decided to do this with my calendar.  I left off work engagements because I enjoy work AND it doesn’t really matter whether or not it sparks joy.  I still had a considerable number of promises on my calendar, but I immediately ran into the problem that the author addressed in the article:

So last spring I decided to analyze my calendar and, using the KonMari method, ask whether each commitment brought me joy. I believe this is why Kondo has become a guru to many Americans at the end of their proverbial ropes. She doesn’t ask if things are necessary or useful. She asks if they spark joy. Joy! That is a high bar, especially if you are using it as the filter for socks or a trip to the DMV.

I would say about 50% of my commitments sparked joy.  I genuinely enjoy the volunteer work that I do with teaching coding to kids.  I’m helping advise a new nonprofit on their social media strategy, and it’s a lot of fun to apply what I know and dream big.  But I also do a lot of things that I don’t really like at all because they’re obligations.  They’re part of living in a community.  They’re part of giving back to the world.  They’re necessary for our family to run.  It’s not that I’m so busy; I just don’t enjoy a bunch of ways I’m spending my time.

So… I dropped pretty much nothing.

I find KonMari great in theory and terrible in practice.  I can apply it to one or two things — clothing, for example — but I can’t apply it to most items in my house.  And I certainly can’t apply it to the intangibles and have the ideology create a life-changing impact.  Grab me back an hour, sure.  Grab me back full afternoons so I can read a book or take a class?  Not quite.

Instead, it felt worse to say to myself, “This doesn’t spark joy… but you have to do it anyway.”

I take ownership of my calendar.  I know I’m in control of setting my own boundaries.  I know how much is on my plate and how much I can reasonably take on and not make myself miserable.  Sometimes those facts control my calendar.  Sometimes there are other elements that are more powerful that take over my time.

Do you think you could KonMari your calendar and really achieve a difference in the way you spend your time?