I wash my hair every morning.  It’s the only way to make it look decent.

One morning last week, I was having a great hair moment and decided not to wash it during my shower.  I threw on a shower cap (I know, so hot) and did the rest of the washing up.  And then dried off and got dressed and looked at the clock.

Normally I get out of the shower and only have a few minutes to spare before school drop off; not enough time to get anything accomplished.  But suddenly I had 35 minutes.  35 minutes?  I could write a blog post in 35 minutes.  I could edit part of an article in 35 minutes.  I could answer a shit-ton of emails in 35 minutes.  I took the twins to school after 35 minutes of productivity, and it carried over into the rest of my morning, keeping me on task.  I even started making the components of dinner at 8:45 in the morning.  Rock star.

Which makes me think that maybe hygiene isn’t such a great thing.  I got 35 extra minutes to accomplish something this week.  But let’s say I stopped showering on weekdays altogether — I could gain 175 minutes per week.  That’s 9,100 minutes PER YEAR.  That’s almost 380 hours.  That’s like shoving over an extra two weeks into your year.  Actually, scratch that.  We’re not awake 24/7, so that’s more like shoving four extra weeks of work time into your year.

And the only trade off is the lack of shower during weekdays.

Just think about what I could accomplish if I didn’t brush my teeth, cook meals, or exercise.

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Not only did people answer the ChickieNob’s questions last week, but some people posted their own.  So I’ve collected 20 to answer below.  I apologize if you posted questions and I didn’t bookmark them.  I only thought to do this after a read a few of the meme posts.  Send them my way and I’ll answer them.

And you can answer these, too.  Links to the original lists below.

These are from A Half Baked Life:

1. What would you do with $5000 and eight weeks to spent it however you want, without any other responsibilities to worry about?

My original answer was re-do the kitchen, because I really want to re-do the kitchen and it would make me happy.  But I’m going to find that money elsewhere and take the family to the Faroe Islands.  $5000 isn’t going to cover much of that trip, but it’s a start.  And I’m totally willing to pitch in the rest.

2. What is your least favorite chore?

Maybe cleaning Truman’s cage? I love cleaning, but not his cage. A close second is shopping. I hate shopping. Even online shopping.

3. What do you wish you had more time to do?

Play interactive fiction and read books.

4. Where is the career you’d least want to have?

Where or what? Probably anything in front of a camera or on a stage (being on television or in a movie or on a stage), which also sometimes takes place in two places I’d never want to live: California and New York.

5. What would you do for a living in another life?

Does it have to be real? I wish I could be a potions master. Like Professor Snape.

6. What superpower would you want: flight or invisibility?

Definitely flight. I think I would creep myself out with invisibility.

7. What was the last book you read? Was it any good?

One Day by David Nicholls. Yes, it was very good. Enough so that I bought his new book, Us.

8. Which would you be: Anna, Elsa, or Olaf?

Good question, but I didn’t personally relate to any of those characters.

9. Describe your ideal day off.

I wake up in the morning to coffee and Hay Day. The twins all of a sudden want to play Hay Day, too, and they give me everything I need for my farm. Then the four of us laze about, eating scones and reading.  Oh, did I mention that we’re at the beach? So we go hang out on the beach. After dinner, we get ice cream and bring it back to the beach house (oh — and all the bugs in the world have died in this scenario or gone elsewhere) and watch Harry Potter movies.

10. Pose your own question and answer it.

What is your favourite accent? For me, it’s probably Australians. I think Australians have the best accent.

And now the ones from Earth & Ink.

1. What topic is so interesting to you that you could talk about it for days?

Word origins. I taught etymology for years, and I still geek out on it.

2. Dream home: cottage at the beach, river house in the woods, lake house, penthouse in a city, farm house, castle in Europe, family home in a burb? Something else?

APARTMENT at the beach. One time, we were at a beach house and there was a snake in the house. A snake! So since then, I’ve been thinking that I’d rather have an apartment at the beach. Then I also wouldn’t have to take care of a lawn.

3. What talent would you like to have that you don’t have already?

I’d like to be able to speak and read many more languages.

4. If you could make one food that’s not good for you, good for you, what would you choose?

Probably bread. I love bread. I try not to eat a lot of bread. But if I could eat unlimited bread, I’d be a happy woman.

5. The one piece of advice you would give to everyone and wish they’d follow.

Be the change you wish to see in the world, and think through that change before you start the ball rolling. I think too many times people try to fix a problem by creating a new one. And too many times people don’t do anything active to fix problems at all.

6. What period of history would you want to visit as a tourist?

That’s hard because I think we romanticized history. I wouldn’t want to live without modern comforts. I don’t think Victorian England would really look like a steampunk novel. So… I’d revisit the 70s and 80s and see if my memories match what I’m seeing in real time.

7. Do you have a hobby?

Yes, I make and play interactive fiction games. The playing of games has been going on for a little over 30 years.

8. If an animal could talk, which animal would you want to talk to?

Truman! Of course! Even though we already have the best conversations daily. But I’d always take more.

9. If you could be friends with a fictional character, who would you choose?

Quentin from the Magicians. He’s whiny, he’s self-absorbed, but I’d still love to hang out with him.

10. Introvert or extrovert?

Absolute introvert.

This is your friendly reminder that tomorrow is #MicroblogMondays.  Get writing!

It’s Friday the 13th.  I don’t know if there’s much more to say about it than that.

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I’m sort of surprised that so many people who answered the meme put the unicorn before their most prized possession.  They were prepared to resent the unicorn for the rest of their life, but they weren’t prepared to murder it.  Is it because it’s a unicorn?  Would you answer the question the same way if it were a different animal?  (Since unicorns are totes realz.)

10. What is your most prized possession? Would you kill a cockroach in order to save your most prized possession?

10. What is your most prized possession? Would you kill a snake in order to save your most prized possession?

10. What is your most prized possession? Would you kill a stray cat in order to save your most prized possession?

Is it size or is it the magical qualities of unicorns or is it the fact that it’s a mammal?  Or do you just not want to be a killer?  Or do you not like your prized possession enough to smush something to keep it?

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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:

• “I Choose Him Over and Over Again” (Adoption in the City)
• “Microblog Mondays: Childhood Dreams” (The Lewis Note)
• “Adrift on Infertility Island: Alone” (Unpregnant Chicken)
• “Monotasking: The Forgotten Skill You (and I) Need to Re-Claim, ASAP” (Writer Unboxed)
• “This is the Way the World Ends” (My Path to Mommyhood)
• “Transitioning” (The Maybe Baby)
• “Someday Our Dream Will Come” (My Path to Mommyhood)
• “Forty Two Lessons in Forty Two Years” (Two Adults, One Child)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Something Out of Nothing has a moving post about returning home after being gone for her father-in-law’s funeral.  It is about finding a comfortable space to call home, about being in flux and not knowing what comes next.  It’s a quiet, little post.

Searching for Our Silver Lining has a post about resurrecting the Bitter Infertiles podcast and using her experience to advocate or aid others.  In other words, that idea of sending the elevator back down that I talked about a few weeks ago.  It was interesting to read that idea wrapped inside something concrete.  And, of course, it’s about advocating when you’re no longer ensconced in the experience — advocating from a place of calm after the storm — so she raises many good questions in the post about how to do this well.

A Little Bit More has a post about her friend’s semi-sexless marriage and her ability to get pregnant.  She breaks it down for the reader: “But, the most important piece of this puzzle, is that they have four children in four years. That means in the (approx) 48 times they’ve had sex, they managed to conceive 4 of those times.”  It’s about the effort not matching the outcome.

After an absence, Mojo Working reaches out with a wonderful little post about the different types of friends we all have, and whether anyone is receiving her words as she sends them into the universe.  She writes: “I’m picking up the figurative phone and I’m sending you a quick text. A beacon, if you will. Let’s be that third type of friend, the ones for whom time and distance are relative. I’ve got a few moments to spare, and I’d really like to hear your voice.”  It made me smile.

Lastly, A Half Baked Life has a post about control and how procrastination and planning ahead are all about how we rub up against the universe.  This post resonated with me a lot as someone who regularly tries to control the universe by doing things well ahead of time to make sure that all deadlines are met.

The roundup to the Roundup: It’s Friday the 13th.  No one will kill the unicorn?  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 6th and 13th) 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’m not really a fan of Valentine’s Day.  As I’ve said before, I’m not anti-Valentine’s Day; I’m just not pro-Valentine’s Day.  I think of it in the same way as Arbor Day — a holiday that exists on the calendar, but I don’t do anything to mark it.

I was watching the twins fill out their valentines for class (“You’re a hoot!  Happy Valentine’s Day,” says the owl) and sort of wishing I could sent them out to my friends, too.  Until you become cognizant of all the baggage that comes with the holiday, it’s just a fun excuse to give your friends stickers and eat candy.

What would I tell my friends?  I looked through my RSS feed and randomly picked 5 people for valentines:

• Lavender Luz: There is no one I want to keep randomly bothering while they’re trying to take notes during a panel more in this world.  I love our yin-and-yang; the snark and the sweetness.
• A Half Baked Life: A saviour not just with words but with well-timed car rides for ice cream.
• The Road Less Travelled: You make me think, you make me laugh, and you make me feel less alone.  I love hanging out on your blog.
• Earth & Ink: I only found your blog this year, but it speaks volumes about your way with words that I immediately pounce when you have a new post.
• A Little Pregnant: I miss your posts.  I’m grateful when a new one goes up (like this week!), and I crack up over your Facebook status updates, but… you know… still.

The 5 of you; consider yourselves tagged.

Because what if everyone set out a box on their desk to collect valentines?  How much fun would that be?

So here’s how it works:

• Choose 5 blogs at random.
• Throw up a post with a sentence about what you love about each one.
• Tell those people to consider themselves tagged.
• Come back here and put up a link to your post (a direct link to the post, not the main URL of your blog).  Keep checking the blog posts on the list to collect your valentines in case you miss the person’s post.  This list closes at 11:59 pm ET on the 14th.

Oh, and feel free to right click and grab the image I made if you want to add it to your own post.

Go spread the love.

I’m still reading the Magician King, the second book in Lev Grossman’s trilogy, and there was a line that gave me pause, especially in regards to our very real, very unmagical world. It, of course, made me think about infertility, but it’s applicable no matter what you’re dealing with in life.

On page 227, Quentin is comparing what he has recently gone through vs. what another character has gone through in terms of their “hardships.”  Both characters have gone through long adventures, encountered obstacles, frustrating moments, loss.  And Quentin wonders if the other character would have fared as well on Quentin’s adventure, and whether Quentin would have fared as well if he had gotten the other character’s lot in life.

The narrator muses, “Maybe he would have failed where Quentin succeeded, and vice versa.  Maybe this was the only way it could have gone.  You didn’t get the quest you wanted, you got the one you could do.”

This is, admittedly, a pet peeve of mine; this idea that the universe or G-d or fill-in-the-blank will not give you more than you can handle.  We all have our trials in life, and if we just have enough faith, trust, energy, we can get through those trials.  That our trials have been carefully curated to fit our capabilities.

It’s true that we can get through things that we never thought we’d get through, and therefore, by definition, we have not been given more than we can “handle” even if we think we cannot get through the situation before we’re in it.

But that’s a pretty weak definition for “handle.”  I mean, there are really only two options: continuing forward or stopping.  Even if you’re not moving forward well, you’re still moving forward.  And if you’re stopping, well, you’re likely dead.  So by that logic, all people who don’t die in the process have technically “handled” whatever the universe has sent their way.

But what is the cost of a quest or a trial or an obstacle?  Just because we can get through it doesn’t mean that we aren’t changed for the worse.  And is that the universe’s goal?  To create broken spirits and distrust and exhaustion?  It brings forth another adage: what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.  And, I’m sorry, but I don’t think that is always the case.  Sometimes we’re not stronger.  Sometimes we’re actually weaker or just different, depending on the situation.

I don’t know, I’m not always certain I get the quests I can do.

It’s more that I have to do the quests I get.

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

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On April 11th, just a little over two months away, they’re going to be livestreaming the Quidditch World Cup.  Am I going to be watching?  Yes, I’m going to be watching.  Wearing my Ravenclaw robes.

A few months after that, the twins turn 11.  They aren’t awaiting their owls as much as they were a few years ago.  Sometimes I wonder how I would feel if it were real, if they got an acceptance letter to a magical boarding school.  Would I send them?  Would I mourn losing those years that I hadn’t counted on losing?  I mean, it’s one thing if you’re a magical family; you know it could happen.  But if you’re a Muggle, wouldn’t it be shocking and a tad upsetting to think that this child that you thought would be at home with you is suddenly far away, at a castle in Scotland, and you can only see them during winter break and the summer months?

While we all say we want to go to Hogwarts, would you really have wanted to leave home at 11 and go to boarding school unexpectedly?  I don’t know if I would.  And I would really miss the twins if they got their letter.

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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.