650th Friday Blog Roundup
Linus has learned a fun little trick. Sometimes I need to use the phone’s speaker when I’m on a call so my hands can be free to take notes. Several times I’ve given him an extra treat before these calls so he’ll be quiet in the background.
He has now learned to wheek whenever he sees my hand reach for the phone. He stands at attention, watching my hand, and the moment my fingers close around the plastic, he happily wheeks as he runs back and forth. “It’s time!” he cries as he kicks into the air, popcorning across the cage. “She must talk over speaker phone! She is my hostage! I am going to keep doing this until she reinforces this terrible behaviour by giving me another treat to get me to be quiet. I am so smaaaaaaart!”
But this is where you’re wrong, friend. The twins are now home for summer and can take you out of the room when I need to make a call. I hope you enjoyed that extra lettuce because the treat train is pulling into the station. Or out of the station. Whichever phrase makes more sense in cutting off my guinea pig from his piggish ways.
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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:
- “Giving Up” (The OCD Infertile)
- “Chapter Twenty-Three: Musings on Motherhood” (My Journey Creating Life)
Okay, now my choices this week.
Different Shores has a post about bringing children to the workplace (and the comment section is hopping — dive in there!). I’m in the camp where it makes sense if you’re visiting an individual at the workplace and bring along the kids, but not for the sole reason of introducing your co-workers to the kids. I gave the example of visiting Josh at work. I brought the kids to his workplace to have lunch with him. Other people swung into his office to see the kids, but the reason to bring them to the office wasn’t to have his co-workers meet them. If the intent was introducing the kids, we did that outside the office. If the people weren’t close enough to see outside of work hours, then they probably didn’t need to meet the kids. Feel free to disagree with me — I want to hear the other side of this.
I love Anabegins post on feeling like something has changed and that she has become more herself. I have felt this sensation before, too, and she describes it perfectly. She begins, “Lately I feel like I’m a different, but vaguely familiar, person to who I have been for the past decade or so. I think I’m rediscovering the real me, buried under years of working too hard, sleeping too little, being too anxious and sad and exhausted, to really have much of any personality at all.” Go read the whole thing.
Lastly, I love reflective blogoversary posts, and Kmina doesn’t disappoint with her musings at eight years. It is about writing for eight years (and reading blogs for eight years) but it’s also about living eight years since the start of the blog. She writes, “I am also kinder than I used to be and I hope I can hang on to this. I hope life allows me to remain kinder than I was before. This is not really a matter of choice, life can drive you to places you had no idea you could end up into, so I can only hope for the best and cross the bridge of worst if I get to it.” A good reminder. Here’s to eight more.
The roundup to the Roundup: Undoing Linus’s bad habits. 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 June 9th and 16th) 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.
7 comments
Thanks for the shout out, in great company with some good posts. I totally agree with you re: kids in the workplace. I don’t really have any interest in meeting my co-workers kids unless I’m friends with them outside of work (and even then, necessarily, and I love kids…I just get enough of them), and I certainly don’t think kids should run around a workplace unless that happens to be part of the culture that is clearly stated upon hiring someone.
FYI, when I clicked on the link to the story about bringing kids to work it screwed up my iPhone such that I had to reset my history – – I keep getting a message saying something about my android phone. So I think that website is jacked up with a virus or something.
As to kids in the workplace, I think it depends. When I was going through IF things like that gutted me. In my current workplace, we’re sort of a small satellite for our department and it such that I know everyone’s status, e.g. people are done having families or never wanted families etc…and I did bring my babies in to meet everyone (at their urging). And every so often I have to bring my kids in, if they’re sick, power is out at daycare, etc. and I have to get something done, etc. I’m lucky that so far it’s been okay. We got zero backup so I literally have nowhere for them to go. And my husband’s work is not a place kids can hang out. And he gets much less paid leave than me, so usually I am the one to take off, except I’ve been so busy that sometimes I just have to bring them in.
But if my coworkers’ status was unknown or so knew someone was going through IF, I’d try real hard not to flaunt my kids.
I’ve had that same problem with a few blogs. Certain blogs (I can’t remember if it happened with that one) redirect to this pop up and the only way to get rid of it is to wipe the browser memory. But it keeps happening off and on so not sure what’s going on.
I loved the comments on the kids at work post! I agree with Ana, I also don’t really have any interest in meeting my co-workers kids unless I’m friends with them outside work – there are so many people at work I can’t stand, if I’m brutally honest: why would I want to meet their kids? I, too, do like kids, I’m just discriminating like I am with adults (and animals), although some people I know just expect you to love them all!!
Ooo! Thanks for sharing the kids in the workplace post. I definitely don’t think kids should be in the work area, but slightly off topic, but in the same realm, I do think more companies should offer on site child care. I became a SAHM because the cost of childcare for two kids in the D.C. area started to almost equal my salary as a teacher. If they do offer it though, I definitely agree there should be a kid zone and a no kid/work zone.
Aw, I love your Max stories. We had two Guinea pigs, Dexter and Tex. Dexter lived for just over six years! They were in the room adjacent to our kitchen, so they would wheek when they heard knife to cutting board. They were also friends with all our other pets. Our cat, Sage, would sleep pressed up to their cage with Tex pressed up on the other side. After Tex died, our standard poodle, Beau, wouldn’t eat himself until Dexter was fed too. To the extent that if my daughter who usually fed them wasn’t home he would pester me until I remembered. My very favorite Guinea Pig moment though was when I heard my daughter who has severe anxiety, difficult time adjusting to changes and verbal processing delays, talking to them after she found out a friend had canceled a visit. She was telling them that it was going to be okay, because their friend would come and visit another time. She had to process out loud and those Guinea pigs were always there to listen. I don’t think many people understand our love for those Guinea pigs, but know you do. They are missed.
Oops, Linus, not sure how I came up with Max.