I broke my blog.

Well, not exactly.

A long long Internet time ago, I bought a custom domain for my blog. For years, you could find this little space at www.mommyalwayswins.com.

Every summer, the URL would come up for renewal and I'd pay roughly $30 to renew it for another year. A few years ago, I splurged and renewed it for a longer time period - two or three years, I can't remember which - because not only did I get a discount by doing so, but then I wouldn't have to worry about it for awhile.

Only in that interim "awhile" lots of life happened. I got divorced. I changed my name. I moved...three times. So as to distance myself from that married name that I didn't have any longer, I also changed my email address. (Plus, you know, they were tied to his account so I technically had to change them.)

And you know what else?

I totally and completely forgot about it.

Until last week when I got this strange email from Google. Apparently some Googlebot (which? that's a real "thing"? Really?) couldn't find my site or something. The error code it was throwing suggested there was a problem with my domain.

...oh...

OOPS.

By my guesstimations, my ownership of that URL expired months ago.

So I went to the GoDaddy site to check it out. I clicked the little "Log In" button and gave it my best shot -- I filled in a user name and password that I use for a lot of online sites.

No luck.

I filled in an old email address and a password I often used with it.

No luck there, either.

I tried another old email address/password combo.

Damn.

Next I tried the "Need login help?" link. It was asking for a user name or customer number and the email address on file. I wasn't even sure which of those old email addresses I might have used.

So I called their tech support line. A very friendly support person asked me for my call-in PIN. Um, I had no idea a PIN number even existed. Well, do you have your account number? That's a big no, chief. How about the email address on the account? Well it could have been this one, or it could have been that one. But you're not sure? No. And all the while I was saying things out loud like "Is it Mommy Always Wins seventy-eight?" and "Mommy Wins underscore two eighteen?" and "Or how about Mommy Wins underscore seventy-eight?" which must have all made me sound like a complete lunatic to my co-workers, who were probably all wondering why in the HELL I kept calling myself Mommy.

So the super friendly helpful support guy directed me to a page on their site through which I could make a change request. With only 78 pieces of data and a color photo of my government-issued photo ID, I could apply to have a person manually review my account to ensure I was indeed it's owner. Within three business days my request would be processed and in roughly two weeks' time this might all be ironed out.

Only...the name I have now is not the name that was on the account the last time I paid to register this domain.

Oh that? That's simple.

I can just attach a copy of the documentation showing proof that I changed my name.

Which is, you know, a 78 page divorce decree with a small note on page 65 showing I can opt to go back to my maiden name.*

There's no way THAT could be confusing. Oy.

So for now, until I get this domain URL stuff worked out, I'm going old school and back to the good ol' blogspot.com URL.

Too bad Geocities went belly up.

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*There might only be 64 pages in that document, but let's keep this 78 theme going, shall we?