The internet ate my blog (Monday night? Sunday night? I think it was Monday). I hesitate to say “blogger ate my blog,” because blogger still hosts my blog, you know, and I wouldn’t want it to get eaten again on purpose.

But here’s what happened: I ran a link checker, found a broken link, and went in to fix it.

I find the link, I fix the link. Fabulous. I hit ‘save changes.’ Nothing happens. ‘Save changes.’ Nothing. ‘SAVE CHANGES.’ At this point I’m clicking rather savagely, and still nothing happens, and the little progress bar still says ‘Done!’ all cheerful-like. Whatever. I close the window and figure I’ll try again later. Oh, will I ever!

A few hours later I try to open the blog (I forget why; it’s kind of funny that I did, as usually I have no reason to look at my own blog except to make sure a post loaded properly). Ugly html splashed across the screen. Huh?

Reload.

More of the same.

No formatting, no posts, no pictures, no words. Okay, not so good. Breathe. I’m so techno-savvy that I’ll be able to figure this out in no time. (NO I’M NOT I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I’M DOING HERE WE’RE LUCKY EVERY TIME MY WORDS APPEAR ON THE SCREEN WHAT AM I GOING TO DO I DON’T KNOW HOW TO FIX ANYTHING WAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!)

I check out my template, and there’s nothing there. There are, like, six lines of code. None of which I am familiar with, mind you, but I know there used to be more than that. This can’t be right—at no time did I highlight most of my code then maybe-or-maybe-not hit ‘delete.’ That just never happened. I attempted to change ONE LINK and that didn’t even work. Maybe if I reload the blog again… Still no. Okay. Hmm.

And then I entered the seven stages of blog grief. Actually I’m not sure what the stages of grief are, and if I was going to grieve a blog, it would have to be one I stopped READING, not just one I’d misplaced. So I decided to condense my blog-grieving into just three stages.

First, denial: Clearly I did nothing to cause this problem; perhaps the individual responsible plans to come back and fix it sometime soon. So maybe if I just leave it alone a while… I’ll go eat dinner. Still screwy? Huh. Surely after I put the kids to bed all will be right with the world. No? Okay, I’ll take a shower. WHAT THE HECK IT’S NOT BETTER WHAT AM I GOING TO DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO?

At this point, fear has replaced denial (and though denial didn’t help the blog much, it did get me fed and showered before midnight—always exciting). The blog is gone; how do I replace the blog? How, how, how? I understand that no one is lamenting the loss of my (six) brilliant words (ever), but I’m sort of enjoying the whole blogging thing and I WANT MY BLOG BACK. Please.

Can I… What if I… What do I… and suddenly fear gives way to action (which I don’t think is a real stage, but it’s better than acceptance of blog loss). Though really the slim tendrils of fear refused to release their grip on my heart until the adventure was entirely over—pathetic but true.

Once I realized that the blog fairy wasn’t coming to my aid after all, it was just a matter of reloading the blog template (but I’ll lose all my custom formatting! Wahhh! Wait, what custom formatting? It’s totally standard. I don’t even have a custom header. Nothing. Oh, alright, reload template). And then replacing the very few non-custom bits.

And, voila! Blog, healed and raised from the netherworlds of blogdom.

So what did we learn? We should keep a copy of our template somewhere far, far away from blogger. I dutifully saved the code elsewhere and breathed a sigh of relief. And opened the blog one more time to make sure it was still there (it was. Never was I happier to see fiesta pictures than at that moment).

And then I made some changes and didn’t save a copy. But at least I’ll know what to do next time the internet eats my blog. (Mmm, regurgitated blog. Disgusting.)