inhale, 1-2-3, exhale 1-2-3.

Amelia; the precious, the darling, has executed her first big "oops" with some real finesse this week. One might ask, "Oh [giggle- giggle, chuckle-chuckle] what did the little cutie break? A plate? A cell phone perhaps?" All those things would have been perferred, but she really outdid herself and chose the most priceless of items to destroy. She yanked on the cord to our external hard drive and let it bounce on the floor. In a nutshell, this sensitive piece of hardware, about the size of a thick book, holds all the data to our computer. All the reports for my work, and all the photos from the last 6 years or so. All of them. So, the hundreds of photos from these first nine months, years of family, showers, christmas, everything is in there.

I tried turning on the hard drive after the fall, and it made an awful grinding noise and would not connect. I put my face in my hands, and felt like my chest had dropped down to my belly. Of all things to damage, this might be the worst. Since then I've taken the hard drive to a "data recovery" place, to see if the photos are recoverable.

I explained what had happened to the quiet, sympathetic tech at the data recovery place. I kept wanting to give up trying to talk with him, because my technical jargon is limited to words like "thingy" and "this part". I handed over the broken hard drive as if I was handing him my broken heart, saying "can you fix it?". Time is money, so I paid for the most inexpensive option for evaluation, which will be sometime in the next 2-3 weeks. Till then all I can do is pray, and start printing my photos!