Our 100th Post!

Say hey all!  I do apologize for being MIA for the past few weeks.  This traveling stuff is keeping me busy and when I actually do get to be home, I just want to hang out with Jeremy and Diesel, so I never really get around to blogging.  But here I am, on Saturday morning in Ontario, CA, waiting for my event this afternoon and I have time to blog.

So, to start things off, this is our 100th post!  Woo hoo!  That's a lot, huh?  I didn't think I'd blogged that much...but apparently I have because Blogger doesn't lie. 

Secondly, is it really October already?  Ugh, where has 2009 gone?  Before we know it, it'll be Christmas...but that's fine by me because I LOVE Christmas.  Anyway, back to October...it's Breast Cancer month!  Yay!  I love Breast Cancer Month because everything is so pink!  Pink candies in the stores, pink jewelry, pink clothes.  Pink, pink, pink!  I love it!  But of course, more importantly, let's remember to Feel Your Boobies, Save the Ta Tas and Fight for the Cure.

Alright, lastly, I have a story about our Diesel.  When Diesel is home alone, we leave him in the laundry room because we don't yet trust him to have full access to the house.  We leave his crate in there in case he wants to sleep, his water dish, and toys to entertain him.  Over the time, he's apparently gotten bored with his toys because he's played in the water dish and even chewed on the water dish holder.  He's recently discovered our white board/key holder.  We have this small white board on the wall, it has little hooks for our keys, and it's about 5 feet high. 

About a month ago, I came home from work and Diesel had gotten my spare car key off the hook and chewed my remote to pieces.  I immediately wondered, "How did he unhook my key from the white board that's 5 feet high?"  A few weeks passed and I came home again to find that he'd gotten my spare house key with my electronic card to get me into the community center.  He demolished the card but couldn't eat the key.  How was he getting these things?!  Well, when I was traveling about a week and a half ago, Jeremy made a quick trip to the store and came back to catch Diesel red handed...he was standing on his crate, which easily made him 2 1/2 feet taller and allowed him to easily unhook all the keys!!  That shmuck!  He's getting SO smart!  Oh, I wish Jerm had taken a picture.

Going along with that story, we removed all the keys from the hooks, but we left a dry erase marker and some on the little magnets on the board, not thinking that he'd be able to get those, since they were higher than the dangling keys.   We were wrong!  Last Wednesday, Diesel decided he was going to eat the dry erase marker and a magnet!  Jeremy came into the laundry to find blue marker pieces all over the place.  Ugggh!  The marker was non-toxic but we still called the vet and they advised that we call Animal Poison Control.  Did you know that it costs you $60 to call Animal Poison Control?  What if you didn't have the $60, would your animal just have to be poisoned with no cure?  Anyway, they said that we probably had nothing to worry about and that it would all "pass," but they recommended we feed him high fiber foods, such as canned pumpkin, apples and whole wheat bread.  The vet agree with the consultation but said to feed him a Vaseline sandwich twice  that day to help "get things moving."  Yes, you read right...a Vaseline sandwich.  GROSS!! 

Anyway, Diesel is fine and I believe everything has now "passed," thanks to the disgusting sandwich.

Great Breast Cancer Sites

I know that I've been slacking a bit in my quest to provide posts about breast cancer throughout the month, but I'm done with traveling for the month and now I can get back on track!  So here we go!  I've found some great websites that provide information on breast cancer or support the cause.  Check out these 5 sites, so we can all be educated, support, and help find a cure.

The Breast Cancer Site

Your click on the "Click Here to Give - it's FREE" button helps fund free mammograms for women in need — low-income, inner-city and minority women whose awareness of breast cancer and opportunity for help is often limited. 

About a year and a half ago, I signed up for the daily reminder email from this site and I click everyday!  It's part of my morning email ritual. :)

National Breast Cancer Foundation

The National Breast Cancer Foundation mission is to save lives by increasing awareness of breast cancer through education and by providing mammograms for those in need.

Check out the "Early Detection Plan" on this website!

Susan G. Komen

This is THE breast cancer site.  Everything and anything that you wanted to know about the disease, how to reduce your risk, how to support the cure, statistics and much more.

Feel Your Boobies 

Ok, how could you not love a website with a name like that!?Feel Your Boobies® is a call to action for women young and not-so-young to get in touch with their body and know what’s normal for them. 

 

Save 2nd Base 

Here's another awesome website name!  Save 2nd Base is a unique and humorous phrase to support the fight against Breast Cancer.  A play on words of the old baseball euphemism is now synonymous with a battle cry heard ‘round the globe! 

There you have it!  Let's all continue to learn and support finding a cure for breast cancer!

Slash Cancer Risk in Minutes a Day

As I mentioned a few posts ago, I'm going to be posting interesting facts and articles about Breast Cancer, throughout the month of October.  The more we know, the better chance we have to educate one another, reduce our risk and find a cure.

Well, the first article comes from the October issue of Self magazine.  This article entitled, "Slash Cancer Risk in Minutes a Day," gives us some great ways to make little changes in our lifestyles that can lower the odds of getting cancer.  Some keep points are:

1. Stay weight wise - Excess pounds boost cancer risk.

2. Nibble a bit of chocolate - Researchers have discovered a compound in dark chocolate that fights fast-growing cancers such as colorectal cancer.

3. Practice peace - High levels of the stress hormone cortisol may inhibit a key gene from suppressing tumor growth.

4. Bake, don't burn - Grilling beef, poultry and fish until it's charred to a crisp can turn amino acids and other substances in the meat into heterocyclic amines (HCAs), compounds that have been linked to cancer.

5. Avoid needless tests - Those full-body computed tomography scans you sometimes see at the mall are bad news: CT scans deliver a dose of radiation 50 to 200 times that of a conventional X-ray.

6. Steal these secrets - Cancer rates in some countries are significantly lower than in the United States, and many experts attribute this to the lifestyles of people in these areas. Adopt these disease-fighting behaviors from afar:

   Spice things up. In India, where breast cancer rates are about five times lower than in the United States, people cook with an abundance of cancer-fighting spices such as cumin, ginger and turmeric.

   Go for whole grains. Finland natives are known for eating loads of dark rye and other whole-grain breads, which likely contributes to their low colorectal cancer rates.

   Kick butts. West Africans smoke much less than Americans, which may in part explain why their rates of esophageal cancer are about 60 times lower than ours.

7. Cut back on coffee - The number of esophageal cancer cases has jumped 300 percent in the past 20 years. A primary cause: chronic reflux, which bathes the throat in stomach acids that can erode tissue.

8. Ponder the Pill carefully - Research on the link between birth control pills and cancer reveals the contraceptive can be a mixed blessing. On the one hand, women who took the Pill for 15 years cut their risk for ovarian and endometrial cancer by more than half.  On the other hand, Pill takers may have a slightly elevated risk for breast and cervical cancer.

9. Be sunscreen-savvy - Melanoma rates among young women jumped 50 percent between 1980 and 2004.

10. Ask about daily aspirin - It's not only for heart disease: One a day reduced estrogen-receptor-positive breast cancer risk by 16 percent, NCI research finds.

11. Beware false promises - At least 25 companies have misleadingly marketed products containing ingredients like shark cartilage, exotic mushrooms and wild yam as cancer treatments or preventatives, prompting the FDA to issue a warning this summer.

For the complete article, please click here for Self.com.

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month!

As you can see by our new updated blog, it's time to celebrate Breast Cancer Awareness Month! Yay!! Breast Cancer Awareness is a cause that I love to support, for the following reasons: 1) I have breasts. 2)I LOVE the color pink. 3) I have a small breast lump (fibroadenoma - benign and nothing to worry about).

Throughout the month of October, I've decided to post some interesting articles and facts about Breast Cancer to help educate us all, get us talking and raise money for research. There are so many ways to support this cause!

One very easy way is to have your website "Go Pink for October." The following is from their website:

Web sites will Go Pink during the month of October to bring attention to Breast Cancer Awareness Month, get people talking about breast cancer, and raise money for research.

The hope is that you turn your site pink (in whatever way works for your site), go out to that World Wide Web thing and educate yourself about the multiple issues related to Breast Cancer, then take that newfound knowledge and tell someone else what you’ve learned.

We hope that you will:
1. Turn your web site/blog pink (however you like, it’s up to you).
2. Educate yourself about the multiple issues related to breast cancer.
3. Take that newfound knowledge and teach someone else what you know.

In 2006 (our first year) was a great start with the roughly 1500 sites that Went Pink. 2007 saw roughly 3000 sites Go Pink. We are looking to make an even bigger splash in 2008, but we’ll need your help to do it.

Blog about it, invite others to join, become involved, help increase awareness, learn something new, and teach others what you know.

So, let's all do our part, GO PINK and support Breast Cancer Awareness!!