Over the last week we have had various things go wrong... Sigh. I went to the bathroom, and of course the toilette was clogged and just about overflowing. I looked at the Charmin toilette paper and wondered if the thickness and fluffiness of it had something to do with it. I called Nicole into the bathroom and asked her if she knew a little more about the situation, and she explained to me that she had a #2 and needed a little more tp. Hmm... Well, that sums it up. The toilette was clogged with toilette paper and other stuff. I got out the old faithful blue plunger. I worked and worked. I plunged and plunged. After about an hour, I got a back cramp, and the water level was still the same. It was frustrating. The toilette must have been very jammed. After some time, I gave up. I went to Home Depot to buy a toilette snake. I bought the cheapest one, and returned home to an almost overflowing toilette. Just in time... I pushed the metal snake into the toilette and cranked the turn knob, and nothing came out. This went on for about half an hour until I finally got the idea to push the toilette snake as far down the pipes as humanly possible, and then I started to crank and crank and crank. The water level started to drop so I flushed the toilette. Whatever it was, it was almost flushed back down. I did it again, and again. To my amazement, a miracle happened, the toilette flushed properly, and the water went down and then raised to the right level. I was proud of myself. A lot of women would not have been able to unclog a toilette all by themselves, but I did it.
The next thing to break down was my laptop. It was an Acer, and I liked it. I've had the same laptop for five years. It has a few small quirks. Each time the laptop plug comes undone, the laptop makes a beeping noise. Sometimes it would beep repetitively, and could get really annoying to other people in the same room. Another problem, the Acer laptop had something else go wrong with the magnets. Each time I moved the laptop I could hear the magnets inside of it rattling around. Probably the worst problem that my Acer had was whenever I went to shut the laptop closed, there would be an unpredictably loud squealing noise, worse than a horn. One time I had my laptop inside of a bag, never opened it, and I was in a crowded room when the Acer laptop must have moved in a way. The whole thing brayed so loud, everyone in the room was laughing. I didn't dare tell them that the sound was coming from my laptop. That would be so embarrassing! I knew that my laptop was on the way out. I had to replace the cord once.
I kept telling Nicole not to kink the cord, not to pull it so hard, and not to let the battery go dead. Well, when I came into the room, she fixed it. She plugged in the laptop, gave the cord some slack, and tried not to let the battery go dead. A few days after I fixed the toilette, Nicole told me, "Mommy, there's only 6% battery charge left on the computer." I checked it, and sure enough the socket was loose, and the plug in wasn't fitting right. It wasn't going to charge without major repair. Nicole cried that she was sorry, so sorry. At first I was very mad, but then I realized that it wasn't her fault. I had fixed it numerous times, and there was no more fixing to be done. It was time to get a new laptop.
I looked online, and I had been thinking about getting a smaller laptop, something that is more portable, and maybe something that is light weight. I liked the chrome books and notebooks. I checked the ratings and one of my favorite was a magenta or blue colored HP. It was only $199, which in my mind is a bargain. I've spent thousands on laptops before. I just wanted something simple. I went to the electronics section of my local store and bought the HP of my dreams.
I couldn't wait to turn it on. I did. I checked it, and everything was so perfect. I was satisfied with it. I have had HP before, and it was probably my longest lasting laptop. Well, I could tell something was wrong with this one right off. Something wasn't going right with the keypad. I waited, and eventually the computer locked up. I went to type in my user name and password, and my password was incorrect. Now I know because I've had this password for quite a long time that this was not a password error. I had only typed it a few million times getting into my windows accounts. I typed it slowly, but it didn't work. I checked cap locks, and it was off so it wasn't that either. The HP locked up. I tried desperately to unlock it, to call support or to find some way to make it work. After an hour of trying, I just gave up. It's probably not the password, it's probably something else. Whatever it was, I didn't have time to fiddle around with it.
I took the HP back to the electronics section and customer service exchanged it for the same type of computer, and hopefully, I'm crossing my fingers that this laptop holds out. So far so good... I've had one broken toilette, and two broken laptops. Things happen in threes so I'm hoping that this is the end of my charade. I don't know how much more frustration I can take.
Nicole used her savings to buy a Netbook 8, and she LOVES it. At first we wanted the cheaper version, the Netbook 7, but there were no more left. We decided to go ahead and buy the Netbook 8, and it was only twenty or thirty dollars more with tax, and it had 3 different cameras front and rear. The Netbook 7 only has a front facing camera (for selfies, I imagine). Nicole was happy to flip the screen on the Netbook 8 back and forth. The Netbook 8 was well worth the extra money. We found a nice black case for her Netbook 8 at Staples, and it only cost $10. That's my kind of price. Nicole wanted me to check out her Netbook 8. We downloaded multiple free games from Google Play. We tried out Youtube, and it downloaded quickly. The picture quality was great, and the audio range was good for a small tablet. Nicole also downloaded free books. Even though the google search is a little slow, it's a tablet. It's not going to have the speed that a laptop has. Still it was small and functional. It did all of the functions that she liked. Nicole loves it. She even told me that I was the best mommy in the whole wide world.
I guess the only thing left to do today is pray that the new HP holds out longer than the Acer, longer that the first HP that I bought and had to return. If that breaks again, I don't know how much more I can stand. I'm still a little low tech, trying to get used to all the high tech mumbo jumbo and hoping that I can adapt to all these new computer programs. Since I have very few technical skills, I will pray about it. Please, please, Please, don't let this new notebook break down... One can hope.
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