Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Just When I Think It Can't Get Any Worse.....

After a long exhausting day at work, I discover that I am scheduled to work the concession stand at the baseball game. Crud. So I do, and get back home at dark thirty.

I run upstairs and take a couple of photos, plug the digital camera into the computer, and WHAM!!!

The absolutely worst thing that can happen at this point, happens. System failure. I try everything, and I mean everything. Dead, dead, dead. Want to see it?



The Coca-Cola was a desperate appeal to the caffeine gods to come to the rescue. They didn't. At this point, there is not enough chocolate in this county to make me feel better. I'm going to cover it with a shroud. It will make a great plant stand.

This is the third catastrophic computer loss I've had in the last year. The other desktop I had kicked the bucket--it too was a sudden, unexpected death. Then the OTHER laptop I had was somehow mysteriously destroyed when it was hit by a BASKETBALL. I kid you not. I can't make this stuff up. It's too good.

After the demise of the first desktop, I bought this one. AND I bought a 1 gig jump drive. This old girl wasn't going to lose it all AGAIN. Everything super important that was on the desktop was faithfully backed up on the gig. I bet you can't anticipate what I'm about to tell you now, can you?

During the recent tornadic havoc sent by Thor, I was carting the laptop stuff all around and riding other folks' bandwidth (I know, I know, but I was desperate) and I LOST THE JUMP DRIVE.


So I just sat there and mourned the loss of 160 gigs of truly great stuff. Most of it is for work. After I cried (yes, I did) my Number One son called and offered suggestions. I hung up the phone and cried some more.


Then I retrieved this from a Random Teenager and hooked it up:




I'm to the point that I'm teetering over the edge wearing high heels. Even the Red Cross knows it.

Three very nice, sympathetic Red Cross Ladies dropped by to check on us on Friday morning. Since the tornado, I've been getting a cup of coffee early in the morning and going out front to look at my poor pitiful house. This is when the ladies happened to stop by. So there I am, sipping pure caffeine and mourning my beautiful porch, and they start talking to me about have we signed up with FEMA. I tell them yes, we have, but they can't help us. All FEMA did for us was give us an official FEMA ID number. I've decided that the best use of this ID number is to have it tatooed on my forearm.

So then one Red Cross lady asks have we applied for a SBA loan. I ask what do we need to do that for, and she replies that it looks to them like it's going to be $300,000 to repair the house, and we can get a SBA loan at a very low interest rate to repair the house.

I just lost it. I truly did. I asked her WHY would we want to work ourselves to death for the REST of our lives paying for something AGAIN when we had already worked our ENTIRE lives to pay for it the first time? I was (and still am) amazed at their lack of sensitivity. I am devasted and already stressed out beyond any means of human imagination and she pops out with a happy little suggestion that I go borrow $300,000?????

She then tells me that they have a nice little area set up in the social hall of the church, and I should go down there and have some coffee. They might even find me a sandwich, or chips, or something. And while I'm there, I can talk to one of their MENTAL HEALTH COUNSELORS!!! And it will be free!! I can go twice a day if I want to! The other two ladies with her are in the background, nodding their heads and saying "yes, do that!" "that's a good idea"!

I just looked at the three of them and said "I'm going back in the house now".

And I did. Without saying another word.

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