It was innocent enough.  My husband leaned over to kiss me goodbye as he headed out to work in the early morning.  I was editing my latest blog and trying to get it posted. So, rather than just focusing of the kiss, he also asked me to reach for his Ipad so he could pack it for our weekly trip to the lake.

The chain of events that happened next were unfortunate and frustrating.

As I leaned over and pulled up on the Ipad, the cord tipped my coffee cup which was sitting on the end table.  Got the kiss, got the Ipad and I got coffee on my laptop keyboard.

In what seemed like slow motion, I tipped my computer upside down and wiped off the little bit of coffee residue on my keypad.  It was just a little bit after all.  But of course, my computer shut down.  When I tried to turn it on, the light flickered and a hopeful sign that all was ok, “attempting recovery”….and then nothing.  A sinking feeling in my stomach.  When was the last time I did a back up to the external drive anyway?   I tried again, nothing.

I quickly made an appointment for that morning to bring my laptop to the Best Buy Geek Squad to see what they would say.  Of course they couldn’t do much there but give me a worst case scenario…”you may have to buy a new computer and we can transfer all your information over….if we can”.  I had to bite my tongue and hold back tears until I got back to the car, where I lost it.  I worked so hard to buy this computer less than nine months ago.  What if my information was gone?

So I did what anyone would do, I Googled it.

Google provided me with some bit of hope.  I took the solicited advise and sprayed air into my keyboard.  Still nothing.   So I took the next bit of advise, put my laptop away and just waited.

The waiting allowed me time to process what had happened instead of reacting to what happened.  It allowed me time to come to terms with the worst case scenario of buying a new laptop and…gulp…if I lost some of my data.   It allowed me to resolve to make another appointment with the Geek Squad on the weekend to do just that. I had come to terms with it all.

Then a funny thing happened.

My husband and I were relaxing on the newly cleaned dock at our lake house, sipping a glass of wine and recapping all the work we had done this spring to get it ready for the summer season. I was feeling pretty content, and then it creeped back into my mind…. If only the coffee hadn’t spilled on my computer.   Maybe it was the wine talking but I was feeling hopeful and said out loud, “wouldn’t it be nice if my computer would turn on and work?”

When we headed back to the house to watch Friday night Dateline, my husband grabbed my laptop and turned it on.  From across the room I saw a light, a light that did not go off.  Hope.  Hope that turned to joy and optimism.  I kept the appointment with the Geek Squad just to be safe, but as I am writing this on my laptop, I would say….all is ok.

I always learn little lessons from these unfortunate events.  How could you not?  You would think the obvious lesson was to not drink coffee and work on your laptop. Actually, though this is great advise, I wasn’t even close to the coffee, it was just a freak accident resulting from a chain of events.  The lesson is more to not do more than one thing at a time.

I should have just focused on that kiss.

And maybe do a backup more frequently.