The second question (remember how I said I had three questions from the book) inspired from I’ll Give You the Sun comes later in the book when Noah realizes how much he loves painting for art’s sake.  When he finally strips away caring about how other people judge his art, whether it’s good or bad, whether he’ll be famous or not, and just paints because painting makes him happy.

He explains on page 351, “It’s like I forgot how awesome it was before I cared if I was any good or good enough…”

Isn’t that the way it is with so many things in life?  That if we could stop caring how other people viewed our work, we could be so much happier with the process and the product.

It flows both ways — taking the criticism to heart and taking the accolades to heart.  Because neither is particularly healthy.  It’s never a good idea to put your own happiness, your own opinions, in the hands of others.

I hate caring about the worth of my words.  But I do.  And I don’t.  And I do.

Do you think you hand your happiness to others?  Do you derive the same joy from things that originally brought you joy; before you cared about how others judge your process and product?

A few summers ago, the twins and I had this goat rodeo-like trip to the beach where everything went wrong.  It was so bad that the three of us sat in an ice cream store parking lot sobbing at one point, and before we could drive, we had to text Josh and ask if we could have a do-over for the trip.

Last week, the three of us were going to the beach and thing after thing kept happening on the drive out.  The ChickieNob commented that this trip felt very much like the one a few summers ago.

“Don’t be so dramatic,” I said.  “This is nothing like that trip.”

Little did I know.

My first mistake came when I decided not to charge my phone.  Why charge my phone?  I barely use my phone.  The only reason I need it is to text pictures of us to Josh.  It has enough of a charge.  Let’s just drop that puppy in the Wolvog’s backpack and go.

(Why was I using the Wolvog’s backpack?  Because I forgot my own.  I also managed to pack one of my shoes and one of the ChickieNob’s shoes so I didn’t have sneakers with me.  Let’s just say that it’s a different kind of smart.)

So we go rent bikes for a ride around the nature reserve.  I’m standing there in my helmet, waiting for the guy to help me get a bike, when I decide to switch my glasses.  I start to pull my glasses from my face, but it feels all wrong.  It feels like glue being stretched across my face, and I can hear the people around me gasping.  The lens in my glasses falls to the ground, and I hear the boy at the bike shop say, “Whoa… that sucks.”

“I can’t see,” I told everyone frantically.  I couldn’t even see to pick up the lens.  Someone found it on the ground, and I threw on my prescription sunglasses.  Somehow the arm of the glasses had broken clean off, and the wire holding on the lens had snapped.  My glasses were in three pieces.

Please ignore the tape on my glasses.  I tried Scotch taping them back together in a fit of hysteria.

“What do I do?”  I was 3 hours from home with two kids.  My cell phone barely had a charge.  The skies were growing darker pre-storm.  All I had were my sunglasses, which wouldn’t be helpful in a few hours.  I had no way of getting the kids home or getting them food or continuing the trip.  I texted Josh the situation and jumped on the bike.  “Let’s ride.”  I needed to think.

We did a fast loop — 5 miles — barely taking in the scenery.  And then we dropped off the bikes so I could collect my messages.  Josh found a discount superstore about a half hour away who could fix the glasses.  It meant giving up two hours of our vacation to fix my mistake.  I was so upset, I couldn’t stop crying as we gathered our things so we could head to the store.

Oh… and I forgot to pack lunch.  The Wolvog can’t eat most things right now, so… we were foodless.  But no worries because we’ll be back a little after 1.

Right?

We get to the discount superstore and they can help us, but it will take 7 to 10 days.  Did they understand that I cannot see?  We were in the vision center in a discount superstore.  Couldn’t we use some super glue and such to Macgyver my glasses back together?  I just needed them to get me home.  They refused to help me — gluing glasses is not part of the vision center.  But they suggested that we head to the nearest city about another half hour away.  There was a jeweler there who could solder the glasses back together, and there was also an eyeglass store that could make me a new pair.

(No offense, but wasn’t I in an eyeglass store?)

I cried some more on the way to the next town.  I was terrified because we were getting closer to the point where it would be too dark outside to use my sunglasses, and there was no promise that the eyeglass store could make me a new pair of glasses instantly.  And my cell phone was running out of battery.  What if I was now an hour from the hotel and 2 hours from home and totally screwed?

We found the eyeglass store in the mall, bypassing the jeweler, and begged them to help me.  The guy took one look at my glasses and said, “those are done.”  (Yeah, I had figured that out by now.)  But could he make me a new pair?  Like right now?  Because I was really far from home with two kids and unable to see.

Yes, he could make me a pair of glasses.  We just had one small problem: my prescription was at home.  It was also at my eyeglass store at home, which refused to forward it to the store I was in despite the fact that I was hours from home and therefore couldn’t patron their store.  That seemed unnecessarily dick-y, no?  But that was their policy: they wouldn’t forward my prescription, even in an emergency, to a competitor despite my promise to buy a new pair of glasses at their shop when I got home.

So I called my eye doctor to have her fax the prescription to the store.  Only their fax machine wasn’t working.  So Josh drove home and took a photo of my prescription, which the eyeglass store accepted.  The man had passed me off with a woman who REFUSED TO HELP ME PICK A PAIR OF GLASSES.  She insisted that she was not allowed to help me choose.  What is her job except to help people choose glasses?  She kept telling me to choose what I liked, except I had no clue what I liked.

So I grabbed the cheapest frames and sat down to make the rest of my choices, crying the entire time.  By the way, the twins were just staring off into space this entire time.  Sometimes the ChickieNob rubbed my back, but mostly they just stood there silently, watching their mother unravel.

I had a long, annoying discussion with the woman over which lens to get.  I kept explaining to her that I needed the same lens that had been in the old glasses, and she could give me that, but did I want something different?  No.  I wanted those lens.  I needed those lens.  They helped me see at night.  Could she just give me the lens I wanted?  Please?  I can’t seeeeeeeeeee.

They started making my glasses, and the kids and I went to sit in what may be the most depressing food court in the world.  They were selling milkshakes with Slim Jims in them.  Yes, you read that correctly.  They were selling “meatshakes.”  I had to sit with my back to the sign.  The kids took one for the team and faced it.

An hour later, I went back to the store to pick up the ugliest glasses in the world.  The kids kept trying to make me feel better by telling me that they weren’t hideous, but I could look in the mirror and see them.  They were enormous and didn’t fit my face.  They kept slipping down my nose.  And, frankly, I looked like Christian Bale in American Hustle.

But they worked.  I could drive us back to the hotel.

So now I am the owner of the world’s ugliest glasses.  I’m not wearing them because I had a second pair of glasses at home.  And that is the point of this post.  If you cannot see, as I cannot see, you should not travel without a backup pair of glasses.  Buy a cheap pair right now during the back-to-school sales.  They don’t need to be gorgeous, they just need to be functional.

Make sure you always have a copy of your prescription.  Take a photo of it and keep it on your phone, or scan a copy of it to keep on your phone, or bring a hard copy just in case.  (In my case, I may do all three.)  Make sure you keep your prescription up-to-date.  Most places will not accept a prescription that is more than two years old.

Make sure you know the location of the nearest eyeglass store to your vacation spot.  Keep a travel tool kit for fixing small issues like a lost screw, but also know where you can go to fix your glasses OR get an entirely new pair of glasses.  Not that you’ll need to do this because you’ll be traveling with a second pair of glasses, right?

Please learn from my mistakes.

All is well that ends well with ugly glasses because we got one hour on the beach; just enough time for a gaggle of 60-year-old men to Periscope us without our permission.

Though I’m joking about the incident now, I think the most disconcerting part was how many unhelpful and uncaring people I encountered in a single day.  People who just stood there and watched me cry, or who refused to help even though they were in a position where they could help.  That’s the part that sucked the most.

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

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Provided I didn’t number #MicroblogMondays wrong (and that is a definitely possibility considering the Roundup is off), this is the final post of the “year.”  Next week, the project officially reaches its one year birthday.

I’m a fan of sticking with things because then you get moments like today where you can look back on how things have turned out.  We took back our blogs; at least, a bunch of people have.  There are a couple dozen people who add themselves to the link-up list.  It’s not always the exact same people, but there is a core group.  So it’s sort of nice; we have the people who have started posting at least once a week again, and other people who post at least a bit more often.

So I thought it would be fun if people looked back at their posts if they participated at all this year and leave a link to their favourite post in the comment section below.  And if you haven’t participated, let this post kick you in the ass to take back your blog.

Really, they shrivel up without your presence.  You don’t need to post daily, but take it back one a week.  Something brief.  Something you would have posted on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram or anywhere else on the web.

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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.

I am rerunning this post from a long time ago because we just bought school supplies. The kids and I were talking about decorating binders, and I told them I had vague memories of once writing a post about it. So rather than write this whole damn thing again, I’m running it mostly in full. Because it still holds true: Your binder is like your face; it is the face of your school supplies.

Image: jkfid via Flickr

We just completed school supply shopping; that frantic scramble through the office supply store for reinforcements and lined paper. We have our highlighters and sharpened pencils. I nixed the ChickieNob getting a second stapler as a friend for her first stapler.

As we walked through the aisle, we talked about one of the sole joys of school: decorating your binder*.

There is a science to this. I always wanted a solid coloured one (vs. one with a picture) — so I could write all over it in Sharpie. (I also wrote all over my Keds with ballpoint pen, starting with that rubbery ridge around the side of the shoe and slowly moving onto the canvas when I ran out of space.)

I usually started planning out my binder decorations in the summer. All binder decorations began with a solid base of a 50/50 split between inside jokes with friends (you know, the sort that you hoped someone in class would read on your binder and wonder what it meant and just how much fun you must be to write such crazy, amusing things) and song lyrics. If you planned early enough, before anyone had touched pen to Trapper Keeper plastic, you could coordinate the inside jokes across your binders. The same went for song lyrics. You didn’t want to have the same song lyrics — that would be stupid. But it was nice to have similar song lyrics. Such as two different Violent Femmes songs. Or maybe I’d go with The Smiths and another person would go with The Cure.

You never never never wrote the name of someone you were dating on your binder because (1) your parents wouldn’t buy you a new one if you broke up and you’d be stuck looking at that person’s name all year and (2) even if your parents were crazy enough to buy you a new binder because they felt sorry for you, you’d have to redo all of the song lyrics and inside jokes. So no names of boyfriends/girlfriends.

The other rule of the binder was that you never wrote on someone else’s binder. Writing on their pink rubber eraser — totally within the boundaries of decency. But never on their binder. Your binder was like your face; it was the face of your school supplies. (Secondary only to the paper bag book covers our mothers made for our textbooks which were also decorated within an inch of their life. I cannot even explain the horror of the year my mother purchased book covers instead of folding them out of old grocery store bags. The paper was glossy and everything smeared.)

No one wanted to save their binder because so much changed over the summer. The inside jokes changed. New songs were released. You saw movies and wanted to write a new list of actors and actresses names on the inner flap. Who knows what will be binder-worthy this year? It’s been a long summer.

How did you decorate your school binder/book covers/locker when you were little?

* The twins didn’t laugh at all when I pointed to the wall of three-ringed binders and said, “These must be the binders full of women.” I thought it was pretty funny.  I mean, it wouldn’t have been funny if I had said it in 2012.  But circling back to it in 2015?  That should have won me a snicker.

Side note: Tomorrow is #MicroblogMonday.  Get writing!

So the veterinarian extended the antibiotics last week, but we needed to take a trip.  I mentioned that this was going to be a problem and she stared at me blankly.  “Cancel the trip,” she said.

“Well, I can’t cancel the trip,” I began.

“What were you going to do with him while you were away?” she questioned.

I cocked my head to the side like I was sure there was a right answer to this question and I was not about to give it.  “Um… I was going to leave him for the night.  With food.  And water.  I’ve always heard that it was okay to leave a guinea pig alone for a night.”

The vet just stared at me without speaking.

She finally looked away.  “You’re going to have to get someone to give him the medicine, or you’re going to have to take him with you.”

We took him with us.  Truman is not the biggest fan of long road trips.  He attacked his nemesis, water bottle, taking a running leap at him and batting at it with his little paws.  He would tug it with his mouth and slam it into the wall of his cage.  He took out all of his fear out on water bottle.  We’ve taken to calling it his Moriarty.

He was pretty confused the whole trip.  He especially hated hearing a toilet flush for some reason.  It would cause him to go back to beating up Moriarty.

But you have never seen a happier animal than Truman when we set him back down in the living room at the end of the trip.  He was so happy that he ran around in a circle, wheeking.  It took him about 5 minutes to calm down and eat the lettuce we gave him.

I love my happy boy, even when he gets totally curious and pushes his nose into the camera.

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The best part about the road trip?  I got to see Justine.  We drank coffee and walked around her town which has a haunted hotel (which makes it cooler than a regular town) and found one of the keys of Fillory in an antique store.

Her daughter is an awesome photographer.

Even when we start to fall out of the frame.

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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:

• “My Nursling, Come and Gone” (Rainbows and Unicorns)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Gypsy Mama’s Family has a post about going back to work.  It has a great opening thought, “Not much work-related has changed in my absence, but being back has made me realize just how much I’ve changed.”  I just loved this post because you can hear the peace of heart in all of her words.

The Empress and the Fool has a heartstopping post about scattering her son’s ashes.  This line made me hold my breath: “It’s easy to be overcome by a sense of infinity in Montauk, its wild and wind-blown vastness: one understands how it earned its moniker, “The End.” He lives here now, body and spirit mingling in the silt and current, unshackled and omnipresent.”  Please go read the whole, gorgeous post and help her hold the memory of her son.

Lavender Luz has a post about the new book, G-d and Jetfire, about open adoption.  It’s an interesting piece putting open adoption on trial, though she points out that she needs to stop the trial analogy because it doesn’t work even though people often want to see things as black-and-white.  It’s a very interesting, thoughtful take on an emotional issue.

Grumpy Rumblings has a post about perfection coming in the form of Internet trends.  For instance, KonMari method circles through the Internet, and suddenly the measuring stick is how well you tidy up.  She writes, “It’s great to try these things out, but if they don’t bring the solutions you were looking for, that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you.”  It’s a nice balance to the cheerleading out there.

Lastly, Something Remarkable has a series of posts about a book that seems to be making its way through the blogosphere: I Know How She Does It.  She writes the first post in 5-minute chunks, showing exactly how she puts the advice into action.  She writes, “We’ve now entered the third 5-chunk of time in which I’ve written this post, which is one of Vanderkam’s strategies… making use of the ‘time confetti’ and smaller moments.”  I’ve been interested in the book, but sort of more interested in the discussion I’m seeing on it.

The roundup to the Roundup: Truman came on our road trip.  I got to see Justine.  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 August 14th and 21st) 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.