The Legacy of the Mango Smoothie

It all began at 11.30am, Monday morning. I sat Principessa down to watch 'Charlie and Lola' while I sorted her lunch out. She followed me out to the kitchen, so I gave her a small beaker of mango smoothie. Happy, she goes back into the living room to resume her DVD watching.

Three minutes later I go into the living room with Principessa's lunch.

"No!" I said. "What have you done?"

"Oh no!" Principessa said. "I have to say sorry to Mummy."

There, on the table, my laptop sat. 'Charlie and Lola' still completely danced on the screen. The keyboard bathed silently in mango smoothie.

I have no idea how I kept my calm. I mopped up what I could from the surface of the keyboard. I had to dress Principessa for school, so I put the laptop down until she was dressed and off to school with her Uncle Gaz. Then I painstakingly removed each key to dry up as much of the smoothie as was humanly possible. Then I left it sitting upside down for 24 hours.

Tuesday afternoon, 1pm. I turn on the laptop. Woohoo I think, as the screen flicks on and the hard drive boots up. The password screen pops up. Tentatively I press the first key, hoping above hope that everything would be fine. Poop! No such luck.

Each time a key was depressed, three characters appeared in the password box. Each time the delete key was depressed one of two things happened. Either the cursor would jump over all of the characters already present and sit at the start of the password box or a new character would appear. Sugarplum fairies!

So I am typing this entry on my new pink laptop. It's good, sits better on my lap, but I miss my old laptop. I have lost all of my bookmarks, some programs I had downloaded online, and some photos of Principessa. Oh, and the kids story I had almost finished and other various bits and bobs of story ideas. So not happy about that. I can't believe that I would do that to myself, and not back them up on the pen drive. I have done with other my other story stuff.

So the morals of the story: Mango smoothie and laptops just don't mix.
Don't put your work on one hard drive. (Kinda like chickens, eggs and baskets, me thinks!)