My laptop is broken again, and this time shaking it and yelling didn’t magically repair whatever the hell is wrong. The good news is I transferred all my October photos off of it minutes before it crashed, so even if it’s completely fried all I lost was last week’s iPhone pictures and the shots from the Jack-o-Lantern Spectacular on Saturday. The bad news is I also lost all my bookmarks, Photoshop Elements, my address lists, my party invitation lists, my password lists, everything I’ve ever scanned and countless other details of my I had stored in my computer. I had actual nightmares last night about time running out on some important project while I stared at the wonky gray screen and begged it to turn on. It’s silly to feel so lost without a laptop – it’s just a MACHINE – but it feels like my lifeline has been ripped away.

Maybe that’s really sad. I can easily make myself feel pathetic for being so attached to my computer – “Come on, Suzanne! It’s not real life! You obviously spend too much time on it! This is a great opportunity for you to finally get away from your screen!” but mostly I don’t feel bad at all. Sure, some of my friends live on the interwebs and could be called “Not Real” but ALL of my friends use the interwebs to stay in touch – even the Real ones. I LIKE the internet, even when it’s full of politics and drama and secret I Hate Your Stupid Blog And Here’s 345832 Reasons Why Facebook groups. It’s also full of blogs. Pretty blogs, wordy blogs, recipe blogs, inspirational blogs, funny blogs, blogs written by my friends, blogs written be people I WISH were my friends, blogs written by people I would never in a million years want to be friends with but love peeking into their lives because I’m sort of a jerk.

My own blog is going to suffer a little until I can get the computer thing worked out (sorry Mom) since E has his laptop set up like the command center for the Death Star or something and it took me 10 minutes just to find the internet. I can’t edit photos from this monstrosity either – unless I can find my Photoshop Elements disk, which is about as likely as finding Bigfoot hiding in the coat closet – so my brilliant post about organizing my closet will have to wait too. I know you’re devastated. Let’s start a secret Facebook group and talk about it for hours. Or maybe I actually will take this opportunity to go get away from my screen and get something done in my real life.

I owe Caroline a 22 monthday post from Friday. I want to blog about the fun weekend we had on Long Island with my friend Kim and her adorable boys and the super-cute Sesame Street themed birthday. I’m working my way through a bunch of internet-inspired craft projects and can’t wait to show you my newly discovered semi-awesome sewing skills.

But yesterday I woke up to a laptop screen that is nothing but white with faint red-blue lines all over it and one big black bar of AWFULNESS. I used the power of Google to determined I was pretty much screwed, and then decided to go with the tried-and-true “shake it a little” method of repair.

It didn’t work.

I got really desperate and went all-out, using every computer skill I had and drawing on things I had one heard someone else talk about like “core processors” and “motherboards” and “card slots”. I managed to pry off all the covers to the laptop guts (that’s the technical term) and blew on them. Then I screwed all the covers back on and prayed really really hard to the laptop gods to just PLEASE let this WORK and I promise I will NEVER use my computer while my hands are covered in Smartpop dust ever again I SWEAR.

It worked. For exactly the amount of time I had the laptop on. Once I shut it down and brought it home my screen went backto death so I’m typing this on my husband’s computer but don’t tell him because our laptops are Things We Do Not Share. Not because we keep private stuff or secret lives or hidden Facebook pages or anything, but because we like things A Certain Way when it comes to our browsers and keyboards and when someone else uses your computer they MESS IT ALL UP.

It might sound weird to you, but it’s something we agree on – except in laptop emergencies while he’s on duty so his computer is literally sitting completely untouched and I don’t even know what I would DO with myself at 9 pm on a Sunday night without a laptop. Listen to the phonograph? Play the harpsichord? Darn socks? I don’t want to live in that world. But THIS computer is not MY computer and besides the fact that I keep typing nonsense like “aerdomr” instead of “awesome” because this keyboard is just sliiiiightly wider than mine it also doesn’t have access to my photos or editing software. So I’m throwing up my hands and going back to

What I’m saying is, good stuff coming up! Tune in tomorrow or whatever day I can sell a kidney in exchange for a screen that works and has access to all of my stuff!