Yesterday, a murder was committed in my household. In a moment of fleeting and senseless violence, my beloved companion – let’s call her Hewlett Packard PC Notebook, although I was usually wont to call her Buttercup – was brutally and fatally attacked. The perpetrator? Jasper, who in a fit of baby frustration grabbed her and pummeled her and flung her to the floor, where, with a flicker and a hiss, she died. As an infant, he cannot be held criminally responsible, but he does face at least twenty years of being regularly reminded of that time he killed Mommy’s computer and Mommy had a nervous breakdown.

I am bereft, I am bereft. Also, I am living in the Dark Ages. It’s quiet here. (It’s a Dark Ages with smartphones and wired public libraries, but still. I AM WITHOUT LAPTOP. I might as well be without arms.)

(No, not without arms. WITHOUT AIR. I am trapped in an airless box with only teeny holes and a drinking straw through which to suck oxygen from the outside world. A drinking straw, and not the bendy kind. And its ends are all chewed up and flattened and OH GOD I CANNOT GET AIR.)

(*faints*)

So, my laptop was murdered and I am seriously, seriously limited in my connectivity. Which is, you know, a disaster, because my livelihood depends upon that connectivity and seriously, how is one supposed to make one’s living as a writer in the Internet Age when one is equipped only with a smartphone and a library card? (You try battling teenagers for the Internet-connected computers in the library. They’re jonesing for their MySpace, and they will cut you to get it. Or at least they have that look about them.) And in the meantime, I have articles to write, books to pitch, posts to post, and a brother to look for (I’ve just learned his real name, which gives me something to search for at the precise moment that I am unable to do electronic searching. Wherefore art thou, Google?) And my husband is going tomorrow to have his boy parts snipped and I’m all ambivalent and confused about that and really kinda need to write it out but gah. Am thwarted. Am thwarted and bereft and lost.

(Also can’t read online commentary about Lost.)

(Shoot me now.)

*Also can’t monitor comments, so. This post will have to remain a comment-free cry in the dark.