Posing For Pink Video

Way back in March I got all fancied up, took a swig of liquid courage and took off some of my clothes for a photographer.  

Now if your stopping by for the first time, you probably just judged me, so let me quickly tell you that I did it all for a good cause, and I really wasn't that uncovered.

If you've been around for a while you know I'm talking about my Posing for Pink Calendar shoot.

I haven't talked a lot about it, but let me say, it was amazing.  Both my individual shoot and the group cover shoot were fantastic experiences.  The calendar girls are all amazingly beautiful and it was an honor to be among them.

Now while I still can't leak too much in the way of calendar design, or any of my own photos, I can share this Posing for Pink promotional video with you.  Like everything Posing for Pink, this video is amazing.  Again, I am so lucky to be a calendar girl.

2011 Posing For Pink Calendar Release from Mike Francis on Vimeo.

Seriously, if you were not sure about buying a calendar before, you are now right?!?  And I promise, I don't have a double chin in the calendar, and I'm quite confident my belly is not hanging out.

Also, if you're local and love to golf, watch my blog for info on Posing for Pink's first annual golf tournament, or simply visit the Posing for Pink website here.

I'm Fine. Maybe

Hi!  How are you?

Good?  Good!

Me? Oh, um, I'm fine.  Yeah, that's it.  I'm fine.

What do you mean you don't believe me?  

Oh, I normally answer with "fantastic"?  Yeah, I guess you're right, that is kinda my word.  Nope, not fantastic, sorry.

Actually, I guess if I'm being honest, I'm not even fine.  

I.Am.Overwhelmed.

Overwhelmed with virtually every aspect of my life, both personal and professional.

We're entering our busy season at work, except it seems to have started early this year and I already have visions of not being able to keep up.  Visions of early mornings, short lunches and paperwork when the phones have finally gone silent at the end of the day.  

I volunteered at my last 3-Day for the Cure Get Started Meeting last night but spent the last hour finally catching up on e-mails related to the 3-Day.  Team Boobs, Sweat & Tears has a fundraising Spaghetti Dinner and Silent Auction in May.  Posing for Pink has a Calendar Release Party in June, and a golf tournament in July.  Hard to believe the event is already in August.  It will be here before we know it!

I'm pretty sure that for every shirt I wash, my sons dirty another 4 pairs of shorts, and for every pair of jeans I wash my boys go through 6 shirts.  While I finally have a functioning washer and dryer in my house and don't need to go to the laundromat, my laundry mountains aren't turning into hills.  Not to mention, the laundry is trying to kill me.  In the last two weeks I have slipped on the concrete floor in the laundry room when the tub overflowed and tripped over my two year old while carrying two baskets full of clean laundry.  Concrete floor, hardwood floor.  Nothing makes me feel older than falling and being stiff and sore within minutes.

My youngest son will be 3 soon, and my oldest is almost done with his year of kindergarten.  They are growing and changing every day and I feel like I blink and miss something.  

My e-mail is out of control, I haven't actually blogged in weeks, I can't remember the last time I commented on a blog and I send an average of two tweets a week.  

I promised my sister a quilt for a friend and that friend is going to have a baby any day.  The quilt is still in squares on my ironing board.

I need more hours in my day and I need those hours to slow down just a little bit too.

I know this isn't unique to me, and I know that it really is just a season in my life.  Soon my children will be old and grown, and I'll be lamenting about how I have nothing to do.

But, for now, I'm going to hit publish and go cross something off my list, even if it is only this: To do: blog.

Reeling

It was almost 9 o'clock and I was busy trying to convince the younger boy that sleeping was significantly cooler than the Legos he could see strewn all over his bedroom floor.

My cell phone rang and I glanced at the caller ID, no name appeared, just a local number.  I quickly hit ignore so it wouldn't further disrupt the boy who was finally beginning to settle down.

Within a split second of sending the call to voicemail I realized I did recognize the number.  Somewhere deep in my brain it occurred to me that that number was only two digits different from a number that used to belong to me.  A number I had all but forgotten.  An extension in the company I worked for almost five years ago.  I have very few connections left to that former job and couldn't imagine why someone would be calling.  I anxiously waited for the telltale beep letting me know my mystery caller had indeed left a voicemail.  

"Hi Kimberly."  I recognized the voice immediately.  A voice I hadn't heard in three years, maybe more.  "I got your number from N, I hope that is okay.  Listen, I really need to talk to you so if you could give me a call back and leave me a message letting me know when is a good time to call you, that would be great." 

I rolled out of the bottom bunk, not wanting to disturb j by making a call, and abandoned my attempt to get e to bed.

While I expected to get a voicemail, I caught that former co-worker before he finished his break and he got right to the point.  "How you doing girly?"  While I smiled at something so familiar, so him, he continued without allowing me a chance to answer.  "Listen, it's Mary, and it's not good.  The cancer is back and she just left the hospital go do hospice at her Mom's place.  A bunch of us are hoping to visit so I'll let you know what we get planned." We talked about the situation for a few minutes but he had to get back to teaching a class and I had to get back to convincing a kid to sleep.

I hadn't even set the phone down before the tears began, and I sat alone on my couch sobbing.

Mary was one of the people I'd lost track of.  I loved every minute she and I were co-workers, and while we had lunch a few times after she left the company, and she sent me a Christmas card almost every year, it had been a few years since I had spoken to her.  Having young kids and "being busy" is a really crappy excuse for being a bad friend and when that co-worker told me that her cancer was back, it made me ill to think that I never knew it was there the first time.

I shared with that former co-worker that only a few days ago, seemingly out of the blue Mary had been on my mind.  I wondered how she was doing and figured that I probably had her address from a Christmas card somewhere.  I considered dropping her a note, but hadn't done it yet. 

To go from wondering how someone is doing, thinking about things like if they are working, or if they have grandkids yet to finding out that they are dying is a shock.  A shock that I am still reeling from. 

She is around my mother's age.  Her kids are a few years younger than I am.  Turns out she does have a new grandbaby.

And she is dying.  And I am reeling.

I'm not sure of the moral to this story, but I've said it before and I'll say it again.  

Cancer sucks.

Goals or Dreams?

It isn't uncommon for me to have a to-do list sitting on my desk at work every day.

It also isn't uncommon for me to have a list tacked to the fridge or a bulletin board in the house. 

These lists contain things easy to cross off.  Tasks that are easy to finish, or things I must do on a daily basis.

But, hidden deep in the recesses of my brain, and hidden in my heart is another list.  A list of dreams.  Maybe even goals, but definitely not the kind of thing I can simply finish in a few minutes and cross off a list.

Like many bloggers, I want to be a published author someday.  I'd love to write children's books and have a couple bouncing around in my head.

I would also love to someday turn my love of quilts and quilting into pattern writing.  

And you probably know that I'm pretty heavily involved with the Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure, but I want to continue to do more.  I would love to someday be on the board of a non-profit that raises money for research and local support in the breast cancer community.

I know that all of these things can be a reality someday.  I've got a lot of life left, and as long as I've got them on the horizon, I can continue to work towards them.

What is a long term goal or dream of yours?  Do share.

The Power of Words

A few weeks ago I saw a commercial for a new show on NBC called Who Do You Think You Are.

The show follows a celebrity through the process of researching their genealogy.  I found the concept of the show to be incredibly intriguing, especially because the teasers always showed the celebrity's reaction to some information that was shocking or emotional.

I actually sat down and watched an episode of the show a couple of weeks ago and it really was as good as I expected it to be.  It was fun to watch Matthew Broderick find out that he had a Great Great Great something fight in the Civil War and then discover where his grave was.  It was cool to see them look through census records to see when someone was counted and when they weren't.

As much as I enjoyed the show, it was also a very emotional experience for me to watch it.  I'm not sure if it would have been as emotional if it had been a different celebrity, as they each bring their own story and history to the table, and in this case, Matthew Broderick's story really resonated with me on a couple of levels.

His grandparents died when he was quiet young, and with the death of his father he lost the source of information about them.

My paternal grandparents both died before I was born.  I think.  Maybe my grandmother died when I was very young?  See, I don't even know that.  While my father is still around, we just don't talk about his parents.  I don't think it is something he is avoiding, it just isn't a topic of conversation.

But, the thing that struck me even more when I gave it some thought is that we are in this situation with our children.

Our children have two grandmothers that they will know only through our words.  j knows who my mother is and recognizes her picture.  e does not.  I don't think we even have a photo of J's mother in our house. 

It isn't fair that it is this way.  My boys should know the feel of their grandmother's hugs, not just hear me tell them that they would have been loved.  

And I really don't know, how is it possible for our words to do justice for two amazing women?

A Perfect Saturday

What a wonderful day, both already behind me and still on the horizon.

I'm sitting at my new (to me) kitchen table with a Caribou Cooler by my side.  The sun is shining outside, and I can see the beautiful, glinting reflections on the ripples of the pond outside our back windows.

We had wonderful spring rains yesterday and the ground is already bursting forth with green.  

My husband is out for a run (because he's healthy like that) with a group from our new, local running store.  I love how he is doing what he can to make sure that this store is a success for the owner, as our end of the Twin Cities area was sorely lacking in such a store.

I've already been out and about twice.  I headed to the grocery store before anyone was out of bed so that I could start my day with something crossed off my to-do list.  The grocery store had the most beautiful pink and white lilys, so I bought one.

Once home I put the groceries away and grabbed the now awake boys to go deliver those lilys to the kitchen table at my in-laws house.  The are home today from a winter spent in much warmer climates and I wanted something cheery to welcome them.

Soon J will return from his run and I'll start to think about lunch for my boys.  We are so lucky to have a bakery in the family, and will have sandwiches on bread that is better than anything my grocery store could provide.

I'm going for a walk with a friend this afternoon.  I'm glad to be able to spend time with her as she trains for the 3-Day for the Cure.  She is walking again after crewing for many years and I'm sure she will have a great (blister free) experience.  I'm also looking forward to stretching my own muscles and getting some fresh air into these lungs of mine.

This evening I'll get a jump on preparations for tomorrow.  I'm making cheesy potatoes for twenty four.  Twenty two of us will gather together to celebrate Easter and each and every time we get together I am reminded of how blessed I am to have joined this family.  And because I love to make food that makes people happy, I'll be sharing my potatoes with my sister and her husband because that brother-in-law of mine loves my cheesy potatoes almost as much as I do.

We'll grill something for dinner tonight, with the boys running around outside in the evening sun.  We'll eat together as a family, listening to the boys tell us about their day.  (Okay, so mostly j.)  We'll toss the boys in the bath, scrubbing away the day's dirt.  And finally, once they are sleeping soundly in their beds, I'll be able to snuggle up with my husband and bring our perfect Saturday to an end.

Without a doubt, I am seriously blessed friends.