One week from today, the twins and I will walk down to our local polling place and cast our vote for Hillary Clinton. The twins have been voting every election since they were three months old. Back then, it was finger to the touch screen, which was a little easier for group participation. This year, we’re each taking a third of that Tic-Tac-sized bubble and filling it in for Hillary. We’ve been practicing. We’re ready. Onward!

Image: Ally Aubry via Flickr via Creative Commons license

I considered going to an early polling place, but I really love the kids to feel the energy of election day. I like to treat the whole day as a holiday, celebrating voting, making a special meal, and then piling into our bed to watch the voting results roll in.

I don’t want them to treat voting like the act of turning in the ballot is the end point.  I want them to see the action through until the results are in, and even then to look ahead as how they can either support or counterbalance their newly elected officials.

I don’t want them to go to the polls and barely register the qualifications of the candidate, just voting down the party line.  I don’t want them to walk away from the polling booth assuming their job is done, and they only needs to glance at the newspaper the next day to see who won.  And I don’t want them to get frustrated when the results don’t go according to plan.  I want them to take a long hard look at what they can do differently next time as well as ways they can make life more enjoyable between turns.

I have invested a lot of energy in having them fully involved in each election, making sure that they understand there are many other elected officials beyond the president, and they need to pay attention to each one.

So we will be at the polling place next week, and I hope you are, too.  We’ll be eating homemade pizza for dinner, and staying up late to watch the first female president win the election.  We’ll be seeing this damn thing through to the end, and then looking beyond because the work of keeping our local community as well as nation running isn’t just important every two or four years.  It’s important every single day.  Remember that.

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

*******

It’s Halloween tonight, and the kids are going in the same costumes they used last year.  Which are also the same costumes they used for Purim.  Which may very well be the costumes they end up using this upcoming Purim.

It has been a busy month.  Halloween sort of slipped through my fingers.

I actually like making them costumes, especially seeing their faces when they’re dressed up as their favourite characters.  So I feel strange that their costume doesn’t really reflect their current interests.  If we had more time, I think the ChickieNob would want to be Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the Wolvog would want to be a character from Overwatch.

If I had more time, I would want Josh and I to go as Ember and Umber from The Magicians.  (Not that he would ever agree to this.)

Costume that best shows what you’re into right now?

*******

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 am smitten by the story that ran in Gizmodo (as well as other places) about the time capsule message from Gregory Lee Youngman who wrote:

I am dead. I go to Montgomery School. That is the olden school name. I was born 1900. You auto now I dead. My favorite subject is spooking the police. I play the guitar. In case you don’t know what it is, it is board with strings on then. I am 10 years old. See you later savages.

Of course, this message wouldn’t be nearly as amusing if the writer was actually dead, but a quick Google search for Gregory L Youngman yields a person who is very much alive and living in Anchorage, AK. He’s 58, which also fits since the author of the note was born in 1958. It seems like it would be a little too coincidental to have two Gregory L Youngman’s who are 58, right?

So working on the assumption that Gregory Lee Youngman is not actually dead, I love this because I was such a serious kid.  I would have never used my one time capsule contribution to write anything like this.  I would have been too scared, thinking that by writing it, it would come true.  That I would be dead by the time the capsule was opened and there would be no one left on earth who knew about guitars.

But, moreover, I would have worried that this would be the way people remembered me; that they wouldn’t get that it was a joke in the moment but think it was who I was as a whole.  So I would have played it safe and maybe a little bit boring.

I wonder if Greg Youngman is still like that 10-year-old version of himself, or if he looks back at it and wonders what he was thinking.

I have a new favourite podcast that I need to tell you about.  Maybe need is too strong a word, but it balances out the numerous times I have tried to get everyone here to listen to Gimlet Media projects.  This one came at the suggestion of my friend.  I love this podcaster’s voice as much as Manoush Zomorodi’s voice from Note to Self.  The podcast: What Should I Read Next.

Her guests talk about three books they’ve recently loved, one book they didn’t like (I kinda sorta don’t like this section because well… I don’t want to talk about things I don’t like.  I have 3000 things I do like, so I don’t have time for not liking things), and a book they’re looking forward to reading next.  The woman’s voice is so relaxing; I want to put on a sweater and drink tea the second she starts talking.

So if you’re looking for a new podcast, that’s it: What Should I Read Next with Anne Bogel.  Bogel, by the way, is Modern Mrs. Darcy, and I’m equally smitten with her daily newsletter.  It’s how I learned about and bought and read Sleeping Giants.

*******

I was standing in the allergy medication aisle at the food store, looking at my non-drowsy options, when a silver ring bounced several times and finally rolled to a stop in front of me.  I picked it up and turned to the boy standing at the end of the aisle.  “Got it,” I told him.

“Got what?” he asked.

“Your ring.  The ring you dropped.”

I held out the ring, and the boy stared at me strangely.  “That’s not my ring.”

I looked around, but we were the only people nearby.  I walked to other aisles, holding out the ring and asking if anyone had dropped it.  Everyone agreed that it was a gorgeous ring, but no one knew where it had come from.  I finally brought it to a manager, asking if anyone had reported a lost ring.  No one had, but she now has it behind the desk in case someone drops by.

The only other possibility is that it was resting on top of the allergy medication box when I picked it, dislodging it from its resting place.  Maybe I’m watching a little too much Dirk Gently, but it felt like the universe was trying to tell me something.

*******

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.

*******

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:

• “Microblog Mondays: From Infertile Soil” (Searching for Our Silver Lining)
• “Community and Voice” (Anne Heffron)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Mrs Spit… Still Spouting Off wrote a post at exactly the right moment that I needed to read.  It was a post about failing, but being okay with it, and it gave me a whole new way of looking at the world.  This is the best part of blogging: when you read something that makes you say, “Oh, everything is okay.”

A Woman My Age has a post about not making her child a life story book; both why she hasn’t and how she wishes she had now that he has more questions about his origins.  I had chills go down both arms when he asked his question in the store, but I loved her ending: “I started his book tonight and instead of trying to make it perfect, I’m just going to do the best I can.”

My Path to Mommyhood has a post about things she has changed this year.  She writes: “I narrowed my life for no tangible reason. I mean, there was hope that something would change, which fueled this sense of CLEAR MY SCHEDULE!, but nothing did, which just left me feeling irritated and let down.”  It’s an important point (and an important post if you are also narrowing your life): that the waiting is even harder if you give up everything and all you have is the waiting.  I’m glad that she wrote this.  (And that she changed things this year and brought all this goodness into her life.)

Lastly, I was deeply moved by Family Rock’s post about marking the 7 year anniversary of her sibling’s death as well as all of the changes that have occurred (or temporary things that turned out to be more permanent) since adopting her children.  It’s an honest post, by which I mean that it is a raw post, and it may be hard for some to read.  I cried reading her final lines: “Even though it’s been 7 years, you never stop remembering. You never stop grieving. And you certainly never stop loving… that’s the only thing that keeps you going.”  It’s a really gorgeous post about grief.

The roundup to the Roundup: Download this book-filled podcast.  The ring that came from… nowhere.  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 October 21st and 28th) 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.

So I’ve really gotten into SuperBetter and have expanded to reading the book while I fiddle around with the app.  I’ve put a link to both the book and app at the bottom of the post in case anything I write resonates with you and you want to join along.

Anyway, I’ve been sailing through the information, nodding nodding nodding until I hit a thought that triggered an internal question that will probably be familiar for many of you.  I should preface this with a fact: Jane McGonigal talks about her own infertility in the book, so it’s a familiar topic for the author.

Somewhere near the beginning of the book, she writes about how games get us comfortable with the concept of losing.  Think about the games you play: The vast majority of the time, you don’t win, right?  I mean, yes, you ultimately clear the board in Candy Crush or get all the cards to line up in Solitaire, but there’s a reason most games come with multiple lives or chances.  She even states later in the book: “Gamers, after all, spend on average 80% of the time failing when they play their favourite games” (p. 86).

I am completely fine with losing games.  I am about as competitive as a slug.  In fact, the slug may care more about the outcome of games that I do.  I’m not competitive in the real world, either.  I don’t run races or care what the neighbours are doing… I just don’t feel particularly moved over whether I “win” or “lose,” even in everyday life.

Except in one place.

Losing during a cycle triggered the deepest grief, and I still can’t explain the reaction to this day.  Was it because I saw the stakes higher?  That doesn’t sound quite right, since the stakes are pretty damn high when it comes to other facets of life such as career, marriage, or health.  Was it the time factor — both the idea that time mattered when it came to fertility AND the length of time between tries?  It’s very different when you have to wait a month or two for another chance to play vs. being able to drop in a quarter and hit start to play again.  The effort expended with no “win”?  But it didn’t matter if it was a medicated or unmedicated cycle: I reacted the same way every single time.

I ultimately never found a way to be comfortable with losing when it came to trying to conceive.  I cried and raged and internally begged my way through every cycle.  Would it have been different if I had used the concrete exercises in this book back then?  Or do we all have places in life that are untouchable; that are therapy-proof?

I don’t have an answer: It’s just an observation about myself.  That while I can be okay losing at lots of things, the baby making game isn’t one of them.

I’m writing about SuperBetter the app as well as SuperBetter the book because… well… I learned about them via a podcast and now I want to talk about everything I’m learning on them.  If you want to talk about them, too, join along.  If not, skip the posts marked SuperBetter.