Reminders

I am sitting here crying after reading a Facebook post from my good friend Dana about her friend and sorority sister passing away from breast cancer this week at the age of 31. Hearing of other young breast cancer patient not making it hits me hard every time. It reminds me that I am.... I kinda don't want to say lucky but I can't think of another word right now to call it so... lucky. It wakes me up and reminds me that even though my life does not always go the way I want it I AM ALIVE and I should be grateful for that and not dwell on things that are not the way I want them to be currently. Yes, my weight is higher than I want it to be, but I AM ALIVE. Yes, I don't have as much money in my savings as I would like, but I AM ALIVE. Yes, I'm not where I wanted to be in my life in terms of in a relationship or having children, but I AM ALIVE. Don't get me wrong, there are things I like about my life too! I love my family and they are very supportive! I have a great set of friends who are amazing! My Dombey cat is pretty awesome!

Ok, time to have dinner and do some school work because I AM ALIVE so I am going to finally finish my Bachelors Degree!

New Year, New Post

A new year always brings new goals.

Things I am looking forward to in 2017:

• Going to Seattle for Filmapalooza in March.
• Going to Ashland twice (April & September) to see all the shows at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
• Training and walking the AVON39 Walk To End Breast Cancer with my Auntie Betty.

Things I want to achieve in 2017:

• Get cast in more shows... this requires auditioning for more shows. I have two auditions already set up for January so I am off to a good start.
• Lose weight and trim my waistline - I lost 20+ pounds training for the AVON39 walk in 2016 so hopefully I will lose more this year. 2017 is the year of the abs... I want less handle in my love handles.
• Cleaner eating.
• Be more social.
• ... and most importantly remain cancer free!

My health is well, I see my oncologist every 3 months and my surgeon every 6 months. I had my yearly mammogram in December and it came back normal (YAY!). I continue to do self checks and take my tamoxifen. 

I've started my year working on some of these goals. Yesterday I went to Dave & Dana's place for game night (being social!). Today I got up and weighed myself to get an accurate starting point (ugh! I kinda let myself go during the holidays) and then I did a five mile walk this morning. I spent the rest of the day doing food prep for the week so I will have healthy food on hand for lunch and dinner. I also went through all my clothes and I now have three bags of clothes to bring to donation that I just don't wear for a variety of reasons. My dresser drawers now have breathing room in them. I have also been doing this 28 Day Plank Challenge to work on my abs... I have like zero ab strength so it's getting to be REALLY challenging to get through them, but I am doing my best and pushing through and I have to pause the time and take a quick break and get back up then that is what I do and eventually I will be strong enough to do it all the way through.

Two years ago...

I have not blogged in forever, but really needed to post today. 

Two years ago today I got the call from my doctor that I had breast cancer. I also started this blog on that day. Today I am health and life is back to normal. I do take Tamoxifen everyday but that has become normal for me like taking my daily vitamins. 

I have started the process of testing to find out how the cancer treatment affected my fertility. This whole getting cancer thing put a big damper on my 5 year plan I made a few years ago - I believe I was 34 when I made it... it was right after my divorce was final. One thing in the 5 year plan was to have a kid. My oncologist wants me to wait until I have been taking Tamoxifen for two years before getting off of it to get pregnant, but I don't want to wait that long to find out if it's even possible for me to do so. I still have about 8 more months until it's been two years since I started on the Tamoxifen, but I wanted to be informed so I can make other decisions about my treatment like switching off Tamoxifen to a stronger drug that will put me in menopause. That is a big decision and I want to be as informed about my body as possible before making it. There are also other factors like my age... I'll be 39 in two months... and we all know the older you get, the hard it is to conceive. I also don't have a man right now so that is a factor in the whole thing as well... who knows what this situation will be when it's actually time to make things happen so deciding whether I am going to "the bank" or not will happen later.

This has been an emotional week with Trump winning the Presidency. He brings out so much hate in people and I am really afraid for anyone that is not a healthy, wealthy, straight, white male. He talks of getting rid of Obamacare which has allowed so many people with pre-existing conditions to finally get medical coverage on their own. I am glad I have insurance through my job but no job is guaranteed to be around forever, no company is guaranteed to be around forever and if I find myself with out a job that offers insurance I have a pre-existing condition (thanks cancer) and I need insurance. The ONLY glimmer of hope is that I saw a news report with Trump saying he will keep the part of Obamacare that guarantees coverage for people with pre-existing conditions. Whether he sticks to that, we shall see... he is two faced and keeps changing his stance on things.

Bye, Bye 20 pounds!

I hopped on the scale this morning... I have officially lost 20 pounds!!! Woot! Woot!

Yesterday was the last big walk (18 miles) before the AVON39 in two weeks, for the next two weeks the training has me walking no more than 5 miles a day. The last few miles were rough yesterday but I got them done.

I want to continue losing weight after the AVON39 so the plan is to keep doing the 3 mile walks I have been doing at my lunch hour and do 6 mile walks on the weekends and continue with the eating plan of no bread/pasta and no dairy - allowing a splurge day every 6 weeks - and incorporating more workouts besides walking.

Not one more!

It's been an emotional week for me.

The shooting in Florida really hit me. I don't know why this one impacted me more emotionally than all the others that have happened but it drove me to write letters to each of my representatives in congress. Things are getting out of control. When will the mass shootings stop?!?!?!? Is no place safe anymore?!?! Something needs to be done now, we can not wait one more day.

On top of the shooting, Jeff found out last week that his mom's cancer has spread to her brain. The doctors told her she only has about 6 months left. I cry just thinking about what he is going through.

Father's Day is on Sunday and that is also not a great time for me. This will be the third Father's Day with out my dad. My brother, sister, and I will be going bowling like we have done the past two Father's Day and then we will have dinner at my mom's house.

IN HAPPIER NEWS...
I have lost 15 pounds! The training for the AVON39 and the changes in my diet are working... slowly ... but working. The walk is in 5 weeks!!! That also means I perform in El Capitan in 6 weeks!

Hey look... I was in a film!

Finally getting around to posting about the short film I helped out with. In April I got the opportunity to help out with a film for the 48 Hour Film Project.  My friend Dana was in a film for it last year and it sounded like fun. A costumer friend posted about her team was looking for people to help out/perform in their film so I contacted her about joining her team. She passed my information on to her team lead. I had not heard from them and it was getting close to the day of filming and I was chatting with Dana about it so she contacted her team lead and they contacted me about joining the team. I had signed on to be the hair and makeup assistant - my job would be to make sure hair was consistent in the shots and make sure people's faces were not too shiny. The whole excitement behind the 48 hour film project is that the team lead picks up which genre, writes, shoots, edits, and submits the film in a 48 hour time frame. So we are all basically "on call" until they have the script written. I get a text at around 10:15pm on Friday night telling me where the shoot will be and what time to show up. I got another at like almost 2am in the morning asking if I can bring party clothes because they want to put me in the film. SURPRISE! Luckily, we were not going to start shooting until the late after noon (the director had a call back he needed to be at earlier in the day) because I needed to do laundry in order to have anything nice to wear.

We shot the film at the director's (Christian & Evelyn) house. I knew no one on my team except for Dana... though I figured out later that one of the other actors and I went to high school together. I was glad to have a friend on the team since I am kinda socially awkward around new people. Everyone on the team was nice and pretty chill.

I would have loved to take more photos, but I did not want to invade with my camera so this is all I got.

Our "costumes"... we all provided out own clothes

The party table. We had snacks! Plus the film took place at a birthday party so they are also props.

What I was looking at during the times I was filming.

Dana shooting the opening scene of the film

My fellow cast mates in waiting

More filming.

Dana ending up being the star of the film. Her photo is even used on the poster art. 

It was awesome watching her work. 

I had never worked on a film before and this was a great experience and I am proud to be part of the final product. We were nominated for 13 awards. The awards show is on May 22nd.... I hope we win it all! 

Here's a link to the film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHSCuz9J0LM

IN OTHER NEWS:

I've been working on losing weight... it's been a struggle. I am doing an eating plan I did about 14 years ago and lost about 70 pounds with. (The plan: meat, vegetables, and fruits. No bread/pasta products and no dairy. There are a few other rules but that's it basically.) Well, I am not in my 20's anymore, plus with the cancer treatment and tamoxifen I am pretty sure my metabolism thinks I am 58 instead of 38 so I am not losing as quickly as expected. I weighed myself today and I have lost 11 pounds in the last month and a half which is nice to see progress. My clothes do fit a tiny little bit more comfortably, but there is no visible changes yet that I have noticed. I am gonna stick with what I am doing a hope that the weight drops more.

Yesterday Dana and I got the meet Alan Tudyk! I got photos with him. I am not a fan of how big I look next to him but I am going to use this a motivation... and since I did not take an official "before" photo I may make these my "before". 

My Auntie Betty's friend, Sharon, joined our AVON39 team. We kicked off Sharon's training by walking 5 miles at a park in Danville on Sunday.

Welp! That is it for now... I think this post is long enough! I will try to more often!

I'm walkin'... yes in deed!

This week is the first week I have felt my ankle was strong enough to walk any sort of distance. I have been itching to start my training for the AVON39 and this week I finally could! I am back doing my lunch time walks and thanks to Daylight Savings Time there is plenty of sun after work for me to do more walking in the evening. According to my fitbit, Tuesday I did 11,170 steps (4.59 miles) and Wednesday I did 13,474 steps (5.53 miles). I've also adjusted my eating in hopes of losing some weight. I started that on March 28th and last week I lost 5 pounds! I do my weigh ins on Fridays so I'll find out tomorrow morning if I have lost anymore weight.

Time to head over to physical therapy!