I Assure You My Personal Tragedy Will Not Interfere With My Ability To Overdramatize My Personal Tragedy On the Internet
March 31, 2009
In the end, a busted hard drive turned out to be what pushed me completely over the edge.
On Sunday night my laptop stopped powering up with the battery, or charging the battery, or even acknowledging the battery's very existence. According to the nice man at the Mac Genius Bar, the battery was simply old and used up and long past its time to go live in the country with the iRabbits.The fact that the entire computer froze and clicked and crashed and died a mere five minutes after the battery went? A coincidence. A crazy, unheard of, unrelated coincidence.
(I really wish I'd spent those last five precious minutes frantically exporting photo files to our network drive instead of on fucking Facebook.)
"Is all your data on the machine backed up?" he asked me cheerfully, even though I bet he totally knew the answer. I mean, look at me. I'm standing here with my laptop's power cord wrapped around my arm and my wallet in my teeth while I try not to spill my coffee on anything because I forgot to put my computer in a goddamn BAG. Do I look like the sort of person who would accidentally leave two years of photos and movies, including absolutely every photo documenting the existence of her new baby, just sitting around in iPhoto with absolutely no backup of any kind?
Yes. YES I DO.
Blog rantings aside, I feel like I've done a decent job at taking everything in stride. I've saved my crying for stupid things, like YouTube videos with an inspirational swell of music at the exact right moment, or the Where the Wild Things Are trailer. My father is ailing and my mother is struggling and my son is a mysterious little question mark and my health insurance is a dick (seriously -- they just kicked our pediatrician AND my obstetrician out of network. Retroactively. Retroactively to 15 days before Ezra's birth.) and I'm working really hard to meet deadlines and provide a little extra income for us and I'm not sleeping super well but I am OKAY. I am FINE. I am BLESSED and things will get BETTER and things could be so much WORSE and in the meantime I have the most beautiful babies in the world and I'm not perfect but they sure are, but let me tell you: the sight of my computer booting up with a blinking icon of No Operating System found made me cry like a snot-nosed little toddler.
"My whole life is on that stupid box!" I wailed to Jason around 4 in the morning, once my tossing and turning finally woke him up enough to notice that I was a hot wreck of nerves.
"It'll be okay," he assured me, to which I inexplicably responded with a confession that Max was due for a vet appointment last month and I NEVER TOOK HIM TO THE VET. OUR BABY PHOTOS COULD BE LOST FOREVER AND OUR CAT COULD BE DYING AND IT'S ALL MY FAULT.
You what is nice, spouses? Knowing when to just not say anything back. That, and late-night backrubs.
Anyway, I have since calmed down. I'm on an old laptop that works, despite the space bar being kind of a bitch, and hey! I had Snood installed on this machine! God, I've missed Snood. The repair cost for my other laptop is charmingly reasonable, or at least SOUNDS reasonable after you hear the prices for data recovery. But hey, we're hoping maybe we'll get a bulk discount because Jason has an external hard drive that he dropped and broke -- at the hospital, five minutes after transferring all the beautiful maternity photos he took of me, after Ezra was born and there could officially be no more beautiful maternity photos. Can you put a price on such preshus memories? Yes. Apparently you can. And it comes with a goddamn comma.
Anyway. Um. Go backup your files, chickies, and take your pets to the vet. That is all.
Re: Backing up your stuff ...
The hubs actually read my Amazon.com wishlist and bought me the 500GB Western Digital Passport for my birthday. And oh yeah, have I been backing stuff up ...
These things are fabulous and not that expensive. Would totally recommend.
...or your ability to do good hair! (I bet.) SO sorry about your loss. Try Mozy.com (free online backup!)
I just vacuumed my computer today, it locked up when I loaded Turbo Tax...bad sign. So my sissy sends me a Facebook message from NZ: "I had a dream, Dad told me we have a sister we don't know about, maybe you should talk to him." I think it's you!
hi amy,
i don't think i've ever written a comment before but i've been reading and loving your blog since you were pregnant with noah.
a post or two ago you said that you were listening to noah talk to himself, playing with the word green, right? I wanted to tell you I think that's a wonderful thing, to be excited about....
Bear with me, ok, but there's a great chapter in This Book where Dr. Pepperburg talks about the exact same phenomenon occuring with Alex-- the idea that when you're learning language, you do practice sounds to yourself when the day is over, and it can REALLY help!
http://www.amazon.com/Alex-Me-Scientist-Uncovered-Intelligence/dp/0061672475
That's it. I know Alex is not exactly like Noah in many significant ways, promise I do!!!! But if you check out the book you might find some interesting connections...
And speaking of perspective, have you looked at power of now?
http://www.amazon.com/Power-Now-Guide-Spiritual-Enlightenment/dp/1577314808/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238730846&sr=1-1
nice book too for when things start hitting the fan.
All good wishes...
de-lurking harvard grad student
It must be the week for Macs to die. My desktop gave me the message this week "no operating system detected." I THOUGHT I had backed up the last two years of photos using Time Machine. But, Time Machine fucked me over. I have nothing. I need a new hard drive. Luckily, I've put a lot of photos on the blog but certainly not the majority, just the better ones. I totally feel for you. It's not a club that either of us want to be a member of obviously.
I liked this part of your entry:
"My father is ailing and my mother is struggling and my son is a mysterious little question mark and my health insurance is a dick (seriously -- they just kicked our pediatrician AND my obstetrician out of network. Retroactively. Retroactively to 15 days before Ezra's birth.)"
Maybe focus more on what that means to you vs. a computer or coffee or wallets in your teeth? :)
Good luck finding a new pediatrician for your daughter. Awful that you may have to pay a bit out of pccket but if she's healthy, this is all that really matters, and moving on by finding a new doctor, hard as that may be in some areas (I'm in Boston - every doctor seems to be fully loaded and unable to accept new patients) is what needs to happen.
As for the cat, we own two - one month won't kill him or her - don't worry, just call the vet and they will say all the right things to talk you off the ledge!
i'm not even reading the post or any comments b/c i'm too caught up in the fact that the title of this post was a play on my favorite part from Steel Magnolias. that just made my whole day. Sincerely, Annelle Dupuy.
Damn. I never back anything up and it terrifies me. I've got a lot of pictures on discs that I keep in the fire safe, but I haven't added any to it in 2 years or so. Thanks for the reminder...
And my dogs need to go to the vet, too. I came to your blog to read a quick witty story and came away with a to-do list. Thanks.