The skies are booming tonight in South Elgin. I have an anxious beagle leaning against me, ears up and listening as fireworks go off randomly. Once awhile he turns to me and looks into my eyes or licks my hand.

He’s not too keen on the noises apparently.

I’m trying to wrap up one of my short stories, but honestly, I’m anxious and a little tired. It was a rough week at work. I felt overwhelmed by numerous tasks and job roles, and sometimes I feel like I’m going through an identity crisis. The constant struggle between having ten dollars left in the bank account a week before payday and more led me to the decision to take on more part time work. I’ll probably hunt for jobs on oDesk this weekend.

At my SLA job, I told my supervisor I could take on another client. After doing so, my husband asked me when I’d have a day off. I said I wouldn’t. Because on those free nights, I’d be here, in my bedroom, writing on my Mac. Writing, writing, and more writing. Drafting too, but I count that as part of the process.

Then my thoughts wander to my Mac, how much comfort it’s given me over the years. It’s one of my most precious gifts. My husband surprised me with a Macbook Pro in 2007 on Black Friday. It ran Leopard (hey, it was cutting edge back then!) and even though he got the inexpensive version, he knew I needed it to write. He knew that if I continued to write up in my office, he’d hardly get to see me. I’m lucky I can write anywhere. Well… sometimes if the TV is too distracting I have to leave, but most of the time I can zone out into my writing, leaving the outside world behind. Ultimately, he wanted me to have a more mobile way of writing. I thank him for it.

Over the years, my Mac has become deprecated, but I still love it. I’ve had to replace a charger cord, a battery, a disk drive. I’ve added memory too. I upgraded it to Snow Leopard, and finally to Lion. It won’t go farther than that. It’s too old but that’s okay. This last winter the hard drive fried. I was really sad. We couldn’t afford another Mac; that was a luxury I didn’t have. So I shopped around for PCs. I used my work laptop for a while. Meh, it’s not the same. I’m okay with Windows 8, but there’s something about a Mac environment that I just missed.

So…looking at my funds and my options. I googled how much it would take to replace the hard drive. I searched my model on Amazon, and then I searched on YouTube (Gods Bless it!) how to replace a hard drive in a 2007 Macbook Pro. I found both! The HD was only $40! I could certainly swing that over a new computer. Plus, if I failed, I was only out forty bucks. I could still shop around for new ones. I could still use my work computer. So I got the new HD, realized I didn’t have a screw driver small enough to take the computer casing off, so husband and I headed to Home Depot and bought the tool I needed that night. (Plus, I got a new tool, so that was good!)

I spent pretty much the whole night until about 1 AM putting it together and then getting software installed. Getting the HD in didn’t take as long, but I got it in my head to put Linux and Mac on it, and out of frustration, I just used Ubuntu for a while. I…I tried to like it. For a couple of months I gave it a shot. I think the thing that wrecked it for me were the key commands. I was on a Mac and yet the key commands were just not the same.

So I started over. I installed Snow Leopard on it, and then Lion (because it was a download from the store) and yay! It’s back! Some things have changed. After awhile my Mac starts to chug and act labored. The casing gets too hot after a while. And my vast iTunes library is gone. I mean, it’s not gone. I brought back the Time machine files, but not everything was perfectly restored. Frankly, I’m keeping things light on my old friend. I’m using her for writing and net surfing and that’s about it. I installed Gimp and LibreOffice, but other than that, I use it mostly with Chrome. It works well enough.

And I got my old friend back. Here’s hoping the old girl gets me through a few more stories down the way. Cheers, H.K. Rowe