You don't know what you have until you lose it.

Like my mind.

WhadoyouMEAN I never had one to lose in the first place?!?

Anyway, not that. I meant my blog.

A week ago, I decided to start blogging again. Had this brilliant post composed (haha... okay, I know. I had you until I wrote "brilliant", right?) and whadayaknow? My blog gave me a mean, serious-looking error message:

"Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration with this lazy-arse blogger and was unable to complete your request. We don't know why you bothered to come here in the first place, but never mind. We are not here to judge.
Please contact the server administrator, the Master of the World Wide Web and find out why they ever unleashed this ... whatEVER she is... on our precious Internet in the first place, defiling it with her presence. She is the equivalent of Acid Rain and the Ozone Layer COMBINED in cyber space.
Please don't inform them of the time the error occurred, and whatever you do, DON'T notify her that this thing she has been calling a blog has possibly died.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log."

I was so sad! I felt such remorse! My blog died because of neglect! I was sure that was it!

And of course, this whole, worrying weekend, the only thing I wanted to do was blog. Blog, blog, blog. Catch up. Tell tales of how leftovers at my sister's house could possibly kill you.

I was dying to write about my aunt, her tenant, the great chase and the narrow escape. (A very involved story that will require at LEAST a pound of Starbucks coffee to tell.)

I had this whole Thanksgiving weekend post planned about my meagre attempt at a life post-America.

I wanted to write about baboons and all the other wildlife I've encountered back here in my native South Africa.

And, more importantly, I wanted to write about a possible resuscitation of my deceased American Dream...

Anyway, to make a long story even longer, I did what I always do in times of My Blog is Down and Possibly Gone for Good crisis mode. I e-mailed the web goddess who was silly enough to become a web hostess to the likes of me. She probably thinks the only time I read her blog is when I have a blog Issue, and it would be fair of her to think that, because those seem to be the only times when I spam her with frenzied, panicked comments.

So this time, I decided to become proactive.

So I spammed her again.

And then I actually dared to venture to the official site of my kind and generous hosts.

I have to admit, I was scared. Because usually, when I go to hosting sites, they lose me shortly after "Welcome to this site."

But not them! They had clear instructions and a very easy peasy Redsaid-the-idiot-proof form to fill out in case of emergency.

I filled out the form, using my best language to try and explain how the blog broke ('it made a funny sound, like scrrrrrrooaaagggh, and then it just curled up and died and was gone'). I immediately received a comforting e-mail back informing me that my problem was being attended to.

I totally prepared to remain blogless until Monday, but no... in LESS THAN AN HOUR, my blog was fixed, with an e-mail kindly explaining what the problem was.

I didn't understand it.

But who cares? Because I have my blog back!

And I'm renewing my commitment to it. No more neglect. No more days without posting.

But who cares? Because although the blog might not be gone, it has simply been forgotten.