I slept well last night. And just for this moment, my technology is behaving. (Thank you, JAWS tech support guy who understood that yes, there was a fixable problem with JAWS 9, XP, and Lenovo ThinkPads.)
Perhaps now I can get down to "normal life," which will involve laundry, homework, meeting with a professor, dinner at the church, choir, homework, rheumatology appointment, housework, homework, housework, studying for finals, etc.