stitch-free

I got my stitches out late yesterday…so I am stitch free. And tonight I can take a tub bath instead of a shower. I am so excited. : )

I read over yesterday’s post and my writing sounds like my 4th grade self. Pretty scattered…sentence structure could use some help. Hmm..is this the way I really talk when I’m not editing myself for the blog? Or am I just a little bit scatter brained these days? Don’t answer that.

I was so happy to be rid of my stitches yesterday. And I know I’ve said it before but I love love LOVE my plastic surgeon. She’s a sweetie. She got rid of my stitches…those were weird by the way..wire’y and pokey and all sorts of ‘y’s…and none of them good…except for healy. That they did. And she took some of the glue off from my first surgery and picked at things cleaned things up a little bit more. Before I know it, I will just have light pink lines where the ladies used to be.

And speaking of the ladies, I asked about when I can go shopping for a new bra and prosthetics. And she said in a couple of weeks. Is it weird that even though I have been very ‘ok’ to go around flat like this, the thought of having girls again makes me happy.

Even if they will be padded or silicone or whatever. I’ll have a bump…a smaller one…I am going for a B this time..instead of the D I had in real life.

So before long I’ll have faux/fake boobs.

Faubs…or foobs if you will.

more “less toxic” ways

Letting go of my old stand by deodorant was one of the first things I did back in October when the ball first started rolling. It was something easy I could do to cut down on toxins entering my body. It was warm back then and I was wearing sleeveless pj’s. So it gave it time to dry…which is crucial. If you try to rush things, it will tend to irritate the skin a little bit. And now that it’s colder and I’m showering in the mornings, it was really bothering me. I did not want to stand there fanning “under there” to get everything dry. So my first thought was baby powder, but I can’t handle many smells, so that wasn’t really working for me. But the ingredient in baby powder is corn starch, soooo…I went into the kitchen and found a small plastic bowl and put some cornstarch in it. I know this sounds weird…but it was the perfect solution! I use those disposable pad type things for makeup removal and pat it under each arm and it soaks up the extra liquid and I don’t smell. Repeat..I don’t smell! : )  Ask me again in the summer..I might have to come up with a better solution…it’s not an antiperspirant…but for now that is ok. Crystal comes in liquid, which I found at my Walmart for about $4, but it also comes in rock form and you just rub the rock against your wet underarm. Simple and effective!

I have also discovered the joys of using vinegar around the house. Most of the time, I just use diluted vinegar to spritz off my counters after I cook. I don’t do this if there is a nasty thing like raw meat or anything, but that seldom happens to me, so this works very well. It smells good..I have a thing for vinegar smell anyway..and it’s cheap. I have filled this spray bottle numerous times since I started doing this and that is just money saved every time I do it. Love that.

I also put vinegar in my spray mop. It’s one of those newer ones that let you put your own cleaners in them. So I said goodbye to Mr Clean and put in the vinegar and filled the rest with water. There are sites on the net devoted to vinegar use and I hunted to find one that told about how much I needed to dilute it for my uses and then I’ve just eyeballed it to get it right. It ain’t really rocket science.

In my last post, Karen asked about using Dr Bronners..and yes, I have gotten a nice big bottle of that. ***If you use Dr B…what smell do you get..I got baby something or other..not much smell…are the smells strong or faint?***

The picture above is my attempt at making body wash. Mixed reviews on that…but I’m still working on it. : )

I have used Dr Bronners in my liquid soap containers..the foaming kind..and even though it works with just a smidge in the bottom of the container and the rest filled with water, it left my skin very dry. So I am back to using the friendliest dishwashing detergent I can find in those.

But I have been using it to clean out my bathtub. I didn’t know if it would work. I sprinkled some baking soda in the tub and then did a scant swirly drizzle of Dr B all around the tub and it lathered up the soda and scrubbed my tub clean. And then I followed that up with some spritzes of vinegar as a rinse and the tub was very clean and I didn’t have to touch anything toxic. I did this in the kitchen sink last night…I will admit it was pretty dirty. I went into it thinking that I would know it was clean but the stains would not come out. But they did! I was very happy with the results. Again, I probably would not do this if I wanted to ‘sterilize’ the sink from raw chicken or something, but again that is seldom a problem for me. (I am weird..I use gloves and go from package to baking dish/pan and toss everything…very easy to keep ‘raw’ from going all over the planet)

I will keep adding to this section as I find new things that work well for us. But these are pretty simple and cheap and they work. And no toxins. Love it.

‘poo or no ‘poo?

One day I picked up my bottle of shampoo and noticed almost every ingredient was a chemical of some sort.

So I did a little bit of searching…it seems as though there are people who don’t use shampoo at all. I had never heard of such a thing, but it intrigued me. So I tried it.

I used baking soda and apple cider vinegar. There are many instructions online for how to do it, but I will just tell you what I did and how it worked. I got out two ‘kid cups’ I had in the pantry and put about a tablespoon of baking soda in one and a tablespoon of vinegar in the other…eyeballing the amount, of course. And then filled each cup the rest of the way with water. I put my finger/hand in the baking soda cup to make sure the powder got mixed up really well and wasn’t just settled at the bottom of the cup.

First I wet my hair as usual. Then I poured the baking soda water in my hair. A little here, a little there, until my cup was empty. I worked it in really well with my fingers and then rinsed like I would with real shampoo. Then I followed it up with the vinegar and did all the same things..rub in, rinse as usual.

I will be the first one to tell you that I did NOT think I would like it…I did NOT think it would work. I thought the ‘crunchy granola’ people that had been doing must have a screw loose, because after all, I have oily hair and there just wasn’t any way it would work.

But it did. I did that for a couple of weeks until my first surgery and I couldn’t really deal with all of that in the shower, so I was using ‘regular shampoo’ again.

Until..the other day I was in Target getting some things and I started looking at the Burt’s Bees stuff and sort of eenie-meenie-miny-moe’d it and picked up what is in the picture and I’ve been using it ever since.

It works very well…it feels funny when I use it..it makes a rich lather, but it doesn’t feel slick in my hair. I don’t really know how to describe that. But anyway..it has been working very well for me while I’m in the shower.

But when I start washing my hair in the sink again, I really think I’m going to go back to the soda/vinegar routine. It’s cheaper and it makes my hair feel great.

Who’dathunkit!

making changes

I’ve had a lot of time to think about a lot of things since all of this new stuff began. One of the things I have given a lot of thought to is chemicals.

Chemicals in what I eat, in what I clean with and what I put on my body. It hit me that many times a day I was coming in contact with things I can’t pronounce and I know they are soaking into my skin or going into my system and I don’t know what they are, or what their real effect is on my body.

And so now, I am suddenly aware that I want to lighten what I have titled “my chemical load” so that my body isn’t working hard to weed out harmful things from my system.

So I have cut out sugar and white flour and anything I can’t pronounce from my diet. I am not eating animal fat or any meat other than chicken and turkey (which I already was doing). I have been concerned with what my meat eats..and that is very hard…nobody wants divulge the whole truth about what their livestock is eating..even “organic” fed chickens are fed a soy based diet..which is not healthy for me right now. Very often my meals look more ‘real’…real foods on my plate that are easy to recognize and haven’t strayed very far during food prep from what they were originally. I could go on and on and I’m sure I will as time goes on.

I am less militant during these times of healing because I don’t have the energy to go to the health food store and gather special ingredients right now. But I’m still trying hard not to break the rules as much as possible.

I am also working on cutting out a lot of the store bought things I use…lotion…lip balm…body wash..some cleaners…this sort of thing. I tried a recipe I found online for lotion and it was a fail. I haven’t given up on it though. I made some body wash, but I won’t use it until my wounds are healed, so more on that later.

I’ve said Yes to Cucumbers for lotion. I’ve also gotten acquainted with Burt and his Bees. It’s been interesting to see what is available now that I am looking and reading labels on evvverything.  I feel like it’s an investment in time and effort that will pay off, not just for me, but for the whole family. 

So you’ll be hearing more about the details of the changes I’m making as time goes on.

***If you have any favorite tips or web sites or recipes or products that you think would fit the bill, please leave me a note about them in the comments. Thanks, peeps!***

another surgery

Friday I had another surgery. I had some skin that didn’t survive my first surgery and this was just going back in there and getting rid of it. In some senses, it was a piece of cake. Shorter surgery..no hospital stay.

But I got a drain. And she stitched it to me on the scar from my last drain. And it was really asking a lot from non-elastic “scar” skin. Ugh. So I have been on heavy duty pain killers all weekend because of a stitch…not because of the surgery itself. I go later today to get my drain out. Maybe then I’ll notice my surgery site more.

She had to really work to get my wound taken care of and removed. She warned my husband about how I had a wavy horizontal scar now. By the time I finally got up the nerve Saturday night to unwrap everything and take a shower, we were both a bit anxious about what we were going to find.

And what we found wasn’t that bad. Not near what we had imagined we might see. But taking that shower about did me in, with all the stitch tugging and all. So I didn’t take a shower last night. Waiting on having the tube out to take a proper shower… hopefully with a lot less pain…later today.

sort of a catch up

This is sort of a catch up post. I have had company that stayed for about a week. Needless to say I wasn’t  posting on the blog. Ha! At his arrival, I was on heavy narcotics and sleeping most of the day and by the time he left (yesterday), I was/am off all narcotics (only taking rx strength ibuprofen) and am able to drive.

I have come a long way…yesterday was two weeks exactly since my surgery.

Went back Monday to see my plastic surgeon. I have some areas of new skin growth (I have a patch of skin that is not alive and will need to be removed), but I will still be having a small out patient surgery at a little surgery center…not THE BIG HOSPITAL…in a couple of weeks. Glad for this time because it gives the skin a chance to regenerate itself where it will. But I also have to massage the skin to make it more pliable. The first time I did it, I almost gagged. I am just not used to the geography ‘there’, and having to feel of it often during the day has been hard for me. It is also waking some things up that were numb, so that is a good thing even though it feels like a set back as far as pain. But it is all necessary.

I have cried in the bathroom over taking off tape…not the dressing change itself, which isn’t pretty..just tape. But that is also something to be thankful for…I am getting feeling back, which is a good thing.

Anyway..that is enough for now..it feels as if there are many things to say…like I am sleeping in the recliner…much more comfortable than a flat bed. I am showering until all of this heals..and I miss soaking in my tub.

More later…. Thanks for checking in on me. Love you all. : )

from D to A just like that

I had my surgery Tuesday of this week. A double mastectomy. And went from a D to an A just like that.

I came home from the hospital yesterday. I am super tired. But my peeps are waiting on me hand and foot.

Hubs helped me take a shower this morning and get into clean pj’s and helped me with my hair. It won’t be in any style magazines, but it feels clean and right now, that’s about as good as it gets.

Everything went well…I have cleans nodes, which is a major praise. One request…a small patch of skin isn’t thriving and if it continues to die, I will have to have another surgery to have it removed…probably next week. So “go pink” has an even greater meaning for me right now..that skin really needs to go pink.

I am sleeping off and on all the time and on a ton of pain meds…so hopefully this post makes some sort of sense. I will check back in with you later, but just wanted to post a general update.

Thank you for all your love and prayers.

Go pink!!!

a new journey : (

Our family has entered into a new journey…another journey no family ever wants to take.

I found out just the other day that I have breast cancer.

I will be having surgery soon. Please keep me and my family in your prayers.

More later.

easy chicken and potatoes…slow cooker style

This has got to be the easiest thing ever for the crock pot. And it’s also yummy and comforting too.

Just put a package of thawed chicken tenders in the bottom of the crock pot. I seasoned the meat with salt, pepper, garlic powder, dried thyme and some sage powder.

And then cut up several potatoes. I halved and then sliced them about a quarter inch thick..or so. Nothing exact here. I just didn’t want big hunks of potato so they would be done in time. Anyway, I put those on top of the meat evenly.

And then poured two cans of this over the top…

Chicken gravy. This is the Walmart generic version of Campbell’s chicken gravy. I’ve gotten both and the Great Value tastes better, in my opinion.

I also sprinkled a little bit of the seasonings on top of the gravy and lidded it up and turned it on low. The potatoes soak up some of the gravy so it didn’t turn out runny or overly wet. Just really homey and comforting. Great with a salad or steamed broccoli.

*side note: My slow cooker cooks fast so I start mine after lunch and it’s ready by dinner. You mileage may vary. : )

Tennessee vaca Part 3 (Biltmore, Dollywood & Clingman’s Dome)

The next day we got ourselves together for a road trip to North Carolina. Another state I’ve never visited! : ) It’s so pretty there!

But first of all..another photo off the balcony at the cabin. Gorgeous! Good morning, God! : )

We had a slight little unplanned detour as our GPS led us onto a GRAVEL road for about a mile and a half. It wasn’t very wide either. A little bit scary…but the weird thing...people lived down there! We passed houses and the mailman along the way. We were so glad to be back on paved road though!

And tunnels..we don’t have those here..you have to have mountains for that.

And fog…or smoke…since were were in the “smoky” mountains.

But then we arrived…

…at Biltmore Estate. Wow. There just aren’t words for this place. Huge. Opulent. Ok..how about gaudy and a little over the top? It was really hard for me to think of that palace as a house. But anyway..so pretty. And as you can see, the weather was perfect!

The gardens were stunning. Can you just imagine yourself going for a morning stroll when the dew is still on the ground? Sigh…

The next morning I noticed a thermometer on the balcony so I took a picture of it at about 8:15 in the morning….

…because according to my iPod, it was already 80 here at home. UGH.

We headed off to Dollywood first thing. This little church is inside the park and they hold church services every Sunday. I think that is so cool! : )

Saw an amazing birds of prey show. This was one of the smallest birds.

And this is one of the biggest.

Amazing! And we had front row seats…hello off season. : )  They would bring the birds down off the stage on one side and walk across the front isle right in front of us. Very cool. And also..all the birds  are non-releasable for various reasons.

We rode the train.

We had some apple pie…but not that pie..the slices from that pie were HUGE.

This is a replica of Dolly’s childhood home. It’s hard to fathom that kind of upbringing with 13 people in the house..especially the day after going to Biltmore and it was built for 3 people..and ‘guests’.

This was inside the park..I felt like it should have been at the front. Oh well. Very pretty.

We loved Dollywood..it was just a relaxing day. Oddly enough, this is a retiree destination for sure…there was a sign that said “stroller parking” and there was one stroller and TWO scooters. LOL Enjoyed seeing the museum type exhibits in the park and we also took in a few shows..birds of prey, a play about the mountains and a video about the mountains. Loved them all.

The next morning we awoke to bad weather. But isn’t that a pretty sight off another one of our balconies. My girl used to call the sun’s rays God’s light. I think she’s right.

We decided to go to Clingman’s Dome the last day. Even though we knew we weren’t going to be able to see a single thing.  Not sure if we’re persistent or just stupid. They don’t call them the smoky mountains for nothing.

This is from the walkway at the dome. When we looked down we could barely see the path below us..much less any scenery.

I thought I was going to die walking this thing. The air is thin and I was gasping for air. My peeps weren’t having any trouble though. We were a mess by the time we got to the top..wet and very tired.

There was a placard for each ‘view’. This is the one for the northern view.

And this was the northern view.

Hmmm..tell me again why we walked all the way to the top. I guess it was so we could say we did it. Ok, we did it. : ) I met a nice couple from our area on the way up, so we had some nice chats while we made our way.  We took pics of each other at the top to ‘prove’ we made it. But we might as well have been standing in front of a piece of white paper!

This is the balcony on our last morning. I grabbed the camera and took this pic and then put my camera in my backpack for the trip home. You can really see the ‘smoky’ that morning. So pretty though.  Sigh…

We had said to ourselves that we would try to leave around 7 am. I woke up crazy early…that’s another story for another post…so we got moving pretty early. By about 7:15 we were saying good-bye to our beautiful cabin in the woods.  We decided to go ahead and turn our clocks back since we would hit time change pretty fast after we got on the road. So it was like leaving at 6:15am. Sa-weet! We ended up only taking one day to drive home instead of two. We hit some storms and our a/c went out…which made the storms harder since we didn’t have a defroster..not fun driving.

We made some Cracker Barrel pit stops along the way, too.

Yummo. And we pulled in at home at about 9:15pm. We were so glad we didn’t have to get up and finish the drive the next day. We took the van that night to the dealer and it was ready by mid-morning and I finished all the laundry an unpacking by mid-afternoon. 

The End. We had a great time and loved every minute of it. : )

Tennessee Vaca part 2 (Gatlinburg and Cade’s Cove)

We woke up Monday morning itching to get out there and start enjoying some of the sights. Our plan was to shop and generally “piddle around” in Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge as there are a lot of shops and what-nots. This allowed us to stretch our legs after two days in the car and just relax.

We quickly found we weren’t that crazy about Pigeon Forge. There was some sort of car show going on and the congestion on the main road was bad at all hours of the day and night. So we focused our attention on Gatlinburg. It’s a really cute little town with quaint shops. We made our way to this ski lift thing, which we rode to a higher point to take in the sights. It was interesting and fun, if not a little nerve wracking since you just kind of hop in and unlike ‘rides’, there are no belts or harnesses to hold a person in, which bothered the girl a little bit. But she quickly started looking around and enjoying the scenery.

This was just after we left the little station thing and crossed the street. Much prettier than ‘town’. : )

And there go my peeps ahead of me up the mountain.

From the top…so pretty.

We decided after spending the morning piddling around town and looking in little shops, that we had had enough of that. And were itching to see some of the real stuff we came for. So we headed into the mountains. Actually we headed into the base of the mountains. There is a scenic loop called Cade’s Cove in the park system. So pretty. Lots of things to get out and take pictures of and learn about. Log cabins, churches, cemeteries, a corn mill. So that’s what we did.

You can almost hear hymns coming out of those open doors, can’t you?

This is my favorite picture from the whole trip. I really need to photoshop out those two people though! : )

 

Sometimes I think I could have lived back then…I love this cute little house.

Hmmm, maybe not. : )

The mill. Really enjoyed walking around here and going inside to see the corn meal.

At one of the stops..I can’t remember which one….there was a bathroom. And the girl and I needed one. But she was pretty worried since we were ‘out in the middle of no where’ that it might be a pit toilet. I was not too thrilled about the possibility either, but kept my concerns to myself. Well, we walked into the little building that served as the rest area and lo and behold. My girl got the biggest smile on her face when we walked in the door and found FLUSH POTTIES. I laughed so hard! (and was secretly just as happy about it as she was!)

I know this doesn’t look like much. But after driving hither and yon to get to and see everything, it was a day.

Self portrait. : )

After a pretty long day it was so nice to sit down to these lovelies. Those are apple fritters…and they were served with fresh apple butter. I never really thought I liked apple butter much, but this tasted a lot different than the stuff with “Great Value” on the label..I’m just sayin’. This place was called The Apple Barn and Amy told me about it. THANKS, AMY! *waves furiously* I was thrilled when this little place was mentioned on a Southern Plate post I received a link to yesterday. I felt like I’d eaten somewhere famous. And yes, we did buy some butter to bring home..and I’ve almost finished off a (small) jar of it. Soo good! : )

Tennessee vaca part 1 (arriving)

We quickly planned our little trip. I think I ended up with two weeks lead time to get it all together. That’s a record, even for us. (we scheduled our first Disney trip 5 weeks out, which is unheard of for WDW planning)

Anyway, we left Saturday and drove most of the day.  We entertained ourselves with music and the girl read some books.

 

Later in the day we made a little iPod taco in a napkin so it could rest in the cup holder. I had downloaded Skit Guys podcasts and we listened to a few of those as well.

We spent the night in Memphis and got up early Sunday and drove the rest of the way. We really enjoyed the lushness (is that a word???) of the trees since just about everything here is well, dead.

We arrived in the mid afternoon. When we got to Pigeon Forge, we had to navigate the town and find the offices for our cabin. Before long we were pulling up to our cabin.

It was impressive. So beautiful and exactly what you’d expect to see for a vacation rental. Rustic with all the comforts of home. : )

This is my favorite part. The swing. I spent a lot of time out there just enjoying the view.

The kitchen…excuse our junk.

Dining room..again with the junk.

My peeps chilling in the living room.

This is the view ‘up’ from the living room.

The cabin was amazing. There was a sleeping loft upstairs with a huge master bath. And a bedroom downstairs off the living area with another king bed and it’s own bath. The girl took that one. And there was a game room downstairs in the basement. With yet another bathroom. Each level had a balcony looking out over the smoky mountains. It was quite an a amazing view.

See…

I can almost feel the breeze just looking at that pic. Ahhhhh. : )