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Just when I thought my life couldn't get any crazier, the hard drive crashed.

The last few months had been rough. The whole thing started in late spring, when I came home from a meeting one night, opened the door and almost passed out from the heat that billowed out at me. My husband was asleep on the couch, oblivious or unconscious, I couldn't tell.

I hastened to the thermostat, anxious to turn the air conditioning on in the hopes of reviving him, only to find myself confronted with a mystery. According the little lights blinking at me the air conditioner was already on!

Strange. I checked the vent to make sure it was actually putting out cold air. It wasn't. In fact, it was blasting out hot air as fast as it could. And of course, the hotter the house got (the mid-eighties when I walked in) the harder our confused heat pump worked at heating the house even further.

It was just the beginning. Fate, not content with leaving this Idaho ice maiden to struggle with a southern summer without the benefit of air conditioning, next decided to let me find out how fast the grass can grow there when it isn't being cut! In the middle of mowing the lawn one fine sunny day, the mower gave up the ghost and died.

It was beyond resuscitation - like the one-hoss shay, it was evidently so well made that no one part broke before another. It disintegrated into an assemblage of dust and parts, impossible to repair. (Need I mention that the event filled my husband with glee? He immediately announced that he didn't think it was a good idea to buy another one - we should just hire the kid next door to mow the lawn. The only problem was that the kid next door showed up twice and then disappeared forever.)

A few weeks later we turned on the TV to find that we were looking at the outside world through thick black vertical bars. It was unnervingly like looking through a jail cell door. All the important bits kept disappearing behind a bar just when things were getting interesting. ("And the murderer is -!" followed by a close-up of the murderer's face - which happened to be behind a black spot. TV just isn't the same without a picture.)

Fourth to go was the car. There was my poor husband, peacefully driving along the freeway after a long day, when there was a thump, a jerk and a suddenly quiet car, coasting along at 65 mph. We had it towed back home, to a mechanic that had been recommended to us. He took one look at the engine, sucked in a whistling breath (you know, the one that says the world has ended and you get to pay for it?) and pronounced our sentence. ("That engine has had it! You'll have to get a new one. It'll take a couple of weeks ...")

Well, everything else we could live without, but the car was kind of an essential. Fortunately, it waited to break until after we'd picked up my stepson from the airport for his summer visitation. As much as we'd love to have kept him, though, we did need to get him back on the plane eventually. So, I scraped around and found out we were just barely able to put together enough cash to get a used replacement engine.

Surely, I thought, this is the worst of it. What else, after all, is left to break?

Just so you know, that's called "tempting Fate." Only a few days later, I started the computer and was confronted with the error code of death.

Since I made my living online, a computer was as essential to our family's financial health as was the car. We felt around in the couch, emptied our change jar, and decided we didn't really need to eat anymore. My husband got a ride from a very kind friend, and we bought a new drive (with even more memory than the old one, so it was a blessing in disguise I decided.)

At that point, however, things started looking up. Money that was owed to my husband finally landed in our mailbox. With cries of glee we celebrated our good fortune and danced in pleasure at our financial freedom. Visions of loaded grocery store shopping carts and working air conditioners danced in our heads.

Alas, the light was only a train in the tunnel. If we wanted to go shopping a car would be incredibly useful, we agreed. Unfortunately, we were still without one ...

I've never met a mechanic with so many excuses! They'd already been closed for a week, due to the Fourth of July. When we called him again to find out when we would be able to reclaim our car he let us know that they'd ordered the wrong engine. We'd have to wait another week for the right engine to come in and then another week to install it, pushing the return of our car to at least five weeks after the day it broke down.

Oh well. All was not lost. Our friends were being very patient about giving us rides, and most of my husband's co-workers drove past us on their way to work, so he wasn't imposing on them too much. And I had a working computer again! (Hey, let's get our priorities straight here. What's life without internet access, after all?)

I spent a full day downloading two weeks of undelivered e-mail and responding to the increasingly agitated queries of customers and worried friends. The next day, our second day with a working computer, I planned to spend updating my website.

I turned on the computer and searched for some paperwork as I waited for it to load. The computer had gotten as far as searching for the A: drive when it froze. I rebooted, and tried again. Again, the big freeze greeted me.

That was it. I broke. The straw that broke the camel's back had officially landed! My husband very sweetly put up with a soggy shoulder as he tried to comfort me.

We wound up having to take the computer to an actual computer doctor this time. The problem was simply beyond my husband's diagnostic skills. The PC Docs kept it for a week, and then returned it, saying they weren't sure what was wrong but we might want to have the processor checked as it seemed to have a problem.

Errrm ... excuse me?

We went to another store, one where they were able to confirm that it was indeed the processor. We bought a new one and installed it ourselves. The computer booted up immediately - without the A: drive. After further diagnostics, it was determined that the new processor was bad. We returned it and installed a third processor. This time all went well.

A week later we got the car back - with a dead battery and wonky carburetor. If we accelerated too quickly it would start trying to shake itself to death. The mechanic insisted they tried to get that fixed, but that he had somebody actually quit over it. We were just going to have to live with it, because they weren't going to work on it anymore.

We eventually managed to get almost everything else either replaced or working again (although it was several years before my husband consented to get a new lawn mower.) About the car, I decided that if I just closed my eyes and hid my head under a pillow it wouldn't do one darn thing to keep the carburetor from dying for good and all. If we fixed the dratted thing, however, something else would just break, so I ignored it anyway and simply concentrated on perfecting my new carburetor-pampering driving style.

That summer left its mark on me. I've developed a decided tendency to cross my fingers and toes whenever I turn on an appliance, loud noises leave me crouched on the floor, whimpering, and I don't take calls anymore from my husband when he's out of town. Life before was so carefree, so innocent. Now, I know the darker side of life and I'll never be the same again.