And Lo, There Was a Great Flood...

So there I am last night, ready to put the five year-old to bed. I have the laptop open and ready to go, so we can look at the Tumble Books from the library site before bed. And she picks up a glass of ice water and accidentally drops it on the open, running laptop.

Dead child.

I flipped the laptop over and powered it off while yelling "I KNEW SOMEDAY YOU'D DO THAT!" The older brother had sense enough to be totally silent and bury under the covers in his own room. Little sister threw her hands up in the air, repeatedly shrieking, "I'm sorry! I surrender!" (The phrase "I surrender" is the signal to stop tickling, btw.) Thankfully hubby was coming down the hall at that point, so I pointedly described the problem in six words and promptly left the room in an absolute rage.

Doug took care of it, I didn't even try. We ended up flipping the laptop over in various configurations, and putting it on the deck keyboard-side-down in an attempt to get it to drain. We left it off overnight.

This morning it powered on for about 10 seconds, then shut itself off.

After a long fiasco, we took it to Apple. They didn't even try to boot it, but instead said that water damage gets into a repair range that they won't do, they'll send it away and have the hard-core techs look at it and fix whatever pieces are dead for a fixed fee. A fee that goes slightly over $1,000.

We took the laptop back, not knowing exactly what to do. I figured we'd take it to an authorized dealer in town that charges a bench fee to look at the thing, but replacing the pieces would likely come in under the Apple flat fee...unless it's the motherboard that has a problem.

Once in the car, Doug tried to turn the laptop on. It booted up, gave the tone, gave the screen....and stayed on. It even valiantly sounded a couple of calendar alarms. Doug powered it back off and we drove home.

Once at home, he tried again. It booted up, gave the tone and stayed on AGAIN. Hmmm. We went for data recovery as the first item of business, so we plugged it into the external hard drive and attempted to back it up...and it couldn't find the drive. We tried another USB port. Nothing. We tried a third, this time on the right side of the computer. Success!

So two USB ports are dead.

It also couldn't find the internet. Dead Airport card.

It successfully backed up the data, which I felt ever-so-thankful for. But the sound didn't work, either through the speakers or headphones.

Dead sound.

So....no internet, no sound, two dead USB ports and I'm lucky the keyboard still works. Damn.

Blink, blink.

Wait a minute, it made sound when we were in the parking lot...

Power off.
Power on.

Oh, NOW it decides it can find the Airport card, the two USB ports and, sure!--it has sound, just listen!

Doug is eyeing it suspiciously. I told him the computer was scared of being sent back to Cupertino for a Re-Education Program.

We're still working with the noisy fan, but we're not sure if we'll be missing more things with the next power cycle of the thing. AT THE MOMENT, it seems to be working. Even with 3/4 of a large glass of water poured over the top of it.

"Don't ever reboot again," advises Doug.

Yeah.

In other news, I INJURED myself. Again. That was on Thursday. See, my sin was that I bent down to sweep kitchen crumbs into a dustpan and when I straightened up, my back exploded and the room turned white.

I called the new chiropractor. "I seem to have injured myself," I tell them. "Is there any way I can come in?"
"How about in an hour?"
"Yeah. Assuming I can drive, I'll be there."

It took me that long to get ready and shuffle out to the car. I stuck a throw pillow from the couch into the driver's seat, and eased my way in. I got the car parked just in time to go through another happy little coughing fit.

Did you know that you use your back muscles to cough? I didn't know that. I sure know that now! After my charming, deep pneumonia hacking, I wasn't sure I would be able to get OUT of the car. I eventually slithered out the door, and baby-stepped to the office.

I got inside, and then my back decided to seize again. I couldn't walk, so I just stood there, waiting for it to go away. It did, and I got to the little receptionist window. Nobody there. I leaned on the windowsill and shifted my weight from foot to foot, but it was all miserable. Nothing helped.
"Your back hurts, I can tell from here," says someone in the waiting room.
I turned towards the sounds and I smiled weakly at her.
"Yeah, I hurt myself about an hour ago, so this is still pretty fresh."
The receptionist suddenly appears and introduces herself. She slides some paperwork towards me and says, "You fill this in...would you like to sit?"
I gave an agonized look at the chairs. "Uh....no, actually, that's...that's a painful option...."
"Oh, that's fine, we could..."
She carefully took note of my body language and I didn't bother to try and hide it.
"Let's just get you in NOW," she says, "We'll deal with paperwork later. Is that OK?"
"Oh yeah, more OK than you know!"

So she takes me back to see the chiropractor.

I have seen lots of chiropractors...I've been to at least four different ones, and know a few more, and they all have a certain look. They'll all young, under 40, and in peak physical condition. If someone told you these guys (and yeah, they're mostly guys) ran marathons, you'd totally believe it. They're painfully clean-cut; they wear dress slacks and fresh, pressed, white dress shirts with crisp, matching ties. Their hair is short, clean, shiny, combed to perfection and locked in place with mousse or gel. Their teeth are always perfectly straight and blindingly white. They're like little crisp, sharp corporate paper dolls.

This chiropractor isn't.

He's old enough to actually (gasp!) have gray in his hair, AND he's got some spinal condition where he looks at his feet all the time.

Now, had I seen this under normal conditions, and had this guy not been recommended to me by an insanely good miracle-working chiropractor in Denver, I'd have said, "Wait, you can't even cure yourself, and you want to lay hands on me? Forget it!" Instead, I gave him a lame grin and told him my tale of woe. "To further complicate this," I told him, gesturing at my lungs, "I'm also getting over actual pneumonia, so I have all this...schnard...to deal with." As the chiropractic table was lowering, he pokes me in the lower back on the right side, and I barked in pain.
"Yeah, that's where I thought it was," he says casually.
I'm having dark thoughts about the man, and about feeling helpless.
Pieces of the table drop, he adjusts, blah, blah, blah. He raises the table, I turn over, he does more adjusting. He goes to snap my neck and it doesn't agree with him and won't adjust.
"Count to three," he says.
"Huh?"
CRACK. "Good, you're fast."
"So...what did I do to myself?"
"It's really not that bad. You just banged together your (L4? L5? Two "L" numbers, anyway), it'll take two, maybe three visits, tops."

Next up is the electro-stimulation, which I think they make extra-effective by putting super-heated, damp towels on top of the electrodes.

"I want to do some acupuncture on you, too," he says.
"I thought you didn't do acupuncture," I said.
"Do it? I TEACH it."

Now it's the water table; you lie on a plastic-covered table that has a water jet inside, and it sprays heated water on you back as it travels from your heels up to your neck. As I'm getting comfortable (?) on this thing, I feel a prick in my right hip; Mr. Needles is apparently shoving lances in me now, THROUGH my clothing. Never had that before.

"My husband got treatment for cat allergies," I tell him.
"Ah. My answer to cat allergies is a Cantonese cookbook. Just kidding! I saw a lot of weird stuff over there, but I never saw cat."
"So what weird stuff DID you see?"
"Oh...dog lung and noodle soup, for instance."

Left hip, right hip, tops of both feet, two in each shin and he says, "I need to get under your armpits." Uh....he puts one in each side of the ribcage.

I'm left in this position to marinate for awhile. When it was over I asked them if they "had a good wax cycle on that thing," which I'm sure is a lame joke they've heard a lot before.

Now I wasn't sure how I was feeling about the treatment; better, yes, but still sort of tender, almost in shock. Getting up the next morning, however, I felt GREAT. Eighty percent improvement! I went in again, they did the treatment again...and later on that day I started to feel worse.

I have a final appointment mid-week, and right now I still hurt...but then again, I went hunting for Japanese Beetles (who are trying to eat my raspberries and grapes), and spent five seconds too long in a squatting position, which probably wasn't in my best interest.

I'm sick of this crap. The illness, the back pain, the incapacitated stupidity. We were supposed to go camping last week and then again this week. I would LOVE to go, and I can barely get out of the damn bed or load and unload the freakin' dishwasher. The minute I get too frisky I can't breathe right, and if I can breathe OK, I can't lift or bend or sit properly. This is more than the pits!! I feel like a mangled mess...