Sorry for my absence. It’s not that I’m dead, and I assume none of you have died either (my condolences if you have). But I am still without regular computer access. Dane and I have officially given up on the old computer and have ordered a shiny new one. It should be here… not soon enough.

So what do you do with a dead computer? Flush it down the toilet? Bury it in the backyard? Run it through the wood chipper? Put the parts on eBay and pray that someone wants 5-year-old used/dead PC components?

Instead of those fun alternatives, we’re thinking about sending it off to recycling heaven at MyBoneYard.com. Has anyone ever tried this service? Do you have other recommendations? Feel free to, you know, talk amongst yourselves. I’ll check back, uh, later.

We took our kids to the San Diego Wild Animal Park last week. Audrey tried to convince us to let her ride a lion, but no luck. We did, however, let her try to pet a duck. (No luck with that either.) At any rate, to get there from here, we had to drive through one of the areas burned by last fall’s wildfires. There were no buildings nearby, but the hills were blackened in both directions; weeds poked through here and there. These reminders of disaster, they freak me out. This spring and summer have been milder than last year’s, but we’ve still got drought conditions–and when the Santa Ana winds pick up in the fall, who knows what will happen.

California has a new disaster preparedness website to help you think through what your family would do in an emergency. I hadn’t given this nearly enough thought before last year’s wildfires. Sure, we live in earthquake country, but we’re not especially close to a fault line. And wildfires usually stay far to the east. But last year, neighborhoods all the way to the coast were evacuated. If Dane hadn’t been helping pack, I would have forgotten to bring food with us. (Though in my defense, I was nine-plus-months pregnant with Sadie and did manage to think of bringing kid things and baby things and birth things. Go me!)

So here’s what I should have done ahead of time. I should have had a disaster kit, including supplies, any medications your family members take, and other special needs items (for example, some of my kids have allergies, so my kit should include an antihistimine). Ideally, I would have one kit at home and another in the car.

I should also have a disaster plan, and make sure my kids know what to do in an emergency. Around here, the most likely emergencies are earthquakes and wildfires. My kids know how to drop and cover in an earthquake, and where to be in each room of our house; they also know how to get outside from each room if necessary. Should an ice storm or a hurricane hit, we would have no idea what to do. But for earthquakes and fires, we’re set.

The state of California offers a free customizable children’s book to help talk your kids through emergency preparations, though I used their guide to teachable moments more than the book itself (it’s part of the download, after the book). The book is more a guide to preparedness than a story; a mother and child tell a friend how to make a disaster plan, how to put together a disaster kit, etc. But talking it through helped me to answer questions my kids had, and let me reinforce the idea that we make plans to keep safe when unexpected things happen. It’s a good thing to remind myself of too, from time to time.

While I’ve been computerless (which, by the way, I still am, at least at the moment), I’ve been reading. Shocking, I know. Here’s what I’ve got this week:

Without a Map, recommended by Writers Revealed and, I don’t know, half the internet.

The Bill from My Father, recommended by Kate Hopper.

Never Let Me Go, recommended by Jennifer Niesslein.

Apparently I’m highly influencible. Anybody else want to tell me what to do? Er, read?

Grrr. Still no computer at my house. Thank goodness my mother likes me and lets me sneak in to use her computer every once in a while! The new video card came finally, and we installed it, and now the computer turns on. This is an improvement. Then the computer crashes. This is not much of an improvement. Dane managed to convince it to backup last night, and tonight he’s reformatting the hard drive and reinstalling windows. Please tell me this will solve my every problem. Please.

Today is Dane’s birthday. It’s a milestone birthday, and I’ve suddenly begun chiding him to eat breakfast and to wear sunscreen (see below). Apparently I am feeling concerned over his mortality.

We went to Legoland yesterday. The children, we covered in sunscreen. Ourselves, we did not. I now need spray-on tan for my eye area, which was covered by my enormous sunglasses.

The new computer part thingy will be here maybe Monday. So I could have a computer again by Tuesday. Possibly. Please.

I am at my mother’s house. Why am I at my mother’s house, you ask? Why, because I cannot check my email at my own house, and it was starting to get to me. And why can’t I check my email? Why? Oh, well, that. Our video card, as far as I can tell, disintegrated and must be replaced. I don’t really know what the video card does except, I assume, enable video, but apparently the computer requires one to turn on. Which maybe wouldn’t be so much of a problem if our computer weren’t so old and persnickety, but as it is, we have to order one that will work with our existing, uh, stuff, so it will be a few more days before the thing is replaced.

So I am at my mother’s house. I have commandeered her computer. It was kind of easy, since she wasn’t at home when I got here. It was just me and the cat, who leaps down the stairs and thumps into walls at bizarre intervals. But now she’s home and possibly expects to, I don’t know, use her own stuff again, so I guess I will be heading back to my own home. My own computerless home. Ah, internet access, how dependent I have become upon thee…