My lovely husband, who truly thinks higher of me and my intelligence than he ought, recently purchased for me a lovely used laptop.  I was in my glory. The whole purpose of said purchase (wow, that was fun to say) was to facillitate my writing genius whilst enabling my homeschool teacherness.

Allow me to back up for a minute:  I love writing my own curriculum for my children. I'm not talking about replacing Abeka and Saxon Math here. I'm talking about Unit Studies and Literature Guides.  My dear friend does this also.  She was so industrious as to actually figure out how and where to sell her Literature Guides as e-books.  Go to her blog and check out the links and buy several copies. She is a missionary now and needs your help to get to Papua New Guinea! (I'm not kidding: go buy one! but then come right back here).

Anyway, back to me (it's always all about me here at Fuel).  So my hubby and Kristina were both on me to get writing again and get my units ready for sale.  This was highly motivating to me, because even though I'm NOT going to PNG, it would be so fun to actually make some money from something I love doing.  But see besides these units there is a pretty funny Chapter One to a novel that I've started that I should finish and also a book about postpartum depression that Kristina and my beau want me to finish.

Hence the computer. (that was for you again Mike!) You see, my dear brilliant children work very well on their own at the dining room table and I am free to leave the room to change laundry, feed a baby, change a diaper etc.  I can even run downstairs to the computer to check email on occassion, but the disappearing into a writing frenzy (which has happened) is not conducive to homeschool life or to living like a partially sanctified woman. When I have tried this, the kids feel abandoned (and rightfully so), I feel interuppted and grumpy (when they have the *audaucity* to come and ask for long division help) and then I feel guilty for making it all about me (while this is par for the course on the blog, it really shouldn't be like that in the home).  So the brilliant idea that I planted in my husband's brain was that if I had a laptop I could write at the dining room table being creative and teacherish all at once.

SO smart. 

Well, didn't he just surprise me by doing this.  And a lovely wee box she is.  One problem.  When I turned the computer on it said I was "Administrator" and had a picture of a karate kid.  So not my style. My computer: my name: my avatar....right?  How complicated can this be?  Well, more than I could handle apparently. Remember the subtitle up there at the top? I could change the picture, but not the name.  Really not that important right?

Right.

So I ignore it while my husband rips my favourite CD's on to iTunes and uploads eSword (thanks to Uncle Jack for clarifying those terms for me...see the subtitle).  Then I get busy writing the study questions to Chapter One of Little Women. This will be my next Literature Guide to write and likely the first one I will sell. My other guides that are completed need some editing before I sell them.  I could have worked on those first, but they are on our main computer and I really didn't think I could figure out how to transfer them to a jumpstick (is that what it is even called?) and then on to my computer with out deleting somebodies hard drive or at the least, losing all the work I had already done on my study guides (wait for the ironic moment...it is coming). 

Chapter one is masterfully completed.  I can hear the cash registers binging in the distance.  And just as the pride swells, the notion comes to mind that maybe changing the user account name wouldn't be that hard. Or maybe I could transfer all the stuff I just did to a new user account and then delete the account I didn't want. (oh oh....the ironic moment....wait for it, wait for it....)

So after several feeble attempts, all I managed to do was create a new account under the name "Barbara" (predictable, I know, but pretty easy to remember) complete with snowflake avatar...  Can't move files, can't change user account names, can't delete old or new accounts.  fantastic. So now when i turn the computer on it will have two user accounts to choose from: one looks like it should be me, but clearly isn't. One doesn't look like me, but has all my stuff on it.

aaaarrrrgh.

So I log off, shut down and pack it up for a day or two.

Just now, just minutes ago, I boot her up again, and low and behold there is no "Administrator" account showing. Just Barbara and her stupid snowflake.  With great trepidation, I log on to Barbara's account.

No music in the iTunes library.

No files saved in Word.

Therefore, no masterfully completed Chapter One to Little Women.

And somehow: no.administrator.stinkin.account.with.all.my.stuff.on.it.

double AAAAARRRRRGGHHH!

Somehow I have deleted it after all.  Any computer geeks out there got a hint for me as to where to find it?  maybe? (insert sound of crickets chirping)

In the meantime, I think I'll start writing another Book.  I think I'll call it "Dummies for Windows 2000"....

 Edit and Update: This just in!  My totally brilliant husband just came home from work and restored my computer to how it was before I bunged it up! :-) (He is a Dr. you know!) So my marvellous chapter one and all my favourite CD's are happily there....under Administrator with a karate kid picture....I'll change the picture ;-)