The most magical town in the world is only an 8 1/2 hour drive from my home.

It’s not far from the American Museum of Magic (about 45 minutes apart). Colon is also home to the Magic Get Together in August, the long-running magic convention.

I like real magic almost as much as I like imaginary magic.

Road trip?

Updated at the Bottom

You may think that the next Roundup is the 600th one, and I get why you may think that. I mean, you know, 600 usually follows 599. But years ago, the Roundups got misnumbered by 100, and it took another year or two before anyone noticed. So the next Roundup is actually the 500th Roundup, which feels more like a milestone number, nu?

I’ve come up with something properly celebratory that I think you’ll enjoy, and I’ve scheduled it for July 1st. Why July 1st? Because (1) I wanted to actually write a normal Roundup for the 500th one, (2) my blogoversary is coming up at the end of June, and (3) the anniversary for the Roundup is coming up in the beginning of July. So mash all those facts together, and I set it for July 1st.

Hope you enjoy it…

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Last chance.  This is it.  On sale a few more days.  Life from Scratch has been chosen for an Amazon promotion.  It’s currently only 99 cents — a fraction of a cup of coffee.  So… pick up a copy for yourself or gift to a friend and get your beach reading set?

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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.  There were no second helpings last week.  Sniff.

Okay, now my choices this week.

Twangypearl the Elastic Girl has an update about parenting after adoption, and getting used to a new normal.  She muses, “Maybe we’re programmed to forget when we have to, so we can be preoccupied by new things? Maybe information that is no longer relevant for your survival is fogged over.”  I especially loved the image she included with the post.

Empty Arms, Broken Heart has a post about being a mum to a 16-year-old boy through adoption.  People assume that she must have been a teenage mother to have a child this old, and she unpacks how she feels about that assumption as well as wonder what to say.  It’s an interesting look at how our brain always goes toward default settings, despite our rational understanding that there are a multitude of ways of building a family.

Lastly, The Road Less Travelled has a beautiful post about how her daughter, Katie, should be about to move off into the world.  Through the years, she has always been able to picture what her daughter would have been doing at each age.  But now, the memory of her daughter moves into an unknown world.  It’s a bittersweet post about how we are always tethered to the living, and how, like all parents, even those who are grieving those who aren’t here, need to release their children to find their own path.  It’s really a gorgeous post.

The roundup to the Roundup: Celebrating the 500th Roundup milestone on July 1st.  Life from Scratch is on sale.  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 June 3rd and June 10th) 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.

Update:

Since you asked, the Truman update.  He started wheezing again yesterday morning, so the vet decided to put back in the first medication, since that was clearing up his respiratory problems before we stopped it to take the new antibiotic.  So now he is on two antibiotics, water via syringe, and critical care, a meal supplement.  His breathing is getting better this morning.  And he’s still eating while on the second antibiotic, which is good.  He’s also nudging my hand for a backrub while he eats his critical care, which is also classic Truman. (Why just eat a meal when you can combine a meal AND a massage?)

He smells.  Actually, “smells” doesn’t really cover it, but I’ll spare you the graphic description I was about to pull out of my pocket.  His eye is still oozing white gunk, his head still tilted to the side.  But he is stumbling around his cage like he’s drunk, a step up from the numerous days where he has barely had energy to open his mouth for my syringe of water.  He’s eating a bit of food along with the meal supplement, and he has managed to gnaw through a few of his beloved cookies.  It feels like we’re working our way back to somewhere good.

I’ve never really been in love with the term “fur baby” but… that is what he is.  He is my baby.  I mean, he is the actual replacement for the human child I was supposed to have, and I treat him as I would a human baby.  The ChickieNob refers to him as my third child, and sometimes mutters that he is my most important child.  But he’s just the one who needs me the most; who is wholly dependent upon me for every one of his needs.

People keep joking this week that I clearly need another kid, and I know they don’t mean harm from it.  Plus it’s hard to back pedal out of that conversation train when the person responds that they did try to add a child to their family but weren’t successful.  I get it.  It’s uncomfortable, and I’m not trying to make people uncomfortable.  I agree with them — clearly, based on the way I treat my guinea pig like a third child, I should have had another child.

But I don’t need to explain to all of you how that cuts into my heart when it’s already feeling swollen and raw.

Anyway, thank you for abiding with me.  I’ve told Truman that there is a lot of love from around the world flowing his way.  He mostly just looks at me blankly and then stumbles around, knocking into everything because he has no sense of balance.  But I like to think that he understands.

Some pictures from last night’s tummy time:

You can still see the head tilt, but at least he’s up and about.

I woke up at 1:55 am on Monday morning, certain that the day was going to hold bad news.  His condition didn’t change over the weekend, by which I mean that it didn’t get worse, but it certainly didn’t get better.  When I went to bed Sunday night, his head was still tilted to the side.  He would eat if we put the food to his mouth and drink if I gave him water in a syringe.  But he could barely walk.  He hadn’t made a sound in almost a week.  He couldn’t bite into his alfalfa cookies.

I spent the morning before we left for the vet with my stomach in knots.

I’m glad we waited.  I am clearly saying that in retrospect because we got to see our normal vet instead of a stranger, and I’m sure I would be saying otherwise if he hadn’t made it through the weekend.  But our vet has a basis of comparison for his normal self vs. his last week self vs. his current self.  Plus she is so compassionate and patient: With me and with him.

She thinks the infection has spread to his brain or inner ear.  She switched the antibiotic to one that gets into the central nervous system — though not one the other vet was suggesting — and put him on a food supplement to keep him from losing more weight.  She wants me to keep giving him water from a syringe.  And she warned that if he starts rolling over, he is having seizures and needs to be euthanized quickly.

She also said that she has never seen a guinea pig this sick rally so hard.  That guinea pigs are usually poor patients that give up fairly easily in the face of infection.  But she said that it was a good sign that he was fighting this hard to get through this.  I am going to cling to that thought because my brain cannot go to the otherwise without melting down.  He has to get better.

My poor sweet boy is resting a lot.  I’ll post another update this week when things get better.  Thank you for abiding with me though this.

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 about the Urban Confessional project on Mental Floss; a sort of face-to-face PostSecret, where people can run up to other people and spill their inner monologue.  Mental Floss explains, “The organization recruits volunteers to stand in public spaces and offer to lend an ear to anyone who wants to unload something, whether it’s happy news or a heartbreaking tale.”

Which sounds great except… isn’t this sort of dangerous, too?  I mean, therapists have training.  They know how to guide someone.  These are just volunteers who are offering to listen.  I think most people will use it in the way they use PostSecret, to unburden their heart to someone.  But what about the people who use the Urban Confessional project to unload something important, and once the words are out of their mouth, realize the person holding their words doesn’t know what to do with them?

Would we applaud untrained surgeons performing simple operations as art or expression?  Sometimes I think stunts like this are wonderful and other times I think they’re dangerous.  I’m on the fence about this one.

What do 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 that are connected to businesses or are sponsored posts.