679th Friday Blog Roundup

I managed to spill an entire glass of water into my desk.  16 ounces of water, flooding the inner cabinet of my secretary desk.  Beyond the computer (which was miraculously fine), I store a shit ton of papers in my desk.  Post-it notes with “brilliant” ideas (cough), books, and notebooks.  Random LEGO characters.  Mala beads.  All of it swimming in 16 ounces of water.

I ran for paper towels while Linus “helped” by standing on his hind legs and watching as the water cascaded onto the floor, soaking the carpet.  It was a great moment; the highlight of my week as I peeled dripping post-it notes apart, trying to read the smudged writing.

I did manage to save maybe 500 post-it notes as well as some important papers that I decided to recopy so I had a clean, non-water-logged version.  That’s how I spent my week: recopying old notes.  Trying to decipher them.

Along the way, I found funny things the twins said as babies, a bunch of short story ideas that will probably never get written, and reminders to call people whom I haven’t spoken to in years.  There were notes that I made while negotiating a contract, and it made me so sad to see how much I undervalued my work once upon a time.

It was emotional archaeology, digging through a pile of fiber samples of things that at one point meant something to me.

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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:

• “On Letting Go of the Colour” (An Engineer Becomes a Mom)
• “Plinko” (Stirrup Queens) — thank you, Jess!
• “Attention Management” (Stirrup Queens) — thank you for this, too!
• “I Don’t Have Unlimited Resources” (Infertile Phoenix)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Jewish IVF ponders whether to transfer more than one embryo.  Her research brings up a glaring hole in the arguments: “The thing is that the article educating against multiples is talking about first transfer success rates. Not sixth transfer. They’re not taking into consideration someone who has tried single transfers multiple times without results.”  It’s a tough decision coloured by more than their past results.

Andmom has entered the world of tweendom.  Due to the way their school system is structured, the 10-year-olds are around 13-year-olds; a big age spread.  She writes, “I’m just not ready, and I don’t think they are either, but apparently we’re all going to run out of the option of innocence soon.”  Me too.

Empty Arms, Broken Hearts points out that parenting doesn’t erase the feelings from infertility.  She explains, “I thought infertility would go away once I became a mother. Not that I would become fertile, but that the unfairness, the raw emotions of not being able to conceive and bear life, it would somehow lessen when children started calling me Mommy.”  But I love this post for the brilliant final line.

Lastly, Inexplicably Missing has a post about her clinic.  I do not want to ruin the effect by trying to describe the situation, but this line perfectly sums up the way my jaw dropped with the post: “I don’t know… it’s just… I feel a bit like… can someone just take this seriously please?”

The roundup to the Roundup: Wish I had used a smaller cup.  (Or, 16 ounces of water is a lot of water.)  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 January 26th and February 2nd) 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.