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

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The twins and I have settled into a thoroughly enjoyable and very bad habit.  Every week before their art class, we go out for water ice and custard.  It started because I was having a bad day.  “I need something nice.  Let’s go out for gelati.”

Every week since, we’ve found some reason to need gelatis.  By last week, we were no longer pretending.  The kids got in the car after school and said, “Are we going out for gelati?”  As if it were a question.  As if I hadn’t flipped my turn signal to take us in the direction of the store.  “Oh?  Do you want to?”

I told them that we had to break this habit because it’s so bad for our bodies.  The ChickieNob added, “It’s so bad for our bodies, but it’s so good for our souls.”  How can I argue with that?

Do you have any bad habits that bring you so much pleasure?

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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.

Listen, I usually think that Hax gives good advice, but this particular column was read on a day when I needed to read it. No, my situation was not like the woman who asked the question — dealing with the loss of her baby conceived via IVF and, subsequently, the end of her marriage — but it was stressful for me, and I had been emailing with a friend about the concept of self-care when you don’t really have the space to practice self-care just that morning.

Hax has the woman visualize what she is going through as an actual uphill climb, and talks about how the same things that would sustain you on that physical trip — breaks, sleep, food — are the same things that could sustain her on this emotional trip. As she writes, “[The struggle will] be no less grueling; you’ll just be better equipped to manage the burden.”

And she goes further to talk about the basic self-care that this woman can manage in the moment, not as an escape but as something that can help her keep putting one foot in front of the other: “Beyond sleep and nutrition, such care is a matter of personal preference, but an easy option — we’re all about easy here — is to pick one from each category: exercise, art, sensory comfort, empathy.”

Hax’s whole response is like a verbal hug. And it’s the best explanation I’ve heard of self-care in a while, both how to do it and why to do it. It isn’t escape: you can’t escape your problems. Even if you go on holiday, you take your problems emotionally with you. But self-care is about fortifying yourself.

Go give the column a read. I bookmarked it.

The ChickieNob gave me an excellent “would you rather” that I now turn over to you: Would you rather accidentally destroy the Mona Lisa and not serve time (since it was a bone-headed accident) but everyone in the world who cares about the Mona Lisa would hate you, or would you rather serve 60 years in jail for an unrelated reason but everyone would support you through that jail time?

Out and about but despised?  Or behind bars and loved?  It’s a tough call.  Tell me what you’d do, and I’ll tell you my answer.

Updated: I don’t think people are considering the magnitude of the question. You’d be out and about, BUT no one would be on your side. Your family would hate you. You would have no support system. It would be difficult to get work or find a place to live. I ultimately decided against jail, but she made me think long and hard about what it would be like to essentially be in a jail-like situation without being in jail.

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I know talking about dreams is one of the most boring things in the world to everyone but the dreamer, so feel free to skip this section.  But Wednesday night, I had a dream that we were having dinner guests, and as the meal started, I brought Truman into the kitchen and set him in the salad bowl.  I hadn’t ribboned the lettuce, so he was able to dive underneath these full leaves of lettuce and start eating his way up from the bottom of the bowl.

Our dinner guests were horrified, but I kept saying, “Isn’t it so cute?  He has a piece of lettuce on his head.”  And they would counter, “You are eating food that is covered in guinea pig urine.”

I just want to state for the record that I would not eat a salad that Truman had peed on.  But I kinda sorta would buy him his own salad bowl and let him eat dinner with us that way.

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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:

• “Middle School” (Stirrup Queens) — thank you, Catwoman73, Charlotte, and Infertile Girl
• “The Risk of ‘Someday When’” (Emily Long)
• “Top Ten Reasons Why This Infertility Survivor is Not Intimidated By Menopause” (Infertilityhonesty)
• “Walking (Imperfectly) In Her Shoes – 2016” (Pastpresentfuture)
• “All the Ways to Wait” (My Path to Mommyhood)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Riding the IVF Roller Coaster has a moving post about the continual realization of “never again.”  She says it perfectly: “As much as I hated the stupid IVF torture, I miss the microscopic bit of hope that comes with it.”  It’s a tiny post that packs a punch.

Much Ado About Nothing has a post about her own fertility juxtaposed against her daughter’s reproductive health.  She explains, “It is a really weird place to be, having a child old enough to have the same hormone imbalances as me, and seeing doctors to straighten them out for two totally different reasons … So lots of wonky hormones in my house right now.”  The post was food for thought for anyone parenting after infertility, and wondering (if you built your family through sex or fertility treatments) if you’ve passed along the same problems.

Lastly, A+ Effort’s post about the Jungle Cruise is brilliant, and I really hope that Disney listens up when it comes to that ride.  It’s amazing that this post even needs to be written; that Disney didn’t take steps to fix this ride before being asked.  She writes: “Make Disney not just safe for kids’ bodies but good for their souls.”  I’d add to that, make Disney safe for all of our souls: adults and kids, alike.  No one needs to know they participated in dulling someone else’s sparkle.

The roundup to the Roundup: Would you rather: Mona Lisa or jail?  Truman salad bowl.  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 February 19th and 26th) 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.

Mugglenet recently put together a personality test based on your favourite Harry Potter book, and I was extremely disappointed with my results. They seemed to disregard anything about the books to arbitrarily assign meaning to your choice. But rather than stew in my sadness, I decided to put together my own Harry Potter personality test, revealing what is important to you based on your favourite book in the series.

So scroll down to your favourite book and see if that’s the reason it got under your skin.  And yes, there is an option for people who didn’t read or didn’t finish the books.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

You love beginnings; when everything feel electric and new. In fact, the beginning is the best part. You love plotting out new blogs and new projects, though you rarely follow through with more than a few posts or gathering supplies. Still, if there was a job where you could just start things for other people and then they would take it over, you would be golden because no one does beginnings like you do beginnings. When you are on fire, you cannot even take a deep breath because you have so much energy coursing through you. Your favourite part of book one? When Harry enters Diagon Alley for the first time. Your heart exploded over the idea that such a place could even fictionally exist.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

You keep up with the Kardashians, and if not the Kardashians, then celebrities like the Kardashians since People magazine is your first choice in any doctor’s office waiting room. You are also the type of person who finds favourites on reality television shows and cheer them on from afar. You have been known to post Brene Brown quotes on your Facebook wall. But strangely enough, Sherlock is one of your favourite shows, even though you can’t imagine reading the original Arthur Conan Doyle stories. In other words, you like a film of distance between you and celebrities: you like to read about them in magazines and follow them on Twitter and you may even try to discreetly snap a photo of someone if you saw them dining in a restaurant. But you’d stop short of walking up to their table and interrupting their meal for a picture.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Come on, this is a book about depression. People who love this book are drawn to its pages because it finally gives them words in which to describe their mind. It is a gorgeous book that treats mental illness as not something that can be banished with a single act, but something that needs to be attacked again and again. Additionally, you are a person whose daydream wondering makes your reality more livable. That longing is important; it grounds you and gives you direction.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

You are competitive, but you also suffer from Imposter syndrome. You’re very scared that you don’t have what it takes, but calm down because you probably do. And even if you don’t, no one is going to find out about it. But back to that competitive thing. You don’t just like to win, you also take a look at the people around you and need to mentally find where you have an edge over the other person. Maybe you have a better marriage or better house or better job. Whatever it is, you need to find it so you can set aside your competitiveness and enjoy being with the other person without feeling jealous.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

You feel calm when you feel like you belong, and you feel ragey when you don’t. For instance, you love being invited to parties, though you hate attending them. But if you see people post pictures of an event on Facebook that you weren’t invited to? You instantly want to unfriend the host and all of her minions. You are in touch with your inner teenager, and that can be a good thing and a bad thing. You still have a lot of hope, but you get annoyed easily and sometimes you utter the words, “it’s not fair” when fairness has nothing to do with the situation.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

You love to listen to other people’s stories. Humans of New York is a favourite site (at the very least, you click on the status updates when people share them in your Facebook feed), but you’re also the type of person who ends up talking to the person sitting next to you on an airplane. You like to figure out what makes people tick, and sometimes in social situations, you listen more than you speak. Moreover, you’re a collector of stories. You hate to lose things, and you keep a blog or journal partly to connect with other people but also to have a written record so you don’t forget things.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

You are the person who needs to have the money in hand. You’re not happy with an IOU; you need to be able to feel the dollar bills in order to feel settled. Closure if a big deal in your world, and you feel like you can’t mentally move on until you’ve ticked something off your to-do list. Half-done is not done, it’s just half-done. You like books that make you feel something; that make you feel as if you are being transported to another space. As much as you didn’t want this book to start, you also couldn’t put it down once you read the first page, and because of that, it has held your heart more than any other book in the series.

TL;DR Series

I’m assuming that you don’t like fantasy? Or you buck conventions so if everyone is telling you to read a book you will purposefully not read the book? Or you can’t see committing to 7 books but maybe would have read Harry Potter to see what the fuss was about if J.K. Rowling could have told the story in about 200 pages total?

Got a Few Books In and Quit

Again, I’m going to assume that you don’t like fantasy? Or you buck conventions so if everyone is telling you that you will love a book, you will purposefully not love that book though you’ll never admit that is the reason you don’t like the book? Or you started reading and said, “7 books? I cannot do this for 7 books. If she could tell this story in 200 pages I would have finished it.”

Got a Few Books In and Will Return

You like to save books for when you know you’ll need a good book, plus you’re the type of person who needs to mix up your reading list. You may chase three fiction books with a few memoirs and a social science non-fiction book before returning to a series again. Moreover, this is not your only unfinished series. You also got a few books into the Sookie Stackhouse books or a few books into Game of Thrones, and you’re planning to return to those series, too. That is, when you need them.

How did I do? Which was your favourite book, and did I describe (at least an aspect) of your personality?

When I grow up, I want to be mayor of Crab Towne, USA.  It is a physical space of pure love; a crab shack filled with dozens of fried food options, a liquor store filled with dozens of alcoholic options (actually, I admittedly haven’t been in the liquor store part so I’m assuming they have dozens of options, but maybe it’s just 5 or 6), and a vintage arcade filled with dozens of video games.

Most of the listings on the classic arcade site (which is bookmarked on my phone for easy access whenever we travel) have two or three entries.  But Crab Towne, USA caught my eye because it was a solid paragraph of games.  The first time I saw the entry, I started gasping and rolling about in ecstasy.  But would the Crab Towne of my dreams match the Crab Towne of reality?

I am pleased to report that it does.  It swims past the world of dreams into an 8-bit reality filled with blinking lights against a steamy background of fried crab perfume.

The ChickieNob is a pinball wizard and she stuck firmly with a single pinball machine for 20 consecutive games.  The Wolvog moved between some of his favourites (Galaga) and driving games.  Josh cleared boards on Ms. Pacman.  And I spent a lot of time exploding creatures in Dig Dug.

And I’m not going to lie to you, it was hard to leave.  It was hard to pull out that bottle of hand santizer and wash away the stickiness of Crab Towne.  It was hard to drive away from that 8th wonder of the world.  How did so much happiness get stuffed inside a single room?

I will be celebrating my birthday there this year, a plastic cup of quarters in hand.  Just as it should be.