Devastated

As most of you know, this is NOT my first blog. When I originally started blogging it was on an MSN Live Spaces blog. I was there for a long time. About 2 1/2 years.

When I was convinced to move over to Blogger, I came kicking and screaming. I was comfortable with Spaces and had it figured out. But the move was necessary.

My first blog with Blogger had all my vital information out there. All our first names. I didn’t ever fully disclose the name of the town where we live, but I gave enough hints that it was fairly obvious. I’m sure I didn’t hide our last name either.

I became concerned about safety, so I shut down that blog and began writing here, using the movie Princess Bride as the theme. So, this blog is my THIRD personal blog that I have posted on. (I also have my cloud blog and the blog of the community theatre group I’m involved with that I manage.)

However, my first blog was precious to me. It documented all the funny things Inigo said and did when he was just little. And believe me, there were a TON!!! It recorded all of Buttercup’s personal triumphs over the hard things in her life. It was my place to write funnies as well as serious posts. It was a great place to practice my creativity.

A year or so ago, I decided I needed to start printing off those blog posts and I began the arduous task of copying and pasting each entry into Microsoft Word so I could take it to the printer and have it copied and bound.

It was a pretty big task. I wrote a LOT back then. So I decided to print it off a year at a time. It saved money doing it that way as well. This was going to be an expensive task.

I got that first year printed and bound. I loved it. And was ready to start on the second year, but our finances got tight, so I put it off. When Max started his new job in New Florin in January I said to him, “Now that you’ve got a regular pay check I would like to finish printing off my old blog.’ We agreed that it was something I should do.

And then I got busy. I became a single mom. I became an art mom and a music mom. I became a Cub Scout Leader. But all that’s okay because my blog would be there waiting for when I could find the time…

NOT!!!

I received a horrifying message from Steck tonight. She had been reading some of my old blog posts and when she went to look at them tonight, she found out that Live Spaces had turned everything over to another blog host, WordPress and my blog was gone.

ABSOLUTELY IRRETRIEVABLY GONE!!!

MSN failed to notify me… they have my email address… I would have made the transfer to WordPress to protect my memories. Instead, they deleted EVERYTHING on March 16.

Steck and I have spend hours on Google trying to find cached versions of my blog posts. I have been able to find and recover about 6 months worth of entries. That leaves me with a year’s worth that I can’t retrieve. That’s a year’s worth of memories. Of good times. Of laughs. Of hilarious Inigo-isms. (I am SO GRATEFUL that the post detailing his adventure with our Temple Dedication and Inigo’s subsequent meeting with President Monson wasn’t completely deleted! I was able to find it on Google.)

I sent an email to the people at WordPress asking if there is anyway I can retrieve my posts. I can’t find any way to contact the people at MSN. I take that back. I found one place where I can get tech support…. for $38! I don’t think so!

I’m devastated about this. I’m praying that in the morning I’ll have a happy email from someone telling me that all is not lost. That I can have my journal and my memories back.

And I’m going to start transferring my posts from my first blog on Blogger to Word. I can’t have this happen again!