the accident.

*Note: I will be silently weeping whilst I type this post.*
Let me give you a little bit of background:
We live in an old house.
We go without a lot of things that other people ask “how do you do that?!?!”. We don’t have cable. We don’t have internet. No dishwasher. Frankly, when you don’t have those things, you do other things with your time, and you get over hand washing dishes because that is your life.

I ran downstairs on Saturday late afternoon to throw something in the dryer for a minute. Nothing was out of the ordinary, except I left wet footprints on the dry floor of the laundry room. Long story short, it had flooded. Wet carpet is no good, so I ran upstairs and grabbed a few towels. While I was standing there soaking up water, I saw a pile of electronics on the floor of the laundry room…mostly chords, but there was a brand new router and some other stuff that I was praying didn’t get wet. Luckily, they had been sitting on top of some cardboard boxes that had soaked up the water. I went to pick them up and set them elsewhere….and that’s when I saw it. My laptop, under a pile of chords.
What was my laptop doing there? That’s a good question. Without the internet in my house, I haven’t been using my computer. I had set it safely in a chair that we had stored away over a month ago. I’m loving that it was taken from that soft chair and placed on a hard concrete floor of a room that had previously flooded.
So without thinking, I took it upstairs and unscrewed the back panel and took out the battery. Soaked. Water everywhere.
Last time I had a problem with water and electronics mixing (i.e. the time I dropped my phone in the toilet) I was told to put it in the freezer. Surprise, surprise….it fixed my phone.
Since I was getting ready to leave for the night, and since there was really nothing else for me to do, I put that laptop in the freezer for the night.
Sunday morning I pulled that bad boy out. (right now if you’re thinking I’m going to tell you it turned on and worked like a dream, sorry to burst your bubble, but not all stories have happy endings) I let it sit for 30 minutes. I plugged it in, and pushed the power button. I started to smell something….like burning plastic, and then smoke started to come out of the bottom of my computer.
Great. Now I’ve fried it. Is there any chance to save the computer? I think I’ve given up hope. What I’m concerned about now is getting files off of that baby. Who knows if there’s even a chance.
The saddest part : I was going to give my laptop to my brother for Christmas. Yes, he gets home from his mission in a month, and was going to need a computer for school. Since I wasn’t using mine, I was very excited to be able to give it to him. And now, because of something stupid and careless, I can’t.
I’m beyond frustrated. I’m beyond sad. It’s worse than bummed.

When all is said and done, I know it’s just a “thing”. It’s only money, right? But for me, it was a lot of money. And not just a thing, but it was going to be a gift for someone else.

Dang. Dang. Dang.