The Rabbit Was to Blame This Time

Some days I wonder if I should keep pursuing this whole writing thing? If I'm not getting in my own way, then it's an illness that lasts over six months. I finally get better, get past myself and think, yeah, now I'm going full speed ahead with writing and this is awesome! Then. . .

Then something happens.

Is it always going to be this way? Is it this way for other writers I often wonder? Are these some sort of divine tests to see if I have what it takes to keep on going? Who knows.

So what happened this time?

My sweet and beautiful house rabbit chewed my laptop cord.

Again.

Sometimes, electrical tape will do the trick. Not this time. She chewed the whole way through it. Just a small piece of the outer black plastic holding the cord together. The inner wires completely severed. There were other chew marks on the cord.

What I don't understand is how she does this without getting electrocuted. Do rabbits have a natural ground that prevents this? No idea. Is this the fist time this happened? Nope. It is not. Is it really her fault and was I mad at her for what she'd done? Again, nope. Because in reality, this was entirely my fault.

See, I'm not a novice house rabbit slave. . . um, er. . . I mean owner. For several years now, I've had a rabbit in the house. So I know that if you have something important, like say a laptop cord, it must stay out of reach of bunny teeth. I know this. I preach this to others who get rabbits.

This past Friday night as I was shutting down the computer, I noticed it wasn't charging. I thought, that's strange. Upon investigation, that is when I found the chewed cord. My first thought was, "Not again."

Notice the again parts of this post.

You see, back in January this same incident happened. I had to get on eBay and track down another power supply. Luckily, my laptop is old and they can be found for cheap. The incident in January wasn't the first time this happened either, or the time before that, or. . . but I digress.

When I discovered what happened, I logged on to eBay, looked at my purchase history and reordered the same power supply. To which my first thought was, I'm going to protect this new power supply with my life!

My next thought was - Gee this sounds like I'm shit faced drunk and begging God that if he gets me through this I'll never drink again. Only, you know, we all drink again. And after the second or third time of that prayer, we know that God knows we are lying our asses off because we will indeed get shit faced drunk again. At least for me, it was only I think after the second time of me praying to God to help me out, I realized that I would get drunk again and so now I leave out the, I'll never do this again part. (Please know that I rarely get that drunk, in fact I rarely drink, but once in a blue moon, it happens.)

Will I protect this power supply with my life? Yeah, I doubt it. God knows I'll get lazy. Like I did this last time. Still, I'll try to do better.

A lesson learned long ago

I have another, very old, laptop that still works but needs updated. I keep meaning to do that, so if something does happen to my main system I have a back up. So now might be the time to get on this.

I remember taking a course on spreadsheets some years ago. The most important take away from that course was the instructor drilled into us the 3 most important rules when it comes to computers.

1. Backup
2. Backup
3. Backup

To which I am actually fairly good at this, but I'm learning that this also means having at least one other computer (or two) that works as a backup.

Friday to Wednesday

So the cord was destroyed on Friday night. As I read the fine print on eBay from the seller, after I'd already ordered the power supply, is when I saw they didn't ship on weekends. Like, what the heck!?

Of course this comes from a woman who had to work weekends for several years. So that meant it wouldn't get shipped till at least Monday. Oh, wasn't this just peachy.

I had an old laptop cord that would send power to the computer but not charge the battery and I worried about using it. I thought now would be the time to get my old laptop updated and working.

Only I didn't.

Saturday I had a ton going on. Sunday was sort of the same. Monday I began reading a book that drew me in and wouldn't let me go. On Tuesday I finished the book I began on Monday. (For a full length novel of over 300 pages that is pretty darn fast for me.)

By then it was sort of like what's the point when my new charger will be here the next day.

So that was several days I didn't turn on the computer and it was. . . kind of nice, actually.

Granted I was on my phone on the internet, but using the net on a small screen just isn't the same so I did not spend hours and hours like I'm prone to do on the computer, wasting my life away on the internet.

I try to look at this incident as a learning experience of some sort. The time away from the computer was golden, actually. Which might mean I might spend more time away from it. That is until this lesson fades, along with my diligence about keeping the laptop cord away from rabbit teeth.

What all of this translates into is that I didn't work on the story that I'm hoping to publish this month. So that was five days of not working. Getting back into the swing of things, for whatever reason, is hard. Which is why I'm writing this. Doing a blog post often gets me back into the swing of things.

If you have a beloved animal living with you that has teeth made of titanium (I swear, rabbit's teeth are this strong) Keep important items out of reach. One day I will take my own advice. It was only after I placed my order for a new power supply that I thought, yeah, I should have ordered two, because I know what will happen to this power supply. Again.