Broken.

It’s been one of those weeks. You know, those weeks. Where life just seems to be messy and unfair and complicated.

Last week, our external hard drive broke. I had it sitting on the kitchen table next to the laptop so that I could clean out some pictures from our camera. It was plugged in a few feet away and the cord was lifted off the ground just enough that when a certain one-year old came sauntering through that area, she tripped on the cord and the hard drive crashed to the floor. Long story short, it’s severely damaged. Also? Every single picture I have taken of my kids (ever.) up until January is on that hard drive. And every video up until Ellie was born.

And here’s where I need to insert my little soapbox moment. BACK UP YOUR PICTURES, PEOPLE. Twice. Always, always do it twice. I thought my stuff was “safe” on that blasted external hard drive. Learn from my stupidity. Please?

We realized the extent of the damage on Thursday. Today I talked with the tech at Geek Squad where we sent it to see if anything was recoverable and was told that it’s going to cost us an unimaginably huge amount of money for them to even attempt to recover what was on the hard drive. And that’s not even a guarantee that they’ll be able to rescue anything.

We told them we needed to think about it and so now I have to decide…just how priceless are those little pieces of my kids’ lives? What am I willing to pay – literally – to get those memories back? And if I can’t find it in my heart (or our savings) to pay that amount, those memories are gone. Vanished. Lost forever. It makes me sick. I’ve been holding out hope all weekend, but after that phone call today, it finally struck me full force that I may very well never see those pictures and videos again.

I know this all sounds dramatic. I know perfectly well that there are far worse things in this world. I know that. But humor me here for just a moment. Because the pictures especially represented a lot of time and love and effort. I’m light years away from being a professional photographer, but I found a lot of joy from taking countless pictures of my kids doing everyday things. Those moments, those expressions on their faces, those smiles, those perfect shots…I’ll never get them back. And so I’m grieving. Yes, grieving. I don’t care that they’re “just” pictures. They’re so much more than that to me.

Add to all that just a generally tumultuous week full of a kid with a nasty case of Croup, countless episodes of grouchiness and whininess, numerous parenting fails on my part, and a plain old messy house, and I’m just ready to be done. Finished. I need a fresh start. Sometimes I wish life came with a big, red Reset button. Also, a Rewind button would be nice too. (You have no idea how many times I wish I could rewind to 2.3 seconds before Ellie walked into that cord.)

But since no such button exists, I’m thinking tomorrow calls for a big batch of warm chocolate chip cookies. And maybe lounging on the couch to watch a Disney movie with my girls right in the middle of the day. And especially some “me” time (I think I hear the cute little craft boutique a few miles away calling my name).