Barb’s Revenge

My friend Barb has had a few things in her life lately that haven’t wanted to run all that smoothly.  Her brand-new katrillion-GB external hard drive gave her fits.  The church directory photo session was a real “Friday the 13th” horror show for her family.  And then the hot tub cover was delivered days late and damaged, and she has been spending hours on the phone trying to get that worked out to her satisfaction.  Meanwhile, things at the Connairs’ house were going just great.  We were on vacation, the new computer was a dream to use, and the church directory photo shoot went nice and easy.

But not so much today. I think Barb can stop feeling like she is cursed, ’cause the joy has spread to the Connair house and she is no longer alone in her aggravation.

This morning I plugged our EHD into my laptop and clicked on the lovely, simple “backup” command key that Ryan had graciously placed on my desktop.  The thing chirped away for about 3 hours.  And then I walked out of my bedroom, accidentally switching off the lights, which happened to disconnect the outlet the EHD was plugged into, and things went south fast.  Next thing you know, the EHD had an error message, my laptop was stuck in limbo, unable to turn completely off, and Ryan (my tech guy) was at his day job and not here to hold my hand.

I won’t go into all the gory details, but suffice it to say that it has been 6 hours now, and I have just barely gotten the Check Disk utility and Defragment utility to complete their work on the EHD.  It looks like data may have been lost, but it’s nothing we can’t re-backup with some effort and about 8 straight hours of file copying. 

Then my tooth started hurting.  I kept getting this faint zapping sensation in my lower left jaw.  I would have put it down to nighttime teeth-clenching if it hadn’t been for the fact that the same thing had occurred early last week.  So I went to the dentist and he took some x-rays.  Nothing visibly wrong, but it still doesn’t feel right, and the dentist suspects I may possibly have a slight crack in one of my molars that is not showing on the x-rays (yet).  Ugh!  I just had a huge molar crack apart in February, and I’m not anxious to take my chances it will happen again.  But the only real choice is to wait and see.  I am a total wimp when it comes to dental pain, and am not thrilled about this.  Frankly, I like a nice simple answer.  Yes or no:  am I facing another crown?  a root canal?  WHAT?!!!  Waiting is not my specialty!

But now I will interrupt my regularly scheduled program of whining to count my blessings, just to remind myself of all the things I don’t have to worry about or deal with, and just to make my current aggravations and frustrations seems smaller.  So on the up side:

• Um, well, for starters, I own a computer in the first place.  Lots of people the world over aren’t lucky enough to have their own computer.  Like the entire populace of Swaziland, where Ryan’s friend Rob is now stationed for his Peace Corps work.  The average income in Swaziland is something like $1.50 per week!  Forty percent of the populace is unemployed, and 69% live below poverty level.  Don’t get me started on their HIV statistics.  It would make us both cry!
• If my tooth gets worse, I have dental insurance that will cover most of the expense of having my excellent dentist fix it.  And he will be able to give me lots of novocaine!
• My husband and kids and I are in good health.  So far so good.
• I think we can still afford gasoline, although you have to wonder on a daily basis just how high the price of a gallon of BP’s best will go.
• No problem making dinner tonight.  I don’t have a game plan, but I have lots of food in the pantry and freezer to choose from.  
• Dennis and I got to sing at mass with his sister Erin and her husband Jesse this past weekend.  We could have done a better job, but we were novices and can hope to improve.  Bottom line:  it was fun, and Erin and Jesse were nice enough to invite us back, even though they can do just fine without us in the background.
• Oh yeah, we weren’t in a horrible tornado-like storm on the way to that singing gig  On the way home we took the scenic route instead of the highway and found a path of destruction for miles, with huge trees twisted off their trunks and the like.  If we had driven that route on the way to the church to sing, we would have been in big trouble!

I could actually go on and on, but I won’t.  Once when I was in a really pissy mood, I forced myself to write down 100 things I was grateful for in my life. It took about half an hour, but I didn’t have a problem coming up with the list.  So if you are ever in a bad mood and start feeling like having a pity party for yourself, try it.

Mary Sunshine, here–over and out!