Some months ago my computer up and died. One day it was just … gone. There were no bangs or whirrs or flashes or anything leading me to believe that the end was nigh, but one morning I turned it on and there was nothing but a blank screen. Since it is an old-ish machine and I didn’t have anything critical stored on it and we do have other computers, the death wasn’t a major disaster. Mostly I missed it when cooking–it sits in a corner of the kitchen and I use a lot of recipes that I have stored only in my email or bookmarked in my browser. For other purposes, my primary base of operation for the past few years has been the Windows computer downstairs in Olof’s office and that’s where I’m used to doing most of my surfing, blogging, et cetera.

Recently, however, I haven’t been getting as much time at the Windows machine as I’d like. As babies are wont to do, Petra grows increasingly mobile and unwilling to sit still on my lap when I’m in front of the computer. In and of itself this isn’t a big problem, but Olof’s office is probably the least baby-friendly place in the house and there’s just no setting Petra on the floor there. The kitchen, on the other hand, is a great place for her to sit on the floor and play and I could easily grab a few minutes at the computer while she kept herself busy, if only I still had a functioning computer there.

But, soft! What light through yonder window breaks? Could it be the warm glow of a monitor?

Last night when I came up to go to bed, I noticed that my monitor was on and, wonder of wonders, the login screen was up. Scarcely daring to breathe, I approached the desk and warily entered my name and password. I sat transfixed as things started happening. Good things. My desktop came up and I clicked the button to start up a browser and it worked. It worked this morning and it’s still working now. In fact, I’m sitting here in a corner of my kitchen typing this entry while my baby plays on the floor behind me.

I have no idea why it stopped working before and why it started working now. We gave a go at figuring it out back when it first died, but we had no luck. For a couple of months, at least, it’s been just a silent absence of internet goodness and I had almost forgotten about it. I don’t know, even, who turned on the monitor last night. The computer professional in the house theorizes (or maybe it should be “hypothesizes” — those two always get me) that an unnamed something was jostled out of place by an unnamed someone at some point, and that that something was somehow jostled back into place last night. Could be, I suppose.

I have a theory (hypothesis?) of my own, though. It was a pre-birthday miracle.