Truman is walking again.  He’s not only walking again; he’s getting up on his hind legs to beg for cookies, skipping around happily, and (of course) fighting his arch nemesis, rake*.

A few weeks ago, we looked over at Truman and Josh said, “Is he on his feet?”  Yes, he was standing on his feet, though he stumbled when he tried to take a step forward.  A few days after that, he started moving a few inches at a time.  Then he started walking slowly and wheeking again.  Then he started running and jumping.  And finally, he started getting up on his hind legs to beg for cookies.

Why did he suddenly start walking again?  We have zero clue.  We have no idea why he stopped walking, and we have no idea why he started walking.  Did the medications take weeks to work?  Was it the new vitamin C tablet he started taking each morning?  Was the whole thing a ruse to get more cuddles?

All I know is that I’m glad I have my pig back.

* Rake is a blue, plastic sand toy that he loves to pounce on and bite.  He’ll creep up on rake and then take a flying leap so he can knock it a few inches, but then run away terrified when rake moves.  Rake is his sworn enemy, second only to water bottle whom he hates with all his heart.

Forgive me if I have difficulty processing things this week, but I just read that Grease is essentially the Sixth Sense with poodle skirts.  Sandy is dead, people.  Dead.  She didn’t nearly drown.  She did drown and we just spent two hours in her musical coma.

Which explains why the car flies away at the end of the film.

Wait… is the stage show ALSO her dream?  Or just the movie?

It makes me wonder what other seemingly living characters are actually dreaming from hospital beds.

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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.

Okay, Loribeth technically submitted this for second helpings, but I already had it bookmarked for the Roundup, so I’m including it here.  My Path to Mommyhood has a fantastic post about the story you get to tell.  It actually reminded me a lot of Susan’s timeless post about fairness that I wrote about earlier this week, and I have a feeling this will be one I return to a lot.  She writes, “what you want and what you get are two different things, and that you can make the most of it but it’s okay to be upset and bewildered by the story you got, and share that so that you can find other people who understand what it’s like to live in that particular reality.”  Clearly the post resonated with a lot of us.

A Separate Life has a post about when our privacy ends, which is timely because I just got the ChickieNob Anne Frank’s diary to read.  She writes on the topic of private correspondence being held up as historical evidence after a death: “in the circumstances of a public or historic figure, is universally ignored and excused, as we – like vultures – pick over their most private thoughts shared with a trusted confidante. Does our privacy end with our death?”  Where do you stand on reading a person’s private thoughts after they’re gone?

Lastly, Different Shores has a post about the Scottish Prime Minister’s statement about her miscarriage.  On one hand, it is good to have loss discussed from a public platform.  On the other hand, is she being forced (or stepping forward willingly?) to explain why she doesn’t have children, even though her reason is personal and doesn’t impact her ability to do her job.  She asks: “Will there ever be a time when women without children are left in peace to just be, without feeling obliged at some time or other to explain why they didn’t reproduce?”  There is an interesting discussion in the comment section, too.

The roundup to the Roundup: Grease… mind blown. 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 2nd and 9th) 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.

If you’ve read this blog for longer than, let’s say, a week, you know that I often write about my extreme fear of forgetting or losing things.  For the last few years, I’ve found a work-around with bullet journalling.  I write down everything from books I want to read to a name from high school that randomly popped into my head to things I must accomplish.

My bullet journal also contains a monthly page where I write the stuff that I know will make me anxious if I ever forget it or can’t find the information quickly.  For instance, at this time last year, I was apparently very concerned that there would one day come a time when I would not remember my favourite Key and Peele sketches, so I wrote down the names of each sketch along with Google-able terms in case I wanted to find them in the future.  I also listed the twins’ MAP-M and MAP-R scores because I always liked to have quick access to those numbers when they brought home the next set.  And I apparently wanted to remember, forever, that I like backgammon.

Don’t judge.  The system works.  At the very least, it calms me down.  Moderately.

Anyway, I was very intrigued by Wonder Bot, which is a bot that can remember anything you tell it and then recall that information when you need it.  For instance, every time you meet someone new, you could tell it to remember some details about the person.  And then years down the road when you bump into someone and can’t remember how you know them, you could ask Wonder Bot and it would spit back out the results.  I love my notebooks, but they aren’t searchable.  When I’m trying to remember something that I know was once written down, I have to flip back through every page.  The Daily Dot calls Wonder Bot a “text-based memory bank.”  Which sounds like the most amazing thing in the world.

You know, except for all the security issues.

Because right now I’m working with pen and paper.  Sure, someone could steal my notebook if they really wanted to know where we went on that walking tour in London. (Clerkenwell!  I always forget the name of the neighbourhood, so I wrote it down so I could remember.)  But that somehow seems less likely than hackers breaking into cloud data or a computer.  And while I would use Wonder Bot to remember things such as the name of the restaurant we hung out at in high school (Booeymongers!), I’m going to bet that others would use it for sensitive information.

Though it’s really really really tempting when you think about how easy it would be to send what amounts to a text message and know that information could be recalled for eternity.

What do you think of Wonder Bot?  Would you use it?

The twins and I are always reading a book together, but the ChickieNob and I also have a side book going at the same time.  We currently started reading The Fault in Our Stars because she had picked it up at a bookstore and read the first few pages and laughed over Hazel’s sarcasm.

We were a few chapters into the book when she asked about the title, and I explained its ties to Julius Caesar and the idea of fate and the stars determining the length and quality and events of your life.  Cassius is telling Brutus the fault is not in their stars but their own personalities, and this idea is played with in John Green’s book: Who gets a long life and who gets a short life and who gets remembered and who gets forgotten… it’s all mostly a matter of chance.  And the odds were definitely not in these characters’ favour.

I decided to read her my favourite post by Susan Niebur, Toddler Planet, who died a few years back.  I bookmarked this post and return to it often because it is probably the most profound, important thing I have ever read on the Internet.  A big claim, yes, but I think if you read the whole post, you’ll agree.

She explains with a story:

Life is given to each of us.  We each get one shot at this sucker, and we are never really told that it will be fair.  We each get one life, one daily wage, and that’s it.  The guy next door gets one life to live.  The mom down the street gets one too.  No one ever promised us the same life, the same opportunities, the same blessings, or the same time to live.

If we look at it that way, we are all treated fairly by the universe.  Even when it doesn’t feel as if we are being treated fairly by the universe.  Can we really argue?  I mean, we’re given exactly what we were promised: A single life.  And what we do with that life, and the circumstances that we encounter while living it, are both in and out of our hands.

It has been hard to read this book aloud.  There are a lot of times when I need to pause and cry because it is so true, and so heartbreaking in its stark truth.  And I cried when I reached these lines in Susan’s post, now reading them after the fact and knowing she is gone:

I have everything I ever wanted.  Am I sometimes envious of others, who may get forty-plus more years on this Earth than I?  Sure.  But I was never promised 80 years. I was promised a life.  And boy, have I had a pretty incredible life.

I hope we all live incredible lives, too.  When I think that I’m not, I come back to this post and re-read it again and think, “Yes, that’s it.  I only have control over certain portions of my life, and the rest of chance.  So do what I can in the places I can.”  I aspire to one day have as much grace and wisdom and intelligence as Susan.  I may never be a NASA scientist like she was, but I will always be grateful that she placed down a path of words for us to walk down and glimpse inside that brilliant brain and see the world in a different way.

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

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I recently learned about a phenomenon in South Korea called muk-bang, where people livestream themselves eating enormous amounts of food.  I misunderstood the idea at first because I couldn’t imagine anyone would want to see someone else chew.  But, no, it’s pretty much just watching someone else consume food.

What I thought it was, at first, was that people were turning on their camera and livestreaming their meal at the same time every night, so you could pull them on your screen while you ate your meal, and you felt as if you were eating with someone.  You know, except for the fact that they couldn’t hear you.  Which would personally make me feel even lonelier than being completely alone, but that’s just me.  And maybe for some people that is the draw, but for others, it’s just about watching someone else slurp noodles.

It made me wonder why I don’t get together for FaceTime meals with friends since we could sit in front of our computers with our respective meals and sort of feel like we’re in a restaurant with each other.  How else am I going to get dinner with Lori?

Have you ever had a FaceTime (Skype) meal with another person?  Would it appeal to you?

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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 posts.