Wife and Mommy

I haven’t been online a lot recently.

It’s not because I was feeling remorseful for being addicted to the internet.

I wasn’t trying to help Ashton Kutcher get to a million followers before CNN on Twitter.

And not because I was cheering Susan Boyle on.

I wasn’t even following the inauguration of the First Dog Bo.

No, nothing like that.  Instead, I was battling water.  Spilled water.  Which landed on my laptop’s keyboard.

I’d like to say that one of my unruly children knocked over the glass of water, but it was simply my clumsiness that flooded my machine.  I immediately followed all the recommended protocol:  shut everything off, flipped the computer so that the water drained down, dried what I could.  It seemed to be fine, but I couldn’t get certain keys to work.  I propped it upside down overnight with a fan blowing on it.  Some keys still wouldn’t work. 

It’s amazing how much you miss certain letters when you can’t use them anymore!  The comma and period keys, C, M, V, and the shift  on the left side would not work.  

y typing looked like this for a few days  people said it seeed like i was typing with a lisp like i said it’s aazing how uh you iss those keys when you an’t use the anyore right  in any ase people still seeed to understand what i was trying to say whih is kind of sary  

Oh, and did I mention my main password to log in contained one of those key letters?  I couldn’t get to my account, which had, oh, my entire life!

This morning, I visited Geek Squad.  The guy was kind enough to tell me I’d have to order a new keyboard from HP, and then they, the Geek Squad, could install it and run diagnostic tests to ensure the motherboard wasn’t damaged blah blah blah.  He said it usually took HP about a week to ship out.  I believed him since he had the HP phone number memorized.  Okay, I didn’t want to wait over a week and pay HP and Geek Squad, so I asked if there were any other options.  Yep, he said.  He told me I could just get a keyboard that would plug into one of the laptop’s USB ports.  I thanked him nicely and then trotted myself (and three kids) over to the computer accessories and picked out a basic keybaord.  Voila.  I’m back online and not missing any more letters!

This is my setup now.  Kind of bulky and awkward, which I suppose defeats the purpose of having a laptop.  I don’t care.  Just as long as there are no liquids within 20 feet of it!