Can you say FudGe?

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!

Love ya,

Kayce