You've probably noticed that I've changed my icon to a Microsoft Paint version of myself. It just felt like it was time for a change. Not a huge change, but an icon change. I'm still firmly committed to Infertility's Common Thread, but sometimes you just need a splash of orange and bright yellow hair bows too.

This is the other thing: I have a few other bloggy ideas brewing for this new year. One I am creating off-line at the moment. Not to be mysterious, but I have a bunch of stuff to get in place before I start. The other I started tonight.

I'm declaring myself an advice columnist.

I have no grounds for doing so except that I had an idea for an advice column and I wanted to use it. And if someone great like let's say a cool online literary magazine were to want to pick it up and start running it, I could transfer the idea over there. This could be, let's say again, a test run to see if this type of advice column would work.

It felt like there was a need for this tonight. So I started it tonight. That's my new attitude coming into play. I'm not waiting. I'm not waiting in long lines anymore unless I have a good book to read. I'm not waiting for people to call me back. I'm not sitting on ideas--I'm putting them into action. I've declared my wonky cycles and my lack of ability to procreate as the only waiting I'm willing to do. Life is too short to be waiting in too many places at the same time.

So, it's up and it's ready to go. My site is called One Smart Mama. It is born out of the fact that I received three separate emails yesterday asking for advice because the people didn't want to blog about their situation but they wanted to get feedback. So here is a place where you can ask your questions or voice your concerns and gather a lot of advice from many different people. And do it anonymously. And this advice column will be different from other ones out there--not only because it will be run by me therefore you will never be mocked for your question or concern--but because it will include references to literature, art, music, poetry, film, theater, and famous quotations in order to help you gain a different perspective on your situation.

I will start posting as soon as I have questions and the directions are up on the new blog: One Smart Mama. And like the tag says, it is as if the Ethicist and Carolyn Hax came together to create a love-child via IVF. With you, the reader, weighing in as a chorus of 1000 voices. Or at least twenty. Right?

Please come on over and see what I've been up to along with writing the first post-blogoversary Friday Blog Roundup. Which will be posted over here tomorrow along with a book review for a cool book that I just read.