On Being a Mother

Sometimes we don't give our children enough credit; sometimes they surprise you with their actions and their devotion to you.

This is a true heart-warming Mother's Day story.

I'm sure a lot of you followed my blog takeover situation over the last couple of days.  If you haven't, here's what happened, and here's how my son, Andy gave his mom the best Mother's Day present ever.

On Thursday, May 4, I received and e-mail from Blogger stating that the password to my blog had been changed at the request of a 3rd party, and that this password change had been approved.  Not overly alarmed, I tried to log into my blog - but couldn't. My blog appeared, but I was no longer in the driver's seat.  NOW I was alarmed.

So, I did the next logical step - changed my password - but that didn't work.  The highjacker, for indeed my blog had been highjacked, had changed the username as well, and then officially changed the ownership of the blog. to himself.

When I looked closely, my blog profile had been removed and a name "James Doon" had been inserted as the owner of the blog as well as a list of other blogs he had taken over.  I had no idea what other changes had been made to the blog, or what he had copied.

Repeatedly I asked the question, - why would he want my blog? - and I know a lot of you e-mailed me with the same question.  This takeover made no sense!.  But because of it, I felt physically sick, and violated.

What happened next is a bit of a blur. I elicited the help of anyone who knew anything about computers, ever hired 3 computer experts to help get my blog back.  I phoned my son in Ottawa to appraise him of the situation, and he immediately went into action.  No one was going to take his mom's blog away from her. (By the way, he's my biggest blog supporter).

While I was filling out forms for Blogger, Google, etc and trying different tactics, Andy was working behind the scenes posting messages on message boards, help forums, etc.

Again and again I was given the information from my "experts" that my blog was lost for good, it had been stolen, and there's nothing that could be done to get it back

Soon Andy's messages and postings got the attention of Blogger engineering, and some magic must have happened.

Andy phoned me last night:  "Try your blog now mom"  He sounded so excited! You can imagine my emotional state by this time - I couldn't log it for what seemed like the longest time-I couldn't remember mber my password  because I had been changed it so many times!! Eventually I logged it my information - AND I GOT IN!!! I think the entire neighbourhood must have heard me scream.


I was so relieved, so excited, I started to cry.  If I could have crawled through the phone lines to hug my son to death I would have!!

He gave me the best Mother's Day gift of all.  While everyone else had admitted defeat, he never gave up.