Monday, March 1, 2010

Porcelain Unicorn's

Right after I got married, back in 1985, my mother gave me a porcelain unicorn that was filled with gardenia scented wax beads.  The aroma of the beads would waft out of these tiny little holes on the sides of the unicorn placed there especially for this purpose.

At the time I was on a unicorn kick, from there it went to thimbles after that I'm not to sure but right now I collect signs.  What kind of signs?  All kinds, but that's a story for another day.  So this unicorn my mom gave me was white with a gold horn atop its head, it was lying down with it's legs curled around it to the side.  It was very regal looking, for an Avon collectible that is.

I don't know why, but for some reason I was really taken with that unicorn.  Why? I think because for the first time in my life I was living on my own and was a little homesick.  This gift given to me by my mom reminded me of her every time I saw it.  About 2 months after my mom gave me the unicorn our first child, Bocephus the cat, jumped up on the coffee table where I had placed it and knocked it to the floor where it shattered into a million pieces.  I don't think I could have done a more thorough job of demolishing it if I had tried with a hammer.

To this day I am still amazed at the sorrow I felt at losing such an inexpensive trinket.  I am still convinced my affection for it was because I thought of my mother each time I saw it.  That is when I decided that never again would a thing, a store bought, man made, maybe not so easily but replaceable thing get that depth of emotion from me again.

This month marks 25 years since my mother gave me that pretty little dodad and I have to say up until today I thought I had done a pretty good job of avoiding having porcelain unicorns in my life.  You know, those things that you attach too much of yourself to, things that you become emotionally attached to, when there are much more important things going on around you that deserve that depth of emotion.

Today as I was driving home from work my sister texted me to ask where my blog posts had gone.  All I could think of was "oh crap, not again"  last month around this time an entire months worth of posts were placed into my trash bin.  How they got there, nobody knows.  I do know this, they were retrievable and all was well with my world once again when it was explained that if something like that were to happen again, check the trash bin first and if there I could easily restore them.  I also learned that it is a two step process to permanently delete my posts, so it is virtually impossible for that to happen by mistake.

Well, today at 11am my blog was completely intact, at noon on my way home, not so much.  At 12:15 when I realized that indeed a few posts were in the trash bin but the last five days of January and the entire month of February was gone forever, I had a porcelain unicorn moment, BIG TIME.  For some reason my little pea brain thought that my web host might have a backup, I was afraid to keep one on the dinosaur of a computer here because I was afraid it would crash and be lost forever.  HA! Apparently that is not how it works.

Either way, Mike the IT guy, was very helpful, just not in the way I would have liked for him to be.  I wanted him to be a magician not a technician.  He wasn't pulling any rabbits out of his hat today, that is for sure.  What pains me the most is that there were a few tales told that I am not sure I can capture again.  They are alot like butterflies, when you get them to land long enough to get a good look at them, you know,  while they slowly open and shut their wings, you can snap a photograph of them and preserve it for posterity.  I neglected to keep a negative of those mental shots that I took and placed on my blog, so I am now paying for my carelessness.

OK, I am through whining about the lost blog posts.  There are so much worse things happening in the world than losing a few of my scattered thoughts put out there on the web.  From now on I will keep a copy or two or three in a safe place and if they come up missing again well then it should be an easy fix.
I don't believe in coincidence so I am curious why this occurred.  Perhaps there are more important things that  I neglecting so that I can ensure that my nightly post make it to the web?   Maybe I need to be tucking those girls in along with Ray, instead of him doing it alone so that I can get that blog post in by midnight? Hmmmm, it's a thought.  Perhaps I will take this opportunity to mix things up a little.  March was the month I wanted to get going with my pageMeanwhile Back  At The Ranch, so I will certainly direct some of my focus there, I am hoping you are pleased with the result.

This week I am going to post every other night and put some things in place to avoid the heartbreak of when a blog post, or 30  goes AWOL.    Wish me luck, please visit often, and let's all remember to avoid having porcelain unicorns in our lives, it just ain't worth it.

Annette Bagley-Martin ~ Once again with cheese in her hair.........

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