What a Waste of Energy....And Sleep.....

I went to bed angry last night. Angrier than I've been in a long time.

Sledgehammer-smashing-things angry.

And no, it wasn't at Hubby. Although his snoring didn't help any at all, when I was so angry I couldn't even go to sleep.

I kept telling myself, "Let it go, Bragger, there's nothing you can do about it. Just let it go."

But I couldn't let it go. And I couldn't go to sleep. I tossed. I turned. Then I tossed AND turned. I kicked the cover off, I put the cover back on. I kicked the.... I think you get the picture.

Right after I finished last night's blog topic, in which I was so smug about having had the forethought to back up my computer's hard drive because I was afraid it was going to crash, I started looking for a certain picture of Gus that I had been using as my desktop background. Because ever since a certain UGA gymnast disappointed me (again and again and again and again, and I'm not even her coach), I have had Gus on my computer instead.

I hooked up the external hard drive onto which I had so cleverly backed up everything on my laptop, and I couldn't find the picture. Then I realized the folder names looked weird.

Those weren't the pictures from my laptop. They were pictures from the network, stored on Hubby's computer. The ones I still had. Now I had two copies of them. And none of the ones on my laptop, which is more or less every picture I've taken in the last five years.

Gone. The whole kit and kaboodle. Along with every single document on the laptop. I started wondering just what documents were ON the laptop, and then I tried to make myself stop wondering, because I didn't want to know. I didn't want to know what I had lost. Sort of like I heard a man the other night describing losing everything in a house fire. He said even though it was three years ago, every now and then he would still wonder, "Where's that shirt?......... Oh yeah." (He also said his house burning down was the best thing that ever happened to him, and it made me wonder just how sucky IS his life?)

I seriously pictured coming downstairs and taking a hammer to the laptop that I just paid a little over $200 to get repaired. Actually, Hubby paid for it, because he's that kind of guy, but it's the same principle. I stewed. I fretted. I called myself names. I wondered how I could be so stupid. I ...... I think you get the picture.

I tried to tell myself that losing the pictures wasn't the end of the world. In the words of one of my oh-so-wise sisters (and I can't even remember which one said it), just because I didn't have the pictures didn't mean the memories didn't happen.

But still.

And I thought I had been so cautious.

I told Hubby about it this morning, even though I hesitate to tell him things that I think make me look stupid. He sympathized, but he's not terribly savvy about computing and backing things up and downloading and so forth, but he does know sledgehammers. He was terribly glad I didn't go that route, because it would have awakened him.

Then I sat down at the laptop and started scrolling through the folders that WERE there, trying to see where I had gone wrong.

The pictures were there the whole time. IN ADDITION TO the pictures from the network, which appeared first, which is why I thought the laptop pictures weren't there. Along with all the documents, which, upon further inspection, wouldn't have been that great a loss. It's not like I had the Great American Novel on the laptop. Or even my dissertation.

Not that I can open any of the documents, since my copy of Microsoft Office got wiped out.

But it's a comfort to know they're there.

I still couldn't find the particular picture of Gus (it's probably in a folder of gymnastics pictures, because that's the way I roll). But it's there somewhere, and I WILL find it.

I should get tons of sleep tonight. If sleep were measured in tons.