I suppose that title isn’t exactly fair. But I’m whooped, as we say around here. The litany of problems began as soon as I purchased the theme from WordPress. That was one solid week ago. I volunteered all day Friday from daylight to dark, so what made me think I had the wherewithal to start my blog the very next day, I will never know. I paid fifty bones for a theme (I chose the prettiest one that included the words “simple” and “elegant”), and then I paid another fifty bucks for it to be installed. Now, that’s tricky business. You would think that “installed” would mean you sit back and watch a timebar (is that what those things are called?) slowly build as the program downloads to your host, amiright?

Nope. Iamwrong.

I don’t know how normal people do it, but I had to go to the live chat and plead for help. Live chat with my domain host, to be clear. They are super helpful. They’re like, “It looks like you do not have it downloaded. Shall I do that for you now?” Sooooo….what did I pay for, exactly? I hope the theme is mine forever, because it’s going to take me at least that long to learn it.

Thankfully, of the approximately 5,647 people who have begged me to write a book/ start a blog/ come tell them stories, three have been willing to help me. Maybe more than that, but two have seriously devoted time to holding my hand and commiserating with me over my laptop. One is a retired Air Force Colonel whose forte was website analytics. He helped me from step one. And he was baffled as I was at all this overload. We gave up after a few hours, promising to give it our next best shot very soon.

My Christmas tree had stood nekkid in the corner since Monday night because I hadn’t had the heart to decorate. I still didn’t, but it needed to be done. But I was so emotionally strung out, Christmas lights and my unstable self were not a favorable combination. I felt intense guilt for even having any sorrows for myself after what many of my fellow Sevier County neighbors had seen and endured this week. But, as usual, Johnny got me through it. I don’t know what I’d do without him and my own personal blogging cheerleader, Meg, who is always able to talk me down or up, whatever the situation demands.

On day two, over sausage biscuits, the Colonel and I were able to create three emails. One for business correspondence (that’s for all the Big Time publishers begging me to choose them for publishing rights), a second one for my contact page that all my starry-eyed devoted followers will write their letters of awe and praise to (uhh, that’s y’all, y’all), and the third one is what I will use for sending out response emails and the like. They are on the Outlook format, which I happen to be somewhat familiar with, as that is the type I used at the Co-op. Alrighty roo. My dear sweet cousin had made me the beautiful logo that you see up top there, with the peonies, a southern favorite. However, it was a smidge too big so she adjusted and installed it for me during our session at my creaky dining room table last night. Anyhoo, back to Kent and I last Sunday. So we struggled and cussed and googled and cussed some more while Johnny strolled by occasionally, popping peanut M&Ms in his mouth while somewhat sympathetically eyeing our work over our heads. I got set up with Amazon ads but I’m still waiting for approval with Google. We obviously didn’t get the ads plugged into my theme, so if you’ve got helpful hints on doing so, please leave a comment. I know how to answer them…I learned about an hour ago.

I had put blogging out of my mind this week while I tried to concentrate on work, and being a good Christian servant to those in need, and cooking supper for Shug. Yesterday afternoon, after I finished all my runnin’ (including the fourth and FINAL trip to my cobbler who is twenty miles away) my dear sweet lovely clever talented cousin (you see how badly I need her, right?) came to help me. She hauled her Very Large and Extremely Expensive Apple monitor over here. I had discovered my Outlook trial period had ran out on all the emails I had created precisely five days prior and I was positively freaking out. We were making some progress (or rather, she was, I was chopping onions and praying) when Bluehost crashed. All our headway was potentially lost. And my logo was repeated about fourteen times in the header.

At this time, I began to drink from my rather giant bottle of Riesling.

Like every other blogger (and I use that term loosely when describing myself, for obvious reasons) I called the help desk. I got some poor bloke who was clearly at a loss and was relieved when I invoked all my southern charm on him when I assured myself that “Everything will be fine and reset itself, when y’all get back up and runnin’ right?” Obviously he was taken by my accent and agreed with everything I said. My dear sweet lovely clever talented cousin decided to undertake the Outlook email issue. She got on the horn –I mean, live chat– with some lady who thought the solution to my problem was another $109 dollars to install it. I wasn’t so inclined.

So this morning I get fired up about it all over again and attempt to log in and with fingers crossed and pixie dust, I pulled up this lovely site once more.

And Amy’s Appalachia was displayed about fourteen times across the back.

And when I logged into my dashboard, the background turned black.

And then I burned the toast.

And then I cried.

And then Johnny held me.

And I logged back into live chat with Bluehost. After one hour, and several un-Christianlike thoughts later, I had my email back up! No $109 required by me! Suck it, Microsoft. Unfortunately, she couldn’t help me with the tiled logo look, or the Amazon issue. She said I had to talk to WordPress. Kill me now, they have no 800 number, it’s all forums. Did I tell you that already? I fiddled with it but never got anywhere. I decided to hit the “Go Live” and see what happened.

Well, it became active. I’m here now. So I decided to post my blurb from last night on Facebook. I titled it Honeymoonin’, slapped a picture on there, and posted it. Shazam!

And….you can see the Texas Roadhouse link, and me and hubby smoochin’, and that was it. Where were my WORDS?! My beautiful words!!

Back to the forum I go. They’re suggesting pretty serious stuff, from what I can make out. Like, uninstalling my plugins. No thank you. I only have like, ten, and they look pretty crucial to me. The other solutions used techie words like “limits” and codes that I don’t even understand. But my positively brilliant cousin suggested that perhaps the words were white. That sounds simple, right? But after carefully inspecting my editing page I couldn’t find a thing besides bold or italics. I decided to try the theme page. Once I located the correct place AHA!!! There it was! So I adjusted the text color to a historic grey (can you tell? Does it look like boring black? I promise it’s not).

I think that’s all for now. I’m still in my pajamas (it’s 1:46), my work Christmas party is at six at the upper end of Pigeon Forge, and our bed still isn’t made. And I’m obviously gonna have to do something about my hair. I’m gonna attempt to post this and pray it loads to the right spot, wherever that might be, and hope y’all weren’t too bored reading about my trials and tribulations. Believe me, I feel loads of guilt complaining about anything. But that’s been my Blogging Journey this far. Thanks for reading.