Changes

There are days when getting older really sucks. For me, it’s not so much the process as it is the realization that all of a sudden, I’m not as adaptable as I used to be.

One of the things I’ve recently realized is that while I love the portability of a laptop and the freedom of typing in my bed or recliner, or outside in a lawn chair, or in a coffee shop, I loathe the keyboard, and more specifically, the mousepad’s proximity to the keyboard. I rest my palms on the edge of the keyboard, so I accidentally hit the mouse pad with my thumbs.

A lot.

This would not be a big deal except for the fact that a well-placed [read: tragically, comically, horribly placed] accident can erase thousands of words [and has…more than once].

I’ve been nearly finished with a blog post or random rant, and accidentally hit a button that shut down my program and didn’t save anything.

Profanity ensued.

I’ve been feeling the need to write again, but every time I get the computer, I sit and stare at the keyboard, and I just stop. That’s partly because of the accidental mousepad tapping, but also because I’m beginning to feel my age in my wrists and thumbs, and sitting at a keyboard that’s a little too flat and a little too narrow makes discomfort and numbness inevitable.

So today, I finally went to the store and found myself a keyboard/mouse combo that was reasonably priced and so far, doesn’t suck.

I suspect I’m going to have to eventually get one of those demented split keyboards where you can sit with your palms vertical instead of horizontal, but that was a learning curve I’m not quite ready to tackle.

I’m still sitting here with it on my lap, which isn’t the best for ergonomics, but I’ve typed this whole blog post and haven’t accidentally hit the damn mouse pad once [we won’t mention the fact that this is probably because my new keyboard is literally sitting on top of the laptop’s keyboard, so it’s physically impossible for me to touch the mouse pad without moving the new one.  Nearly idiot proof!]

Which leads me back to why getting old kinda sucks.

See, I really don’t love my laptop. I prefer the bigger keyboard, the separate mouse, and the bigger screen of a desktop.

I blame this on the fact that I quite literally have over 20 years of experience with desktop computers [and now that I think of it, it’s actually closer to 30 and that makes me feel very disturbed].

My children have no problem maneuvering their mouse pads. They can scroll, double-click, and randomly move stuff around, all without ever accidentally whacking the mouse pad and causing a major meltdown.

Just the other day, I accidentally hit a random button and my entire keyboard stopped working…and what sucks is, even after fixing the problem, I still have absolutely NO idea how I even did it, let alone how to fix it.

I dunno what the function buttons, or shortcut /hot keys/ whatever they’re called/ do…so I had no idea which button I accidentally hit and I had no idea how to fix it.

I ended up Googling it on my phone [because the keyboard did nothing…and that may have been the time I blitzed out the mouse pad at the same time…because that happened, too] to figure out how I’d managed to blow up my laptop and whether it was going to take a computer doctor to fix it or if I could muddle through and do it myself.  [luckily for me, I still know how to read and follow directions!]

These kinds of things do not happen to my children. They can move back and forth between the two platforms with miraculous ease.

But today, today I have a real keyboard, and a real mouse, and life is good.

I also decided to write something because my beloved left junk all over the bed and I have to clean it off in order to go to sleep.  I’m sleepy now. Which is partly why this makes very little sense and seems to have no point.

That’s me when I’m sleepy.

You’re welcome.