Heather and the Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

And so begins post 2 for today. Yesterday was "one" of those days and I just need to share with all computer land what happened.

It started off okay. I went to Bible study with the girls and then to lunch with the one and only Rachel. I came home for about an hour before I needed to get my kids from school and it began. I sat in the recliner to catch up on email and look down. Normally, I would have seen this:

But, what do I see this time!? THIS:

Some of you might be saying to yourselves "so what, your shoe broke?" First, how does a shoe even break that way!? Then, let me just tell you that these are no ordinary shoes! They are my FAVORITE shoes! I love them. It's like wearing really cool socks, but better. You know? I remember the day I got them like it was yesterday. I saw them there on the shelf in Rack Room Shoes. I went for them only to realize they were expensive. I am cheap. I tried them on and then stood pondering for a few moments. I decided that my cheapness would win and walked away. My sister, who was with me, grabbed them and secretly bought them, handing them to me as we left the store. Ahhh...what a great sister to know that her sister desperately wanted those shoes, but could not overcome her frugalness (yeah, not a word, but whatevs). So, yesterday the left shoe broke. I grieved for a moment and then went to pick up my children. We got home and they began working on their homework. Blaine finished before Aubrey and began singing. Well, this did not sit well with Aubrey, AT ALL! She began having a fit, telling him to stop. At this point, my brother, Scott, calls. We are having a pretty serious discussion about some stuff and what was annoying to Aubrey becomes grounds for murder, in her mind. She begins staring Blaine down and saying things like "I'm going to kill you. You have 15 minutes to live!" I interrupt Scott and tell Aubrey to get on her knees in the corner. She obeys and then turns to Blaine and says "You're SO lucky you have your mommy here to protect you!" I finish my conversation with Scott. At about the same time I am hanging up the phone, Aubrey leaps for Blaine. I stand up quickly from the recliner to gently remind her that I am the one in charge of life and death in this house and it happens. The recliner jerks forward and then back again, my brand new and very expensive laptop falls to the floor. Yep. It broke. For your viewing pleasure:

My beautiful, broken laptop sitting on the arm or the recliner as though he had never fallen.

The power cord to my laptop- broken.

A shot of the hole that the power cord plugs into- also broken.

He landed perfectly on the cord and it jammed into the plug-in and broke both the adapter and the port. I frantically got on the phone with Dell, knowing I had very little time to find out what to do before my battery would be dead. Some wonderfully rude man with a foreign accent informed me they would send me a box, I would put the laptop in the box, send it back to them, and it would be returned to me in 3-4 weeks "as though it were a brand new computer" all for $539.09!!! NO JOKE!!! My first thought was "$539.09! Are you kidding me!?" My second thought was "a brand new computer! Are you going to erase my hard drive!?" The answer to that question was "yes, you will want to back up any important data you have." Really!? On 1/2 a battery before death!? The thing cannot charge in its condition! Apparently they don't care about that, so I paid the man, hung up the phone, and cried. Very quickly I sucked it up grabbed my 80GB iPod and a memory stick and began "backing things up". I then emailed a few people and explained my upcoming absence from the land of electronic mail. Almost immediately my dear friend Ashley's husband, John, called and said "did you already pay Dell?!" Turns out John the Great can fix it for oh, WAY less than what Dell charges and have it to me before May! I called Dell and they are refunding my small fortune. John- you are no longer a computer geek. You are now a computer god!

And lastly, here is my kids' mugshot. I had them stand there, after this happened, so I could take a picture. I told them it was for my blog about how my laptop and shoe broke. This is what I got:
Aubrey almost looks remorseful. Blaine, on the other hand, looks kinda proud. Here's hoping for better days!