Simply Incredible

If anyone has ever doubted the good in people (I admit I have my moments, often), please consider walking for a cause like Breast Cancer. The crazy amount of emotion I have experienced the last few days alone is almost too much to handle. On Friday, I finally decided to email my co-workers to tell them about the Walk and ask for support. Initially I was nervous about this because I didn't know if there was a company policy which wouldn't allow it (my husband's company is really uptight about this. I won't mention any names. Grr...) I was proved terrible wrong when, after sending the email I got a response that morning from our CEO saying that any donations made by employees would be matched up to $1,000! My thoughts went like this... "Wait, what? What? WHAT? Oh my gosh, oh my gosh... *I was then without thoughts for about a minute, then* WOW!" I immediately thanked him and emailed my group to tell them the news! So far employees have contributed $250 to my Walk page, and it's still coming in! :-) (The words "yippee" and "skippy" come to mind!)

As I said before, Saturday was the Expo in Boston. We got up early and met a large group for a Training Walk before the Expo. We dressed warm, but it was still quite miserable. We walked about 5 miles around the Charles River (Boston and Cambridge sides) in the rain/snow/sleet/ice and wind. I took a lot of comfort knowing that, even though it could rain, the likelihood that it will be SNOWING the weekend of the Walk (May 17-18th) is pretty low. (However, there is a chance, since this is New England and it has snowed on Mother's Day before... remind me why I haven't moved to Florida again please. Oh yeah, hurricanes, that must be it, and maybe alligators.) Steps recorded for Saturday = 19,050, a new personal record!!!

On Sunday we went back to Shaw's in North Reading for another bake sale (as a team, since all 5 of us were there! Amanda and Dan had the pleasure of meeting the infamous Kevin Bacon.) We got a bunch of donations but two people really made me want to bawl. One was a young boy, about 10 years old, who had brought in over 6,000 pennies (wow!) to cash in from his piggy bank. We watched as it was all counted with the machine and in the end he had just over $60! When he came back from the cashier with his cash he came over to our table and gave us $1. I mean really, how sweet is that? A little while later a woman came up and put $5 in the jar and said, quite simply, "this is for my Mom." *tear* (Not regular tears, not "oh, this is sad" tears, but rather huge gushing tears that wet your cheeks and make you unable to breath...)

Our team received some incredibly sad news from home yesterday. A friend's Mom was diagnosed with Breast Cancer on Friday and will undergo a mastectomy on the 31st. Apparently it's slow moving so the doctor's are confident. This woman also recently lost her husband and has been having a hard time in general, and now this. Please keep her, her family, and everyone else having to go through the same in your thoughts. (I am confident I am going to run out of tears soon.)





TEAM PHOTO! (Left to right: Me, Jason, Amanda, Dan, Nicole)




Dan (our team's graphic designer!) is working on replacing the ugly yellow background with a color that doesn't remind me of puke. ;-)

8^)

Our team is one third of the way to our goal! Together, the 5 of us have raised over $3,000 so far! We are so excited! We still have a long way to go, and there are some days when we email each other freaking out that we aren't going to be able to meet our goal (I'm guilty of this as well!) But, we are certainly getting closer and no matter what we are contributing to the cause! I can't believe all of this started when Lisa texted me and asked me if I wanted to walk 40 miles with her!

The Front Desk (my husband's parent's store in Vermont) is helping out a lot as well! We didn't think that we would have such a huge response from our friends back in Vermont but we have been so surprised and grateful for their support! They have helped us raise almost $400 so far, and the checks are still coming in! I know that not many people from the great Northeast Kingdom will read this (I bet only 20% of you have internet, hehe!) but thank you, and for what it's worth I really hope all your snow melts soon (or at least stops falling!) 8^)

15,121

I just have to say, this past weekend was a stressful/emotional/fun time! Friday night my team mate, Nicole, and I baked up a storm for a bake sale on Saturday. Which, I must say, was quite successful considering the weather didn't cooperate with us at all. People are so incredibly generous, it is really amazing. (Our bake sale was at the Shaw's in Reading and the store manager who helped us out was named Kevin Bacon... how great is that?)

Sunday morning we woke up with every intention of a 10 mile training walk on the Minuteman Trail in Cambridge. However, the weather disagreed. It was cold and windy out and we knew we wouldn't last long walking outside (I'm not really that tough when it comes to weather, despite the fact that I grew up in Vermont where the snow is known to melt around June.) Instead we went to the Burlington Mall and walked as much as we could before the mall got crowded. We walked about six miles in the mall and I wasn't even sore the next day! This is definitely getting easier. At the end of the day my pedometer read 15,121 steps! (My goal every day is 10,000!)

This Saturday is the Boston Expo and my whole team will be together for the first time! Amanda and Dan are driving down from Laconia, NH on Friday. Saturday morning we are attending a 5 mile (moderately paced) training walk which will take us right to the Expo. I am most excited about the yoga session they are holding at the Expo and being able to take a team photo to post on my Avon page! (And my blog, of course!) :-)

It's a Bad Day to be Breast Cancer

Today has been a great day for fundraising! I have no idea why today is really different from any other day, but it really is. This morning, the generous customers of The Front Desk Office Supplies (In-Law's store in Vermont) donated $150 to the Avon Walk. JUST TODAY! Also, I have been getting emails from family members letting me know that they have donated as well. I am super excited! Also, my teammate, Nicole, (who has been a fundraising MACHINE for the past month) just hit the $1,000 mark for her peronsal fundraising! My team is up to about 20% (the webpage shows a little lower because it takes a little while for checks to be counted...) So, like I said, it is a BAD day to be Breast Cancer, cause we are kicking some major butt here! Not even like "oh, look, we're kicking butt," but really actually foot-to-butt contact, with FORCE! Rolling on the ground in pain and pointing and laughing kind of butt-kicking... :-)

Living in Eternal Dorkdom

This past weekend Jason and I took a short trip to New York City. I have always wanted to go and somehow have never had the opportunity. I know it's weird; I have been to Europe twice but not to NYC, which is just 6 hours away! We finally thought that it was time to check it out and ventured out Saturday morning (during a snowstorm, of course!) to the Big Apple. Why do people usually visit New York City? To see a show maybe; to see the Statue of Liberty, maybe visit the Empire State Buidling... Let me tell you honestly why we went. I wanted to go to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) to see my most favorite painting of all time, Starry Night by Van Gogh. It was one of my life's goals to see this painting, kind of like a "have to do this before I die" type of thing. (I actually have a list like this! I encourage everyone to make one of these lists. It is a really interesting exercise.) Anyway, a fringe benefit of our trip is the meaning behind the title of this blog. I recently started collecting Squished Pennies (you know, those machines that you put in 51 cents so that you can get a penny that is then worth less than one cent with an imprint on it, yeah, those.) As it turns out, there are A LOT of opportunities to squish pennies in NYC. I came back with over 40 new pennies for my collection! We searched and planned to get the most pennies we could in one weekend, it was great! Jason let me know on the way back that I am going to be living in "Eternal Dorkdom" for the rest of my life because I went to NYC to see a painting and squish pennies! (The museum was amazing by the way!)

You may be asking what this has to do with the Walk, well, indirectly, penny squishing is like training for the Walk! Honestly, we walked almost 40 blocks from Times Square to the Museum of Natural History (which we certainly need to visit again, it was so cool!) on Sunday! That's 40 blocks ONE WAY, and another 40 back. Plus, we stopped for lunch in Times Square then walked another 8 blocks to Grand Central to catch our train. My legs hurt a little the next day and I certainly felt like I got a workout. I'm so glad that even on vacation I can do a little but of training for my nearly 40 mile goal for May! Just think, if those blocks had been miles, I would have been all set for the Walk! (Oh my, that makes it sound like a lot! It's a good thing I have two days to do it!)

For more information about the MoMA - www.moma.org
For more information about penny squishing - www.pennycollector.com


(PS - I know "Dorkdom isn't a word... It just adds to the dorkiness of my life to use it.)

Walking for Day in Different Shoes

Yesterday was a great day for Jason and I and our progress with the Walk! We went (with our team mate, Nicole) to buy sneakers for the Walk at Marathon Sports. In order to Walk and not get millions of blisters (I am aiming for under one thousand over the course of the weekend) and also so that your shoes aren't too tight and make your toenails fall off (AHH! Seriously, I do NOT want that to happen to me! EW!) you need to have shoes that fit your feet right. We walked into the store and told them we are participating in the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer and needed to be fitted for shoes. The employee who helped us was very knowlegable about the fitting process and had us take our shoes off and walk the length of the store so that she could see how we walked. At this point, where I took my shoes off, I realized something very embarassing. I was in a shoe store, about to be professionally fitted for sneakers so that I can walk 40 miles and I look down after taking my shoes off and see that the inside of the shoes I have been wearing all day are not the same color. Wait, what? That is weird. I look more closely and realize that I am wearing two different shoes. TWO DIFFERENT SHOES! They are both black, and the same type of dress shoe, but still completely different. This all took place after work at around 7:00 in the evening. The ENTIRE day I was wearing two completely different shoes and had no idea! Can you imagine? And of all places to be when I realize this I was at a SHOE STORE! Needless to say I went to bed early last night and I am hopefully giving off the impression today that I have regained knowledge about how to actually dress myself in the morning!

Fundraising Blog Up and Running (or, "Walking" is more like it!)

Great news! You can now purchase Breast Cancer Awareness items (hand crafted by ME!) on my Fundraising page. Just click here or the link on the right side of this page (under my profile). Items are all below $10. There are bracelets, bookmarks, cell phone charms, die cuts, and more! And, do you want to know some more great news? There is a lot more to come! Soon (Monday!) I will be posting candles, bracelets featuring Swarovski Crystals (so pretty), embellished frames, and necklaces! This is just the beginning everyone! Please check back often for more goodies!

13 Penguins-a-Plunging

My husband and I drove the 4 hours (multiplied by holiday weekend traffic, jetlag, and sickness = 7 hours) home to Vermont Friday night for a special event held in Newport at Lake Memphremagog every winter. My sister wanted to make sure that we visited this weekend because she committed to fundraise for the Vermont Special Olympics and (I'm serious here...) jump in the lake! What's more amazing is that there are A LOT of people who do this! That amounts to a lot of money donated to the Special Olympics as well as a lot of cold people! I'm so proud of her for doing something so meaningful and for such a good cause. I think that deep down, my family is very charitable (not to mention a little crazy! Have I told you that my husband, sister-in-law, and I are all walking?) We debated back and forth about which is crazier, jumping in a lake in the dead of winter, or walking 40 miles! We'll see what happens because she wants to walk with me next year and I told her I would do the Penguin Plunge with her. I think we may be equally crazy now... But hey, it's fun and both are for a wonderful cause. To her credit though, it was twenty degrees outside and she did this in her bathing suit!

To find out more about the Special Olympics and to make a donation please visit: www.vtso.org
For more information on the Penguin Plunge please visit: www.penguinplunge.org

A Minor Setback

I apologize to all my adoring fans out there (How many people are reading this blog? Maybe 2? Haha!) for not posting last week. If you are within the 80% of the people in Northeast US that were sick last week, you know how I feel, if not, you are lucky! I battled a cold and stomach bug most of last week and I am FINALLY feeling much better. For the most part, my body still hates me, but I think we are slowly getting back to being on speaking terms again.

As for the walk, my team members and I (well, three of us) are excited today because we are going to an intro meeting in Boston tonight. Hopefully we can get some more fundraising ideas as well as get (more!) excited for the walk! I will let all of you (i.e. both of you) know how it went tomorrow!

Fundraising is picking up for me as I have about 40 letters to send out to family and friends explaining the commitment I have made and asking for donations. If you are reading this because you read a letter I sent you and decided to check out my blog, then HI! How are you? Please post a comment here to let me know you are reading! And, because I sent the letters to my closest friends and family, you can assume that if you are reading this then I miss you and we should get together soon!

I also have pictures of items I am going to be selling which I will be posting online with prices. They should be online by the end of the week. I have bookmarks, bracelets, key chains, cell phone charms, iPod cases (for the new Nano!), packs of die cuts, embellished frames, and more! Everything is made by me except the bracelets which are made by my Mom and the iPod cases which were made by my Mother-in-Law. I know, my family is amazing! We are all pretty crafty people (the girls anyway!) and I am very glad for that.

As for training, there will be more updates to come as soon as I regain strength and get to go to the gym again. Stan has been reglected lately and I'm pretty sure he's mad at me too. :-)

11 DEGREES!

I had a very eventful day yesterday... When I went to get in my car to drive to work I couldn't get into the driver's side of the car. The door just wouldn’t open so I had to climb in through the passenger side door. I thought that I should take it as a sign and not go to work (also, it was 11 degrees outside), however I thought that I was being dumb and finding an excuse to take a day off. Little did I know what was store for me. I got to my car last night at the train station I drive to in the morning to commute in to the city, unlock the driver's side door (it worked!), climbed in, put the key in the ignition and turned it. Nothing happened. I took the key out, put it back in and turned it, still nothing. The lights weren't turning on, nothing was happening. Great, dead battery. So I called my Mother-in-Law, and after attempting to use my husband’s AAA number (I am not a member, apparently) and exclaiming a variety of obscenities to my steering wheel. When that didn't help the battery not to not be dead I called my boss, who lives just north of me. She was still at work and had jumper cables in her car. (I thought that the problem may have been the starter as well because it was making an unnerving ticking sound so I was a little worried we would be there for a while...) We connected red to positive and black to negative and the lights turned on in my car! YAY! (Did I mention that it was 11 degrees outside, which means it was also 11 degrees inside my car?) I started my car and Marie followed me back to Wilmington. The car started fine this morning and I drove to the train station no problem. We'll see what happens tonight I suppose. On top of all this, we are due for a storm tomorrow morning going into the day. I don't tend to pay attention to the weather, but when I turned on the TV this morning to see what the temperature in Boston was (still 11 degrees) they were talking about the big, bad, and equally ugly winter storm warning for Boston tomorrow! Also, my big bad immune system which has been working so hard to keep my white blood cells doing their good little jobs has officially plummeted into no-man's land where it is currently weeping in a heap of not-so-usefulness wondering where it went wrong in life. Thus, I am coming down with an equally big, bad, and definitely ugly cold. Needless to say I went home, made some soup and tea and took a bubble bath for about an hour last night. (Also, I remember cranking the heat up to about 75 degrees in the apartment because it was 11 degrees outside... I wasn't sure if I had mentioned that...)

Despite all this, I must say that my day yesterday is absolutely nothing compared to someone battling breast cancer. Taking on something like this, something that is bigger than I am, certainly puts things into perspective. I think that everyone really wants to be part of something bigger than themselves and it is honestly bringing me an incredible amount of joy. Working toward a specific goal and doing it with people I care about is going to make this a terribly fun few months!

Stan says my steps yesterday totaled 5,024. My total today (up until right now, at 1:00 in the afternoon) are 5,197. I’m pretty sure today is shaping up to be a good day for Stan! :-)