We’re taking a break from Freudian Friday this week because I have a few words to say about something very dear to my heart.

Last week I spilled some liquid on my beloved little Toshiba Portege laptop. The computer continued to behave fine once it dried out, but the keyboard developed a stickiness that made it almost impossible to type.

No big deal, right?

Well, the keys don’t pop off of this particular model, so unfortunately, it became a pretty big deal. We took it in to Best Buy to have the Geek Squad clean it or replace the keyboard.

For the past week, I’ve been using my old laptop, a 13-pound Alienware monster that gets hot enough to shut itself down. The mouse jumps, too, occasionally leaping across the screen and clicking elsewhere, with the charming effect that when I’m typing, I have to keep an eye on where I am or I’ll start typing in the middle of an earlier line.

In the fall of 2010, the power button on this machine started sticking, as well, so that it became difficult to turn on. I decided enough was enough.

Then a few days later, my fiance and I were in a head-on collision that totalled my car and demolished the other driver’s vehicle. No one was seriously injured and it was happily(?) the other driver’s fault, so I received a rather large settlement from the affair.

Instead of buying a new (crappy) car, I bought a new, magical laptop.

This little laptop weighs less than 4 pounds, even with the battery. It doesn’t get hot. It’s small enough to fit on my lap—and I’m pretty small. It is, as Drew says, a Kristin-sized laptop. I finished my first book on it. I wrote all of Shaken on it. I can put it in a totebag and carry it wherever I go.

That brings us back up to now. The Geek Squad has had it since Monday. Today we learned that their estimate for repair was $980—more than my beloved little laptop cost when it was new. They said the damage was “extensive.”

They also charged us $85 to do nothing but open it up and say they couldn’t repair it.

I realize it’s stupid, and that this is a distinctly “first world problem,” but this is pretty upsetting to me. It’s like finding that a beloved pet has cancer and will die slowly before my eyes, even as we’re playing together. And worst of all—the whole thing is my fault.

Drew’s going to give the repairs a whirl. Wish him luck, please.

Have you ever lost a laptop to your own stupidity, readers? Do you feel as bad as I do right now?