I had a thoughtful blog post planned for today, full of encouragement and wisdom (har), but due to circumstances being what they were, I did not finish it. Instead of giving you nothing (don’t thank me), here is what my day was like:

As I was sitting in my office this morning (which doubles as Prudy’s bedroom at night), I notice something suspicious in her water dish. It was a mouse.

More specifically, my wireless computer mouse.

I snatch it out of the water, remove the batteries, and toss it in the trash thinking it can’t possibly work. On reflection, however, I pull it out of the trash, dry it thoroughly and replace the batteries, thinking just maybe it might still function. Lo and behold, it does! Sort of. Perhaps I can muddle through the day if I am careful. I can always borrow a mouse from my husband if my newly dried off mouse fails me—which it does almost immediately. I can click on things, but if I try to scroll, the screen leaps and stutters until I pull the batteries out of the mouse again. OK then. Borrowed mouse it is. Let’s get back to today’s blog post…

But wait! You say you want to type? No, no, no, no, no. Whether the keyboard decides to take a break, walk off the job in sympathy with the mouse, or just simply make my life difficult, suddenly it doesn’t work. I try rebooting. Nothing doing. Into my husband’s office I go, to use his computer to look up “keyboard won’t work.” I find a solution on a Dell forum that works. Back in business. OK, about that blog post…

[Short interlude in which I eat lunch.]

OK, then, let’s put some nice, soothing music on Pandora for inspiration. Hmmm. I don’t hear anything. What gives? Do my external speakers work? Yes. How about iTunes? Yup. OK, look up “sounds don’t play on web pages.” Try a bunch of things, including clearing my cache and cookies (which means I now have to sign in to everything again). Nothing. OK, I guess I can listen to iTunes—BUT WAIT—now iTunes doesn’t work, either. (Pity poor Laure Ferlita who was getting a blow-by-blow recounting of all this.) I wonder if the laptop has sound and the problem lies between it and the external speakers? Pull the laptop out (it lives on a shelf under my desk and I use a docking station to connect it to an external keyboard and monitor) and find that no, it doesn’t have sound.

No, I do not curse.

I give up. Stare pitifully at my paper. Twiddle my pen. Can’t think of anything to write. Click sadly over to YouTube to look longingly at some silent videos.

And suddenly

A miracle.

Sound.

Don’t know how, don’t know why.

Beautiful sound.

But now it’s 4:30 and I’m cranky. Decide the encouraging and wise (har) blog post will have to wait for a day when I feel encouraging and wise.

Moral of the story? Some days are irritating and unproductive. Some days expose your weaknesses. You just have to put up with them, do your best to get through them, and hope the next day proves to be better.

Life took an unexpected detour last weekend when my computer began “acting funny” (my tech-savvy description). My husband spent a good portion of two days helping me tinker with the computer and doing online searches for things like “log on process has failed to create the security options dialog” and other, more ominous messages. After running various diagnostics and “fixes” (haha), which resulted in the computer doing nothing but blink at us, we finally determined the hard drive was failing and needed replacement.

My husband was confident he could replace the hard drive himself and we ordered a new one. We read a step-by-step description of the process, and watched a tutorial on YouTube. After the new drive arrived, he was able to put it in in just a few minutes. The most time-consuming thing has been reloading my operating system and all my programs. Fortunately, I had all my documents backed up. I thought I had my photos backed up but didn’t, not all of them—I’m still working on that. And figuring out how I can plug in my iPod without iTunes erasing all my music! (That’s happened to me before…) I figure by the end of today I’ll be finished getting things back to normal.

I’m deeply grateful to my husband, Larry, who worked patiently for hours while we tried to figure out the problem, and finally fix it. He put into words the moral of this story when he said, “You can fix anything if someone will show you how.” A good takeaway when life hands you unexpected adventure.

I would also add, if you have anything you value on your computer, back it up, Back It Up, BACK IT UP!

So endeth the lesson.

And how was your week?