We’ve made it through, it’s just not been fun. I at least managed to get several things done before the computer went completely useless and I was greeted with several design commissions when I came back so I’m slowly working my way through those. Hopefully we can come up with something really neat for our Ostara special on the tarot site, and I can actually get some decent shots taken of the few jewelry pieces that I made during the down time also. I really want to get things off the ground but it’s hard. I can only work on things for so long before someone gets bored and takes over to do something more fun, or my hands seize up and I can’t manipulate the beads and chains and clasps any more.

He runs slooooooow, but he runs and that’s all he really has to do. Let me fix some graphics, and connect to the net, and occasionally grace us with some music.

In other random asides, our psychiatrist told us to try a certain over the counter allergy medication on nights when we have trouble sleeping. On the back of the box it says: WARNING: Do not use to make children sleepy.

Max being Max comments, “Now does that count inside children?”

Which set off this whole big debate. We have had different reactions to medication at different times. NyQuil, for example, if Max takes NyQuil makes him absolutely hyper. However non-drowsy Tylenol drops him like a rock. The last time Rat was let anywhere near medicine she was loopy, probably hallucinating or just being totally bats not quite sure. Somewhere in there is the time that she called hubbie at work, no less, and told him there was a golden armadillo crawling across the ceiling moving from room to room through the sprinkler system…yeah, fun times.

So, now I’m going o.O should I take this??? On the upside hubbie is home, and I’ve decided I’m only going to take one, not the two it suggests on the box, because it’s a whole big world out there and I do not need to be a five year old running down our street trying to catch flying penguins.

We really hadn’t realized how much we rely on a group of online friends for support until we could not have access to them. It’s like having ipods and then losing all your music, in a way, maybe that’s a bad analogy. I mean, I know the friends are still there, but I can’t talk to them. We no longer have a phone that can call some of them given they’re in other countries, and others don’t have phones or we don’t know the phones and snail mail letters take so long to get to them. We have local friends and family, of course, but there are some things that just can’t be discussed with them the same way, because it would take too long to explain all the back history and the back story which the online ka-tet already know.

Anyway the end of the week has seen things coming together a lot better, which is good. We managed to finally get the taxes filed and had the pleasant surprise that rather than only getting $30 back we’re actually getting around $200. The paperwork has already been approved by the IRS and we should get our refund around our wedding anniversary which is nice. Then an online friend has offered to help me out with the computer issue, so I should only be without a computer for a couple of days which is just so wonderful; and right now I’m catching up on things before Kore takes her computer up to G’ville for a week given she’ll be on spring break as of Monday, and a friend is over working on our tile.

Mum and I got to have a nice lunch out yesterday. She wanted to go for sushi so I recommended Kiku Steakhouse where my FIL had taken us several days earlier for his birthday, and I must say we had the best gyoza I’ve ever had and the sushi, well the last time I’ve had sushi that good was when we went there the Monday before.

I’ve found out that our old desktop may yet get fixed, but I’m not holding my breath with it. It tends to give the illusion of working and then die again a few short days later, at least we may be able to get the rest of the information off it before it does. Fingers crossed. It’s just a matter of having the money to pay the guy who is trying to fix it ;_; if that’s the case. Given what little we had left this week has gone for grout and tile spacers and twelve 16-inch tile squares.

I know that I’ve complained before about support groups and their drama, and that’s not what I’m talking about needing here. I’m talking about friends on livejournal who understand not only the multiplicity aspect, but also the past lives aspect of things that we relate to and have interest in. For I can discuss things with them when Kore’s in school or busy with assignments and things.

On the upside knocking the computer down to essential use only is helping in other aspects, it’s forcing me to do the actual weaning away from Facebook games distraction and things like that I’ve been trying to do previously and failing miserably at, because whenever I’ve gotten stressed I’ve gone right back to it, and let’s face it day to day you deal with a lot of stress. Now I can’t because if I try it slows the computer down on it’s back-up process or it is too frustrating due to the way the screen reacts. The only thing I’ve allowed myself to do is periodically check one game known as “country story” to harvest the trees, but as they die off I have not planted any more.

I’ve been transferring a lot of the urgent email I might get to my gmail accounts so they can be checked from my phone. So the tarot business now has it’s own gmail account and I’m going to look and see if there are any groups I need to switch to that, but I doubt it. I weaned off a lot of the groups and only added one support forum back which I’ve been meaning to ditch again, but can’t get into the groups setting to do so.

As you might imagine the site re-design for here is only hold until further notice. I’m glad I managed to get A Joyful Path done before this started. However, the charity features I’ve been planning to do and the other things have to wait until the computer is working better.

I’m more than a little stressed out.
Here’s hoping things work out. Wish me luck!

I can get perhaps a sentence of typing done and then screen starts scrolling like a computer possessed, and I have to tap random keys on the actual laptop keyboard to get it to stop so that I can continue writing on the plug-in one. On the up side I found my old copy of Nero 7 which is really helping me back up and burn the contents of the hard drive even if it is slow. Slow is better than nothing and the interface is a lot easier than the generic windows one.

A friend had said he would help us with it. He had drawn hubbie in our secret santa draw, so he pledged two days of manual labor as the gift, which were to be used for the tiling, given we know that we would just make it worse if we tried to do it by ourselves.

So, last night Max vocalized to said friend that we had been rumbling about the tile again and he said, “I was just waiting for you guys to tell me when…” so that is that, and it’s scheduled to start next Saturday and go on to next Sunday. Not only is it going to get done, but he has several pallets of very similar tile leftover from his house and some water proof epoxy grout that he is bringing to help us out.

We did some measuring last night and working out an estimate of how many tiles we’d need and we should have enough, especially as some of the tile taken out is still fairly intact and can be cleaned and cut to fill in the areas that are too small for a full size piece of tile. We didn’t need to do cad drawings but we will have to take a leaf out of those when it comes to walling off the loft to turn it into our future house mates room.

I will probably have to get another bucket of thin set and will probably have to get some blades for their tile saw, but things are looking up. I’m definitely happy about this. To have the house back together will really help my frame of mind.

I also don’t wear make-up very often. I’ve worn it at friend’s weddings, at my wedding, and a few other times such as job interviews, but from day to day I don’t wear it. I don’t ex-foliate, I don’t bother with face wrinkle cream. I wash. I shower. I do shave my pits and legs, but those are about the girliest things I do, occasionally there is some flirtation with lip gloss, and I do love painting my nails bizarre colors, and dyeing my hair the same way; but overall my beauty routines and morning ablutions take very little time. Hubbie has often expressed great appreciation for the fact that when we go out somewhere and I go to the bathroom it doesn’t take me twenty minutes to get back out.

I’m sure there are other females who are the same way, but given tendencies of certain alters I find myself wondering some times if I would have been one of those girly girls were it not for the fragmentation; but then to wonder about things like that could get redundant.

Then munchkin broke the laptop. Yes…the keyboard and mouse no longer work. Joy. Joy.
So, there was a frantic half an hour spent trying to fix things to no avail, and then trying to find the receipt and the warranty paperwork, because I thankfully purchased the warranty. However, neither of those could show up.

So, I called the place I bought it and they said to bring it in and see if they could fix it. They couldn’t. Yes, it’s a hardware issue, they say. The woman who I bought the computer from knows me well, because I’ve been in there a lot with the munchkin and usually check out with her at the register and she confirmed to the tech guy that she knows she sold me the warranty because we had a discussion about the munchkin and his propensity to break electronics. He’s broken a printer, several keyboards, at least one of our mice and one of Kore’s, a cell phone and a house phone. So, that and the fact that it’s a lot harder for me to fix a laptop than to fix a desktop I added the warranty.

However, I admitted I had not been able to find the receipt which I hoped was just because I was panicking. Our desktop computer is dead, not dead-dead, but it refuses to boot past the screen where it offers you to F10 or F2 to go into different boot scenarios, and will not recognize a keyboard so I cannot F10 or F2. I need to have a computer for work, given I work from home, online. So, my mind was full of panic-driven scenarios of us getting foreclosed on without the extra $2-400 of income per month.

Anyway, I was assured that I could get the receipt from corporate, given the store only keep receipts for 30 days after purchase, but corporate would still have it especially as I only bought it last November and that even if I haven’t activated the warranty, the warranty company could activate it then and there provided it was still valid. So, that’s something. So far I haven’t been able to find the receipt or warranty booklet, so I got in touch with corporate. I’m still hoping it will turn up here somewhere, but I figure if it doesn’t I get it from corporate, if it does I have a spare copy.

In the mean time I have some wonderful friends who are supplying me with a keyboard port keyboard so I can try to fix FrankenStan (the old desktop), and I’m backing up everything on the laptop that I’ve added since we got it so that if they have to do something drastic to it to get it to work we don’t lose any files. I’m making sure to back up the music files too, hubbie’s been very put out that previous back-ups I’ve either forgotten to back up the music or not been able to because I get the most urgent files first, things I need for work, family photos and then the computer died before I could get to the less necessary ones such as the music and the game saves.

Wish us luck.

Me: Gods, I’m tired…
Max: I’ll do it!
Me: uh…okay…*gets shoved back*
Max: Do do doooo….

*insert an hour or so of playing with munchkin attempts to make food with asides of um….what do I do noooooooooooow??? *wail* and are you sure you don’t want me to? No I has to learn!!!*

*insert also the fun of putting the munchkin to bed and the Hunt for Lucky (his dalmatian plush who he has a new LOVE for given Gran loaned up 101 Dalmatians*

Then…

Max: Ooooh ff12–again? where you at?
Me: Miriam…but I’m stuck, hey wait you played this before didn’t you?
Max: Yeah, but…HUNGRY!! I want burgers…(outside) K—, I’m hungry but I don’t know what I want…
Kore: Um…okay? Leftovers?
Max: Actually I do know what I want…
Me: We are on a diet…
*affirmative nods from the rest of the head*
Max: Actually I do know what I want. I want a burger and fries.
Me: *head-desk*
Rose: NO! We don’t have any anyway…
Kore: You’re out of luck ’cause we don’t have any of those things.
Max: *pouts* *explores kitchen* OOOOH!
Me: No no no no no
Rose: What did he? Oh, no!
Kore: What?
Max: Lookit! Look what I found *holds up pack of brownies*
Kore: If you’re going to make those make them cake-like please?
Rose: what the…why didn’t she?
Max: Oh, ’cause I thought…who am I kidding I’m gonna make ‘em
Kore: s’why I didn’t even try?
Rose: Those are those chocolate square cake things right?
Me: Why do I even try? Why?
Towers: Leave me out of it.
Me: :p~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ all of you.
Max: Do-do-doooooo makin’ the brownies, makin’ the brownies.

*Brownies get put in oven before it reaches temp because he didn’t set the timer, and couldn’t be bothered to wait*

Max: Okay…stillshrine it is…hm…oh, yeah, there are these things you have to turn and stuff to face the sword and then…*explains a bunch more of the game*
Me: Okay, so where are those things?
Max: Oh, I don’t know. Ami had to get us through that part last time it was all puzzle solving and stuff I got bored.
Me: *head-desk* shouldn’t you still remember anyway?
Max: I guess…
Me: *slam head on metaphoric desk several more times* wake me up when there are brownies.