Home Free

The ultrasound technician entered the room, startling me out of my mental fog.  I gave her a weak wave, not trusting myself to speak yet.  She flashed a warm smile.

"Well, Miss Bradley, let's get a look at that baby!" her voice was very cheerful and upbeat.  Surely if the doctor expected me to receive bad news, the tech would be using a more somber tone, right?

The technician applied the gel to my belly and pelvic region.  I waited patiently and silently as she moved the wand around.  I was too afraid to look at her or the screen.  I knew that detecting even the slightest frown or scowl would lead to me panicking.  I simply shut my eyes and focused on my breathing.

Finally, she spoke.

Bonus Post Coming Soon

Hello, everyone!

My blog has officially garnered over 100,000 page views since its creation!

In celebration of this milestone and to make up for my admittedly short last post, I will be writing an extra post next week.  I sincerely appreciate every comment you leave.

My normal posts appear on Tuesday and Friday.  Let me know if you have any preference on which day the extra post appears.  Also, let me know what you want to see more of in the blog.  Do you like when I reply to your comments?  Are you happy with the content and length of posts?  What can I do to improve your reading experience?  I am open to suggestion.

Thank you all for reading!

Darkness Falls

**Sorry for the posting delay.  I didn't want to post until I was satisfied with what I had written**


Murmured, frantic voices permeate the darkness.  I'm vaguely aware of a searing pain radiating across my side.  My mind is struggling to pull me to consciousness.  Fragmented thoughts cross my mind.

Eric.  My email.  A fight.  Storming out. Dizziness.  Pausing on the stairs.  The baby, oh god, the baby.

Curiosity Killed The Cat

"I don't know what to say," Eric mumbled, looking down at his hands.  His features were drawn, pained.

I was clenching my jaw in anger so tightly, my teeth and head began to ache.  I waited a beat for him to continue.  He didn't utter another word.  I broke the silence.

"That's it, then?  All you have to say is you don't know what to say?" I threw my hands up in exhasperation, exhaling forcefully.

"I'm sorry." His voice was barely audible.  I'm not sure if he was whispering, or if my anger was drowning out the sounds around me.

Gotcha.

My mouth went dry.  I could feel my heartbeat in my throat and struggled to make sense of what I was reading.  I knew immediately that it hadn't been Michael.

*Bonus Post* Shock and Aww

"Do you think Michael would do that, though?  I mean, he has to know that you'd find out someone got into your accounts.  He'd have to be pretty stupid to risk it.  It'll look really bad if he hacked the accounts of someone with a restraining order against him, especially after violating the order already." Kate spoke thoughtfully, swirling the ice in her drink.

Thank You For Being A Friend

Of course, I had immediately screenshotted and printed a copy of the email Facebook had sent me logging the IP and time stamp of the password change.  It showed that it had been done through my personal email account, but that password hadn't been altered.  Did you guys know that Gmail logs the most recent access to your email account, showing the IP address of your most recent log-ins with the time and date?  I saved a screenshot of that, too, noting that the IP that had changed my Facebook password had also accessed my Gmail account.  I also printed a hard copy. I have to say I was surprised when I saw multiple logs in my Gmail with that same IP address.  Obviously whoever had done this had had access to my email for a little while, yet hadn't done anything until now.

I quickly changed my email and Facebook passwords, ending all other log-in sessions as I did so.  It may sound stupid, but I felt violated.  I have years worth of saved communications on both my Facebook and email accounts.  I'm like a pack rat when it comes to my messages, I never delete them, I just create archived folders to store them in.  Knowing that I was still on the clock and therefore needed to be working, I logged out of my personal accounts and pushed the worry aside for the rest of the day.

When I got home from work, I signed in to my email and Facebook account using my new passwords.  I scoured through everything, hoping to find what may be amiss.  Nothing appeared to be missing or noticeably changed in my email.  I found no record of any emails sent from my account, but if theperson were smart, they may have deleted anything they sent.  Still, the person who'd done this had full access to all of my contacts via Gmail, which I have synced with my phone (thank God, that had made it incredibly easy to import all of my contacts when Michael had destroyed my old phone).  This person could easily have saved that information, now knowing the phone numbers of those nearest and dearest to me.  I felt so frustrated and helpless, not knowing what they'd seen or saved or destroyed.

I turned my attention to my Facebook account.  Now that I was home and on my own time, I made it a point to go through and update all of my security settings.  I'd previously had a bit of information visible to Public and mutual friends (friend of a friend? I'm not sure how to describe it).  The friend-of-friend option had been what allowed Manda to see a few pictures I'd shared.  I updated all of my settings, making every single thing viewable to Friends Only with a select few items visible to Me Only.  I also enabled SMS notifications for log-ins and changed the settings so I'd be notified via text immediately if someone logged in to my account from an unfamiliar browser.  I double-checked that no other sessions were active and deleted all "approved" browsers, meaning even when I logged in at work, I'd have to manually accept that browser.

It was tiring, really, going through all of this.  I chastised myself for not being more aware of my social media and email accounts.  I hadn't taken the time to enable security measures to keep my accounts thoroughly protected.  I also updated my security questions and enabled text confirmation for log-ins to my email account. I was confident now that if anyone tried to access my accounts, unless they physically had my phone in hand, their attempts would be thwarted.  At the very least, I'd be notified immediately of any suspicious activity.