Oh, the drama...

I will probably do the New Year's Meme, as seen at Crazy's and Profgrrrl's, later, as a way of thinking through the year. Right now I'm still trying to process the week, which has involved much phone-calling and visits with family.

The short version:

• I managed to lose my laptop (yes, my laptop!!) somewhere in the process of getting off the train LG and I took to visit my mom. I am not a person who loses things, not gloves, not keys, not scraps of paper with phone numbers. Seriously. If I lose a coffee cup, it means I'm completely stressed out and scattered. All I can figure is (a) I was distracted by the kid (like, 10 years old) who kept trying to take my suitcase from me while I was getting LG off the train and left the laptop at my seat or (b) I left it on the platform after I fell getting off the train. (Seriously, Dear Amtrak workers, instead of telling people "be careful," it might be helpful to, I don't know, take the hand of the four-year-old getting off the train with her mother who is lugging a forty pound suitcase, a backpack, and a carseat.) I was so disoriented from the fall and navigating LG through the station that I didn't realize the computer was missing until we were already in the car on the way home. The silver linings in this event are (1) working over vacation was taken away as an option and (b) the laptop probably should have been replaced shortly anyway (it's already 5 years old), but I wouldn't have done it until the situation became dire. The negative consequences of this loss are too obvious to mention, and I'm in a huge state of denial about work that can never be recovered (all my completed/in the mail manuscripts are in hardcopy, my thumb drive, or email; but messy book chapters, bits of essays, and a novel I started last spring, oh, probably not...)
• My brother is going through a major situation involving the likely hospitalization of his father for mental illness.
• My sister. Oh, my sister. Let's just say that among her many problems she's engaged to a man considerably less charming than Nabokov's Humbert Humbert (but, perhaps that's not a fair comparison, as Lolita is one of my favorite novels).

We're heading home tomorrow afternoon. On Friday, LG will go to school and I will purchase a new computer, next Monday I will go for a consult and sonohystogram at Dr. Gorgeous's office, and then I will need to get ready for spring semester in a serious way.