Well it is 5:14 a. m. on Monday morning and under normal circumstances I would already have my article for the paper written and ready to email to the paper but when should I ever expect life or circumstances to be normal around this house? A few weeks ago I talked about my computer crashing and the not so magic extended warranty buy some stores sell you. I am sure you guys will be pleased to know after hearing nothing but UPS drive bys rather than actual stops and delivery and a second phone call to the miracle insurance/ we fix your problem place, I received my UPS box to return my laptop. When I opened the box to put my laptop in to send back, lo and behold there was another surprise waiting for me, a paper stating I must include all system recovery disks! Okay people look, it was a miracle I kept the original sales receipt and now with the twelve million electronic devices we own, you want me to find the disks that go with something I bought several years ago? The computer guy who lives in this town never needed anything like that to fix my computers here and he completely wiped the memory from one! I just neatly wrapped a picture of Patches, put it in the box with the laptop with a little note saying…Dear Sirs, I regret to tell you but I am unable to help you with your request for the system recovery disks for you see…this dog ate my homework! You will just have to do your job without assistance from me, just as I have always done mine without any help from you! Sincerely, I was insane before this laptop crashed but honey, you ain’t seen crazy yet! Of course. I didn’t really enclose such a letter and haven’t even sent the laptop back out yet. I went to the refrigerator yesterday to get a water and I did a double take because I thought maybe Patches had gone out on the porch and opened a new case of water to put in the frig because the one in my hand was warm. The ones I had put in the frig had been in there for two days and should have been freezing cold and so I opened the door again to check the temperature of other things and sure enough, nothing felt particularly cold. You guys know that feeling where your stomach starts to inch up and you feel like the sides of it are caving in? I had that feeling when I opened the freezer door. I didn’t care if ice had melted and stuff came oozing out but what I dreaded more than anything was if something had defrosted completely and it smelled! Even the thought of it had me as white as the door panels but as I gingerly opened and heard that woosh, I was very relieved to see everything still nicely frozen. The good news in all of this is I DO NOT have an extended warranty on this thing and all I have to do is go to Everett’s Furniture, see my wonderful friends, Brad and Misty and see about getting a new frig! I adore them and actually have not seen them in awhile so that shopping trip will be a pleasure, not a chore for me. Last week I heard words out my son’s mouth I never wanted to hear…”Mom, I was almost car jacked at a stop sign by two guys on Scott street!” He lives in Houston and was going to buy a very special guitar he wanted, drives a beautiful new truck and had a wallet full of money on his dashboard. He said he was stopped and one guy approached the driver’s side while another came around the passenger’s side but luckily he had been watching them and he floored his vehicle before they could open the doors and he sped away! I know the area he was in well because it is where I attended law classes and to say it is a bad area of Houston would be like saying butter is a little fattening. He called me the other day driving home from work and he sounded different, scared, and in fact, told me he needed to hang up because he was driving through a really bad part of town and it made me sad. I wish everyone could know the solace of living in a place as comforting as San Saba. I wish the biggest problem of the week was a crashed computer, sputtering frig, wayward puppy, or thinking of something to write for a weekly column. In case any of you have a single doubt, I love you all with all my heart; I cherish my moments with you; I respect your life and your will to live it. If you guys keep reading, I will keep writing because believe it or not you help keep me sane.