I have been tagged by IzzyMom to come up with 5 (slightly odd) facts about me.

01: I love Hanson! You read that right. Hanson. I have had 3 copies of their Christmas CD. I would listen to it year-round! My brother hid one copy and then my husband took the second copy I bought. I now keep the third copy under lock and key.

02: I’m 29 and I STILL sleep with my baby blanket. It’s green and has been all over the United States. (Yes, including college and on my honeymoon).

03: I nicknamed my husband’s you-know-what. It’s Joe.

04: I watch shows like Supernanny & Nanny 911, because it makes me feel like a better parent. I watch shows like Wife Swap & Trading Spouses, so I can tell my husband how good he has it.

05: I’m a huge Bobby Knight fan. Any guy who can throw a chair across the basketball court in anger and be witty enough to tell reporters after the game that there was an old lady on the other side that needed a seat - is tops in my book!!! (He was the head basketball coach at Indiana University and was fired. He went on to be head coach at Texas Tech.)

Now I’m tagging you! What are 5 (slightly odd) facts about you? Leave your responses in the comments.

We are an open kind of family. By open I mean we run around naked. Just kidding. We only run around naked when we don’t have any clothes on. Our small house includes one small bathroom, so the three of us must share. It can make the morning rush of getting ready a little hectic and a little difficult to be modestly clothed at all times. There is also the open door policy - where we all use the bathroom with the door open. I guess Nate and I have always been at that level of comfortable with each other. It must have started when we fell in love or maybe it was when we first shared a toilet after getting drunk?

Typically I shower first in the morning and put on pants after, but sometimes go topless until I’m done putting on make-up, etc… I know our son is 4.5 years old and he’s probably getting to that age where I should be more covered. Nate and I have talked about it, but we haven’t really done anything about it.

Last week while I was running around like a pole dancer, Ethan flat out pointed to my drooping chest and stated, “I really like those Mom!”

How do you respond? I was at a loss for words. Feeling inappropriate and embarrassed, I mumbled something about girls being different than boys and they were part of my body, or something?

Flustered and still topless I went back into the bathroom and shared with Nate the remark Ethan had made. What was this proud Daddy’s response?

“Well at least he doesn’t point to my stuff and say that!”

True, but still. Then I saw a post over at IzzyMom about explaining to kids the correct body part names. She’s not ready to go there and neither am I. Right now the only vocabulary word we use is pee-pee. That’s all he needs to know.

7:21 p.m. It’s the In-Law’s calling. It was 22 degrees there today and they may get 12 inches of snow tonight. They wanted to know if we received the rubber. Yes, all 690 lbs of it arrived and is taking up what might be a permanent residence in our drive-way. Our weather today was 36 degrees according to the internet apparently. Forecast for the week looks pretty good too. They had a surprise 60th birthday party for Nate’s step-mother and wished more people could have made it. Uh, we weren’t invited! He saw where we had some serious flooding down here. My husband was puzzled because it hasn’t rained or snowed. Apparently, his Dad was reading some anniversary edition of our local newspaper online that was remembering the Flood of 1937. Back to the weather.

I came home yesterday to find these two animals (dolphin & turtle) in our driveway. Delivered by semi-truck and left without anyone signing to accept them. At first I assumed they were left at the wrong house. When I read the packing slip they kindly left in our mailbox it had our name/address and pointed out that the freight weighed 690 lbs. Then, I thought maybe it was a prank. But who? Last on my list would have been Nate’s family. In fact, my family would have been numbers 1-99.

Nate solved the mystery when he remembered a conversation from Thanksgiving. Seems Nate’s step-brother (who owns a rubber business & makes products for playgrounds) felt it necessary to send us 2 huge animals for our small backyard.

There are SO many issues with this:

#1 - WHO THE HELL would send 960 lbs of rubber without asking first?
#2 - HOW THE HELL will we get these things moved?
#3 - WHAT THE HELL are we going to do with them? Even with a fork-lift we’d have to tear down our fence, because they won’t fit through the gate opening.

I have to say it one more time….WHO THE HELL WOULD SEND SOMEONE 690 LBS OF RUBBER? RUBBER? UGLY RUBBER AT THAT!

Enjoy a laugh on me. My family has been. I’ve heard jokes about putting one of the animals near the edge of the garage, so that in case I hit the garage it will bounce off the rubber. Another popular side-splitter is that if we hear a noise outside, it’s probably just the dolphin flipping around. My favorite one is the idea of decorating them on holidays (you know lights on them at Christmas, eggs at Easter, etc…).

*I wrote this almost a year-and-a-half ago after our local newspaper asked for submissions from breast cancer co-survivors.*

When I read in The Courier that they were looking for stories from co-survivors about the impact breast cancer has had on the life of someone looking in, my initial thought was about my cousin, Stephanie Roth, who passed away on April 16, 2005 and her family. As I continued to read it revealed that they were looking for stories about those still living and battling the disease. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case here, but I consider her parents, brother, fiancé, family and friends to be co-survivors, because they must continue to live even without her in their lives.

What The Komen Foundation does for breast cancer and education is wonderful, but why not devote a feature on those who weren’t as lucky. They deserve a tribute most of all. You can dress cancer up in pink, you can highlight survivors whose lives have been affected, and you can show them now with their hair grown back in – but breast cancer is not pretty and it does not always have such a happy ending. Painting a picture of “survivors” shows hope and encouragement, but show me the reality of a woman who’s fighting with every ounce against this ugly monster and still has no real promises for her future. Show me the family who’s still grieving for their daughter, mother, sister, wife, cousin, niece, friend and doesn’t understand why she wasn’t one of these lucky ones. Show me the woman who’s lost everything, her job, her husband, and her friends. That’s where my admiration lies.

Stephanie turned 30 in July 2004. She’d recently been engaged; she had a good job, a beautiful smile and a big heart. What was supposed to be the best years of her life were shortened drastically in September 2004 when she learned she had Inflammatory Breast Cancer. In an instant the hopes and dreams she had of getting married and raising a family changed to how do I survive. Her first symptoms were a red, swollen breast – much like an infection. I recall the two things a doctor kept telling her- 1) You don’t have cancer, you’re too young 2) There’s no lump. When she completed her chemotherapy, another doctor told her this was “just a bump in the road.” Wishful thinking, but it wasn’t quite true.

To say her life and those around her were changed after her diagnosis is an understatement. You can’t put into words what a person goes through when such a thing happens to them or those they love. The fear and devastation is immeasurable. Stephanie was a young, healthy, energetic woman; to explain why it happened to her will never be answered. She never asked why me, she asked what can I do to beat it. After chemo, surgery, and radiation it still wasn’t gone. She’d looked into clinical trials and MD Anderson as options, but wasn’t given the opportunity to keep fighting. A blood clot cut her life short, shorter than any of us ever imagined. Although she’d recently gotten news from her oncologist that the cancer had spread and the outlook was poor, because they’d simply run out of treatments. She kept that information to herself, because sometimes she was more of a support system for us, than we were for her.

A few days before her death, she sent me an e-mail talking about how much her parents and family meant to her. How much support they’d given her. How much she loved them. How many good memories she had as a child. It was great comfort for her parents, but it doesn’t change the fact she didn’t deserve this, no one does. She left us with a brilliant outlook – “We’ve all had a lot of ups and downs. It’s the ups that keep us going and the downs that make us stronger.” We’ll forever remember her vibrance and she’ll always shine on us, not even cancer can take that away.

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African Americans have a higher incidence of IBC and the median age is 52, but it can happen to anyone. Symptoms are not typical of breast cancer, there often isn’t a lump. It can begin as an infection and progress. For more information please visit http://www.ibcresearch.org.