Wow. It’s only been EIGHT DAYS since my last post. I find that extraordinary. I thought it had been at least fifteen. I note that my last one was dated the night before a few things were all shot to hell. If you follow me on twitter you may have noted the long sad bellow of despair…

But let’s backtrack. It was exactly a week ago, as I was trying to get Small Z off to her first Really Long Day at kinder that my boss rang me. My boss NEVER rings me. He said he had extra work that he was supposed to get done, was supposed to already have done, and could I…um…do it for him? STAT!

It was web-trawling research work – compiling information about methods of assessment on a state by state basis. Teeth-aching boredom – but paid by the hour. And so began my Hell. Working at night, on top of the sleep striking/teething/waking? Two nights of it and my wheels began to fall off…

But I only noticed when I realised I’d washed my iPhone. My precious window to sanity, sloshed around in the front loader for ONE WHOLE HOUR. Oh god. I discovered it when I had people over and so was fairly composed. Unfortunately I had to voice my sadness, albeit in a restrained manner – and Small Z did all the suffering for me, screaming and crying about her games and ‘Was it dead f-o-r-e-v-e-r?’

I baked it in the oven encased in rice (a little too hot, but…) then I cracked open the case and left it in the hot car for two days. My SIM card, somehow, survived intact. And the phone, when I put it all back together, actually worked! Except for the microphone – so people could call me, talk at me – but could not hear me. D’oh.

Over a day or two it began getting flakier. The wifi carked it. The backlight was intermittent. The thing I hated most? No camera. Anyway, we happened to be going to a birthday party on Sunday close to an Apple Store… I’d done a bit of research and realised that I could get a brand new replacement cheapest straight from Apple.

Sure enough, I walked into my ‘genius appointment’ and about eight minutes later I was $179 poorer (can you feel my credit card sweating?) but the owner of a brand new white 3GS. And thanks to iCloud, all my stuff was getting put back on it as I hovered out the front waiting for M to return with the Smalls. I was soothed. And thankful. And kind of disgusted at myself at the excessive amount of money involved…

That night, we got home after a revoltingly hot day, the Smalls conked out (a marvel in itself…but my joy was premature) and I sat down at my computer. My first workfree night (the previous evening had been spent making a present for the birthday). I updated ‘flash player’ as it requested and was twenty minutes into Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries when my computer died. My Macbook Pro. Workhorse that has never blinked.

I couldn’t. believe. it. Nor could I believe that I had, of course, backed up nothing. My work that I needed to send in the next day was on there. It was cold sweat time. I pulled the hard drive out so fast that my screwdriver was on fire for the lord. Thank goodness M has a computer.

I put my hard drive into an external casing with a usb and plugged it in. It was, being formatted for Mac, unrecognised. After much cursing I installed HSFExplorer – a free and holy grail piece of software.

I was able to access all my files, copy all the important ones over to M’s computer and breathe a massive sigh of relief…

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The second installment will be posted tomorrow. The sleep strike remains ongoing and thus I must away to bed.