Month: September 2014

All that talk about craziness in Thursday’s summer reading recap got me thinking…

You know what’s really crazy? I’m talking really, really crazy?

Wearing a chicken costume to a meeting (with 100+ people in attendance) at your kids’ school.

Yep. I did that. Yesterday.

Letting your 8-year old play with fire.

I did that, too.

The aforementioned fire-handling child’s collection of stuffed bunny rabbits proudly on display.

Wascally wabbits galore.

Scoring this on SpellTower.

Go ahead. Try. I’ll wait right here.

Holding a hummingbird.

How doggone cute this baby in a Viking hat is.

Whipping up on dyslexia.

Thank you, Schenck School. You are chock full of miracle workers.

The Most Interesting 3-Year in the World.

“Where can a man find a good cognac around here?”

I never tire of trotting this out because it’s still funny. Every. Single. Time.

The caveman photo manipulator from the Smithsonian.

It’s free! It’s funny! Winner, winner!

Anyone who wears a Transformers helmet while driving.

For a brief moment, I was Bumblebee’s co-pilot. Oh, yeah.

Thinking this was a good idea.

The horse (?) is named Larissa.

The hotline to Ric Flare in the Braves’ pressbox.

There’s also a direct line to Manscaping. So resourceful.

Kissing a dolphin.

Wearing orange-striped tube socks. In public.

A gerbil eating a Cheerio.

Letting your children build a 2,500 piece K’Nex contraption in one of their bedrooms.

A dog who likes to sunbathe.

Beating the claw machine twice. In the same day.

Crazy.

Walking 60 miles in 3 days.

Hold up. 

That last thing wasn’t crazy.

That last thing was one of the best things I’ve ever done. 

What’s really crazy is that an estimated 232,670 new cases of breast cancer will be diagnosed this year. 

Fourteen percent of all new cancer cases this year will be breast cancer cases. 

More than 150,000 people in the United States are currently living with metastatic breast cancer.

40,000 people will die this year from breast cancer.

At just 43, I have way too many friends who are battling breast cancer right this very minute. 

One of my sweet friends had to wear this scary contraption on her head for a Gamma Knife treatment yesterday, 

sending high intensity radiation into her brain to attack metastatic cancer cells. 

Lynn is one of the bravest women I know.

Another amazingly brave friend of mine went head-to-head against Triple Negative Breast Cancer and won. 

Take a minute to read about her journey. Shelley is only 40.

At just 43, I know way too many people who’ve lost their lives to breast cancer.

We’ve come a long way since 1975, when only 75% of those diagnosed with breast cancer would survive at least 5 years. Still, there’s more work to be done.

We all say we’re aware of breast cancer. But are you really? Do you know about Triple Negative breast cancer? Metastatic breast cancer? Inflammatory breast cancer? We still need to raise awareness of the multiple, terrible ways breast cancer can rear its ugly head. 

And most importantly, we still need to find a cure.

In the past 30 years, Susan G. Komen has spent $685 million on research for a cure. Komen currently supports over 500 active research funds in 48 states and 18 different countries. Last year alone, Komen pumped over $91 million dollars into metastasis research. But this still isn’t enough. I’m still scared; I’m scared for my family; I’m scared for my friends. The $6,925 you all helped me raise last year went a long, long way towards helping find a cure for Lynn and Shelley. That $6,925 has helped keep my cousin Angie and my friends Valerie, Mary Ann, Elaine, and Ellen alive. But that $6,925 has not discovered a cure. 

Yet.

And that’s why I’m doing the 3-Day Walk for a Cure again this year.

My team, Feet to Beat Breast Cancer, first walked in 2005, and since its inception has dedicated itself to raising funds to support the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. Last year alone, the team raised close to $100,000–and about $83,000 of that went directly to research for a cure. 

Would you please support me as I move into a space that makes me uncomfortable? Would you consider donating to help me help our team fund research so that one day NO ONE will have to go into battle against breast cancer? The link will take you to my personal page on the 3-Day website where you will find a way to make a donation.

If a monetary donation is not in the cards for you right now, may I still count on your support and prayers as I undertake this awesome challenge once again? Walking 60 miles is nothing compared to that journey so many women and men must take once they hear those awful words:  breast cancer.

So far, I’ve been very, very fortunate. Among those names listed above, I know them as cousin or friend, but not mom or grandmom or, thank goodness, me.

So let’s do something really, really crazy:

Let’s work to make this a world that’s entirely cancer-free.

We can do it. I know we can. Every penny helps.

Thank you so very much from the bottom of my heart.

You can click right here to make a donation!

Please visit the 2014 3-Day home page for more information. 

The Susan G. Komen Foundation graciously accepts matching gifts; please check to see if your business or company makes matching donations!

My participant ID is 6987448 and the Event ID is 1860.

I love summertime reading. Tons of great books are released, and the stacks around my bed grow…much to Russ’s dismay.

Since Labor Day has come and gone, I’m declaring the official end to summer, so it’s time again for my Scout’s-Honest brief reviews of the things I plowed through from June to September. Some are fluffier than others; some are borderline embarrassing to admit I read. Some are absolutely brilliant. Remember:  there’s no judging allowed, even though, you know, I’m judging these books. We can stay friends that way.

This summer’s crop was especially abundant, if dark. (In the real world, you’d see something like “Trigger Warning: Those Officially Insane in the Membrane Quite Possibly May Have a Freak Out of Epic Proportions, So Consider Yourself Warned and Proceed With Care” posted at the top of this.)

Bittersweet by Miranda Beverley-Whittemore. This modern Gothic novel was the page-turner that began my summer. Set in Vermont, it had a tiny bit of the flavor of one of my all-time favorites, The Secret History. There’s some seriously messed up family stuff going on in this book, and I kept thinking to myself, “there’s no way it can get any crazier.” But, yep, it does.

We Were Liarsby E. Lockhart. I read several positively glowing reviews of this little book; many compared it to an M. Night Shyamalan movie. And there’s a huge twist in it, to be sure. You’ll need a hefty dish of willing suspension of disbelief for it, but even then, I still flew through this in a day or two.

Dollbaby by Laura Lane McNeal. Continuing with my summer study of family dysfunction, I read this book set in the Deep South of the early 60’s. I loved this book and read the majority of it on my porch during a rainy Saturday. Ibby moves in with her eccentric (um, that’s saying it nicely) grandmother in New Orleans and her grandmother’s black helpers, Queenie and Dollbaby. It’s certainly reminiscent of The Help, but Dollbaby‘s characters are grittier, crazier, and less genteel.

How to Tell Toledo from the Night Sky by Lydia Netzer. Remember my obsession with all things astronomical? This novel is a mega-quirky examination of the question of whether true love is destiny or choice. The protagonists, George and Irene, are both astronomers. I flew through this thought-provoking book, but beware: it is Quirky with a capital Q. I loved it, but I don’t even know the way to explain why.

All Fall Down by Jennifer Weiner. Want to feel better about your nightly glass of wine? Then this is the book for you. Love reading about other people’s rehab experiences? Then this is also the book for you. Total beachy page-turner that’ll leave you feeling smug about your own self-control, however weak that may be.

California by Edan Lepucki. This story of love, devotion, family, and courage is set in the near future after the collapse of cities as we know them and was one of the meatier novels I read this summer. Frida and Cal forge their way in the woods for several years before the feeling of isolation begins to choke them. Frida’s pregnancy sure isn’t helping them feel any safer. They make the journey to a small, protective community and try to assimilate, but duh, it’s not easy being the odd man out.

Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Anne Fowler. I loved this dense, beautiful story of the rise and fall of Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Z features copious amounts of drinking, oodles of jazz-filled nights, and enough flamboyant behavior to leave you with a virtual hangover. It’s the last 1/3 of the novel, however, that will leave you thanking your lucky stars that women’s rights have come as far as they have since the ’30’s.

Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris. It’s David Sedaris. You know it’s funny. He includes a few pieces written in the voice of another person (a housewife, a bratty kid, an older man) which I did not enjoy as much as the rest of the madness about dentists and taxidermy and language barriers (yes, again, and it’s still just as funny as it was in Me Talk Pretty One Day). Luckily, those oddly voiced essays only take up about 25 pages of the book. The rest is classic Sedaris.

What She Left Behind by Ellen Marie Wiseman. There’s a whole lot of weeping and wailing in this novel, but that’s probably fair because it’s about a woman who, in the 1930’s, spent the majority of her life locked in an insane asylum even though she was not insane. The rubbernecker factor of this one is high, and while it’s certainly not the loftiest of literature, it was, um, interesting. And as this was the third book I read this summer that featured a nuthouse, it’s safe to say I’m over insane asylums.

I wasn’t the only one burning through books this summer; Jack will have his list of books for the younger set ready to go on Quiet Down There by the end of the weekend.

Happy reading!

P.S. Wanna know what’s really crazy (other than a summer filled with books about asylums and hallucinations and rehab)?

This.

This is crazy:

5th, 3rd, and Kindergarten.

My stars.