For Mrs. Dull

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  I won’t ask you for money but I will ask you to (please) REBLOG this because spreading awareness to just one single person is worth its weight in gold. Thank you 10 million times in advance! I owe you. xoxo

Today, November 13th, is the first ever World Pancreatic Cancer Day.

Did you know...

• PC is terminal. We hope for miracles (because they do happen), but when diagnosed late, there is no beating this disease. 
• PC patients are rarely diagnosed prior to finding it at Stage IV and it’s often referred to as the “silent killer” of cancers.
• PC is the 4th leading cause in cancer related deaths in the US.
• PC has the lowest survival rate out of all major cancers.
• 73% of those diagnosed will die within one year. 
• Only 5% of PC patients have a five-year survival rate.

My next-door neighbor, Jean Anne Dull, was diagnosed on Christmas Day 2013.  She went to the ER with excruciating pain, thinking that possibly she had an intestinal blockage or kidney infection.  Instead, she had Stage IV Pancreatic Cancer.  In the ten months after her diagnosis, she fought her illness and lived each day to its fullest.  

Please educate yourself about this particular kind of cancer and know the signs and symptoms to be on the lookout for. 

And Now We Bring You... The Storm

So here we are - three weeks later.  The tote is still stocked and I never leave home without it.  The vests are still green, although one is MIA.  We've added cookie costumes to our repertoire, fresh from Etsy, and we still have two girls who are each about 500 boxes away from their goals.  Cue the nervous breakdown.

Go ahead and say it...  But you volunteered for this gig - you basically ask for it every year!  Can it.  I've heard it all before, people!  This year has been really tough for cookie sales for the girls.  Pre-sales were going on when the weather in our area was bitterly cold, so it was really hard for anyone to go out and sell cookies door-to-door.  Then there's the issue of The Powers That Be pushing the sale back a month later than usual, making booths start after Presidents' Weekend when all of the shoppers are out frivoisly spending their tax returns.  And let's not forget this fledgling economy.  Or the increase in the cost of a box of cookies this year.

I still haven't colored my hair.  Those three grays stare at me and mock me in the mirror every morning.  How can there not be more than three??

Then Tuesday we received an e-mail.  Cookie sales will be extended by one week.  Seriously?  Are you screwing with me right now?  Is this a sick joke?  Am I being Punkd?  As much as I was prepared to share in the girls' disappointment in not reaching their lofty goals of 1250 boxes each (an iPad Mini is at stake here, people!!), I was also chilling a bottle of Glenora in my refrigerator to celebrate making it through another season with my sanity and dignity intact. Funny how life throws you curveballs.  Now we've got another seven glorious days to deal with not only our cookies and other regular activities, but also a new sport, softball, and all of its ridiculous practice schedule.  The only saving Grace is the fact that A - it's seven days; B - I can follow a calendar; and C - wine improves as it ages.

The Quiet Before the Storm

The cookies are in; the tote is stocked.  The vests are green and the money box is ready...

It can only mean one thing.

GIRL SCOUT COOKIE BOOTHS ARE ABOUT TO BEGIN!

I was going to do my hair color the other night, but I thought, Why bother?  It'll be turning gray by this weekend.  Didn't you know?  Silver highlights are in these days!

Pray for my sanity!

Quiet!!

We are at my parents' house for a visit right now, and the only reason we're allowed to speak is because of the extended rain delay for the Daytona 500.

God Bless NASCAR!

Again??

Yes, friends, it's that time again.  Time for me to lose my mind.  It's Girl Scout Cookie Time!

Booth sales start in three weeks.

Big Ol' Bully!

I never thought that at my age (for which I'll let you use your imagination), I'd have my very own bully.  Lucky, lucky me, though...  I've got one!

My adventure takes place at my place of employment.  In general, everyone gets along quite well.  We do have a couple of abrasive personalities, but we're usually good at keeping each other in check.

In mid-June, our manager left for another job, leaving us all without a leader.  As a result, our president/one of our owners & pharmacists has been spending a few mornings a week in our store, plus we've had a consultant coming two days a week for the past two months.  What that actually boils down to is *very little* leadership.  Very little leadership has led to opportunity for Ms. Curmudgeon to pick on the lowest gal on the totem pole for what seems like no apparent reason!

It started sort of subtly - a jab here or there.  Yelling at me from across the store to answer the phone like I was one of her kids.  Then she started deciding what parts of my job I was "allowed" to do.  Then she berated me in front of a customer/patient.  I calmly handled that situation as professionally as I could at the time.  The following week I was sitting at my desk working; she came into my cubicle and not only asked me what I was doing, but what website I was on!  (I wasn't on the Internet - my computer was on that web page that pops up when you open a new tab on Internet Explorer.  I was doing paperwork.)  That was absolutely the final straw for me.  On the advice of my coworker, I went to our "boss," for lack of a better word.  It took me about a week and a few texts to finally catch up with him, but we finally spoke.  I took responsibility for my actions, but I made it clear that her actions were unacceptable.  It was a good talk.

Guess what?  Nothing changed!  But guess what else?  I didn't care anymore.

The weirdest thing happened.  All of a sudden, she's started being her old self again!  I've stopped trying to figure it out.

Maybe she just can't appreciate my sparkling personality...

Gee, Mom, I Wanna Go... But They Won't Let Me Go...

Last weekend was our annual Girl Scout troop's camping trip to our local GS camp.  Everyone was looking forward to it - girls and adults alike.

We should have known.

We have a team of leaders that run our troop - C, M and myself.  We all have our strong points, and C is our go-to gal when it comes to trip planning.  She faxed in the forms for our camp reservations and horseback trail ride back in February, to ensure the dates, accommodations  and programs that we wanted...  That the girls had chosen.  Funny thing, though...  as time went by, we never received confirmation.  After she called (several times), we found out that they never got our reservation and not only were our a-frame cabins no longer available for the second night of our weekend, but the horses were booked the entire day on Saturday!  As a consequence, we re-sent a new & revised reservation.  Actually, our supervisor sent it as C watched.  After a few more weeks and a few more phone calls, our camping was finally confirmed. Horses?  Well, the lesson was changed to an arena lesson on Friday afternoon, and not confirmed until *that morning.*

Fast forward to Friday.  I struggled my way through a morning of work, rushed home to pack and we headed out to camp, only to be greeted with the news that one of the girl's sisters was discovered to have lice.  Great!  I didn't even dare let myself think, "What next?" because I just had a feeling in the pit of my stomach.  All of the girls showed up, and troop mom B and I took them to the stable for their horse adventure.  When we got there, the horses were out to pasture and there was no staff to be found.  Not a good sign, I'd say!  We tried distracting the girls by having them read the barn rules, going over to meet the horses and finally resorting to sitting in the stands and playing games while we tried figuring out what was going on.  Finally, a car pulled up.  This poor girl had  no clue that there was a troop booked for the afternoon!  She called her supervisor and we heard her say, "It happened again!"  So...  No horses.  The woman I spoke to on the phone seemed quite apologetic and tried to accommodate us by getting us in with another troop the following day, but here's the clincher:  she never called us back.

On to the next activity...

We took the girls back to the lodge and managed to find an unlocked door so they could use the facilities, then let them play and eat their bag dinner they brought with them before we started taking our things down to the a-frames in shifts, as C and M weren't there yet.  By the time we got finished with that, everyone was there and it was time to get the girls settled in.  In the mean time, we obtained massive bottles of Fairy Tales hair products and contacted all of the parents concerning the lice issue.  (Had you forgotten about that??)  On the way down into the woods, C got a huge branch stuck up under her van, and none of us could get it out.  Thank God for Ranger Rick!  He came and saved the day!  (OK, so that's probably not even his name...)

After we got the girls settled into their bunks and pretty much forced them all to shower using the Fairy Tales, we had our campfire and sent them all to bed.  Holy cow, were we beat!!

Saturday actually went pretty well!  We moved up to the lodge in the morning after cooking breakfast on the campfire (we do all of our cooking on the fire), and we had activities planned for the day that included finishing our last Brownie badge, earning a Junior Camper badge together, packing hobo lunches, water fun and hiking.  We made pie iron pizzas on the fire for dinner and got the girls all settled in for bed with very little drama.  It's amazing what an entire day spent outdoors with no electronics will do for a group of girls!  :-)

Sunday morning as we woke up, all Hell broke loose as I watched my Sassypants open her eyes, look at me and utter the words, "I don't feel so good...  I think I'm gonna throw up."  Commence pukage - on camp bed.  I just froze in disbelief...  Good thing C was in the room and sprang into action, running to find a dishpan!  As I snapped back to reality and gained my senses, I stripped the bedding and got Sass a drink of water.  She drifted back to sleep as I tried to go between tending to her, readying for the end-of-the-year ceremony that was to happen (with lunch to follow) in less than three hours' time, watch out for the other girls and physically get myself ready.  Needless to say, I was no help to anyone.  And in the mean time, my Sass, who could not wait to fly up to Juniors and wouldn't miss this ceremony for the world, asked me to call Daddy to come and get her to bring her home.  :-(

After Mr. Sunshine collected Miss Sassypants and the ceremony went in without her (it was very nice, BTW), we cleaned up and parted ways.  I came home to find Sass sleeping on the couch, but puke-free, and in between naps we had our own little flying-up ceremony.  By around 5:00 she was fine...  I think she was just overheated and dehydrated.  

Please pray for me that next year's campout goes better!  Because yes...  We'll be back.  After all...  We're Girl Scouts!!