Every morning I stumble downstairs, make coffee, and then bring it back up to my room and rest it on my nightstand. Then I flip open my MacBook Pro, catch up on emails, return messages, check the weather, and do some writing.
Until Katie spilled a ginormous glass of milk on my laptop. We lost the remote for the TV, and I wanted to go for a run without anyone fighting and so for the very first (and only) time, I let Katie play with my MacBook. She spilled her milk all over the bloody thing and then tried to mop it up and hide what she did. When I turned it on a few hours later, I saw a droplet of milk and then the thing fizzled out on my lap.
I brought it to Best Buy where they confirmed the death, and as I sunk to my knees, the sales guy grabbed my arm and hushed me, telling me that "it's only a laptop, that it's not a child, that your kids are healthy and alive, and the 'things' of this earth can be replaced." Then I told him that if that's true, then he'd probably not mind much at all if I tucked another MacBook under my arm and walked out.
Life is full of lessons and I have no doubt there's a big fat one waiting for me somewhere in the curdled milk. Maybe I'm not meant to be a writer. Or a runner. Or maybe I shouldn't take shortcuts on parenting techniques. Or maybe we shouldn't be drinking milk. Or maybe, just maybe, sometimes mistakes seep into our motherboard and we just have to live with it.
So here I am, punching away at the sticky keys on our desktop in the family room while Freddy pesters Katie behind me until she cries, and while Jake begs me to send them both to a boarding school in Sri Lanka. There are what looks to be boogers stuck to the edge of the desk, and there's dubstep assaulting me through the speakers.
I am a mother first. A writer and a runner, maybe those too. But always a mother. My MacBook mornings will come again when the time is right but for now, I won't cry over spilled milk. I'll just fill my cup up with wine instead.
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