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Trying something different is sometimes a challenge. I’ve known people who loathe change while others thrive under an onslaught of NEW. We are, all of us, creatures of habit and how we bloggers BLOG is no exception.

That said, I’m going to incorporate the use of links to one or more previous posts as well as try to vary the placement of photos here using a more diverse approach than my usual plunking down of a single photo at the top of my post, centering it and blowing it up in size as far as she’ll go.

In order to facilitate the placement of a few photographs, I’ll try to recap the year, what we’ve seen of it anyway, thus far.

New Year’s Eve? Husband and I attended a basketball game that night – our beloved Iowa State Cyclones are having a good season and are currently ranked 9th in the nation – and then we were home and in bed by 10:30. Party animals, we’re decidedly NOT.

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January started out fairly frigid. The usual Midwest suspects – cold, snow, icy roads and strong winds – closed schools and businesses and made travel pretty much miserable. But we Iowans are a hearty lot and we (for the most part) take it all in stride. Once we got past a week or so of subzero temps, January has really started to shape up. There is little to no snow on the ground thanks to several days of temperatures in the 40s and 50s so with the month almost at a close, the remaining two months of winter are a little easier to swallow.

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February, often cited as Least Favorite Month of the Year, brings Valentine’s Day AND my birthday. I turn all of 58 this year. Gulp. The Big 6-O is fast approaching. Funny. I feel like I’m still in my 40s or even late 30s, depending on the day and how well my RA is behaving itself.

Bill and I have scheduled a trip to Colorado this summer where we plan to hike and explore and plan to pursue one of my bucket list goals of reaching the summit of a 14er, a mountain peak more than 14,000 feet high.

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Later this year we hope to visit my son in St. Louis or perhaps drive out to the Black Hills and Devil’s Tower where we spent our honeymoon nineteen years ago this April.

As always, I’ll have my trusty camera in hand and eyes wide open, looking – always looking – for that next great shot!

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Assignment: Blogging 101: Try a New Posting Style

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Today we’re asked to regroup and check out other’s post via our earlier Prompt assignment: read at least six posts that used the same prompt and leave comments on at least two of them.

The first one I pulled up was Evil Queens and Coffee Beans. I must say, I laughed aloud when I read it. It was ever so brief yet elegantly stated. It is, in it’s entirety, reprinted below:

growing up i worshipped at Madonna’s altar.

still do.

Love it! In tit-for-tat measure, I responded accordingly:

Short, sweet and to the point. Succinctly defined. I like it.

Another post, Musings & Rants, lists no less than six of her teen idols, two of which are no longer with us (I admit to having glanced too quickly at her list and looked again to see if another of mine, Davy Jones, was included. He was not and that alone made me sad to consider how these objects of teenage angst -ack! I’m getting older! – are no longer living). One who did make her list was David Cassidy. Ah yes. I remember crushing on him back in the day. And while not (yet) dead, life got a little ugly for our little Partridge Family lead singer. A quick Google search revealed an ugly mugshot for a fairly recent DWI arrest. Sigh. Still, he did make my pulse race when I was just fourteen.

Assignment: Blogging 101: Increase Your Commenting Confidence

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Per yesterday’s assignment (posting this a day late!), we’re asked to include a head’s up on our home page to inform our readers of the blogs we like and Follow. To that end, I’ve already added the Blogs I Follow widget (titled as Blogs I Like) and I’ve posted via an earlier Blogging 101 assignment some shout-outs to bloggers and blogs that I enjoy.

As an aside, please check out my new widget: Ye olde Ping-o-Meter!

Assignment: Blogging 101: Build a Better Blogroll

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Dark Shadows was must-see summer TV when I was in middle school. It was a daytime soap opera of gothic proportions and was groundbreaking in a way, set in the spooky Collinwood Mansion, home to any number of ghosts, vampires, witches and werewolves. Many a time, too scared to watch but spellbound nonetheless, we girls would position ourselves to the side of the television cabinetry and sneak a peak (but with our eyes covered).

Most girls (and, I suspect, many women) crushed on the star of the show, Jonathan Frid, who played sexy vampire Barnabas Collins. However, I was smitten by Quentin Collins, played by David Selby. I laugh now to recall the massive sideburns he wore but, still, he was undeniably attractive. I used to fantasize that perhaps the producers and actors might be driving past our house along Highway 69 (it was, after all, as my parents told us once, a major highway that cut across several states in the Midwest) and that their car would breakdown. After knocking on our door for some roadside assistance, the producer would steal a glance my way and proclaim ‘Hey, sweetheart. You’d be perfect for Dark Shadows. Whataya say?’ Yeah, silly. I know. But such was the stuff of my teenage hormone-driven imagination.

My dad surprised me once – funny how some things are just etched in your memory – as I sat on the kitchen counter drying dishes and putting them away in the cupboard. Dad wasn’t much for chit chat. I recall very few conversations with him growing up which is probably why I remember, so vividly, him asking me if I was in love. Was he able to read my mind? Did he know that I thought constantly about David Selby or that I scribbled his name on paper? Had my father seen the hearts I’d drawn with my initials intertwined with those of the one that I daydreamed about? I was embarrassed and somehow ashamed, guilty that I’d been found out. Of course, I denied the allegation but always wondered how he’d known.

It occurs to me, just now, that this would have been a delightful topic to have asked Dad about before we lost him to cancer a few years ago. How I wonder if he would have remembered the day he once asked me, his eldest daughter, if I was in love!

Assignment: Make a Prompt Personal
Prompt: Teen Idol

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Our final task this week is to add some dash and pow and pizazz to our sidebars. While I prefer to avoid anything overly busy, gauche or loud, I have added some tweaks to my home page these past few days:

  • Retitled each section (or widget) in the sidebar
  • Added an image widget using a whimsical photo to indicate the end of the sidebar menu
  • Inserted the ‘blogs I follow’ widget in grid display

Assignment: Blogging 101: Spruce Up Your Sidebar

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Yesterday we were tasked with posting comments on a few select blogs that we had not ever commented on before. Today, we step things up a notch by publishing a follow up post to elaborate further on either one of those original posts or our response to it.

To that end, I’ve selected The Wild Pomegranate. (What a great name for a blog!). In her post entitled Call of the Wild, Grace writes of her struggles as a single parent. Her hardships are something I was able to relate to. Pregnant and married at eighteen to my first real boyfriend, our ‘wedded bliss’ lasted only two years. Jim didn’t stick around very long after that and while ordered to pay child support, only did so for the first year following our divorce.

Money was always tight. I remember a line from the Dolly Parton movie Best Little Whorehouse in Texas where Dolly spoke of the joys of always carrying a fifty dollar bill in her purse. I could only dream of such a thing. I was fortunate to still have $5 on me come payday or any money left in my checking account, for that matter. Always broke, often overdrawn, downtrodden, alone, depressed and envious of the lifestyle and ‘good life’ that I saw everyone else in my world enjoying – my friends, sisters and co-workers – I often threw caution to the wind and indulged in new clothes, shoes, partying and fun. It was a vicious cycle. Lines of credit extended at favorite shopping haunts and Visa and Master Card were definitely NOT my friends as I increasingly (and repeatedly) maxed them out. Debt begets depression which begets debt and so on and so forth. It is an ugly and gut-churning feeling, lying in bed at night wondering if the check you wrote to pay the light bill will bounce – again – or to open your mailbox to find multiple overdraft statements, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year.

I finally was able to break free when I decided to quit my job to go to college. Turns out I was smarter than my previous poor judgment and choices would indicate. I did quite well in school. Student loans, grants and numerous scholarships enabled me to finish first my AA degree at a local community college and then my bachelor of science degree at Iowa State University. At first, I only planned to pursue a drafting degree. Early on, however, I realized this wasn’t a good fit for me but math and programming (surprise, surprise – I avoided math courses of any kind in high school) were subjects in which I was quite proficient.

Quitting my job to go to college was the best decision I’ve ever made. Many struggles and hardships led to this choice and because of these and other difficulties I endured in my twenties and early thirties, I have a great appreciation for what I have – and where I am – today.

Assignment: Blogging 101: Be Inspired by the Neighbors

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For today’s assignment, we were encouraged to post a comment on at least four blogs we’ve never commented on before. I’m going to cut corners, however, and focus on just three. Discovering new blogs and bloggers is something I look forward to: finding amazing new writing and incredible photography is something I greatly enjoy and has the potential of introducing one to wonderful new friends. Our Readers open many new doors!

On The Wild Pomegranate, Grace wrote of her struggles as a single mother and her desire to live the lifestyle of her more affluent friends and provide the same kind of things and activities for her children that other ‘stay-at-home’ mothers, in my opinion, sometimes take for granted. Much of what she wrote resonated with me because I was a single mom, struggling to make ends meet, until my son started college. I yearned to live as many of my friends did: the clothes, the shoes, going out and having fun. But doing these things created more problems than they were worth. I was in debt much of the time and worried constantly how I was going to make it all work out. Her post reminded me of that time of my life and I very much understood the angst that propelled her writing.

I was all smiles reading a post on Midwestern Kitchen. Julie works in a nursing home and while taking down the Christmas decorations, she decided to leave one of the trees in place and covered it in red lights and ribbon. As the residents came in for breakfast that morning, she dimmed the lights and played romantic music in the background. She promised the residents more to come as Valentines Day approaches. What a thoughtful, lovely gesture!

Some really great food photography tips can be found on a blog that streamed across my Reader feed called The Pinay Va. Food isn’t something I normally think to photograph (other than to capture meals on some of our vacations!) but the ideas and tips are sure to stoke my creative ‘juices’. I tried making ciabatta bread a few years ago (it turned out great!) and I took photos of the process from start to finish. The pictures weren’t too bad but I’m anxious to give it another try, armed with April’s fantastic recommendations.

Assignment: Blogging 101: Be a Good Neighbor