Upon our return from the refreshing rambles, I put the kettle on as Meika desperately escaped our centrally heated home in favour of her usual watering hole in the cool morning air. Always intrigued by the fun, fishy frolics, Meika sits for hours, staring into the murky depths of her giant sized water bowl. Deciding it was indeed a perfect day for making a warming stew, I dragged out the slow cooker and prepared the ingredients. All that was required now was the dumplings which I could pop in to the stew later. Glancing at the clock I noticed it was only half past nine...I had the whole day ahead of me, for writing. What could be better than that? | Jumping out of bed this morning with a spring in my step, I hurried to get ready for an early hike with my best friend. The sun was shining brightly although it was a crisp winter's day. I had a good feeling that it was going to be a good day. A week's holiday from work and two planned writing days among the catch-up jobs and family visitors. Lying dormant during the cold season, Meika's fin flapping friends are motionless but she waits patiently for the sun's warm rays to breathe life into their bodies. Curious by their movement and terrified of their splashing capabilities, it's highly entertainig to watch her run away from the waves of water, washing over the edge. |
But that wasn't a huge problem as I could do a search of each document (chapter) by putting the word 'dog' in the 'Find' boxes and wait for every highlighted word containing 'dog' to appear. Nine chapters and lots of highlighted 'dogs' later and I hadn't found what I was looking for... | In fact, I hadn't found chapter two at all! It had completely disappeared from my laptop. Not to worry...I back up my documents every week, religiously, on to my one terabyte, external hard drive (clever girl), so I can retrieve the mysteriously elusive chapter from there... |
VANISHED!
Chapter two was completely empty, not even one tiny little word to be seen anywhere. How could this have happened? My heart sank to the bottom of my fluffy slippers. I'd have to write the whole thing again.
It was only three thousand words long and on a good day, I can achieve that in an afternoon. The real problem was that the second chapter contained lots of facts, figures, character builds and scene settings and I now had to trawl through the whole thirty thousand words and more to make sure I got the right information back in there. A wasted day.
As the family returned home for tea, I sat silently at the table, pushing dumplings around the plate. Then I decided, in my miserable state, that I wouldn't tackle the job straight away, in fact, not during the rest of my holiday as it would feel even more like a wasted session.
So I began to write a blog about my day...
At seven thirty I started writing this blog, hoping it would help to make me feel better... Damn! The internet was playing up again and kept going on and off, all the time... By eleven o'clock, and having done nothing else all evening, I had almost completed the record of my diastrous day. As my eyeballs screamed to close, I saved the last section into draft and felt slightly better for it. Then the screen on my website displayed an 'Oops' sign... Wanting to join the koi in the pond for a long and peaceful existence, I screamed quietly in my head as everyone else had given up on me and gone to bed. No one was going to believe that I'd lost so much in one day. After stabbing a few marshmallows, I felt slightly better... Tomorrow was another day and although it was allocated to 'other things to do', I had to leave my missing muse to float around somewhere in the Universe and go to bed, still simmering like the morning's stew. | Oops! More like, 'Ha Ha! You've just wasted the last three and a half hours of your life, patiently working your way through the mishaps of technology, to write a blog.' GONE! VANISHED! EMPTY BLOG DRAFT! LOSER! BAD DAY! I could not face doing it all again, not at, approaching midnight, by the time I'd walked around the dark garden, cursing under my breath. |
On the bright side...
Maybe something like 'Fluke'.
Any other ideas?