Happy black friday!! Go purple shopping!! ;) & Art Ginsburg – Mr. Food

Tobys black friday Teddy and I :o)

BLACK FRIDAY SHOPPINGGGG!!!! Got my SHOP on!!! 🙂   I LOVE me some Pentagon city! I love shopping.  My first words as a baby were “mall” and “shop” for heavens sake so don’t blame me!! 🙂   I didn’t need any off brand laptops or cheap tvs, but the little misc stuff I did need I got good deals on and spent 17 hours…. 5:00AM until 10:30PM… haha!  Nice day spent with my love 🙂  and good exercise!! Although I am not suppose to be exercising?  hmm… well my dr.’s don’t read this… as far as I know! ha!

I received a call today from someone who hasn’t seen my since May and wanted a follow-up and I was catching her up but forgot how she remembered me.  She had recalled how skinny and weak I was last she saw me and had my j-tube in my stomach and just dreamed of eating a bite of food.  It’s amazing how much I’ve changed since then! I’ve gained all and more of my weight, I eat obviously, I look better and am so much more active. Today I felt well actually, even after eating too much at the beautiful Thanksgiving dinner I attended last night and didn’t eat all day.  When I don’t eat I feel my best and then forget I have to take it easy and be careful.  I made this mistake in August and was literally running around everywhere when my spleen did what it did so I constantly have to remind myself about that and how I don’t want that to happen again.

It was funny today when I was shopping, actually later tonight and the cashier said I looked like a brunette barbie.  I laughed, first of all because I had no sleep and got ready in 5 minutes this morning and secondly that I had colored my hair blonde since high school and then I go with this brunette look this year and probably have had more compliments than when I dyed my hair blonde???  too funny! 🙂  I just roll with it.  Who doesn’t like a compliment when you are going through enough?  it’s a nice thing.  🙂

I hope everyone who celebrates Thanksgiving had a wonderful day yesterday.  I did! I had a wonderful day and a beautiful dinner with amazing people. I ate TOO much, little bites though and did well.  I am thankful just that I was able to eat, it would have sad if I was in the state where I was months ago and couldn’t even try a nibble. Amen for that!

I also hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!!!  I have a MILLION things I need to get done, that’s no exaggeration!  I am praying my platelets are high enough for chemo on Monday. I don’t want my 3 day chemo, but I need it, so platelet prayers for me! 🙂

I also wanted to add, since I forgot to blog about it the other day but I’m sure many have heard that Art Ginsburg, “Mr. Food”, died at the age of 81 from pancreatic cancer. This terrible cancer took another life, famous one at that.  How many lives does it have to take before it gets the recognition it needs???  This ridiculously underfunded disease is taking more lives by the day and many famous ones at that as it seems I am hearing it in the news often!  It will soon by the # 2 major cancer killer but it is the ‘NO HOPE’ cancer!!!! I spoke to someone last week who advised it doesn’t get the funding because it’s just SO hard to detect and treat that it’s basically the one that is looked at as when will you die as opposed to how can we treat this etc.  I get there is no cure for cancer but no one understands how pancreatic cancer needs the research to advance its odds, like breast cancer, so badly!!!!   Here is an article I found online about Mr. Food:

Art Ginsburg, who billed himself as Mr. Food in 90-second televised cooking lessons — attracting nearly four million viewers for each, selling eight million cookbooks and presaging today’s proliferation of celebrity chef shows — died Wednesday at his home in Weston, Fla. He was 81.

His family announced his death, which The Associated Press said was caused by pancreatic cancer.

Mr. Ginsburg disdained haute cuisine as irrelevant to the lives of hard-pressed working folks in favor of cake mixes and canned soups. His recipes had 10 ingredients at most, and he shared uncountable timesaving tricks. His “anybody can do it” philosophy held that any home cooking is better than no home cooking. The recipe for his recipes boiled down to this: “The less steps the better; the less ingredients the better.”

Mr. Ginsburg was the son of a butcher and a butcher himself — as well as an enthusiastic amateur thespian — and his appeal rested partly on his often goofy, unaffected manner. His syndicated spots appeared on local news programs and talk shows in the manner of weather forecasts, and were distinguished by his tall chef’s hat, gray beard and bad jokes, but most of all by his legally trademarked sign-off line: “Ooh it’s so good!!”

At his death, his vignettes — of which he made 230 a year — appeared on 125 local television stations, down from a peak of 168 in 2007. He wrote 52 cookbooks, and each month attracted 1.7 million unique visitors to his Web site. He peddled merchandise that included frozen food products, energy bars and gas grills. He endorsed products like spaghetti sauces and sweet corn. His company, Ginsburg Enterprises Inc., will continue; during his illness, an associate had already replaced him on the broadcasts.

A large part of Mr. Ginsburg’s appeal was his easygoing approach, advocating moderation. His advice to dieters: “One piece of chocolate cake has half the calories of two pieces of chocolate cake.”

Happy Thanksgiving!! :o)

💜

^ This was taken of me about this time of the year 3 years ago

HAPPY THANKSGIVING everyone!!! I hope everyone has a wonderful day! 🙂

I am so incredibly thankful for SO much!  I was asked this month “why don’t you participate in posting on Facebook every day what you are thankful for?”  Are you kidding me?  I find that SO foolish!! I would not!  I am so thankful each and every day of my life that is extends way beyond this month. I truly did not believe I would be alive to see this holiday.  When I was diagnosed, it was in Feb, but it would have been Januray or December 2011 from how sick I was back then if I am honest with myself. With that said, when I went in and they said how much time I had left (not much) I figured it was shortened even moreso because I had been sick longer than what I said. I suddenly pictured dieing in the spring and all of my family celebrating these holidays without me. I felt terrible for them. Yes, people die every day but just having someone tell you you are going to die so young, much harder to swallow.

As I am so thankful to be alive, I thank my doctors for this along with so many people who have sent me their prayers.  I believe my will to live along with the medicine, my doctors who have put so much though with their education into my specific treatment, with a mixture of prayer and strength I have been given is what really pushes me day to day.  I am thankful for the love of a man who has been with me from High School. I cannot imagine where I would be without him. Over a decade together with the most challenging year of our life this year. He was just 29 years old when being told your significant other of more than 10 years doesn’t have much time left.  Most couples cannot even imagine especially at our age. He was willing to travel any distance no matter what the costs just to get me the best care in the world.  He never left my side that long month plus in the hospital and slept in a chair every day before being upgraded to a cot in which he stayed hour after hour, day after day, week after week. He didn’t go to work and was even sweet enough to eat all of that hospital food they were trying to shove in my mouth! Aww! 😉   I am thankful for the 4-legged beautiful doggies of mine, my boys, who have traveled with us all over the country and have lived in more states than most people have.  They love their adventurous life and they are my world! I am thankful for family and friends.  I’ve had more people reach out to me that I never would have guessed.  I am thankful for many of you that I don’t know that are following my journey. I am thankful that with this horrid cancer and the pain I have, I don’t have all the other symptoms from the chemo.  I do not have cold sores in my mouth, I don’t have that metallic taste when I eat food, I don’t have any affects that you can see on the outside. My skin looks just fine and have gained every pound I lost back and then some. My hair has grown like crazy and I never lost my brows, lashes or any hair on my legs or arms even with a hard chemo!  When you look good, you feel good, so for this I am thankful! I could go on and on about every little detail I am thankful for but I tell God every day and this blog entry would be books long, so just know I am one thankful girl.  🙂

I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday and appreciates everything they have!  Let it be a wonderful holiday for all!  💜

My spleen needs blood!! :(

My nephew (well bff son) and I at Detroit PurpleStride in Sept

^Can’t remember if I posted this one or not…but I haven’t taken new pics this week so I pulled one from 2 months ago 🙂  (Take new tomorrow)

I got some clarity today about my spleen and platelets. I spoke to my oncologist who advised the cancer is cutting off blood supply to my spleen and my spleen is taking my platelets and the loss of blood supply is causing my spleen enlargement.  Once again, NO SURGERY allowed!  Surgery to someone like myself who’s cancer has already spread is like putting gasoline on a fire. I really need my fire to burn out with water (we’ll call chemo) then to spread and increase.  I was told NO exercise, do NOT over excurt myself and to be CAREFUL.  No lifting, twisting, bending, running, etc.  She said I need to stop running around and “doing stuff”.  haha… wow. What a blow!  What bride doesn’t exercise before a huge day???? Oh, this one! Awesome.  I haven’t dieted, I haven’t “worked out”.  Grr!! I only quoted working out because some people say walking is working out but I believe it’s sweating in the gym and running 10 miles but to each their own! 🙂 I’ll just be a fatty.

To all my friends going out drinking tonight – be careful! Be safe 🙂   I sorta wanna partayyy but… I also want to be a home body. People don’t realize I’m not home enough, ever.  I go to the hospital, a lot, workkk and everything else.  Plus this pain is back at it. It’s ridic!  Oh, to clear things up.. I had a couple friends question why the other day I wrote I was fabulous following saying how I couldn’t believe I wrote that the next day because I was miserable all night.  So – at the time of my posting I was feeling FINE. Good, great, happy just fine but then a few hours passed and I got super sick so I updated how I felt that night. Got it?  I make no lies on here.  If I’m feeling crazy, you’ll know, miserable night… you get my point. No need to fake feelings in writing. 😉

Sooo…I accomplished more today being at HOME then yesterday out and about with my check list with times. Ha! Funny how that happens. The internet can be such a beautiful thing.  You can shop, basically order whatever you want from clothes to food to a gym membership, hell you can order a gym DVD then work-out from home. Who needs to leave home?  Oh! …us working people. 🙂

Random thought – last week someone I me approached me at the hospital with, “Hey! thats the girl that knows all the lyrics to Colt Ford songs!”  hahaha…. random… I love Colt Ford! I received his CD along with Taylor Swifts new one the day they both came out as a present, spoil me more! 🙂

Tomorrow is THANKSGIVING!!! Reminder for those who hadn’t heard….  I hope everyone has a great night tonight and a wonderful day tomorrow! 🙂  xoxo