I’ve been living an absolute nightmare. For TWO WHOLE DAYS!!!

But finally, after a weekend of anxiety-drenched trauma, I am back to tell the tale. It’s mercifully short, but not, I think, an insignificant one to any who has experienced the horror. Mary Shelley only dreamt of such nightmares as this!

It started Friday. (Actually, it’s been coming for a while, but I’ve been assiduously ignoring the signs.)

Friday morning–I print off a recipe to work with the kid on baking a cake. This is what I call Grade-A remote learning!

I grab my printout and head back upstairs–leaving my computer simmering on the desk unware that a monster lurked in the shadows.

Several hours later–mostly covered in bits of flour and cocoa powder–I came back down to do some stuff and hear a weird noise coming from my office…my empty office.

I open the door slowly and am met by the worst sound imaginable…

Whirrrrr….whoosh…Whirrr…whoosh…Whirrrrrrrrrr….whoosh…

“Oh no.” I say.

[Sidebar: I may have used more colorful language, but I still had hope when I first sat down, so let’s be generous in assuming I wasn’t yet at Drunken-Sailor, category four expletives yet–the kind involving horses and the riding thereof. ]

“No, no, no, no, no…” I mutter as I frantically run through my limited repertoire of computer fixes.

The computer absolutely refused to turn off–despite several attempts to force a hard shut-down. Every time it turned itself back on it gave a passive aggressive screech that nearly deafened me. It was like Night of the Living Dead. Just when you thought it was safely dead–its corpse reanimated.

But sadly, once I figured out where all the itty-bitty screws were in my Dell monstrosity, I opened it up to find a hideously bloated battery pack–the computer equivalent of a septic appendix. Even removing it, the computer continued its harpy shrieking and wheezing and hissing. I unplugged it and asked for a moment of silence from my friends and family on Facebook.

And then, I sat and cried because I am a moron and I haven’t backed up my stuff in at least three years.

And then, like a superhero rescuing idiotic damsels in distress, someone offered me a new computer. New to me at least. Moreover, he also offered to recover what data he could from my dead Dell beastie. Out of respect for his privacy (and the desire to keep his talents all to myself) I won’t name names. Let’s just say, New Best Friend has a ring to it, don’t you think?

So, here I write, at my precious silvery-grey laptop. It’s something called an HP Pavilion – Signature Edition; I have no idea what that means, but the buttons are nice and soft. They almost invite touching. I’m afraid to take it in public for fear I might moan with pleasure, that’s how good it feels typing.

My only regret is that my New Best Friend also recovered the ghastly five-pages of drivel in a post I have been dragging my feet about editing. I guess no good deed is infallible. I suppose I could always kill off my darling by having it commit digital suicide, couldn’t I? It does seem to be my particular talent.

So, my excuses for not writing lasted a total of two days. Now, back to the damned grindstone for me! Bring on NaNoWriMo! I only have a digital deadline left to fear.

Oh, and must learn how to undo the overwrite key. Somehow I hit it and now can’t figure out how to undo it. I’m going to blame all my typos on that for at least a week.