The last few days have had the potential to be worrisome ones. My daughter’s beloved computer exhibited the dreaded blue screen that indicated her registry was corrupted. I know something about computers, but not how to fix that issue (but that didn’t stop me from spending a whole day trying to fix it). Luckily I have a friend who knows about this kind of stuff who stopped by and fixed it for her (and charged me much less than the Geek Squad would have).

Then, when I swiveled in my chair to get up from my work computer I knocked the dvd tray askew. After trying to fix it, I concluded I needed to buy a new dvd reader/writer and install it. I expected to pay a fair bit of money for this — it had been years since I installed anything on my computers, and back in the olden days a dvd drive was well over $100.

Then, Monday night when I had computer guts all over the floor of my office, my daughter told me our female cat had dilated pupils that wouldn’t constrict and the cat was bumping into things and obviously couldn’t see. She consulted Dr. Internet who told her the cat was possibly going blind. I consulted Dr. Neighbor to see if we should rush the cat to the after hours animal clinic, but he said as long as she was acting ok otherwise, to wait until morning.

Through all this, however, I refused to worry. I’ve been a worrier and I’ve known worriers and I’ve concluded that worry is an unnecessary and harmful emotion. Computers can be fixed. Blind cats can adapt.

Tuesday morning I called our vet who suggested we bring our cat in for a visit.

Then I voted.

When I returned home from the polling place I took my son to get some clothes, stopping first at Micro Center to buy a new DVD drive and maybe a firewire port for my desktop. The Micro Center folks were very helpful and I found a better DVD drive then the one I broke for less than $30. I also bought a firewire/usb combo card. Now I have enough slots on my computer to run all my peripherals.

My son has been hoping for a laptop for his 16th birthday in January — but knows that desktops are actually better deals. I offhandedly remarked maybe he could build his own and he jumped at the idea. So now he and I are going to build a computer together. Something I’ve always wanted to do, and something he said he’d considered. He was pretty excited and wants to get going right away. (Yay — another geek in our family).

The day was looking up.

When I got back home my daughter said our cat’s eyes were back to normal. I kept the appointment with the vet anyway — to see if they could tell us why.

My son and I installed my dvd drive and firewire/usb ports with no problems (it took less than 30 minutes) then my daughter and I took our cat to the vet. $200+ later we still don’t know why she spent 12 hours visually impaired, but know she’s healthy enough for a senior cat.

So, except for some unexpected spending of money all is good.

Oh yeah, and then changed happened.