810th Friday Blog Roundup

It’s September 11th. It’s so easy for dates to get lost on the calendar right now when every week feels the same. But I noticed the date and remembered in time. Next year will mark 20 years, right? Time feels so strange right now.

I forgot and then remembered that Rosh Hashanah is coming up in a week or so. Clearly it was in the back of my mind because we’ve taken steps to make sure we have everything in place to attend Zoom services at our shul. But I forgot in the sense that we plotted out the next two weeks of meals, Josh did the food shopping, and then I remembered that we should have planned a meal. We originally had calzones scheduled for that night. We bumped them by a day to make a brisket.

In some ways, Zoom Rosh Hashanah is easier than Zoom Pesach. Remember Pesach? Back in the spring? When I thought it was silly that I had purchased the matzah so early. Surely the stay-at-home orders would be lifted by Pesach. And it’s now the seventh month. And we’re still at home. With zero dreams that Rosh Hashanah will look different.

Which means we can release those old expectations and instead make sure that we’re plotting out something new vs. something second-best.

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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 Vultures Are Already Flying Above Us” (The Next 15000 Days)

Okay, now my choices this week.

By the Brooke has a post about choices after loss. She explains: “I think most working moms feel some level of mama-guilt, but in my experience, babyloss working moms get a double dose.” She takes the time to explain her thought process—not because it’s owned to the question asker but because she acknowledges that hearing someone’s story can help someone else make a decision.

FinallyMyLinesNow has a post marking the day she lost hope. They’re moving forward with the planned IVF cycles, and she’s doing everything she can to make them successful, but they didn’t have embryos for PGS. My heart sank for her when I read: “I know that adding PGS, while necessary due to the cerclage, realistically lowers our odds even further. Today though, was the first time I felt in my soul that we really have no chance. It was the first time I felt convinced that this is just the proverbial fool’s errand.” The post ends with a hug from her daughter, exactly what she needed in the moment.

Finally, The Road Less Travelled points out how COVID-19 has added to the sting of first-day-of-school reminders. Instead of social media being a week or two of first-day-of-school pictures, it was preceded this year by weeks and weeks of discussion about how school would look, etc. She unpacks how things unfolded in a few bullets (among other small thoughts), and it seems like a good reminder for all other difficult times, such as Christmas, Easter, or Mother’s Day. She writes, “The constant buzz-buzz-buzz is hard to ignore, and adds yet another layer to an already difficult time of year for those of us who are living without the children we wanted.”

The roundup to the Roundup: September 11th and Rosh Hashanah. 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 September 4 – 11) 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.