The Queen's Rambles

As predicted, we had a very long night indeed. I doubt I got two hours sleep, total. Poor Miss Elsa is absolutely miserable and there’s just not much we can do for her.

You’d think a sick baby and an exhausted mommy would be enough to make any day pretty crappy, but fate had more in store for us today.

I was happily sitting at my computer when I suddenly got a pop up window that said my hard drive was damaged and I would lose data, but I must reboot. I didn’t know what data I would lose, but I wasn’t working on anything important so I rebooted.

Every picture was gone off my computer.

Every.

Single.

Picture.

Even icons.

Do you know what a computer looks like without icons? Freaky.

I about wanted to puke. I have back-ups of the best pictures on Flickr and Shutterfly, but I haven’t done any backing up since shortly after Vancouver. I was hoping it was all a big mistake and the pictures were just hiding.

Before I could figure it out, Elsa started coughing really hard. Did I ever mention that Elsa has a really strong gag reflex?

I heard The Gurgle in her stomach. Sadly, I know The Gurgle well.

Less than 4 seconds later I was covered in puke from head to toe. It was in my mouth, my hair, my underwear.

I started stripping her and she puked again, right when the shirt was going over her head. She got it in her eyes, her hair. Every where.

So off we went for our second shower of the morning.

When we finally got settled and I checked my computer, the whole thing was covered in error windows. I thought I would have to send my computer in to Dell to get it repaired because it kept saying it was a hardware error.

So that was happening.

The puke happened.

The crying, cranky baby was happening.

I whined to FB that my day was bad and “what else could possibly go wrong?”

Not even 30 minutes later I thought my washing machine was coming unhooked from the wall. Then I thought we were being bombed or a truck was running through my house. Something was happening and my brain couldn’t even begin to process the noise and the movement. Was our A/C unit on fire? Did someone shoot my neighbor? Was a train loose?

It was terrifying in the moment, until I realized it was just a big ol’ earthquake shaking the shit out of my house.

When I got my wits about me, I grabbed Elsa (who was finally, FINALLY sleeping) and ran out the door to collect Erik from the park. She was dressed in a diaper. I had no shoes on. It was like something out of a bad movie.

I was yelling for him as I approached the little park and he thought it would be a great time to hide. Thankfully a guy from the low income house saw that he was under the play structure at the park and pointed him out to me. Apparently he hadn’t felt a thing, even though all the neighbors were out and the kids were all saying the fences in the neighborhood had been shaking. One kid even fell off his bike.

Overall, the earthquake wasn’t bad at all, except for that initial terror of “what the hell is happening?” It just made us nervous for the rest of the day and I didn’t want Erik playing outside in case of aftershocks.

Once Mike got home, I had a little chat with Dell tech support and some guy in India remotely fixed my computer.

How, you ask?

By completely wiping my system and setting it back to factory settings.

Obviously he did it with permission, but there wasn’t much choice. I am lamenting all the lost pictures.

There is one good thing. I was supposed to fix my e-mail accounts a couple of months ago when Kisha figured out why I was having problems. Thunderbird automatically synced my accounts so it doesn’t matter which computer I am on–my e-mail inboxes will look the same and I can access any message from either my laptop or my desktop. This is a problem because it stores the messages on the server.

I’ve been really good about deleting stuff, but it is still a pain to make sure I am not going over my data limit. I keep meaning to re-do everything and make it so the e-mails come off the server and are stored on my laptop. I guess it is a very good thing I didn’t get around to fixing it, since I have some pretty important e-mails that I can’t afford to lose.

Well.

Pretty important in my little world. I don’t have the cure for cancer tucked away in a secret e-mail file.

I am so stressed out right now that I can barely think straight. We are doing an open house for my MOMS Club and I have a ton of stuff I need to take care of but I can’t seem to get started. Before I left for Oregon I was getting into a list making mode. First time in my life that I ever used lists and crossed things off. And you know? It made me so much more productive.

Tomorrow I shall revive the lists. I am overwhelmed and the lists help break things down into manageable steps. Erik has five hours of camp tomorrow, so if Elsa is feeling a bit better I should be able to knock some things off the list. I really need to make some fliers for this open house but my desktop publishing skills are abysmal. Bah. I need to write a press release for a local kid newsletter. I need to figure out what, exactly, we need to bring to this open house and have all the files printed and prepared. My stomach hurts just thinking about it.

And with that, I shall leave you. Time to hit the hay. I am functioning on very little brain power tonight, but with all the craziness of the day I am wishing I had a sleeping pill handy. Why do I not have a stash of sleeping pills any more? I think it is high time I visited the pharmacy and loaded up on barbiturates. Not that OTC sleeping pills are actually barbiturates. Are they?

Maybe I should just re-watch the movie I watched this afternoon: Dear Lemon Lima. Very bizarre stuff. I can’t do slow moving movies with plots that make no sense. I bet a lot of people liked it, though. It was pretty quirky in a sort of Napoleon Dynamite way, only depressing.

Speaking of Netflix movies, what the heck happened to Kristen Bell? She did such a fabulous job in “Veronica Mars” that I was sure she was destined for great things. She could play any one! She could do anything! Yet every movie I’ve seen her in makes me want to cringe. I watched You Again yesterday. It was ok, but had a lot of cringe worthy moments. I tried to watch that movie where she was in Italy, but I couldn’t do it. Why, Kristen, why? Is she just picking the wrong parts? Do movie studios not take her seriously because she’s young and blonde? I don’t know. I miss Veronica.