I fly into Melbourne on Thursday night for the ProBlogger event, which runs Friday and Saturday. Saturday night. I leave Etihad stadium after a full day of brain stretching to catch my eight pm flight home from Sydney.
I never check my laptop in when I fly– who does that, trusts their prized possession with baggage handlers who are likely to play tarmac soccer with it....? But I've been lugging the combined thirty kilogram weight of three bags around for two hours now and I am so damn tired.
I'm picked up from Sydney airport at ten pm. I sleep for nine hours, wake still exhausted to the bone. I collect my children from my mum’s house and meet up with friends for a day out. After running around, driving another two hours in between stops and starts... it's seven o'clock and the gloaming is beginning by the time we finally get home.
My house if full of people– my cousin, The Doc, my mate Kristabelle. I never mind the company but tonight there is just too many of them and I need a break... the noise of constantly interacting with other restless souls for four days straight has become an almost unbearable din.
I open my laptop, trying not to think too hard about the forty emails I have to answer and two articles due tomorrow. I turn around to put something in the dishwasher, turn back...
"Oh no..." It's a whisper that feels like a whimper. "Oh no, no..."
The screen is shattered, a huge crack running diagonally across the entire seventeen inches of screen. My stomachs drops and flips and I feel so stupid- if it were physically possible, I'd kick myself in the face. Who is stupid enough to check in their laptop?? Especially on a discount carrier that essentially use streamlined buses with wings for their aircraft and have you walk across a virtual frozen tundra of tarmac to board?
I look around my house, at four loads of unfolded washing and no less than eight bags of clothes, mine and the kidlets, that need to unpacked following our four days away from the TinyTrainHouse, lest we have no clean underwear. I think of washing that should be done and lunches that need to be packed and writing I'd really like to do and so many emails to be answered and a million other things....
And I start to cry. I can't help it. Obese inflated tears roll down my cheeks and I sob noisily, gutturally, so fed up with the way things are always so damn difficult and so tired of being tired all the time.
My mate Kristabelle... she's all kinds of awesome. I connect my laptop to an old TV and finish what must desperately be done tonight while she cleans the worst of the mess in my house. She sits with me, on the edge of my bed, as I cry pitifully, a slick layer of shiny tears across my cheeks, my eyes swollen and sore.
"I miss him" I sob to her, "I miss so much, and I just want him back."
"I know" she says, all there is to say, "I know..."
She stays with me until I have cried myself to sleep, and then she returns at half past seven the next morning. Gets my kids up and dresses, wakes me as she's leaving to walk them to daycare for the day.
And I catch up, enjoy the day that goes too quickly. At the end of it, there's still so much to do, the never ending list of things I'm not quite on top of.
But it feels manageable again, as though I can handle it... Just.
Maybe it's just having someone in my corner. Some people are real and unafraid and so generous of spirit it makes me want to weep.
People like that are rare. A friend like Kristabelle.... I'm very lucky to have her.
***
I begin to wonder if breaking a computer screen is akin to breaking a mirror.
Kim from MM, With Some Grace and I at the #PBEvent. Why do I somehow feel as though I jinxed myself...?
In the days that follow I get locked out of my email account and lock myself out of my house (again). I discover first hand the catastrophic difference the carbon tax is going to make to the average household and almost faint when I open my electricity bill. I fight with a good friend, yell at my kids. I discover my travel insurance doesn't cover those people dense enough to not carry valuable goods on the plane with them. Insomnia kicks my arse and I find myself awake, clenching my teeth and wired with anxiety until four or five AM.
It's been a bad week.
The next one has to be better.