There are the lasts we know about, and there are the lasts we don’t know about until we look back and realize that it was the last.

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The twins are likely my first and last kids.  I use the term “likely” because it is too hard for me to say it definitively.  So I don’t.  I leave the door open to the possibility that another child will make their way into our family.

I don’t know when I will stop doing that.  When I reach a certain age?  I don’t know.  I think I will always be able to convince myself that there is a chance that I will raise another child; even after my own children have children or I am clearly moving into the denouement of my life.

I sometimes picture myself in the nursing home, a spray of white hair against my pillow, still saying, “The twins are likely my last kids, but you never know.”

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I didn’t know that the twins’ last birthday party would be their last birthday party.  In fact, their last party was such a success that as we drove home, I said that I would do the same thing next year.

But they dragged their heels on whether they wanted a big party, and after that ambivalence was conveyed, I didn’t really feel like spending the time or money on a birthday party.  A small activity with a friend, sure.  But managing 18 kids and running them through games if the twins weren’t wholly into it, no, thank you.  They agreed that small was better; that they’d rather do an activity than have a big to-do.

As I did yoga the next morning after the decision, I was flooded with grief.  That was the last party!  And I didn’t realize it would be the last party when it happened.  I didn’t take the right mental snapshots because I didn’t know I would never see this childhood ritual again.  This childhood ritual that I didn’t even like!  That filled me with dread every year!  What the hell was wrong with me?  Any sane person would be happy to be rid of it.

What did I expect?  Of course the game of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey had to end some time.  So I pushed myself into downward facing dog and told myself to get a grip.

*******

There are obviously lasts that I don’t really miss.  I don’t miss the last diaper.  I don’t miss crawling.  I don’t miss having to hold them in the pool.  I don’t miss teaching them not to eat sand.

But there are the lasts that still gut me when I think about them: The last bottle.  The last lift out of the crib.  The last warm cuddle when they woke up from a nap.  The last day of preschool.  The last day of Kindergarten.  Every last day from every grade.

We are almost at the end of elementary school, and I think about this last every day while I wait in the carpool line.  It is partly fear of the unknown; of leaving the coziness of elementary school and entering the more self-sufficient middle school years.

But it is also mourning the lastness.  That I won’t get to do this again.

It goes so fast.

Just because I’ve never let the idea escape out my fingers doesn’t mean that the thought hasn’t been in my brain.  As the contractor was being a complete dick, telling us that he wasn’t going to correct his mistake and that we were just going to have to live with a doll sink for the rest of our lives, I was thinking,

“I am so going to write about this and post it on the Internet with the name of your company SEOed to infinity.  And everyone who Googles your company will find my scathing review.  And then I’ll write a Yelp review that will make your head spin and give you one-fucking-star since that’s the only amount of stars that would fit in a sink that small.”

But you’ll notice that I didn’t use the name of the contractor nor did I SEO the post to infinity.  Nor have I written a Yelp review.  I wrote about the incident because I needed to vent (and because I was proud of myself for speaking up), but I left the contractor unnamed so he will never be affected by Googling.  It remains only a story.

It would be wrong to negatively affect someone else’s livelihood just because they upset me.  There are proper channels for addressing an issue, and going online to complain about the company in order to get them to bend to my will is not one of them.  And the point is that without dragging the rest of the Internet into our disagreement, we worked it out offline and the company is making good on their mistake.  Plus making that one incident the sum of the whole ignores the gorgeous workmanship the installer has done.

BUT.

I also depend on online reviews to make decisions.  Maybe not for small purchases, but when purchasing large items or lining up service work, I go online to see other people’s experiences. I ignore reviews were it’s a matter of taste such as movies, books, or music.  And with restaurant reviews, I only care about the service and cleanliness knowing that other people may enjoy food I would despise and vice versa.

But service-related reviews are so helpful, and I’m grateful when someone goes online and gives their honest opinion.  If it’s negative, well, they may have saved me stress or money.  And if it’s positive, I still go into the experience knowing my mileage may vary, but hopefully it will be similar to the people in the reviews.

So where is the line between warning others of a negative experience and writing online to ruin someone else’s business?  Is it the intention?

Because while I may have rationalized it later to say that I was saving other people from having a negative experience, the reality is that I would be using my online power to get him to fix his mistake or punish his dickishness — a scenario we’ve seen played out daily on social media when people go online to tweet about a negative experience with an airline or appliance dealer or restaurant.  It gets results, but was it the best use of the power of the Internet?  Would we want it done back to ourselves in the future?

And it’s true, it may have saved someone from a negative experience (though not using this company would also keep you from great workmanship, a lovely end product, and a decent price), but if that wasn’t my intention — if it was only a side effect of my actions — should I ever post something like that online?

It’s so hard to know where the line is because I’ve possibly benefited from other people speaking up negatively online, and yet I also know how difficult it is for businesses in this day and age, where word-of-mouth not only spreads in the moment but is Google-able for ages to come, to do their work while shuddering under the silent threat of a bad review.

What do you think of negative reviews, tweets, status updates, or posts, naming a business?  Is it fair for consumers to use the power we have at our disposal — word-of-mouth — to negatively impact a bad business, or should we stick to the old channels of addressing issues offline?

And I do always take online reviews, in general, with a grain of salt knowing that people are much more likely to put out the effort to vent than they are to go say something positive.

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

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So these three people set off to find their doppelgängers via social media in a project called Twin Strangers.  They posted pictures of themselves and then attempted to harness the power of the Internet by having people submit images of people they knew who looked like the subjects.

So it would be like me posting a picture and asking all of you to either submit a picture of someone you know who looks like me, or pass along my picture to people in your social media accounts to see if they know someone who looks like me or pass along my image to their social media contacts.  So on and so on.

The woman in the project found her doppelgänger living an hour away.

The project site states: “They say there are 7 people in the world who look exactly like you…  We want to find OUR Twin Strangers.”

So… would you want to find your doppelgänger?  Or do you like the idea of looking different from everyone else?  (This is obviously a moot point for some identical twins.)

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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 should start this out by admitting that I am not fantastic about speaking up.  I would rather sit and be miserable than exert myself and fix things so I’m not miserable.  It extends to things like returning items at a store or even ordering pizza over the phone.  It takes a lot for me to use my voice.

I work out of the house, so I’ve been with the workmen through the renovation.  It’s stressful due to the noise and the lack of access to the kitchen, but also the social side of things: having to talk to people and be around people when I am accustomed to having conversations solely with Truman.

The renovation had mostly been going according to plan when we hit a snag.  They installed the new sink and it was nothing like our old sink.  The contractor had promised the sink would be larger than my existing sink, but this was a lot smaller.  A lot smaller.  Like unusably small.  Like a doll-sized sink.

The workman commented that it was small, but he continued to work on installing it while I stood there, my stomach in knots.  I was miserable with the idea of using this sink — which was smaller than my bathroom sink — for eternity.  I went upstairs and paused for a moment to email Josh and my mother, and then went back down and told the guy to stop working so I could think this through.  We were going to call the contractor and have this corrected because I was not going to buy all new, smaller cookware just to use this tiny sink.

Josh came home and got involved, and at first the contractor told us that we were imagining things and liars.  Luckily, I took photographs and had evidence, and all the workers there agreed that the new sink was much smaller than the old one.  One of the workers even called his boss to tell him he was wrong.  And finally the contractor agreed to fix the problem (since it turned out that he had written down the wrong number on the contract) and the counter top and sink were carted away.

It was hardly an impressive victory for a normal person: all I did was point out that what he told us we would get is not what we were actually getting.  But to walk downstairs and say, “stop!”  And drag out the camera and argue with my photographic evidence.  And stand and talk to a bunch of strangers.  It was big for me.

I am much better at speaking up when it involves the kids, but this is the first time I could think of in a long time where I put my foot down and said, “uh, no” when the twins weren’t in the vicinity.  I used my big girl voice, and I liked it.

A side note: Tomorrow is #MicroblogMonday.  Get writing.

I got into a discussion on Twitter about the mother who was seen beating her son as she removed him from the Baltimore protests. I’ll start by saying that I don’t condone violence of any kind or for any reason. I’ve been uncomfortable with the Facebook comments people have written as they put up the video stating that she wins mother-of-the-year. I would never call beating your child a great parenting moment.

BUT.

I saw a woman who was terrified. Who was in the middle of a chaotic, emotional situation and interacted with her son inside that bubble of fear.

We all like to think that we would continue to be ourselves and hold tightly to our ethics in the face of that sort of fear. But I don’t know if I would. Meaning, I’ve never been in a high stakes situation like that where I had to get my child out of danger. I don’t know if I would be myself at that time.

I have no clue how this woman parents in a calm moment. I’ve only seen how she reacted to stress in this one particular moment. I don’t think that we do our best parenting in those moments.

Do I wish she had removed him without using violence? Yes. But I’ve also have never stood in her shoes and have no clue what I would do if I saw my child in danger and they weren’t going to follow me out of danger by using reason. I just don’t know.

But I do know that it’s dangerous to judge a whole person — good or bad — by a moment.

*******

My house is loud. It’s hard to think.

I brought Truman upstairs with me because I didn’t want him scared by the noise or breathing in the fumes and dust. He was quiet all day but decided that he wanted to start playing around midnight. I told him to go to sleep but laughed hysterically as he attacked his water bottle, a formidable opponent.  Isn’t our pig so damn cute, Josh?

But I wasn’t laughing when he decided to play with the water bottle again at 2:30 am. Nor was I laughing when he decided that 5 am was a great time to get in another fight with the water bottle. Or when at 6 am he decided he was up for the day and would love to be fed.

It is making me rethink the whole dog idea.

*******

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:

• “NIAW: You Are Not Alone” (Unpregnant Chicken)
• “You Are Not Alone: Flying Together With Broken Wing” (Waiting for Baby Bird)
• “You Are Not Alone (But It Sure Can Feel That Way)” (My Path to Mommyhood)
• “You Are Not Alone: In the ‘After’ of Infertility” (Inconceivable!)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Pages, Stages, and Rages has a wonderful rant in time for Mother’s Day.  We point out these fails year after year, the narrow definition with which people define motherhood.  She writes, “Mother is not only a noun– it is a verb. One of those definitions is ‘to care for or protect like a mother.’  Please remember it.”  Yeah, I wish they would.

TasIVFer has a wonderful post explaining how she once was fearful for the type of mother her friend’s child would become, and how she has surprised her by being the opposite.  It’s a nice post about how our expectations can limit us, and how people sometimes astonish us in a good way.

Breathe Gently has a post about secondary infertility and all the things she didn’t know until she experienced it.  To quote Smarshy (remember Smarshy?!), secondary infertility is just a different “bag of ass.”  It is such a well-written summary of the complex feelings that surround trying to conceive again after a first bout of infertility.

Lastly, Life and Love in the Petri Dish writes about flying back out to Denver to cycle again at her clinic.  She explains, “Being back at the Denver clinic was weird… strangely boring this time around but also nostalgic. We flew through much of the day without blinking an eye. The consents, the credit card payments, the procedural instructions on injections, etc.? We’ve got all that down pat.”  It’s another leg of a long journey, and I wish them so many good thoughts as they gear up to cycle again.

The roundup to the Roundup: The Baltimore mother.  My house is loud.  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 April 24th and May 1st) 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.