Hey,
all. Good to see you here again. Hope ya’all are doing fabulous! I’ve missed ya. LOL
Well,
today’s blog is about Stupid Girl…you remember her, don’t you? The girl who occasionally camps on my couch
and does really stupid crap. She even
has the gall to occasionally show up in my mirror occasionally—how she does
that, I have no freaking clue.
Anyway,
last night I’m typing along doing my writing thing, when this stupid computer
(which I am fast coming to hate) suddenly goes into hyper-drive and is deleting
my manuscript text like there’s a demon in the keyboard. I can’t make it stop, and I start to freak
out as I watch all my hard-found words disappearing into a black hole.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I hit
the delete key, thinking it’s stuck down.
Nothing.
Words
disappearing at the speed of sound.
Crap!
I hit
the escape key.
Nothing.
Double crap!
Words
being sucked into the void like a fat kid eating cake.
I now
begin to pound on every key I think might possibly interrupt the huge
word-sucking monster, and stop the flush of all my hard work.
NOTHING!!!
By now,
I’m in a complete panic and shouting every curse word I know at this possessed
computer. I am freaking out!
As I try
to decide what would happen if I just close the document, I can’t think. Will it save the version with the lost words? The loss is pages, perhaps chapters, worth of
story by now. I can’t afford the loss,
but I can’t think either. I’m in such a
panic over the fast-escalating loss that my brain is high-centered.
I
finally decide to just shoot and holler “shit” later…I swallow hard and hit the
cancel button.
Nothing.
Just words
disappearing off the screen with the speed of a rabbit in a cat house.
Holy crap, Batman!
Now the
brain begins to kick in and I realize I probably have a key stuck. So I try the delete key again.
Nope.
Panic
takes hold once more and now I begin to scrape my fingernails across the
keyboard, hoping to dislodge whatever key is stuck down.
About
three seconds into this attempt, the “G” key becomes airborne and flies across
the room.
Seriously?!
Now I’m
a key short of a keyboard, and words are continuing to disappear at a sonic
rate. My screen seriously looks like a
sink full of letters and someone pulled the plug on the drain, and they are all
whooshing down into a virtual sewer.
Time
for a last ditch effort. Hit the button
to close the file again. Even if it
saves the file the way it is, at least it’s not all lost.
Yeah!
The
huge sucking sound stops and the computer asks me if I want to save the file.
I’m
shaking and hyperventilating so badly that I have to stop and think how to
answer the question.
Where is the HELL NO button? There is no freaking HELL NO button. WTF?!
Okay,
the brain finally kicks back into gear and my breathing starts to return to
something more normal. I hit the DON’T
SAVE button and the file closes.
Whew!
I look
at my keyboard and wonder where the hell all the pieces are. Now begins the relentless search for little
white plastic pieces a quarter the size of a contact lens. Sigh. Took about fifteen minutes to find
everything, as the “G” key itself was sitting up on the back of the couch and I
couldn’t see it until I stood up and started shaking out rugs.
Okay,
got what I think are all of the pieces, but my nerves are frazzled. So I turn out the lights and go to bed before
I can do any more damage.
Then
morning comes and the house gnomes have done nothing to fix my keyboard
overnight. Guess it’s up to me…and if I
can’t, then it’s a trip to Best Buy to talk to the Geek Squad. So I research on the internet how the little
pieces are supposed to fit together.
Then I round up all the tools I will need—two pairs of reading glasses,
a magnifying glass, a pair of tweezers, and a fork.
I hear
you judging me…you use the tools that work for you…I’ll use what works for
me. There is no tool on the planet that
I’m better with than a fork!
Anyway,
I spend a half hour watching videos about assembling pieces that look nothing like
mine, and finally decide to pop off the “F” key, so I can see clearly how the
little hinges underneath are supposed to go together—on my specific
machine. The good news is that I now
know how it’s supposed to go together.
The bad news is that I now have two keys to put back on instead of just
one.
So I
put on both pairs of reading glasses and start to work. Yeah…that’s not a misprint…I’ve found if I
stack the reading glasses one over the other, I can actually read the fine
print on medicine bottles—and see the pieces on my damn keyboard.
A half
hour later, and a full trip through every curse word in my vocabulary, I finally
have the keys back in place.
Yeah!
(NOT)
When I
sit back to admire my handiwork, I realize I now have the “F” and “G” keys
reversed.
Crap!
So it’s
back to the drawing board and another half hour before the keys are solidly
back in their rightful places.
Hell Yeah!
So now
I’m still trying to work up the courage to open my manuscript. But I’m pretty sure if I open it and the
words are still gone, you will hear me screaming from there. So cross your fingers for me…and let’s hope Stupid
Girl is off being distracted somewhere else today, and not still camped on my
couch!
But I
guess there is one positive in all of this—well, two. First, I was able to get the keys back
on. And, second, it was the F and G keys—rather
than the F and K keys—or this blog would have had an entirely different title!
That’s
my story, frustrating and frantic, and I’m stickin’ to it. Hang on tight now, ‘cuz we’re gonna go real,
real fast!
Kayce
I just love Halloween and dressing up as someone I'm not. I like who I am, but being mysterious is fun too ;-)
