Now What?

My eyes might be on the upswing, but it's been a bad week for technology. I left my cell phone on the counter near a glass of ice water, and when I went to pick it up, the condensation had soaked it. I was told by several people that if you put a wet cell phone in a bowl of rice, it will dry it out and it will work again, but all the rice did was bloat the battery up. So now I have no cell phone.

Same day, I was typing a post and Squizzle was doing his usual "how can I annoy Dad while he's trying to type...I know, I'll try and hit the keyboard!" act. And so he did. And the screen froze. I took out the battery, plugged it back in, and tried to turn it on, but when I went to type in the password only half the keys worked.

I still need to send it in to get the screen fixed anyway, and we knew we had five kids when we bought it so we got the two year, "don't ask, don't tell" warranty where it is covered for anything up to and including dipping it in a bathtub. So I wasn't too upset.

Until I realized that I don't have a back up disk of all the pictures that I have been taking for the last year. I know when I finally send this beastie in to the repair shop the first thing they are going to do is erase everything. So I was no longer so sanguine about it.

Plus, I started thinking about not being able to post, read the paper, etc, etc. Not so happy.

Then this morning Haggis asks, "Can I play on the computer?"

I've had a headache all day so as sarcastically as possible I say, "Sure the password is ********. If you can get it on let me know, but since half the keys are frozen I have a suspicion that I'm going to be hearing you cry in a minute."

I went back to picking up the living room. Ten minutes later, Haggis says, "I got it!"

Stunned, I came into the kitchen, and she had left clicked the mouse, pulled up a list of accessibility features and added a "type without a keyboard" feature. I had never seen that on a computer before, but when I entered the password, it worked. I was about to blast a backup disk when I realized that upon logging in, all the keys had started working again.

I have no idea why that happened, but since this family seems to be on a bit of a roll regarding Divine Intervention, I have no choice but to subscribe to the theory that some one up there is looking after me.

Modern technology indeed.

I'm just glad I can post again. I was already testing the Internet connection on the Wii to see how long it would take me to post from there.

The answer is For-freaking-ever.

Thanks to all of you who commented on my last post, it garnered a bit more response than usual, and it was nice to see that it affected so many of my friends and family for the positive. Lord knows that it was one of the more emotionally draining things I've written; probably since "The Rooftop". I don't know if we'll get out of this tunnel while in this life, but it's nice to know that at least we have some company in the dark.

And speaking of the rooftop, I spent most of yesterday on mine, completing the spring ritual of setting up the swamp cooler. It is always tough to do that. I think of my brother every second I'm up there and I always take a little longer than I need to connect the water supply tube. This year was a little harder still. I had to remind myself to be patient as I looked as far as I could across the valley and thought about how nice it will be to see the mountains clearly again. Clear vision, Eternal perspective,...guess Ryan was teaching me more than I thought when I wrote that story.

Well, enough for now. Gotta go crack the whip and get the house picked up before the Boss gets home. Tomorrow will be our 15Th wedding anniversary. I can't believe she's put up with me for this long.

And I gotta change my password...again.