I put the period in the middle of the name because I live in fear of my childrens’ Googling savviness.

It began with needing to cut the ChickieNob’s nails. She was not in the mood to have her nails cut. She wanted to read more Harry Potter.

“I have to cut your nails in case the Glym.ph comes tonight.”

Why did I say it?  Why didn’t I just let her grow out her nails like that woman with the long curling fingernails in Ripley’s Believe it or Not!  Why didn’t I tell her that she needed to cut her nails because I said so?  Because, of course, this begs the question: what is the Glym.ph?

“The Glym.ph.  My G-d.  I don’t know if I’m ready to tell you about that.  Come over here and let me cut your nails.”

“Tell me first about the Glym.ph,” she challenged.

“No, come here first and let me cut them because you’ll have deep regrets when you rake your fingers over your face in your sleep if the Glym.ph comes.”

She held her hand out, and I started clipping.  “Why would I rake my fingers over my face?”

“It’s not as if you could help it.  You see, when the Glym.ph comes, you’ll have the most amazing dream.  It is literally awesome, as in, full of awe.  And you will lose your mind over the excitement of it, and you will likely scratch up your face in the process.  Unless your nails are cut.  I always cut your nails for this reason.  To protect your face.”

“I don’t believe you,” she said, evenly.

“So don’t believe me.  See what happens to you when the Glym.ph comes.”

“How do you spell Glym.ph?” she questioned.

“I’m not telling you that.  There are many spellings for the Glym.ph.”

“I don’t believe you,” she repeated.

“Again, you don’t have to believe me.  Though you’ll regret it when the Glym.ph comes.  And you’ll know the Glym.ph has been here because you’ll have had an amazing dream.  And then… there is the note.”

“What note?” she asked.

“The Glym.ph always leaves behind a note.  It just says, ‘The Glym.ph was here.’  But that note brings with it two things: good luck for a full year and tremendous responsibility.”

“What do you mean by tremendous responsibility?”

“Well, you have to do something incredible with that luck.  Change the world.  You find that note and you get all the luck, BUT you also have to something incredible that leaves your mark on the world.  Really, the Glym.ph comes to remind us that we are alive and we need to do amazing things.  So… yeah… a lot of luck but also a lot of responsibility.  I’ve found the note before.  It’s never where you think it will be.  Once, it was in the pocket of the jeans I was going to wear that day.  How did the Glym.ph know what I was going to wear?  I have no clue.  One time, when Daddy was little, he decided to wear a pair of brown shoes…”

“They were tan,” Josh called out from the next room.

“Tan shoes,” I corrected.  “He never wore these shoes.  One day, he had an amazing dream and then a desire to wear those shoes.  And when he put them on, there was the note.”

The ChickieNob was staring at me, open-mouthed.  I nodded and continued to cut her nails.

“What if I find it and the Wolvog doesn’t?  What if I have great luck and my brother doesn’t?”

“But it’s 2014.  The Year of the Double Glym.ph.  This is why I need to cut his nails tonight too.  If it comes, then… there is a chance two notes will be left.  Double the luck.”

She looked at me doubtfully and left the bathroom, but decided the existence of the Glym.ph was possible enough that it was worth asking her brother if he had ever heard of the Glym.ph.  He asked me how to spell it because he wanted to Google it.

“Oh, you’ll never see anything about it online.  People don’t… talk about it.”

After they went to bed, I left two notes under the muffins on the muffin plate.  They found them the next morning.  I have never encountered two more disbelieving faces.

“You left it under there,” the Wolvog accused.

“Me?  I didn’t do that!  It was the Glym.ph,” I insisted.

“Really?  Well, I didn’t have a dream,” the ChickieNob pointed out.

“You probably had the dream, but you don’t remember the dream,” I told them.

“I still think it was you,” the Wolvog muttered.  “Actually, I know it was you.”

Was it?  Well, was it?

I’m sensing that the two of them are not going to accept the mantle of tremendous responsibility that comes with the year of luck…

#filedundermessingwithchildreninordertogetnailscut

The Tooth Fairy allowed the ChickieNob to keep the tooth she lost at the White House.  You know, because it’s special.  Normally the Tooth Fairy snatches those suckers up: if you want the cash, you need to relinquish the tooth.  But the Tooth Fairy understood that this one had sentimental value.

The ChickieNob has no clue what she is going to do with said tooth.  It is currently in my drawer.

I hope she doesn’t open the drawer and see the rest of her teeth.

[Fine; I’m the Tooth Fairy.  You got me to admit it.  Are you happy now?  Now that all the magic is sucked out of the universe?  I’m the Tooth Fairy.]

Image: Dave Haygarth via Flickr

I have no clue what to do with the teeth.  I don’t want to throw them out.  I also don’t want to keep a jar of human teeth.

I told her I would get her a small box to store the tooth.  Can you imagine that horror show when she’s older?  A friend is poking around her drawers and happens upon this cute box.  And she opens it up and finds BODY PARTS!!!  Because that’s all it is: a body part.  We wouldn’t think it’s okay to save our severed thumb in a box if we lost it, but I bet every single one of us either has one of our own or someone else’s tooth.

It makes me feel weak and woozy; similar to how I felt staring at the reliquaries in a Spanish cathedral.

*******

People seemed stunned every time the ChickieNob answered that the Tooth Fairy would bring her a dollar.  I thought that was on the low end, but people pulled me aside and said that it was very high.  We used to get a quarter, but I assumed the Tooth Fairy would adjust for inflation.  A dollar seemed like a good, solid amount.  Not too much — the average human child will only lose 20 teeth; meaning, the most we’re out is $40 with twins.  But not such a small amount that the child wonders why the Tooth Fairy expects them to lose four teeth just to have enough money to purchase a pack of gum.

Oh, and that’s the other thing that popped up in conversation: some people don’t give money at all.  They give toys.  Or candy.  Or special trips to favourite spots.  Is that common?  I mean, I could see doing that with the last tooth (wish I had kept better track so I would know how close we are to the final tooth), or the first tooth.  But… yeah… we’ve always gone with the dollar.

What did you get from the tooth fairy as a kid?  And if you have kids (especially those losing teeth), what are you doing now?

So, the kids went to cover the Kids’ State Dinner again at the White House on Friday.  (Click on that link to read their article!)  It’s obviously a mind-blowing, wonderful event that makes you want to go home and eat a salad.

And then there was this.

We were sitting in the press pen, waiting for the next interview when the ChickieNob looked at me and then took something out of her mouth.  “My tooth just fell out,” she said, grimacing so I could see the bloody space where the tooth once stood.

“Uh… urggggggg… uh,” I said, not knowing what to do with the human tooth that was now resting in the palm of my hand.  I mean, yeah, I know I grew her and everything, but when I signed up for parenthood, I did not realize that it would mean standing around, holding discarded body parts.

“Mr. Kass,” she said, pivoting to face Sam Kass, the White House chef who was passing by, “do you have time for some questions?”

Without missing a beat, she launched into her litany of questions while her brother worked the audio equipment.  And I stood there.  With a human tooth.

When they were finally done talking, I leaned forward and said, “Mr. Kass.  Um.  My daughter just lost her tooth.  Do you have… maybe a tissue… or something I could put it in.”

I wish I could have photographed his face as well as everyone else the ChickieNob told that day.  I’m sure it wasn’t the first tooth lost in the White House, but… I mean… bloody gums and a human tooth in my hand: probably not an everyday occurrence when the vast majority of the people working around you are over the age of ten.

Sam got her a napkin, and she asked if he wanted it back.  No, I don’t think Mr. Kass wants a bloody napkin back.  We put it in my purse and she said, “well, in that case, someone should make a museum of interesting things covered in blood.  This napkin could be a great exhibit.”

So my daughter can now say, before the age of ten, that she has zombie-walked through the Rose Garden and lost her tooth in the East Room.

Oh, and written two articles.

So this is it.

The 8th anniversary of the Roundup.

8 years, 403 posts, about 1600 posts highlighted.

*******

Yes, this is your weekly reminder to back up your blog, social media accounts, and email BUT, it is also an opportunity to point you towards a post that Keiko sent me.

It’s a checklist every blog owner should fill out and keep offline (yes, you need to make a paper copy) in order to have this information at your fingertips should the shit hit the fan with your site.

So an extra little task to throw into your weekly backup (because you are performing a weekly backup, right?)

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.

*******

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:

• “Sailor on the Rainpool Sea” (Blood Signs)
• “Crying Over Spilled (Breast) Milk” (The Long and Winding Road… to Parenthood)
• “So… How Did it Happen?” (Just Stop Trying and It Will Happen)
• “Visiting My Sister” (Stumbling Gracefully)
• “Go Quickly” (Stirrup Queens) — thank you, Northern Star!
• “When Your Rainbow Baby Dies” (Diana Wrote)
• “Where Are the Health Professionals?” (Stillbirth Matters)
• “Broken” (Stop, Drop, and Blog)
• “Right Where I Am” (Still Life with Circles)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Something Out of Nothing has a post about anniversaries on the infertility calendar, in this case, a good one.  One year earlier was the transfer date that yielded her current child.  I absolutely love this line: “Prior to this week, he used to marvel at baby girl’s completeness and muse, ‘A year ago, you didn’t exist.’  He can’t say that anymore.”  But what I really loved was the idea of setting aside Fertilization Day as a day for all future siblings to celebrate with the embryos that came from that batch.  It’s a unique holiday only singletons born from the same embryo batch could celebrate.  A tiny silver lining?

Life as I Know It has an encounter with a stranger that leaves her unsettled.  She writes, “But I knew there were little ears listening–ears that miss nothing, that internalize everything. How I responded was important. Yet again, I was woefully unprepared for dealing with this kind of situation.”  Despite feeling unprepared, she handled the man’s question beautifully.

Bee in the Bonnet has an emotional post about losing fictive kin, her mother’s best friend who was a second mother to her.  How the outside world can’t wrap their brain around relationships; that we constantly ask (and judge) how close two people are based on what we assume about relationships.  And in this post, it is quite clear that the labels we put on relationships such as mother, daughter, aunt, or friend do not convey the amount of love that exists between two people.

Lastly, It Is What It Is (or Is It?) has a post about a breakthrough that came in therapy, connecting all of her current and past behaviours to a single event: feeling trapped.  It’s a fascinating post about how the brain works; how our experiences inform our future actions.  And how we can rewire our brains to think differently once we know what informs our decisions today.

The roundup to the Roundup: It’s the 8th anniversary of the Roundup.  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 July 11th and July 18th) 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.

Until the brouhaha bubbled up to the surface, I wanted to read the new book by Marja Mills called The Mockingbird Next Door about living next to Harper Lee.  The journalist rented the house next door to Lee and formed a friendship with the author and her sister, Alice.  She claims that she had their blessing in writing the book.  Harper Lee says that she cut off the relationship once she realized Mills’s intentions; that she had moved next door specifically to write this book.

And now it comes down to a round of she said/she said.

Image: Jose Sa via Flickr

Either Lee encouraged the relationship and book, and then pulled back at some point, insisting she never agreed to an intimate biography (effectively wasting Mill’s time and money) or Mills wormed her way into Lee’s life for her own curiosity and gain and exploited a woman’s trust in order to write the book she wanted to write.  Either situation leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and I was set to refrain from reading on that alone, not knowing the truth.

But the ChickieNob pointed out another reason not to read the book.  That no matter how curious we are, no matter how much we think the academic world could gain by having the author speak about her work, no matter how much we feel we’re owed something because we gave Lee’s book our attention and accolades, Lee should be afforded privacy.  She’s asked for it.  She clearly wants it.  To invade that is to disrespect her; a violation.

The best way you can show your love for the work and the person who wrote it is to follow her lead and do as she requests.  So I’m not going to read Mills’s book.  Even though I am so curious to hear what she has to say about her own work.

Are you going to read Mills’s book?  Would you read a biography where the subject is so clearly against having their story out there?  And in that way, how is it any different from reading someone’s diary without their permission?