Taking care of business

I'm almost a week in to my zombie sleep project, and it's surprisingly quite un-zombielike!  I suppose I'm so used to not enough sleep that the 6 hours I'm allowed to be in bed each night seems about normal.  I'm tired, yes, but no more tired than normal.  I've forced myself to stay up till midnight each night and gotten out of bed at 6am when my alarm goes off (minus over the weekend... really, let's not be ridiculous with this whole thing).  And I feel normal!  Very tired normal, but still.  And the sleep I am getting feels a little better.  Most nights I fall asleep relatively quickly by my standards and am getting decent quality sleep.  I meet with Dr. D on Tuesday to update him with my progress.  We'll see what he says.

I got the confirmation from Pantene Beautiful Lengths about my hair donation!  I think it's being put to very good use for some woman out there who needs it.

Nice mail to receive

My fellow Alpha Chi alum from Wazzu and KOMO regular Kathi Goertzen is having another brain surgery this Wednesday.  When recently asked how many she's had, she couldn't remember, there've been so many.  Her tumor is causing her some serious problems, as she's lost control of part of her face and has issues swallowing and must use a feeding tube.  She also has difficulty talking.  Please keep her in your thoughts this week for a successful surgery!

Back in October, amidst word that fellow tumor dominator Ryan Leaf was starting radiation soon, I *may have* stalked him on FB and sent him a message of support.  You know, why not.  :)  Well, guess who got a response today?!  Me!  Ha!  He says he'd love to be a part of my brain tumor dominating troupe and thanked me for my message and thoughts, and that he'd keep me in his thoughts and prayers as well.  Cougs helping Cougs, 3.5 months later.  :)

On Friday, I met up for happy hour at Zig Zag with a friend who is a breast cancer survivor.  I hadn't had a chance to talk to her much about her experience before, and she was curious about mine as well, so we enjoyed adult beverages, calamari, and margharita pizza and talked.  And it was GREAT!  It is so nice when I get the chance to talk to someone who has been through a similar situation and can really relate to the feelings and emotions and fears and changes.  She is doing really well and it made me so happy to catch up with her!

It's almost Valentine's Day, which is everyone's favorite holiday (especially my single lady friends and myself, duh).  I will have a lovely holiday, thankyouverymuch, filled with sugar.  I received my annual V day care package from my mom that included a special guest.  I also got one of Johnny's famous V day candy jars, filled with tasty treats (Johnny is my friend Syd's dad, and he's made these for Syd and friends as long as I've known her).

YES.

Happy Valentine's Day, friends!  Wah wahhh...  ;)

Getting my wig ready

Well, technically it's not a wig for me, but there is going to be a wig of my hair soon!  I put together my lovely hair package today to send off to Pantene Beautiful Lengths in the mail tomorrow.  PBL creates wigs for women that have lost their hair due to medical conditions, and the wigs are provided to the women for FREE.  According to their website, they've collected over 272,000 ponytails for wigs.  You can add my 3 more ponytails to that number!

The 2 top ponytails are from my recent pixie; the bottom ponytail is from surgery.  Sadly, another big chunk of hair from surgery was way too tangled to send in.  :*(

I chose PBL over Locks For Love for a couple of minor reasons.  One, LFL gives their wigs to kids and I wanted to have my hair go to a woman (I hope that doesn't sound anti-kid, as that's not my intention).  Us women need wig love too!  Second, LFL makes the recipients pay for their wigs based on a sliding scale depending on what the family can afford.  I liked that PBL gives theirs out for free.  And third, sometimes I like a good underdog, and I think that the Pantene program is probably always second fiddle to Locks For Love.  :)

Treat it well, Mr. Postman!

I may have stroked my lovely ponytails oh so briefly as I put my package together to send.  I miss my long hair for about 2 seconds each day and then I'm sooo excited about my new short 'do again.  :)

This is the bag that my hair from surgery came in.  Cracks me up!!

If any of you ladies or alterna-dudes out there are thinking about growing your hair long (minimum 8" ponytail for PBL) for donation purposes, I really recommend it!  Not only will it go to a fabulous cause, it's also a nice fresh start with the short hair.  But maybe I'm biased.  ;)

My short hair, in case you don't believe me...

Merry Christmas, friends!  Have a very lovely holiday!!