I am someone who verbally beats myself up when I have an unproductive day and glows when I’ve managed to pound through a lot of work.  Perhaps I should look into not having my self-esteem tied to how much I perceive I’ve accomplished, but barring that, I was deeply interested in Lifehacker’s advice on how to get over an unproductive day.

I think my favourite idea on the list was sending myself to bed early and waking the next day early.  Though I will say that I use coffee as a productivity anchor.  I better have accomplished something substantial before I pour myself the final half-cup.  It’s like I need to hold that last bit of coffee partially out-of-reach so I’ll work hard to get it.

I’m a bit like a trained lab rat that way.

How do you get over an unproductive day?

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WOFE is a new portmanteau I just learned for the merging of work and life into one amorphous blob of time.  In other words, instead of designating the hours between X and Y to be dedicated to work, and designating the hours between Y and X to be dedicated to home life, the two have bled into one another so that we bring home life into the work day (such as pumping breast milk during work) and we bring work life into the home (answering emails after dinner).

I have no work-life divide because I work out of the house.  I mean, I could.  I could set firm boundaries, but I don’t really mind everything mixing together like a salad.  I like having the flexibility during the day to go volunteer at the twins’ school.  And if I want that, I have to also not mind that work sometimes pops up at 11 pm and needs to be completed before I go to sleep.  That last scenario is rare, but it does happen several times a year.  More often it is simply working after the twins have gone to bed, or dragging a laptop on vacation and taking care of a few tasks at the beginning of each day.

But this was the part of the piece that made me tired:

The need to stay constantly connected is rapidly on the rise, as individuals not only run the risk of losing business, but also need to maintain the working relationships they’ve formed … Work hours are creeping well past conventional daytime hours along with other activities such as eating, cleaning, socializing and taking care of the kids which are all intertwined, often quite seamlessly. When was the last time you went out for lunch without checking your phone at least a few times during the meal?

Uh… a long time?

When was the last time you went out (at any time — morning, lunch, late at night) without checking your phone at least once?

Many people mentioned that they are exactly like me when it comes to lost items so I thought I’d put this on your to-do list since I’m in the middle of doing this right now.

Before you donate an item or give it away to a friend or sell an item at a yard sale, take a photograph of the item.  Yes, even the ridiculous stuff that you insist that you will remember you gave away like that bag of onesies you couldn’t care less about.  Photograph all of it.

And drop all of those photos in a folder called Stuff That Left the House.  If it’s only lent to someone else and will one day return, place the photo in a different folder called Stuff Lent.  But once that item is returned, move that photo out of the folder.

The reason being that before you drive yourself crazy, tearing apart the house to find said bag of onesies to give to your pregnant neighbour because you’re absolutely certain that it’s still in the storage room, check the Stuff That Left the House folder and look at the images.  If it’s not in there, then it IS still in your house and keep looking.  But if the picture is in there, you can be certain that it left the house and you’re mis-remembering keeping said item.

Does it take more time?  Yes.  But it will save you time on the back-end when you’re wondering why you can’t find a toy that you are certain has to be somewhere in the house or a sweater that you remember seeing in the closet but is now missing.  When you see those photos in the folder, you’ll remember that you got rid of those items.

Just a tip from a fellow anxious-when-I-can’t-find-something person.

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

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Just to make this all about me: I audibly released a sigh of relief when CNN sent out an alert stating the new name of the princess was Charlotte Elizabeth Diana.  In other words, not Alice.

Normally I’m only worried about family members scooping one of our names, but in this case, because the name would become a new trend, I equally didn’t want Alice used.  Not that Josh would ever agree to the name Alice, but it has always been one of my special names, and I didn’t want to share it with the Princess.  I know, ridiculous.  But the idea of having to hear my special name paired with this other woman’s baby felt like… too much.

Charlotte, that’s just the name of my notebook.

Inside that notebook is a list of names I always carry with me.  And yes, Alice is on the list.

Do you have any special names that you hope no one else — either in your family or famous people outside your family — use?

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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.

It’s Mother’s Day, but you don’t want to read one more thing about Mother’s Day, do you?  Either you’re not celebrating Mother’s Day and you don’t want to hear about someone else’s Mother’s Day, or you’re estranged from your mother and hate the holiday, or your mother has died and this holiday makes you ache for her, or you’re celebrating Mother’s Day and not reading this until after the fact, or, or, or… well… there are a dozen of other scenarios, but the point is that the commercial world made us sick of talking about Mother’s Day by March.

So… what more to say on the holiday?  If you’re not celebrating it, I hope you’re doing something kind for yourself today.  And if you are celebrating it, good on you.

And if you want a distraction, here it is.  The kitchen is done-ish.  It’s done in the construction sense (with the exception of one light fixture).  I like it very much.  I like the clean, white cabinets.  I like the brown countertops.  I love the drawer pulls — you guys were so spot-on that if I had gone with another design, I would have always thought about the twig ones and regretted that I didn’t splurge and go for it.  I like having a sink again.  I especially like having a sink that isn’t falling apart.

I dislike the drawer that I told the man I would dislike, and he promised me that I would love, love, love.  (Turns out, I was right.)  And I dislike how I feel as if I need to move gingerly through the kitchen lest I scuff it up in the first week.

Now comes the fun part: decorating it.  This will take me a bit because I’m behind with work.  So more pictures will be forthcoming when I have my little golden snitch hanging from the ceiling.

But the best part of the kitchen?  The little bookshelf.

It only has room for about 20 or 30 books.  Which means that books may need to be rotated.  But right now, I have a bunch of books in place that are all tied to the literary decorations (like the 7 keys that will be hidden around the kitchen for Fillory, or the Deathly Hallows above the kitchen table for Harry Potter).

The books make me smile.  I had two minutes while I was waiting for something to cook, and I grabbed down the Magician’s Nephew and reread the first few pages.  I love that.

Side note: Tomorrow is #MicroblogMonday.  Get working on your post.

Today is Truman Day in Missouri. We like to celebrate it over here in Maryland as a nod to our guinea pig, Truman. (Though we think our 33rd president was pretty swell, too.)  Though Josh claims that every day seems to be Truman Day in our house, today he is getting extra cuddles, extra cookies, and extra time listening to guinea pig videos on YouTube.

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We’re caught up on Sherlock and now awaiting new episodes, which won’t come for almost another year.  I’m not really a fan of mysteries or crime shows, but I love Sherlock, especially the episode with Irene Adler and the Hounds of Baskerville.

I know we can revisit the characters through old episodes, but we all know that it’s not the same thing as watching it the first time.  Am I the only one who misses characters — not the show, itself — when the episodes run out?  It feels like two friends have moved far away; somewhere without telephones or Internet.  I miss the ritual of spending time with them.

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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:

• “A Snapshot in Time” (No Kidding in NZ)
• “Choose Joy Recap” (Amateur Nester)

Okay, now my choices this week.  Just in case you need a distraction on this most-difficult of weekends, there are a lot of posts in the Roundup.  I couldn’t narrow it down to my usual 4 and instead let everything bookmarked land on the list.

A+ Effort has a post about race that is… amazing. It’s simple, it’s short, it says so much in such a small space. To me, it’s a must-read for everyone.

Today’s the Day has a post about body image.  I am so glad that she decided to post the picture of herself because every shape of body should be represented in running photos.

My Path to Mommyhood has a post about how infertility has subtly changed her personality, shaping the way she approaches hope.  It’s about finding the balance that protects her heart while still allowing her to be herself.

Wild and Precious Life has a brief post about the unfinished nursery that made me cry.  These are the lines that gutted me: “I struggle with the urge to finish the nursery. To hang their names on the wall, to reorder the returned cribs. To unfold the handmade blankets.”  Please read the whole thing.

Two Kids and Counting… Slowly has a post about hitting the end of the brainstorming road, and not seeing how they’ll ever have another child.  She explains: “I am not even numb, it’s just like… a big I’M OUT OF IDEAS flashing across my brain … I’m just out of any other feelings about it.  Is it possible to run out of feelings after a long time dealing with something?”  I love this description of finding yourself at the end of your thoughts.

The Lewis Note also has a post that made me weepy about doing the laundry while not knowing if the child she is fostering will remain with her or go back home.  Every load of laundry brings her closer to that decision, and she holds the tiny items wondering how many more times she’ll get to wash and fold them.

A Separate Life asks an excellent question: how often are you in your photographs?  Do you ask others to take a picture of you when you travel?  Do you take selfies?  I’ll admit, I take many pictures and I’m in very few.  Maybe I should change that.

Lastly, Baby-Making Merry-Go-Round has a sobering and important post of what it feels like when you are being tested for cancer.  It begins: “In a nutshell, it’s a mixture of feeling sick to your stomach, mixed with moments of shortness of breath, following by long deep breaths. I think that’s the basic feeling.”  Please go over and read the whole thing, and then stick around and leave a message of support in the comment section.

The roundup to the Roundup: It’s Truman Day!  Do you miss television characters when a show is over/goes on hiatus?  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 May 1st and 8th) 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.