And the winner is…someone completely unexpected!

Towards the end of January 2016, I’ll have blogged daily, sometimes more than once, for four years.  Hard to believe.  While I started out with only writing, sometimes with photos borrowed (with attribution or permission) from the internet, my blogs moved now to mostly photos.  I’m trying to bring back more of a balance, but we’ll see how that goes.

Anyway, it’s interested me to see which posts are the most popular, so I waded through the stats pages to find the following.

The most viewed in one day post, as I linked it to something on FB, was a grammar post I titled “The drop of an “at.” When I saw it had garnered 473 views, pushing my total for that day to 598, I couldn’t believe it.  Unfortunately, most of the viewers didn’t bother to “like” or comment, but it still made me feel good.  Total views of that post have been 823.

My most liked post was a Weekly Photo Challenge shot, “Depth…water droplet.  This has been viewed 384 times and reached 254 likes.  Will I ever be able to top that?  I don’t know, but I’ll keep trying.

But sometimes a post takes on a life of its own.  My post with the most staying power and overall views, is one I did back on December 9, 2012: Story of Stalin’s war…Al Stewart’s Roads to Moscow.  I didn’t have many followers then and the original post only got 16 likes and 4 comments, two of which were probably mine.  But with a persistence which continually surprises me, this post has been viewed 1,595 times!!  Rarely a day goes by without a view (no likes or comments) and I just shake my head and smile.  Who’s viewing this and why don’t they respond?  Is it linked somewhere obscure, somewhere that people find and then come to my post.  I Googled “Al Stewart’s Road’s to Moscow” and didn’t find it.  But when I put in “Stalin’s War, Al Stewart”, my link came up first!  🙂

Thanks for “listening” to my ramblings and for being a follower of my blog…or at least a reader.  I love meeting and talking with people from all over the world via my blog (and theirs) and even meeting some of them.  I also love finding out what you’re doing and thinking via your blogs, although I can’t begin to regularly get to as many as I’d like and still have any sort of non-computer life.

Speaking of non-computer life, I’m out of here and into the real world.  🙂  See you soon!  If you go over to view the Story of Stalin’s War, “like” (if you do) and comment.  It will change everything.  And do take time to listen to the song.  It’s wonderfully sad.

Cancer and the “what ifs”

My husband has stage 3 papillary thyroid cancer.

There. Does it look or feel any different when down in black and white? I don’t know. How does it really feel? I guess it depends on the day or the time of day. Mornings before I get up and nights before I go to sleep are the most likely times for negative feelings to try to grab me. Daytime is usually busy enough to keep my mind otherwise occupied or at least occupied in positive ways.

Overall, I’m optimistic. I generally am. The statistically odds are greatly in our favor and of all the cancers there are, this seems to be about the “best” one to have if you have to have one. Of course, as with all statistics, there is the fact that a number of someones are the other statistics, the ones that don’t do so well. I choose to believe that my husband will be one of the good statistics, the ones where once the thyroid is gone and treatment completed, the cancer is also gone. And it’s likely to be so.

Sometimes the little niggling thoughts about other scenarios get hold of me, my optimism not quite slick enough that they all just fall away while scrabbling for purchase in my mind. The “what if’s”.

“What if’s” tend to be negative. I take them out, examine them in the cold light of my mostly optimistic mind, pray about them and leave them to the Lord. That’s what He’s there for. I’m here to support my husband and daughters, take care of my part of business and things in two houses, watch the finances and keep my spirits up. That’s enough to keep my occupied. And I’ll be smacking those “what if’s” every time one pops up.