The Crash

Before I went on vacation, two weekends ago, my mother offered to have my laptop checked out by the place she gets her computer worked on at. My beloved Dell laptop was running a little slow so I figured being away for a week would be a great time to get whatever was slowing it down fixed. I went away and didn't think about it, except that by the end of the vacation I was itching to get back to writing, editing, the whole shebang.

Then my mum picks me up at the airport and says, "I have good news and bad news, which would you like first?" The bad news was that my computer was not yet ready to be picked up. Ok, fine. I don't mind waiting two extra days if it means it'll be back up to speed. But then last night I get home from dinner and read an ominous email from her that basically said, Did you back up all your files? I'll call you in a minute.

I panicked. I called her (got busy), called again and again. Sent two emails begging her to get off the internet and call me to just give it to me straight. She never called and I had horrible dreams and woke up in a cold sweat. I worked myself up, trying to just get over the emotional loss of 1200 songs and about a thousand pictures (I don't even know what Word docs I didn't also save on flash drive). So when she called I obviously bit her head off. I am sorry for that, now a few hours later, but I still feel on the verge of tears.

I called the computer guy after my mum and I got off the phone and he (laughing through it all which only made me feel more out of emotional control) said that they hadn't been able to even turn my computer on so then they removed my drives to plug into their own devices and COULDN'T. FIND. A. SINGLE. FILE.

(Deep breath.)

Of course I stopped him right there and said, What do you mean you couldn't turn the computer on? I have never had that issue. It's just been running slow lately. The skeptic in me is obviously blaming them for doing whatever they did to break my computer because it was generally fine when I left for vacation and now it's dead. I begged him, in what I do hope was a calm and collected voice as opposed to the about to be unhinged tone running through my head, to really try his best to get my pictures back. If I lose all the songs, well there goes $4,000. And while that's a (BADWORD) lot of money, it is, after all is said and done, just money. But the pictures... I don't have those saved anywhere.

Last night one of my dreams was about my childhood dog MacIntosh. We were having some sort of adventure together and I remember the feeling of being happy in the dream. He died four years ago. My only pictures of him, aside from the one below, were on my computer. I know non-animal people won't get why that makes me teary-eyed, but there's a lump in the back of my throat at the idea of every image I've taken over the past six years being wiped away as if they never existed.

So while it might seem silly to cry over something inanimate like a computer, I am going to go home tonight and have a really ugly, probably snotty, cry. Because my computer "mysteriously" crashing means the loss of money I do not have, songs that maybe I can beg and cry and convince iTunes to give me back?, pictures of family, trips, friends, pets, and (fingers tightly crossed) hopefully no lost Word docs. 

Commence ugly cry.

~Stephanie