Somehow the topic of Boston’s rap battle situation came up while we were driving, and I informed the kids that if someone pulled up alongside our car and challenged me to a rap battle, I’d have to politely decline because (1) I’m not really good at speaking off the top of my head, (2) I’m not really good at rapping in general, and (3) I really like to pay attention even at red lights, and I wouldn’t want to be distracted by their rhymes.

I told the twins that when I was younger, the thing to do was to pull up alongside a car in traffic and motion for them to roll down their window.  Of course, that meant taking off your seat belt and leaning across the seat because most cars had windows that had to be manually rolled.  It was truly a pain in the ass unless someone was in the passenger seat.

Anyway, once they had the window down, assuming you needed directions or that you were going to warn them that their tail light was out, you would say, “Do you have any Grey Poupon?”  And then drive away.

We were such cards.

*******

I asked the twins if kids still pump their arm up and down whenever they pass a truck while they’re on the school bus.  It used to be a huge game to get truck drivers to pull their horn for you, and I remember mostly doing it on the bus but also in the car on long trips.

I asked Josh, and he did this as well as a kid, and we didn’t grow up in the same area.  Anyone else?

Unfortunately, getting truck drivers to honk their horn no longer seems to be a thing.

*******

Of course there was also punching the person next you — hard, in the arm — whenever you saw a Volkswagon Beetle.  Yes?  No?

Punch buggy!

I downloaded the most brilliant set of apps.

So, I go on the fan sites on Wikia a lot to look up facts when the twins and I are reading a book. (Most resent search: “What happens to Foxface in the Hunger Games?”  Could not remember.)  And I decided to look and see if Wikia had an app in the iTunes store.

Did they have an app?  No.  Did they have like 50+ apps?  Hells yeah.

They had a different app for each individual fandom.  They’re all free.  You download them, and then you can access commonly sought information such as characters, locations, actors (when there are movie versions of the book), themes, etc.  I downloaded some of our favourite things: Doctor Who, Sherlock Holmes, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Hunger Games.  It makes me so happy to see them all lined up on my phone.

And now, when we’re driving somewhere and trying to remember the name of the boy from District 11, someone can look it up on the phone in two seconds.  Pure bliss.

If you’re having trouble finding the individual ones, do a search for Wikia on iTunes, pull up one app, and then click on the developer (Wikia) at the top to see a list of all their apps.

*******

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:

• “Out of the Shadows” (Inconceivable!)
• “Oh, the Humanity” (Lavender Luz)
• “Two Years Ago and Today” (Torthúil)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Searching for Our Silver Lining has a post about missing the babies who aren’t here.  It is a beautiful post on the process of healing and forgiveness, and she writes, “There are days I think it’s mastered only to pull me back under. Forgiveness is such a funny thing.”  Go read it in full.

The Barrenness has a post about her pregnancy dreams returning.  It’s always such a strange reminder how little control we have over our own mind, despite what some self-help gurus would have you think.  She seeks a reason why these dreams are looping back into her mind after banishing them once before.

Lastly, I usually don’t highlight non-infertility/loss/adoption posts, but this Washington Post article on the author’s sister’s suicide got under my skin.  Rather than sweeping the cause of her sister’s death under the rug, she wrote it into her obituary.  I love these lines: “Here is the truth: You have value. You have worth. You are loved. Trust the voices of those who love you. Trust the enormous chorus of voices that say only one thing: You matter. Depression lies. We must tell the truth.”  My hope (as well as the author’s) is that many lives will be spared from death by depression by writing and talking about it.

The roundup to the Roundup: Wikia apps are so much fun.  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 March 18th and 25th) 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.

I’ve been trying to get back into logging my food with My Fitness Pal, though it hasn’t really been working.  I forget all day, and then I eat terribly and think, “What’s the point in knowing how many calories I consumed when I clearly ate too many?”  And so nothing changes.

I finally realized that there were actually four things I wanted to do to make myself feel better: (1) Do yoga daily, (2) Drink 8 cups of water, (3) Get closer to 8 hours of sleep, (4) Balance and limit my caloric intake.  The problem was that I was trying to do all of them at once and it wasn’t working.  So I decided to only do one at a time and see if that worked out better.

So the first thing I did was start doing yoga daily.  I’ve pretty much stuck with this for years, but not in a mindful way.  So now I committed to doing it every morning, and of course nailed this goal since I was already doing it.  Sidenote: it helps to start with something you know you can accomplish.

Next I decided to add in the water thing.  This is huge because I still wasn’t eating well, but I had to say to myself, “Food isn’t your concern right now.  Water is.”  So I’ve been drinking 9 cups of water.  It’s easier than 8 because my water container holds 3 cups of water, and I just fill it 3 times during the day.

And even though there are two things I’m still not doing, I’m focusing on the fact that there are two things I am doing.

And here’s the thing: I have been eating better because the water fills me up so I’m less likely to go in the kitchen and grab a handful of crackers.  (Oh, crackers, I love you so damn much.)  Without trying, I’m actually getting closer to a place where it isn’t going to be a big deal to start counting calories again and looking at the nutritional breakdown of my food to make sure I’m getting enough protein and not too much sugar.  So that is pretty cool.

I’m currently between step 2 and step 3, feeling like I’ve got a good grasp on the water consumption thing and starting to set a bedtime for myself.  I need to begin by not playing video games up until the second I go to bed because that clearly hasn’t been working for me.  I’m feeling like 11:15 is a good time for lights out, so maybe I should read during that 15 minute appendix of time dangling off the evening.

And once I stick to that for a while, it will be time to limit my beloved sugar.

I recently read a good post on Lifehacker about setting negative incentives, which sounds like it would work well for me.  (Of course, it may not motivate you at all.)  The idea is to set a negative consequence that you want to avoid rather than setting a positive consequence for reaching your goal.

I decided to set $20 in a jar.  Every day that I don’t stick to recording my food on My Fitness Pal and staying within the caloric goal, I am going to remove $1.  At the end of the month, I get to take the remaining money and buy myself a new section of the PS4 game that I’m playing.  Each part is about $15, so if I stick to the plan, I will have enough money.  And if I don’t, I know that I have no one to blame but myself*.

In fact, I may make it worse and tell myself that the lost money needs to go toward buying Josh one of his annoying albums that he’ll play in the car, subjecting me to his musical noise.  So not only will I be unhealthy and unable to play more of my game, but I will have to listen to Josh’s music.

So that is how I’m turning it all around.

* I’m pretty certain I’ll only need to do this for one month.  Once I get into a routine, I’m pretty good about keeping it going.  I’m just terrible at starting the routine.

I spent the morning about a week ago dropping very obvious hints that I wanted the Superman LEGO Dimensions action figure.  As Josh made the ChickieNob’s lunch, I loudly told her all about how much I loved Superman.  She kept saying, “I know.”  Which only made me say it more emphatically.  Did she know that the Superman can swim AND fly in the game?  And melt gold and ice with his eyes?  And see through green walls?  And fixed cracked walls?

Did she know all these things PLUS how much I love Superman?

(Aside: I love Superman.  Josh and I like to play a game called “You Can Only Save One” where two items are on fire and you can only save… well… one of them. (I’m fairly certain you were able to get there on your own based on the title of the game, but just in case.)  One old favourite is DC Comics vs. Marvel.  As much as we both love X-Men, we both save DC.  Josh saves DC for historical reasons, but I save DC because Superman is such a great character.  And he’s cute.

Did I mention that Josh is a good person and I am shallow?)

Anyway, one of the reasons I felt that Josh should get me Superman is that I could keep Superman on my desk when not in use with the game, and he would keep me company.

That’s a lot of pressure to put on molded plastic, but I don’t have co-workers.  Or, I do, but they don’t work in my office.  It’s just me and Truman, and Truman likes to nap.  When he’s awake, he’s attacking the water bottle or begging for cookies.  Whereas LEGO figures are really good at keeping people company and being very quiet and respectful of my work time.

Like there are days when I work with Harry, Ron and Hermione.

They make me feel good.  They make me think about happy things (like Harry Potter!) while I’m plugging away at work.  I ask them their opinion when Truman is too busy fighting his water bottle to listen.  Yes, they may be inanimate plastic, but when I put on my Ravenclaw robes, it looks like we’re all in uniform.  And that is important, too.

Anyway, Josh bought me Superman.  And he is so freakin’ awesome.  Except that he swims really slowly in the game, so I have to use Aquaman to get wherever I’m going and then switch to Superman to solve the puzzle.  But moreover, during the day, Superman gives me his opinion on comma placement as he hangs out on my desk.  Best co-worker ever.

P.S. I’ve now set my sights on Wonder Woman.  If Josh won’t let me bring stray cats into the house, the least he can do is buy me plastic toys.

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

*******

Today is Twitter’s 10th anniversary.  You go, Twitter!  In honour of their 10th anniversary, they’ve made it easy to find your first Tweet.  Just click on that link and it will tell you the first thing you wrote.

I wrote:

11/15/07 9 p.m. EST for Grey’s Anatomy

— stirrupqueen (@stirrupqueen) November 15, 2007

Sort of an odd choice, and I don’t really know what I meant by that. Was I trying to remember to watch Grey’s Anatomy the next night?

Anyway, what was your first Tweet?

*******

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.