This is a monthly series, published near the end of the month summarizing what I found, ate, watched, googled, and felt this month. New categories added from time to time.

Books Added to My TBR (e.g., books I just learned about that I’m excited to read… maybe)

• My Husband’s Wife (Alice Feeney)
• Vera, or Faith (Gary Shteyngart)
• Moderation (Elaine Castillo)
• Bring the House Down (Charlotte Runcie)
• The Goldens (Lauren Wilson)
• The Ending Writes Itself (Evelyn Clarke)
• The Compound (Aisling Rawle)
• The Game Is Murder (Hazell Ward)
• The Greatest Possible Good (Ben Brooks)

Notable Meals (new recipes, old favorites, and restaurant items we ate this month)

• Miso-sesame noodles (tweaking this recipe to make it less slaw and more noodle-y)
• Stanley Tucci’s marinara sauce (tweaking to use passata instead of whole tomatoes)
• Jamie Oliver’s tomato risotto
• Recreating Burger Fiancé’s vegan chicken sandwich, to the best of my ability. If you are ever in Montreal, this is our favourite restaurant

Television, Movies, and Music (watching and listening)

• Our experience with Australian Traitors lasted two episodes. We were really upset by the stuff with Chloe, and we decided to stop watching and switch to the U.S. Traitors. We don’t love it as much as the UK Traitors, but it’s a close second. We watched Seasons 1, so far.
• We started Department Q. I read the first two books and loved them but worried that seeing it on the screen would be too scary. The episodes are intense, but it’s well-done.

Added To My Ongoing Mix Tape

• “Cult of Personality” (Living Colour)
• “December, 1963” (The Four Seasons)
• “New Slang” (The Shins)

Tabs I Left Open (things I Googled and left up on the screen)

• The best time to book train tickets.
• Come See Me In the Good Light Wikipedia page.
• Trying to figure out what the KONO signs (with a violin) mean. We see them on telephone polls all the time.
• A recipe for Philly tomato pie, which I read about in an article.

Micro-Joys

• Josh has been joking for more than 20 years that I have an unusual love of primates. Joke was on him when Wordle made “loris” the answer on July 18, and I got it in three guesses.
• Our waitress at a restaurant told us it would help them a lot if we left a review. Happy to help out, especially because she went above and beyond, allowing us to sit outside for our meal. After I left a review, I wrote one for every place we enjoy in the area. The exercise reminded me that we know a lot of awesome places.
• Drew Petersen was the solo pianist at a Gershwin performance, and he was invited back on stage for an encore and shyly dedicated the performance of Gershwin’s “The Man I Love” to his boyfriend who was in the audience. And you know how old the crowd was when you collectively heard 1,800+ people touch their chest and let out an “aaaaaaw” in the face of young love. It was awesome to celebrate happiness.

Mood

• Feeling a little melancholy with the end of summer.

What about you? Let me know what you’re eating, seeing, listening to, googling, feeling this month.

We are slowly turning into the end of summer once again. Or, if not the end of the actual months of summer, the end of the twins’ break from college.

In May, I told myself not to think about it until August, but now that it’s almost August, I am thinking about it. A lot. We’ve already plotted out the fall visit, and they’ll be home for Thanksgiving and winter break. But it is hard to mentally stay in the now.

I love it when the kids are home. I love having them around and hanging out with them at night or on the weekends. They are the best company. And while I love catching up with them via FaceTime when they’re far away, it’s different knowing I can walk into a room and give someone a hug.

Two years into this, and I am still so sad.

But that is only because they are such cool human beings.

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

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The Wolvog introduced me to the BEST game. I love it so much that I save it for after work as a way to relax at night. I love it so much that I signed up for the creator’s newsletter after playing one round. That’s how good it is.

You get a word and a bunch of clues, and you have to decide which clue fits and what the answer would be. You get a little hint on the side of the answer box with the number of letters, so there are a few you can quickly eliminate. For instance, if it’s a five-letter word, and it says to anagram it, but the answer is a four-letter word, you can confidently skip that clue. If you get stuck, they’ll give you a hint and then the answer, but it’s pretty rare that you’ll need it due to all of the other context clues you get.

I’m probably not explaining it well, so go over and play Raddle and let me know what you think.

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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.

The Wolvog wanted a desk in his room, but had been dragging his feet on it because he didn’t want the room to look different. I got that. But I recently realized that if we gutted his closet, he could put the desk in his closet. The closet was mostly storage, so the rest of his room would stay as is, and when the door to the closet was closed, it would look exactly the same.

Win-win.

But cleaning out the closet meant dealing with a lot of empty fertility drug bottles and paraphernalia that I had shoved up there 16+ years ago to put off dealing with it. And if we were cleaning out the closet, we were cleaning out the entire closet. The Wolvog dealt with his things, and I was forced to open the box and look at papers and unused sharps and books. The preemie diapers and tiny nail scissors.

So much time has passed, but it still hurts in the exact same way that it hurt when we stopped treatments. It was as if no time had passed. I cried in the same way. It impacted my mood the rest of the day in the same way.

But it feels like I could have waited another 16 years and had the same result. The same feelings.

In the end, the Wolvog had an empty closet, feeling his own feelings about throwing out mementos from his childhood. It was an emotionally hard weekend, but he now has space for a desk.

In addition to having general glasses anxiety, I now have new prescription anxiety because the last eye doctor messed up the prescription. It was my first time going to her, and she refused to listen to me during the appointment, gave me the wrong prescription (which I put in new frames that I lost money returning because I could not see in them), and then refused to correct the prescription.

I got her to return the prescription on file to my old prescription, and then I had to wait a full year for insurance to cover another eye exam. If you’re playing along at home, that means that I went a full year with glasses that barely worked.

They were just good enough to get through life, but it was a daily frustration.

So now I can finally get a new prescription. I went back to my old eye doctor with a sheet where I wrote out my current (too weak) prescription, the wrong prescription from the terrible doctor, and the prescription before that just to have it. I left the office with a prescription that makes sense, but I’m going to be nervous until I put on the next glasses and see how they work.

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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:

• None… sniff.

Okay, now my choices this week.

Steal this note idea from Swistle because it’s brilliant. After leaving to-do lists on the counter that were ignored, she left a note for her two kids. “I said would the second of those two children to see the note please empty the dishwasher. Then I put ‘first person to see the note:,’ with a line for them to write their name. You see. This way, the motivation is TO HAVE SEEN THE NOTE.” Read what happened next.

Finally, Jess from Finding a Different Path writes about a book about periods written by Anita Diamant of The Red Tent fame and a podcast about PCOS. Both sound fascinating, so go over and read the post.

The roundup to the Roundup: Wish me luck on new glasses. 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 July 18 – 25) 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.