Back That Thang Up!

The roughest part of my day came in the mid-afternoon.

That's right. The four to five times that Ryan woke up in the middle of the night demanding to be in bed next to me, was not the roughest part of my day.

Neither was sleeping through my alarm (from pure exhaustion from being awake half the night) and waking up at 6:20 a.m., nearly an hour late. This still wasn't the roughest part of my day even though it brought the added bonus of having to text my boss at 7:30 a.m. to tell him that I was going to miss my ferry and be late for work.

The roughest part of my day was not even the ginormous (and uncharacteristic) tantrum Jacob threw as I tried to get him out of the car. He had to be forcibly removed, which, to be quite honest, gave me a horrible wedgy that I couldn't "fix" for quite some time without the fear of someone watching.

Oh, and that moment my mom called to tell me she thought Jacob had pink eye and she was going to take him to the doctors? Nope. Not the roughest part. Turns out it was only a scratch.

So, what WAS the roughest part of my day? Well, let me tell you....

At about 3pm, I had just put finishing touches on a motion I had been working on and handed it over to the partner to review. He polished it up and made some changes. Then the secretary stuck copies of the end product in a bunch of envelopes to be mailed for filing with the court and for serving on the opposing party.

My next task was to draft a similar motion. So I went to the computer folder where the motion was saved and attempted to copy and paste it. Except....I accidentally deleted it! Don't ask me how it's possible to accidentally delete a document (especially when doing so requires accepting a pop-up box warning you that the item will be permanently deleted) but I'm special and had found a way to do just that.

Luckily, hard copies of the motion had already been printed out and stuck in envelopes. BUT I didn't even have a copy of the motion for our own files! When I fully realized what I had just done, my heart started to pound and a wave of jitters started to build up inside my chest. Saying a million prayers, I opened my "Trash Bin." But it wasn't there! Apparently, documents that are kept on a shared drive don't go to the Trash Bin when you delete them.

NOOOOOOO!

What was I going to do?

Well, first I freaked out. I did a little "help, my world is ending" dance. Then I forced myself to calm down enough to do some Google research. Google told me to click "undo" in the electronic folder. Oh yeah, duh! I held my breath as I selected the "undo" option. Nada.

WTF?!!?!? What would I tell the partner when he asks where his motion went? What will he do when he opens the folder and sees that it's empty?! I could re-type the motion but he made some changes that I hadn't even had the opportunity to see. How the heck was I going to get out of this mess?

If I couldn't recover the file electronically, I decided I was going to have to do it the old-fashioned way: typing up an exact copy from one of the copies we had already printed out. I snuck up to the receptionist and asked if I could have one of the sealed envelopes containing the motion. She looked at me strangely but didn't question (thank goodness!). Then I used my sleuthing skills to carefully break the seal of the envelope. I removed the motion and went at it with the staple remover. I was going to make a copy to take back to my desk and recreate from scratch.

But, in the process of removing the staple from the corner, I pricked my finger. A trail of bright red blood dribbled across the front of the document. Oh great. This was the copy for opposing counsel....and it wasn't like I could just open the electronic version and print out a new one!

I made my copy and, regretfully, shoved the original back into the envelope. "Maybe it's not so bad," I thought. "Maybe it will look like a red marker stain?" (WTF, I'm screwed). I decided the only thing to do was come clean and let the bricks fall on my head.

At this point, I was panicky. My heart was throwing a rave party in my chest and my hands were nervously shaking as if I'd just downed three 5 hour energy drinks. I approached the partner and coyly asked, "Does the computer keep back-ups of our files?"

"Why?" he asked.

"Um. You know our motion? Well, I, uhhh, just deleted it." I winced, waiting for the fall-out.

"Oh. That's no problem. The computer keeps back ups with a couple different programs." He then proceeded to show me how to recover the old files. It's not exactly a piece of cake. But it's easier than re-typing a multiple page document. And it's MUCH better than sending opposing counsel a blood-stained motion. Phew! I guess I should have come to my boss sooner.

And I lived (almost) happily ever after.

The End.