The day Tinkerbell broke me

photoSee this Tinkerbell cup above? In a moment you’re going to understand what on earth it has to do with blog post. Until then, there’s this…

I like Oprah. I have ever since I was young enough to feign sickness and take the day off school, witnessing my Ma and her daily ritual of watching Oprah while having lunch. She reminds me of childhood, my teen years and then growing up and finding my own love for her. When Oprah talks I listen.

I’m still a bit dirty that I didn’t get free tickets to her shows in Australia. I’m also still a bit dirty with myself for not realising I probably could have weaseled some media passes somehow. Anywho…

Oprah believes that life talks to us in whispers. I believe the same.

It’s that little voice within you that tells you to do something or not do it. It gently guides you to make decisions and live the life you’re meant to live. Deep, I know. Stay with me.

I’m not talking about the voices that pop up when there is cake in the house. You know the ones that tell you to eat that cake, or don’t eat the cake, or eat the cake, or go for a run instead. That’s your tummy talking. Not the whispers.

So, life talks to us in whispers. Lately, I’ve been hearing the whispers. Amongst the extreme-tiredness, the baby crying, the 6 year old chatting {she does that a lot}, the husband telling me stories {he does that a bit too} and all the other noise that life brings, I ignored the whispers.

They were telling me to put less on my plate. To slow down. To stress less. To rest more. To take a walk in the fresh air. To ask for help. To slow the heck down.

So, I heard them but I was to busy ignoring them to stop and listen to them.

The thing with the whispers is that if you ignore them, they don’t quit. They get louder and louder and louder until you can ignore them no more.

Miss Oprah says:

“Difficulties come when you don’t pay attention to life’s whisper. Life always whispers to you first, but if you ignore the whisper, sooner or later you’ll get a scream”

I was cleaning the house, trying to do a million things at once. Luella was cranky. I had her on my hip as I vacuumed the house. By the time I’d made it through all the bedrooms and the two bathrooms, my arms were burning, and I was becoming frustrated. Luella was equally unimpressed. Not crying, just not thrilled with the whole vacuum thing. The whispers had pulled up a chair, grabbed a megaphone and were telling me to stop.

I kept vacuuming.

Each morning Hubby makes Lacey a sandwich for breakfast and a cup of water {that day it was in a cute Tinkerbell cup} on the arm of the lounge for breakfast before he goes to work. That morning I placed my laptop on the lounge as well, before I went about my day. When I did it, I got a whisper telling me to move it. I ignored it.

Later, as I was vacuuming I knocked the cup of water and it landed perfectly over my closed laptop. And finally I stopped.

I grabbed the laptop, cursed the whispers and knew it was a-goner. I opened it up, tried to switch it on, nothing. I wiped it down, tried to turn it on… and again, nothing. I put it in the sunshine. Dried it gently with a hairdryer. Nothing.

My life is on that laptop. Because I’m so overwhelmed at the pace at which children grow I captured so much of my girls and kept it on there. Silly, short videos of Luella suckling. Lacey’s first day at school. Moments after giving birth. Just so many moments.

Perhaps there’s nothing profound about it. Perhaps there’s no lesson to be learned in the water/laptop incident. Perhaps I’m just a super klutz who needs to be more careful {quite possible}.

Or perhaps life picked the material item that mattered most and decided to teach me a lesson.

And perhaps it’s time I stopped and listened.

{And after I’ve stopped for a bit, perhaps it’ll be time to search for a geek who can do some CPR on my poor laptop}.

Do you believe that life speaks to us in whispers? Or is that just crazy talk? What are your whispers telling you?

And I know it’s a lot of questions, but most importantly… have you ever brought a laptop back from the dead?

24 thoughts on “The day Tinkerbell broke me”

  1. My laptop also may have died 2 days ago. And blogging by phone is not the easiest thing in the world. I say “may have died” because it turns on but doesn’t fully boot up. It has done that before, but never for 2 whole days (and starting 3rd day). My computer and I were doing great as long as I ran a full Norton Antivirus scan every day. Then I started missing days and now it won’t fully wake up.

    And then my washer died yesterday. I guess voices are trying to tell me something but I am not quite sure what. It sounds to me like they are telling me to quit trying to make money from home and also go out and spend some more money at the same time.

  2. Oh no. Fingers and toes are crossed for you. I’ve just discovered Dropbox and linked it so that all my pics and videos taken on my phone save straight to my Dropbox which is accessible on phone, laptop and iPad. Very handy. Keep us posted on your laptop. X

  3. Oi. That’s not good. I can imagine your frustration 🙁

    And yes, I know how life can whisper to you. I also know how bad I can be at listening well. Especially when life is overwhelming. Which is kind of not so smart, because especially during those kinds of times those whispers can save the day – and my sanity. 😉

  4. You are so right about the whispers! We get so caught up in life, moving too fast through each day, we forget to just stop and listen. I’ve been trying to take my time more lately, practising gratitude and being thankful, forcing myself to stop and take a break, to listen to the little voices and act upon them (don’t worry, they’re not talking crazy..yet). I believe everything in life happens for a reason and sometimes life just wants to grab our attention, like it did with the water/laptop incident, sometimes we just need to be forced to stop! Great post!

    Sarah 🙂

    Saloca in
    Wonderland

  5. I certainly believe you get whispers telling you to eat the cake- I get them plenty! I believe things happen for a reason and perhaps something good will come from your misfortune in the laptop department. It’s just that being patient and waiting for the good to come leaves you with more time to eat that cake!

  6. Laptops can be resurrected and I’m always being whispered at. Actually they scream a fair bit at me. Hope you get you laptop working long enough to get it all off and backed up x

  7. If all else fails, and the laptop is dead, you can pull the hard disk, pick up a hard disk enclosure for it, and recover all of your files that way. Don’t let anyone restore it or reload your operating system – that will wipe the files. Odds are that the water did not damage the hard disk.

  8. My laptop has been playing up for days and I keep thinking I need to back it up before it dies and I lose everything but I have been so busy….. Today I am taking the time to do it so I don’t find myself devastated when it’s all gone….. Thanks for kicking my butt into to gear. I think we all need to slow done, why do some of us insist on doing so much. Xx

  9. On day my desktop died. Like suddenly black screen POOF it was all gone. There were tears, many many tears. EVERYTHING was on there. I thought all I had was Facebook and the very few photos I had printed in the 3 years since Sadie had been born. I dropped it off with a tech guy and he managed to get everything off my hard drive and back it up for me. I loe him forever. Crossing everything for you xoxo

  10. Oh I feel your pain Chantelle. My external hard drive has decided it won’t respond to anything and it’s got ALL my important stuff on there. All of my photos of Autumn, graphic design work I’ve done and more. I’m too scared to find a geek to check it out in fear I really have lost it all…that and I think it’s going to cost me an arm and a leg!

  11. Darling as frustrating as all of it is the profound, deepest meaning of it all is….SHIT HAPPENS! You DO need to slow down just a little bit because if you read your own blog, you are running at a frenetic pace for what? The carpet will still need vacuuming if you leave it an extra hour! Not to play down the wisdom of Oprah but Those ‘whispers’ are your common sense! LISTEN! Picture your Sister or one of your girlfriends going at the pace you are right now and imagine what you’d tell her? NOW LISTEN TO YOU! We are always so wise when we are doling out advice to others! Just tackle one thing at a time. I understand the whole computer thing is really awful but ask around and Im sure you’ll find someone who can retrieve your stuff even if you can’t save the actual laptop. Learn from it though and make the whole thing mean something! Back up the important stuff onto an external hard drive every so often!! Feel Better sweetie, this too shall pass! by the way we all have ‘Tinkerbells’ in our lives….the flighty princess who thinks everything’s fairy dust and sparkles! Under it all she’s a trouble making bitch!

  12. Great post, but I actually think that if you ignore the whispers that they will get quieter. Some, perhaps, get louder, but most will just fade away and become a missed opportunity. Like whispers that tell you to help people, to take advantage of this opportunity, etc. Thanks for this food for thought!

  13. I’ve lost lots of photos before…twice actually…plus lots of business data. First when my son spilt a cup of milk on my laptop and the next time when the kids decided to sit (jump) on my new laptop when we were travelling overseas. I lost about a year and a half worth of photos of my eldest two kids plus our holiday snaps. Took them to an IT guy but didn’t get the pics back – but you never know your luck – it’s still worth a try.
    I ignored the whispers too. Now I don’t ignore them. If I get a feeling I know it must mean something. I think it’s also called learning from my mistakes the hard (and expensive) way!

  14. I lost a year’s worth of data recently when my laptop was stolen (amongst other things) when our house was burgled. The burglars very nicely left some older laptops that we had lying around though, so at least I wasn’t completely without electronics. I say I lost a year’s data because that’s how long it had been since I had backed up the darn thing to my external drive (which thankfully they did not take).

    That night, I set myself up with a Dropbox account. Now all my photos and music and documents are backed up to Dropbox and I do not have to fear their loss again. And the photos from our European trip magically re-appeared when I got a new iPad and restored it. (I’m not an Apple fanboy, but that was a joyous discovery). I also set up my email accounts to forward to a Gmail account so everything important gets backed up there too (I do have to regularly go through it and delete thousands of emails, but at least I’ll never lose things like our holiday bookings again).

    I have never done it, but it most certainly IS possible to retrieve the data off your HDD. Take it to a geek, don’t try it yourself and after you get it all back, set yourself up with a cloud backup so it doesn’t happen again. x

  15. You can open it with a screwdriver. On the back you can see which screwed part gives access to what. We had two HP pavillion something and we easily removed our hard disks. Buy yourself an external hard drive case and cable. The laptop’s hard drive will fit in the case, and you plug the cable on it and on an USB port of a desktop computer or another laptop. All of your files are there.
    Also, try to use google drive to keep those files in the cloud. All you need is a gmail account. There’s also Dropbox or microsoft’s One Drive, you can sync the files so they’re available anywhere you go.
    Hope it helps.

  16. it is possible to pull the harddrive from the computer and attach it to another computer. The hard drive won’t have been damaged by the water, it will just be the circuitry on the motherboard. Find someone who has a good reputation with data recovery and who won’t charge like a wounded bull. Ask on facebook if you are on local forums for where you live. There will always be a geek around somewhere that can help you.

  17. You use a Mac right? San you get to a store with a genius bar?
    And also, I know it totally won’t help now, but buy a Time Machine. Best investment ever. We have one in our office which works as a wireless router, and each computer also backs up to it.
    It basically takes a snapshot, so if your computer dies, you can guy a new one and restore your last backup. It even restores most of your personal accounts and settings. From memory, you just have to put in passwords etc again.
    Good luck, and make sure you slow down a bit.

  18. I hope you can get those precious memories off the hard drive. I know I would be devastated if I lost all of ours. 😉 I have a terrible memory, so love having to look back on photos and videos of my two littlies.

    I do believe in whispers, but probably aren’t that attuned to them 🙂

  19. I hope you can get those precious memories off the hard drive. I know I would be devastated if I lost all of ours. 😉 I have a terrible memory, so love having to look back on photos and videos of my two littlies.

    I do believe in whispers, but probably aren’t that attuned to them 🙂

  20. My grandmother always used to say “first God sends you a pebble, then a rock, then a boulder.” I never really understood it until I became a mother. Now, I try to listen before any boulders appear 🙂

  21. Oh no Chantelle! (sorry just catching up on your blog now!) Did you get it working?! That is the worst feeling in the whole world! I felt sick just reading it! My brother in law is a crazy computer man and he has brought a few laptops “insides” back from the dead, so hopefully your could be too! x

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