Interesting how, just as I shipped off my final proposal to my agent, Precious has shown signs of fatal weakening. Not only has she sustained injuries over the years such as: most of her letters are worn off from all my typing, so it’s a good thing I learned how to touch-type in high school; there are permanent palm-prints where your hands rest; the screen is a spotted mess; there is a streak of red nail polish in the upper-right corner. So now, the “z” and the “apple” keys are hardly moving.<\/p>\n
I flipped off the key tops to have a look (against Ned’s counsel, I should add, probably reminding him of the time we went to U-Haul for a small truck and all they had was a really big one and while Ned pondered and worried about what we could do about it, I hopped into the driver’s seat and drove right up to him.)<\/p>\n
There, within the complicated metallic innards of Precious, twinkling like a tiny gem, was a glass bead from the cossie repairs. I pressed my finger onto it and drew it out. “Oh, look!” I smiled to Ned, who was not at all amused. “There must be more of them under the ‘z!'” Sure enough, another little twinkly bit rolled further inside Precious.<\/p>\n
I pried off the “z,” figuring to do a bit more surgery. No go. The cap was stuck and it still is, half of it flipped up into the air like a partially removed scab, revealing the vulnerable flesh underneath. And there it stays, flapping in the breeze, making it really, really hard to get a “z.” I may have to be like Monty Python and use some other letter to mean “z.” Like the guy who can’t say the letter “c” but finally discovers he can use a “k” or an “s, ” depending. But what sounds like “z?” I can’t even spell it out, because I need to use the letter “z.” D’oh.<\/p>\n
I picked Precious up and shook her a bit, while Ned’s eyes widened in horror. I think he whispered, “Careful.” But I am not. My stuff has to be able to stand up to my style of use (I wouldn’t call it Ab-use). My family, my friends, my shoes, my cars, my plants, my gardens, my computer, all have to be tough because I am hard on everything. I was now remembering a segment of a childhood tape recording Dad had made of Laura and me playing with cars, where I heard my baby self say, “It boke, Daddy.” And he said, “Susan! You took off all the wheels!” But I merely insisted that it “boke.” Mistakes were made.<\/p>\n
I was hoping Precious would last a little longer, so that I could celebrate my next book contract (knock wood, I should be so lucky) with a new laptop. Well, I am still managing to use her, even with the flapping z. What’s a little flapping between friends?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Interesting how, just as I shipped off my final proposal to my agent, Precious has shown signs of fatal weakening. Not only has she sustained injuries over the years such as: most of her letters are worn off from all my typing, so it’s a good thing I learned how to touch-type in high school; […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pSTth-9Z","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}