683rd Friday Blog Roundup

So I went to get the mail and there was a letter addressed to someone else in my mailbox.  My address, someone else’s name.  This happens sometimes, so I went into the post office to hand it over to the postmaster so he could return it to the sender because it was clearly a check.  But the thing was, the name on the envelope wasn’t the person who had my address before me (I still get her mail all the time), AND it was a check, which meant a transaction had happened recently.  Strange to have the wrong address.

As we were standing in line, ChickieNob was playing with the envelope and suddenly she said, “This is from Puerto Rico.  And it’s going to our address in Puerto Rico.”  So it was our address but in Puerto Rico vs. our state.

But this is where it gets even stranger.  Mail is stamped with a number or barcode that is used for routing purposes.  The routing was a number off, sending the letter to our state instead of Puerto Rico.  If the rest of the address hadn’t been correct, it would have hit an obstacle at some point and returned to the sender without reaching me.  But because the address exists in both places, it continued on its merry way into my mailbox because the machines reading the routing number didn’t see anything else amiss.

I wonder if that family has ever received our mail, or if this was a one time thing.  Unfortunately, they took the envelope from me before I could write down the person’s name or I would write them directly and say, “Hello, I’m your address Doppelganger.”  Actually, now writing that out, it’s sort of creepy.  Cool to think about, but… yeah… probably shouldn’t write them.

*******

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.

*******

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:

• None… sniff.

Okay, now my choices this week.

My mind was blown by My Path to Mommyhood’s post about death cleaning; in other words, decluttering so if you died tomorrow, other people wouldn’t have to deal with all of your stuff.  Or, really, that they’ll deal with less stuff.  I laughed at this: “Leaving your home with mostly wonderful things you truly love and not, say, leaving a drawer full of exotic dildos for your grandchildren to find (a real example from the book!).”  But she points out that all of these books also make a lot of assumptions about family situations; namely, the existence of children.  This was my favourite part of the post: “It just amazes me how some people are so removed from infertility struggle. And how ever-present it is in my life.”

Infertilityhonesty has a moving post about a ritual they created to mark the “time of death” for their dream of parenthood.  She points out that the conversations they have with the yearly ritual “are crucial interactions for a loss that does not receive this kind of discussion, or really any for that matter, in mainstream human conversation.”  Another important moment in the post: “Our backyard is a space where I can honor our losses and experiences within a world that doesn’t by vowing to make the resting place of the dream of our children as beautiful as possible.”  I wish the general public would have more recognition and conversation around this type of loss.  But in addition to that, I’m glad that she has written this beautiful post about creating your own way forward.

Lastly, Searching for Our Silver Lining has a post about the concept of being “deserving.”  She writes about a friend who has given birth after a long journey to parenthood, and how another friend congratulated her by saying she deserved it.  At the same time, another baby is born into a difficult situation.  She writes, “Turning terms like ‘deserved’ and ‘blessed’ on their heads and making you wonder about the games that are played. The polar opposite reactions to the exact same news: in one case I’m celebrating and sending well-wishes while in the other I’m mourning for the newborn.”

The roundup to the Roundup: I have an address Doppelganger.  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 23rd and March 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.