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

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If you live in the US, you likely spent the last five days either cooking a big meal, consuming a big meal, and/or perusing the big sales.

We were only in charge of the cranberry sauce and dessert, so we didn’t have to cook a big meal.  But we consumed a big meal.  And while I didn’t end up shopping since we have nothing to shop for in terms of gifts, I did purchase two things on our to-buy list simply because sales made it easy.

If you live in the US, what did you say that you were thankful for?  And if you don’t live in the US, it’s a nice practice to pause from time to time and reflect on what makes you grateful so join along.  What is on your list?

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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.

By now, I am sure you have read about the fertility-enhancing worm.  I didn’t click on the story at first because I didn’t want to see the pictures of the worm.  But, of course, curiosity won out.  Still.  Worms!

I think I found my deal breaker.  I don’t know if I could be infected with worms in order to have a baby. I am aware that I also didn’t think I could give myself injections, and I clearly overcame that fear.  But being infected with worms takes things to a different level.  I didn’t realize I had a limit, and yet here it is.

What do you think?  Could you purposefully become infected with worms?

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Do you ever go on Atlas Obscura?  It’s one of my favourite places on the Internet.  You type in your zipcode (or the zipcode of wherever you’re going), and it spits out interesting things in the area.

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I really want to go see this park of monsters.  I clicked on the article because I had been to Zuccari’s monster house in Rome, and thought they were related.  (See!  Mental Floss and Atlas Obscura go hand-in-hand.)  But they’re not.  And I missed this during my trip to Italy.  Must go back.

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I checked Jojo Moyes’s new book, After You, from the library.  I decided to borrow it rather than buy it, mostly due to my experience with her other book.  I guess I wanted to see similarities before I committed?  I’m really enjoying it; it’s a continuation of the first story.  Though I’m only at the beginning.  Anyone else read it yet?

Side note: Tomorrow is #MicroblogMonday.  Get writing.

It is so quiet on the Internet today.  Facebook is already hopping with pictures of people who have been up all night for Black Friday deals, but the blogs are quiiiiiiiiiiiet.

Do you guys play Candy Box?  I leave it playing in the background while I’m working.  Every so often, I take a break and tend to my lollipop farm or go on a quest.  I’ll warn you if you begin playing it (and you should because it’s the sort of game that gives more than it takes), it has a learning curve.  When you first start playing, it won’t make sense.  What you need to understand is that the story is unfolding in real time.  And there is a lot more to do than eating candy, but you need to wait for it.

For instance, I have a lollipop farm and a diamond sword and 7-league boots and a key.  I’ve planted my lollipop farm to over 100,000 lollipops, and I’m producing them at a rate of 100 per second.  This morning, I’ve been hanging out at the sorceress’s hut to have her put a spell on my sword.  Plus I like that the Candy Merchant looks like an ASCII version of the 4th Doctor Who doctor.

It will take an hour or two of game play before you get to a fun point in the game, but once you’re at the fun part, you remain at the fun part forever.  So let it play in the background, plant your lollipops, and enjoy.

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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:

• “571st Friday Blog Roundup” (Stirrup Queens) — thank you, 35jupiterdrive
• “I Was That Girl” (The Barreness)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Bent But Not Broken has a post about Facebook’s memories feature throwing her back into a moment she’d rather forget, especially as it dredges up a slew of realizations.  It’s a wonderful post about being tossed back into a moment and applying what you know now to the past.

The Next 15000 Days has a post continuing a story about a man she met at a dinner in March.  (So maybe read that last link first, and then go to the middle link.)  They talk about their regrets or lack of regrets.  She writes: “I spent a whole decade regretting not having children. But now I am done with regrets. I did my best to get a child, but it wasn’t written in my destiny. It was not meant to be. What should I regret?”  And then she explains his side of the story.  I can’t really describe this well; I think they’re just two posts you need to read and experience and think about.

Lastly, the Empress and the Fool had me by simply referencing the Odyssey, but she took this post to such a deep level.  It is stunningly gorgeous; a comparison of journeys and what is learned along the way.  I love this consideration of our own personal lotus-eating: “I’m caught somewhere in the debate between terming this ‘avoidance’ or ‘self-care’.”  Read this post.

The roundup to the Roundup: Enjoy Candy Box.  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 November 20th and 27th) 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 read about Nina Keneally’s services on a few sites, and I didn’t know how I felt about it.  She rents herself out as a mum.  You need a good hug?  You need help figuring out what to wear?  You need relationship advice?  You can rent Keneally and have her serve as your temporary mother.

On one hand, what a necessary service.  She cannot replace a missing or estranged or never-known mother, but she can fulfill the needs that stem from being motherless.  Think of her like a painkiller; she can’t cure the illness causing the pain, but she can alleviate the symptoms for a short period of time.

On the other hand, it feels wrong.  It feels wrong for money to change hands in exchange for kindness and comfort.  It’s different from paying for a therapist who goes through years of training in order to help people with emotional situations.  This is someone who has simply lived life.

I guess you are paying for her time.  Which, I know, isn’t a small thing.  Every moment she gives up to a stranger is a moment she takes away from spending on herself.

But… you know what I mean?  Shouldn’t we just reach out to the people around us when we know they are struggling and need a parental-like figure?  Can’t we just send up the bat signal when we’re in need and have our friends and family step in and fulfill the role?  Are we really so starved as a society that we need to pay a stranger to do what any loving, caring person could step in and do?

Perhaps it is all my years as a teacher, for filling in for parents when parents aren’t there from 8 am to 3 pm, for holding hands as kids cried over lost friendships or failing grade, for giving life advice, for offering protection.  I had to act like a mother on 9/11 and act like a mother for girls who got their first period in school and act like a mother by attending their school plays and basketball games and looking at the sculptures they made in art.

It was not hard to act like a mother, which was not in my job description.  My job was to teach English.  The rest of that stuff?  It was just because it was the right thing to do.

It’s Thanksgiving today, and maybe it’s a good time to sit back and reflect on ways we can reach out to one another.  Keneally’s services lay bare the fact that the need is out there.  It’s a matter of figuring out how we can all fill it, not by charging vulnerable people in need of some comfort and advice, but by taking the time to continuously look around you and see where you can give care.  Just because.

Happy Thanksgiving if you’re celebrating today, and if you’re not, you get a head start on thinking up one way you can reach out to another person and offer care by this time next week.  That would make the best Cyber Monday, simply being a listening ear online, offering a comment, virtually holding a hand.

[Melissa stands up, taps her fork against her glass, and clears her throat. The conversation around the table dies down, and she suddenly knows how Dumbledore feels as he delivers his Welcome-Back-to-Hogwarts speech. She considers, as always, growing a long white beard before next year’s meal.  Though we all know that she’ll never manage it.]

Welcome, everyone, to our annual pre-Thanksgiving online meal. Let’s just put it out there bluntly: sometimes the holidays are great, and sometimes they suck, but everyone deserves to have a nice meal around a table (even if it’s only a virtual one) where they feel comfortable and know that the other inhabitants at the table have their back.

For some people, this pre-meal is what gets them through their real meal later in the week. People have written that they’ve printed out this yearly post and comments and left the paper in their purse because it helped to have a tangible reminder that there were people out there who got it. Who weren’t going to ask them when they were going to hurry up and have children. Who weren’t going to cringe when someone spoke the name of a child they lost.

We are all so different. All of us. Around this table. But we have this one facet of our lives — and yes, even though it may be a big, overpowering one for you right now, it is only one facet of who you are — where we overlap: infertility or adoption or loss. And I am so thankful, so grateful, that I found all of you. Everyone needs a You-shaped space where they can be themselves. And that’s what I have here.

So every year, I ask people to bring a virtual dish to our meal. Place it in the comment section, explaining what you brought and why. And say anything else you need to say before sitting back down to enjoy the company. Update about where you are; your emotional state. We’re an international group, hailing from countries all around the world. So while Thanksgiving is an American tradition, I hope that everyone around the world feels as if they can participate. (Especially our Canadian neighbours who celebrated Thanksgiving weeks ago.) I’d love for your dish to come from your culture or country. Don’t worry about the contents on the table clashing.

So I am bringing again Mary McCartney’s English pea soup. I know, not exactly traditional Thanksgiving fare, but it’s warm and filling and it makes me happy. Plus I can make it ahead of time because it freezes beautifully. In the summer, I like salads. But cold weather calls for vegetable-based soups.  We’ve been eating a lot of this soup this fall.

So what did you bring and what do you want to say to the community?

And please, start eating as everyone is introducing their dish. We don’t want the food to get cold and there are so many of us at this table. Thank you so much for coming, and I’m going to carry the warmth of this meal with me for the rest of this week.