I was folded forward this morning during yoga, in the middle of eka pada rajakapotasana, when it occurred to me that there was no one in the twins’ class named Greg.  Greg used to be enormously popular when I was in school.  Every class had “a Greg and a spare,” as I liked to say.  Actually, I never said that until today, but you immediately see the truth in the clunky phrase.

Josh looked it up for me.  (This is the benefit of doing yoga in your living room while your partner makes the school lunches.  You can call out the random things you think up from the mat, and he can Google them.)  Greg has not broken the top 1000 most popular names in the last twenty years.

The same with Melissa.  Every class had at least a dozen Melissas.  I may have inflated that number a bit, but Melissa was a very common name where I grew up.  And now it’s as if the Melissas have all scattered into holes in the baseboard, never to be seen again.  I meet Jennifers and Jessicas all the time, but all the Melissas have seemingly disappeared.  I can’t remember the last time I met a Melissa, even one my age.

I get that names go in and out of vogue.  The people who make those name pencils and name necklaces need a little variety in their world.  (I assume those are the people who decide the popularity of names because they have the ultimate power as they choose which names to etch onto shot glasses and which names to leave in the dust.)

But shouldn’t the people who had that name back in childhood still be around?  I used to know 3000 Melissas. (Again, that number may be a little smaller.)  Now I know zero.  Well, I know one.  Myself.  I am cognizant of my own existence.

Where have all the Gregorys gone?  All the Melissas?  Where are the Coreys and Bretts and Cynthias?  Where did the Candices run and hide when the 80s ended?

I’m starting an Ex-Popular Name Club.  Are you in it?

What would you think if I said I liked or didn’t like Joan Didion’s writing based on the work of her husband?  If I picked up a John Dunne book and read it and said, “Well, now I know everything I need to know about Joan Didion’s writing style,” I think you’d cock your head to the side and say, “I don’t know how the two are connected.”

Even if I continued, “Well, she gave him writing advice and edits on all of his books.  So now that I’ve read his book, I can totally imagine how Joan Didion writes.”  You might counter, “But editing isn’t the same as writing.  If you read her work, you’re going to discover that they have two very different voices despite having lived and worked together for many years.”

This conversation isn’t really about Joan Didion and John Dunne.

The point is… Hillary Clinton isn’t Bill Clinton, and she should not be liked or not liked based on the leadership style of her husband.  Yes, they have worked closely together for many years, and I’m sure she has offered him advice.  But you cannot know how she’ll be as a president based on how Bill was as a president — good or bad.  She is her own person with her own foibles and strengths.

And neither her husband’s infidelity nor his policies have any place in a discussion of Hillary Clinton’s ability to serve as president any more that we would ever look at Melania Trump’s parenting or career in order to judge Donald Trump.  The fact that Trump keeps trying to bring this topic into the discussion means he’s treating the election like a tabloid article and not the American people hiring our next leader.

While I believe she has a lot of strengths and that her foibles are generally the ones of all politicians as well as the narrative created by the media, the decision to vote for her has to be about her.  Not about her husband or other Democratic leaders or the DNC itself.  Just a lone woman, standing on a public stage, requesting that we allow her to lead the country.

Yes, I am a little cranky as I read yet more coverage that doesn’t allow the woman to own her accomplishments and keeps bringing her future back to her husband’s past.  Which, when you think about judging Joan Didion’s work by her husband’s writing style, is reductive and demeaning towards the individual.

Plus Joan Didion’s books are amazing.  I would have really missed out if I hadn’t given her a chance as a writer based on her own merit.

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

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Remember #MicroblogMondays 64 where I wrote about that hoodie that was also a back massager?  Of course you remember it because you’ve been thinking about it non-stop since I wrote about it.

Um… so scratch that whole idea of it being the best invention ever because Refinery29 did a review of it, and it sounds like maybe it was too good to be true.  Which is all kinds of disappointing.

This is why I’m reluctant to get too excited (or, to be honest, invest) in projects I see on Kickstarter.  Sure, it sounds great, but will it be great in actuality?  It’s hard to embrace things before they’re actually here.  Even upcoming television shows and movies rarely turn out as good as I hope.

But we live in an age where “coming soon” begins when the product is still months or years away from release.  How do we temper our excitement when everything sounds so damn good in theory?

When was the last time a highly anticipated product or book or movie lived up to your expectations?

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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 was recently reading a piece by Andrew Sullivan in New York magazine about his overuse of the Internet. He used a turn of phrase that caught my eye: living-in-the-web.

In other words, he didn’t use the Internet, partaking in it as a tool.  He lived in it, spending more conscious hours connected to the Internet than not connected to the Internet.  His primary mode of communication was writing or sharing on the Internet.  In his heyday, he posted every half hour or so.

And then he stopped.

I guess it struck me because I am always mindful of how much time I spend online, creating or consuming, and I try to set a lot of personal limits so I don’t feel as if I’m living in the web.  I like to visit, sure, but not live here.  Yet I do feel pressure to go online daily, and maybe I’m worried (and why I read an article that he wrote in the first place) that believing that I must go online is the first step to living in the web.

Maybe some of it comes down to that idea that if you use a smartphone, you’re taking the Internet with you:

At your desk at work, or at home on your laptop, you disappeared down a rabbit hole of links and resurfaced minutes (or hours) later to reencounter the world. But the smartphone then went and made the rabbit hole portable, inviting us to get lost in it anywhere, at any time, whatever else we might be doing.

It is convenient, of course, but it’s more than that.  There is something comforting about carrying all of you in my pocket.  There is something empowering to knowing the answer to many questions that pop up during the day is in my hand.  I agree with him that the distractions that come from being plugged in often feel pleasant and not annoying because it’s usually people or information I want to hear from or about.

He writes,

We all understand the joys of our always-wired world — the connections, the validations, the laughs, the porn, the info. I don’t want to deny any of them here. But we are only beginning to get our minds around the costs, if we are even prepared to accept that there are costs.

It’s a long piece, but I recommend reading it if you’re interested in this topic.  I’ve been chewing it over in my mind for a few days.

I think I am doing a decent job of just visiting the web and not living here, but doing so means constantly looking at the way I use my time online.  Where are you living?

I tried something new this week, something that promises to change my life.  I baked my challah early.

I knew I wouldn’t have time to make the challah for Rosh HaShanah and cook everything else, so I went online to see if other people had solutions.  I found a board of rebbetzins and learned that people who bake their challah every week are chumps.  These women churn out dozens of challot at a time, baking once a month and having bread for weeks on end.

They were arguing over whether it’s better to freeze the dough or freeze the baked challah, and they seemed to be split 50/50.  I went with the bake-entirely-and-freeze-immediately idea.  You take it out in the morning, and it comes to room temperature during the day.  You can throw it into the oven after your meal is done for a few minutes if you want to serve it warm.

We’ll see how it goes.  Perhaps this will change my life.  Or perhaps our challah will suck on Rosh HaShanah.

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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:

• None… sniff.

Okay, now my choices this week.

Non Sequitur Chica has a very honest post about parenting a second child.  I love it when women state their truth and open the door for others to say, “me, too” vs. to sit silently with the thought that they are the only one struggling.  She writes: “But man that guilt is tough. Guilt for not wanting to be on maternity leave anymore. Guilt from wanting to get away from your son (even for a few minutes) to get a break. Seeing other new moms on FB isn’t helping because they seem to have their shit together way more than me.”   Thank you for putting this out there.

The Empress and the Fool has a post about a Real Housewives message board and the divisive way the women on the board process one reality star’s IVF experience, an observation she came to after watching the actual episode.  She asks, “Why are we – as women, as human beings – so inclined to divide, categorize, measure and rank, organize experiences and their validity into a hierarchy?”  She admits that the situation left her with more questions than answers, but they’re really important questions that warrant a deep discussion.

A+ Effort is also tackling the idea of another child from a different angle, looking at the facts and adding them up to find what is best for her family.  It is a system that has clearly worked well over the years, and her family is thriving thanks to decisions they have made along the way.  But it’s also a post about the heart and the brain fighting each other since they rarely get along and agree to a single plan.

Notes from the Ninth Circle has a post about taking Clomid for the first time despite being in the infertility world for a long time.  She writes, “Papa Bear asked me how I felt after taking the first pill yesterday.  I didn’t really know what to say.  I didn’t feel bad, but I was afraid to feel good.  The best description we could come up with between us for how I felt was ‘guarded’.”  It’s a post about trying to figure out a path forward.

Lastly, Baby With a Twist has a post on reading about transgender parenting from her vantage point as a mother after surrogacy.  She admits to her own feelings about how the world processes motherhood and states, “If I – a cisgender woman – feel like this, I can imagine how my trans sisters feel.”  It’s a great post about how various groups can work together to create a new vocabulary.

The roundup to the Roundup: Changing how I bake bread. 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 September 23rd and 30th) 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.