"Inconsolable"

That's pretty much the word I'd use when describing my state of being yesterday.


After sleeping with my precious laptop underneath my bed for the last four nights because of this contest I was returned with a favor: somewhere between 12:30-1:30 yesterday afternoon I received a "Dear John" letter (in the form of a gray screen with a file folder and blinking "?" on it) from my Macbook. Apparently my obsession with getting A Really Goode Job was too much for her. The hours spent blogging, tweeting, editing, previewing, and watching videos was just too much for her. She was tired of being overused and under-appreciated (aren't we all?). She felt the time had come to go our separate ways.

Despite my attempts to woo her back (I even contacted a genius to mediate), I am still being given the silent treatment. And before you even ask, the answer is no: in fact, it's a BIG F A T resounding "NO!," we did not have any of the hard drive backed up.

Other words I might use to describe my day?

What about "crushing?" That pretty much sums up the blow of losing all of our honeymoon photos/future post photos/and silly family moment photos ("Goodbye Camp Sherman and Mexico, goodbye CCR cupping, goodbye nine year anniversary date night! We'll miss you!")

And "devastating." That's how I felt when I first realized that I'd lost the only copy of the food memoir I've been diligently dedicating the past four months to. As I explained to my dear friend Alice between sobs, this is perhaps the most overwhelming thing that can happen to a writer. To have your words ripped away from you is like nothing else and of course the thought of having to sit down again and try to recreate what had already been written seems like an absolute impossibility.

Are any of you familiar with that children's book Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day? Well yeah, it was kind of like that. There were numerous other ridiculously unsatisfying things that happened both prior to and after the explosive, crashing failure of my hard drive (wasp sting, mud on my new coat, broken cup,etc.) Surely details too insignificant to share or bore you with, but suffice to say that by the time I had returned home from various attempts to console my computer, I was fretfully inconsolable. Yes, Friends, that's exactly the right word for this occasion.

My reaction was to swear off looking or even thinking about another computer, and to go out and buy not one but two bottles of Sonoma county produced zinfandels to do a little wine tasting. How predictable are we during a break-up? My laptop leaves me because I've been consorting with a bunch of winos and I proceed to go right back to the source of the problem. Well, what can I say? If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. When it was all said and done I managed to convince myself that this was all a sign; that it was supposed to happen so that I would be forced to go down to Sonoma and nail this really good(e) interview, and land this really good(e) job so that I could be inspired to sit down and not only rewrite what I had already completed for our book, but be able to add a new chapter, the chapter about my six-month internship as Murphy-Goode's Wine Country Life Correspondent. On top of all of that, I've got a sneaking suspicion that if there ever were a place that existed where I could feel more motivated than ever to recapture my words, Healdsburg, CA would be it.

Come on, Folks: Help a girl out (keeping in mind that you would actually be helping two girls out). Please vote for our video. Have your friends vote for our video. I personally could use your support now more than ever.