693rd Friday Blog Roundup

I have had Childish Gambino’s “This is America” stuck in my head on a continual loop for days.  I wake up hearing his voice in my head.  Then I move through my day, muttering an approximation of the lyrics.  (Like Josh, I thought he was saying, “underpants, underpants, underpants.”)  I think about the song as I drive and as I cook and as I clean out Linus’s cage.

It has been a long time since a song has gotten under my skin like that.

That song is taking up all the space normally held by my mental calendar.  That continuous conversation my brain has with me about everything that needs to get done each day.  I somehow conflated Mother’s Day with the royal wedding, believing they both were occurring this weekend, and that I had to make scones immediately so we’d be ready for breakfast while we watch.

Clearly I have a little more time than I thought.

A warning if you haven’t seen the video: it’s violent.  I wish I had been given that warning before I saw it, so I’m passing it along to you.

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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:

• “Flipping The Script: Solidarity, not Pressure” (Inconceivable!)
• “Aunt Mila” (The Next 15000 Days)
• “Tell the Story” (Stirrup Queens) — thank you, Jess!
• “The Curious Misunderstanding About Grief” (Searching for Our Silver Lining)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Searching for Our Silver Lining has a post about how things look from the outside on International Bereaved Mother’s Day.  I love this: “Because though from the outside we look like a normal mother-daughter pair, our story is more than that.”  It’s the definition of bittersweet; a beautiful post about honouring loss and cherishing the child who is here.

No Kidding in NZ has a post about Mother’s Day and honouring where you are vs. being nudged into someone else’s idea of how you should spend the day.  She calls it “the day that reminds us without mercy that we didn’t become the mothers we had wanted to be.”  It is also her husband’s birthday, so it is a careful dance of being with her mother-in-law and celebrating her husband’s birthday and taking time for herself, too.

Lastly, The Road Less Travelled has published a mammoth post on social capital and making friends and loneliness, topics that I find extremely interesting.  There is also the infertility angle; how does infertility and loss affect your friendships?  She writes, “Nevermind the mommy train — many of the friends that I have managed to make here over the past 30-35 years almost literally boarded a train — they moved and left me behind, which was a new (and unpleasant) experience for me.”  Jump into the conversation happening in the comment section, too.

The roundup to the Roundup: “This is America” is stuck in my head.  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 May 4th and 11th) 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.