795th Friday Blog Roundup

Josh and I plugged my phone into our television and streamed a 12-hour beach video from YouTube. Then we got into our bed and read books, pretending we were at the beach.

The pros: No sand blowing into the pages, seagulls begging for food, or need for sunscreen. Bathroom is mere steps away. No people playing their radio. (That’s my beach pet peeve.)

The cons: It is not the beach.

The issue is that I’m near-sighted and cannot see the waves on the screen without my glasses, but I cannot wear my glasses and read my book. I technically need bifocals, but since I’m not getting bifocals (and taking off my glasses works fine for reading), this makes enjoying the waves and the book at the same time difficult.

The ChickieNob wandered in during the experiment and told us that she thought the whole thing was weird. That the real beach doesn’t have a watermark for a website in the lower left corner. Plus my phone ran out of battery and died so our beach trip was cut short.

But it’s my new Plan B. French fries while walking around the kitchen (that’s my boardwalk) while bird noises play, and reading in bed on the fake sand. Now if I could just figure out how to set up mini golf in the living room…

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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:

• “The Science and the Art…” (Regie’s Blog)
• “Grit” (Searching for My Silver Lining)
• “Congratulating Myself” (Infertile Phoenix)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Waiting for Baby Bird marks the anniversary of learning she was pregnant. She writes about her husband’s enormous grin on finding out the news and how she can’t forget the look on his face. She writes: “You might ask why would you want to erase it, because it was a happy moment, right? It was. And it still is. Yet, at the same time it isn’t. Because that life I promised to protect? I couldn’t.” Instead, she has been in a state of pregnancy—of anticipation—for eight years, and she talks about why she still has hope.

Infertile Phoenix had a hard day this week and she unpacks it in a post. The pandemic is stressful, and navigating the world right now is stressful. She writes, “I started crying as I was driving to the city, thinking about how I’ve wasted my life and how I would’ve lived my life differently if I’d known I was infertile (while also remembering that I had, in fact, already written a blog post saying just the opposite–that I WOULDN’T have changed anything about my life).” It’s about living life under stress for nine straight years. And she’s right: we’re not alone and sharing our stories helps.

Lastly, My Path to Mommyhood has a post about a People magazine article that finally—FINALLY!—acknowledges that not everyone who tries to adopt ends up parenting. She thanks the couple in the article, saying, “It’s okay to evaluate your life and know that you have the kind of relationship that could withstand that loss and building a new life, and then take that exit off the family building heartbreak highway towards that new existence.” Yes.

The roundup to the Roundup: Bringing the beach to my home. 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 15 – 22) 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.