My laptop is ailing. Dying, in fact. It is struggling and groaning and is, I fear, not long for this world. I lamented (yet again) the impending demise of my trusty Wordsmithing anvil the other night, and my husband asked (yet again) whether I was finally ready to shop for a new one.
Finally, I was.
My brother has been trying for years to persuade me to make the move from PC to Mac. 
So far, I have resisted. My husband finally convinced me to take my brother’s advice, and so we went shopping for a MacBook. Online. On my old laptop. The bitterness of such irony, eh? We sat together for hours, comparing, learning, watching the tutorials I had already watched half a dozen times (but don’t tell my husband or brother), and at last, having made my choice, I was ready to place my order. “You should call your brother first,” advised my husband before disappearing to practice darts.
I called my brother.
My brother was excited to learn I had finally seen the light and was about to make The Conversion. My brother was not, however, excited to learn I had chosen the saucy black MacBook that is a step up from the one he has. We may be 44 and 41 years old, but the competition between the engine and the caboose has not diminished in our more than four decades together. Remind me to tell you about our cameras some time. (chuckle)
Anyway, I walked through the order process with my brother, ending up with free this and bonus that, and went to bed that night a little poorer, but all together a very happy girl. I had, after all, a shiny new MacBook on the way….a saucy black MacBook, no less, of which my brother was jealous.
Some moments are too perfect not to savour.
It turns out the items in my order were all shipped separately, so I clicked the various tracking numbers thirty times a day to see where my new toys were. Kanshun, Shanghai, Anchorage, Newark, Memphis, Mississauga, Edmonton…….and…..here? No. Everything sort of stalled once it hit Alberta. Except the mouse – the mouse arrived in record time…but just the mouse, nothing more. I stood in the Post Office staring at the little white thing in my hand and, the absolute picture of dejection, said, “A mouse? Just…a mouse? What’m I gonna do with a mouse??”
It was so sad.
Two days ago I received a text message from my brother: “Has it arrived yet?”
I responded: “Well, the website says they were delivered at noon yesterday, but I don’t have them. I don’t know where they were delivered, I just have a mouse.”
Now, you know that I love a good mystery - mysteries are intriguing and fascinating - but not, I have learned, when shiny new saucy black MacBooks are involved. Mysteries under such circumstances are neither good nor interesting. They are, in fact, not very good at all.
Finally, finally, finally, today I was able to send this text message to my brother: “It is very shiny and it is very black.”
He responded: “Did you hear the angels singing when you opened it?”
When I stop laughing, I will tell him that I did, indeed, hear the angels singing…and then I heard them laughing because they know I have commitments that will keep me from introducing myself to my shiny new saucy black MacBook until the day after tomorrow.
At the earliest.
Bother!
