This post is not about a computer.
Last year, I bought a new laptop. It had occasional problems charging, but nothing major. Then, over a month ago and outside its warranty window, the battery completely drained while charging and would not register the charger. I researched online, and was told that sometimes the Microsoft-proprietary charging system flakes out and to try the USB-C port instead… so I bought a USB-C charger and an appropriate cable and… nothing. (This advice was from Microsoft, by the way, so 🤔🤔🤔.
Anyway, I checked online to see how much Microsoft would charge to fix it, and got told that for $800, I could trade it in for a refurb. That was my only option. Truth is, while it’s a nice laptop, it’s not worth $800 for a replacement that only comes with a two-month warranty. After some folks at Best Buy confirmed that, yep, that model is very difficult to replace the battery on so Microsoft just offers replacement (and don’t buy a refurb from Microsoft, it’s a crap shoot), I put it in a drawer and decided to just let it have a few weeks to complete discharge, and also to give me time to steel myself for getting rid of it.
Several weeks passed, and I decided to give it another go. I plugged it in using the USB-C charger, and let it sit for about an hour. And… it’s alive again. It’s now gone through two recharges without any incident, so I’m hoping for the best.
Yesterday, I made copies during my prep (which is first hour). Then over lunch, some other people struggled with the machine, which was ignoring everyone’s attempt to log on. So a colleague flipped the main switch to off and told everyone that it needed a nap.
Ten minutes later, someone turned it back on, and it was fine.
I’ve been a Autistic Burnout mode for a little while now. Yesterday was a major struggle. This is late-October teacher feeling, but it’s not even October yet.
This morning, though, I woke up an hour early and feeling well charged. No nightmares to speak of (Sunday night, I had a nightmare for the ages; Monday night wasn’t great either).
I don’t know if I’m completely out of the emotional woods yet. I’ve learned not to trust a short-term high as a long-term situation. But it’s a reminder that my Autistic brain runs in cycles that the NT world isn’t adjusted to, and maybe I’ll be okay for now.
Maybe I just needed a nap.
Okay, so the rest of this will be about the nightmare, so if you don’t feel like reading about someone else’s dream, move along.
I was at a party for the child being held behind a house on a hill. There was a plane flying overhead, and then it bounced around like a deity was playing with a toy, then crashed nearby. There was a fire ball. I started to run towards it, shouting for people to call 911. I went down the hill and tried to run up the ten foot embankment on the other side of the valley, but it was too steep and my fingers just clawed helplessly at the grass. So I ran back up the side I’d come down, but that was steep too, so I barely made it. Then I ran to the sidewalk where there was a truck bed with chairs stacked on it where everyone who was going to help with the airplane crash could sit while we were driven to the site, but all the stable chairs were taken by other people and my choices were too unstable. I gave up on that and instead went back to the house.
At some point, I picked up on that back story that we had acquired a house that needed cleaning out, having been owned by a hoarder. It was full of tchotchkes. So we had rented another house down the block to stay in while we cleaned it out. It was this rental where the party had been, but I went back to the house we were cleaning out. The neighbors were a women’s support group, and though I’d been there the day before and been accepted as a woman for the purpose of their safe space, they refused to let me in this time, saying that they’d talked about it and decided I didn’t really fit.
So I went back to the house we were supposed to be cleaning, and there was a man there trying to break in. I confronted him, and he said he was just a delivery person and that he was trying to drop off a package for me. I accepted it, and it was a personalized unicorn Christmas ornament that had been sent by a nonbinary person I knew online.
I went into the house, concerned that it wasn’t as secure as it should be, if people could just get in. I found a breeze around the back, so I followed it downstairs. There was a tunnel that I decided I needed to investigate, but first I just looked around the subbasement. It was all polished rock with shackles embedded into it, and I realized that the house was part of the illegal slave trade, and that the tunnel went to the coast. I decided to verify that, but realized that the way I’d gotten into the subbasement was too small and angled for me to get back out, and I couldn’t find any way to get out at all.
Then I woke up.
(Not looking for analysis, I think a lot of it is clear. Just documenting.)