The best new I've had in a long time!

I debated about whether to share this information here in cyberspace or not because who knows who will get their hands on it, but for now I will share. Something this exciting to me can't be kept to myself. My head could most certainly explode!

All of my life I've been blessed....in so many ways. There is one particular blessing I've not always been so comfortable being endowed with, however. Anyone who has ever met me knows that I'm quite a buxom woman. All of the women in my family are. From the pictures I've seen of previous generations, this has apparently been true for SOME time! It doesn't help matters that apparently all of the men are attracted to buxom women as well. This only results in generations of exceedingly MORE buxom women. This is my...um...blessing.

It's a body issue I've struggled with for most of my life (or at least since age 8 when the Girls started to make themselves known). I've thought about surgery. I've watched the procedure on medical TV channels, researched the cost and insurance coverage and generally drooled over the tiny bosoms of women around me. (Hmmm...that doesn't sound good, does it?)

It's a major surgery and it is quite invasive. I'm sure that, along with all that cutting, comes quite a bit of pain. That's never the part that kept me from proceeding. It's the cost. In the past, my research has shown me that the procedure carries a hefty price tag of $10,000 - $20,000. Insurance rarely covers it either. I am NOT a wealthy woman.

Alas, at the end of January, on a whim, I asked my doctor for some Plastic Surgeon (PS) recommendations. I had had enough of lugging these things around. I would love to run and jump and frolic in the fields. ...Ok, maybe not so much field frolicking, but I would love to be able to jog like a normal woman without the fear of blackening an eye.

At the beginning of March, I had an appointment with one of the recommended PSs and he said he did not consider this reduction to be a cosmetic procedure. He gave me a general guideline that they give for what an appropriate or normal size is for each person and, needless to say, I was an overachiever....but not in a good way! (If you would like to know what that guideline was so that you can "check" yourself, just let me know). Although I was certain that the insurance wouldn't cover it, he took digital photos (EGAD!) for submission to insurance. He said he would write up his recommendations, submit them and then we would play the waiting game.

I think of myself as pretty thorough and had read all of the policies and exclusions in my health insurance, so I was pretty certain I was NOT going to get the A-ok from them. Essentially, according to my understanding, the only breast procedures that were covered were reconstruction surgeries due to mastectomies. So, you can only imagine my elation when the nurse from the PS's office called me last Friday to explain that I had been APPROVED! Hallelujah! I actually had to ask her to repeat herself and I nearly started bawling from relief right there on the phone. I told Troy it felt like it was one of those Claritan commercials where you think the world is in color and focus, but then a film is removed and colors are suddenly bright and vibrant! My whole world seemed to take on a different shape. It was amazing! It was like winning the lottery on Christmas morning!

After a bit more research, I found that insurance is covering it more and more as long as a certain amount it taken out. Depending on exactly what tissue is taken, a pound is roughly 500 grams. My PS estimates that he will take approximately 2 1/2 pounds EACH! Think about it ladies! I will drop 5 pounds without breaking a sweat! Sweet! It's like having a baby...without that pesky college tuition to pay!

So, in just 43 short days, I go under the knife. I would love to document the surgery through photos, but I'm not sure that's exactly appropriate content for my blog. I'll figure out something. At present, I'm thinking about taking my photo in a "boobie" shirt as some call it (something showing the shape and cleavage) before and after so that the difference will be obvious. If you have any better suggestions that could make it through the censors, please let me know.

I need your votes!

Here it is! The place to go and vote for my photo entry at the Snapfish photo site!

http://www.snapfish.com/viewsinglevote/contestname=bestfriends/contestentryoid=1235594/a=13316123

Vote Early! Vote often. I need your support.

Vote early! Vote often!

Starting Monday, April 7th, 2008, please visit www.snapfish.com and vote for my photo. In the middle of the screen is a link for "Enter Snappy's photo contest". Voting will begin on April 7, 2008 and the owners of the 3 photo that gets the most votes and stars (the more stars the better, you know!) will win some pretty great prizes. I would love to be one of them and, in order to do that, I need your help! If you have a blog, link to my voting page. If you have friends, tell them all!

My photo is listed in the "Best Friends" category. It's a photo of Troy and Sisko when they were being cuddly with one another and it makes me smile every time I see it.

I'll post more info on Monday, April 7th. Until then, start spreading the word! I need votes! Thank you for your support!

Recipe #2 of 6

I'm not sure if I've mentioned it on here, but about a month ago, Troy and I took the big plunge.... No, not marriage.....a freezer. I have definite commitment issues and don't get me started on his. I think a freezer is about as committed as we could get for now.

It's a gorgeous white chest freezer that is 7.2 cubic feet of lucious frozen goodness!

About once a month, we do some serious shopping and meal planning. We then gather all of the individual "disposable" freezer containers we can wrangle (QUITE a few after months of cooking), plan a menu consisting of several different meals which we both enjoy and freeze easily and I commence to cooking....marathon style. I've gotten it down to a science, nearly. I can usually complete the cooking, containerizing and labeling of 4 - 5 different meals in about 4 hours. These individually packed meals can then be frozen and we can each just grab one and take them to work for our lunches. The problem that we've run into over the last few months is that we run out of freezer space in his little refrigerator-attached freezer. I would plan 4-5 meals and only be able to complete 2 or 3 before I would run out of space. Then there was always the impending disaster of having frozen chicken breasts nearly break your toes when they would make a break for it as you attempted to retrieve a meal from the tiny freezer.

After hemming and hawwing for several months, I finally said enough is enough and bit the bullet! $280 later (including delivery fees) and I have found frozen culinary bliss!

This last round of meals was the real test. The menu I had planned consisted of:

1) Turkey burgers with mixed vegetables and rice on the side

2) Chicken enchiladas

3) Pot Roast

4) Turkey meatloaf with mashed potatoes and vegetables

5) Tilapia filets with vegetables and a noodle side dish

6) Chicken marsala with mashed potatoes

Normally, this would not be a menu to be prepared by those with a faint of heart and limited freezer space. But, alas! That is me no more!

A mere 5 hours after starting, there were about 40 individual meals labeled and in the freezer. It fills me a with a sense of satisfaction ..... and a full belly.

All of this was to say that I technically completed 2 new recipes this month instead of 1. I had never made Chicken Marsala and I was amazed how simple it was! No longer will I pay $15 for it in a restaurant when I know that I can make 6 servings of it for under $2 each! It was fast, VERY easy and downright delicious!

Here's the recipe I used (I skipped the parsley and doubled the wine, chicken stock, lemon juice and mushrooms):

Ingredients:

¼ cup of flour

Salt and pepper to taste

4 chicken breasts (boned and skinless)

2 tablespoons of olive oil

½ cup of dry Marsala wine

½ cup of chicken stock

½ lemon. Squeeze the lemon juice

½ cup of white sliced mushrooms

1 tablespoon of fresh chopped parsley

Method:
Season the flour with salt and pepper. Lightly coat the chicken breast with seasoned flour.
Heat the olive oil in a frying pan on medium heat. Place the chicken breast in the pan and brown on both sides then remove from the pan and set aside.

Add the dry Marsala wine to the pan and gently bring to boil removing the alcohol. Add the chicken stock, lemon juice and stir in the mushrooms. Lower the heat and cook for about 10 minutes reducing the marsala sauce. Return the browned chicken breast to the pan spooning over the sauce. Cook for about 5 minutes on each side until cooked.

Serve with mashed potatoes or pasta. Garnish with parsley.

I (heart) Facebook....and Classmates.com....

So, I'm still in nostalgia mode, apparently, but it's been great! I don't know how we ever got along without Google, Facebook and Classmates.com. In the last week, I have been able to reconnect with a former teacher, several friends from grade school and high school and even a very good friend from college. Crazy!

Even crazier is when one of my friends from high school emailed me and asked what I've been doing for the last 16 years. How is that even possible? Has that much time really passed since I've seen many of these people? That's 5,840 day; 140,160 hours! I could have completed 5 101 Lists in that amount of time!!!

I have to admit it does make me freak out a bit. I'm always worried that I'm not accomplishing enough. That my life is just passing me by. Somehow experiencing these blasts from the past make those feelings even more urgent.

How can the 80 or so years that most of us are given seem so long and yet a lifetime seem to go by so quickly?

Workouts - 35% Complete

An update on the progress of my 500 Workouts (AKA, I love my statistics!):

With a mere 499 days left, I have completed only 35% or 175/500-30 minute workouts. That means that I have averaged 1 workout every 2.8 days. That is most certainly NOT going to get me to my goal. On an annual basis, at least I'm heading in the right direction. During 2006, I completed a mere 19 workouts in 75 days. That means I averaged about 1 workout for every 4 days! For 2007, I finished 130 workouts in 365 days. Still not a stellar performance at 2.8 days for each workout, but at least it's not dropping. For 2008, I still need to step it up. I've completed 25 workouts in the last 60 days.

During those 175 workouts, I have spent the majority of the time either on the treadmill or in a step class (54 and 50, respectively). My other favorite machines are the elliptical trainer with 23 sessions and the bike (either inside or outside) for a total of 25. Rounding out the 175 sessions are weightlifting, Taebo and walking or running outside.

I've spent 6,392 minutes or 106.50 hours exercising for an average workout of 36.5 minutes. I've burned approximately 64,750 calories, which should have translated to a weight loss of 18.50 lbs. It hasn't.

If I workout once a day every day until I have completed the 500, I will be finished by January 21, 2009. Now let's not get crazy. I'm an over-achiever, but there's no need to rush this!

#82. Really organize my scrapbook supplies (AKA A Place for Everything...)

Perhaps I've watched too much of Peter Walsh and "Clean Sweep" or maybe it's my perfectionistic tendencies, but I am addicted to decluttering and organizing. I swear at least twice a year, I pick a room and just start throwing things away. I move furniture around, clean every bit of floor and baseboards, windos and ceilings. The problem is, I just have to do it again sometime in the future. I often find myself simply overwhelmed by the sheer amount of stuff that I own! I have a 1900 sq ft, 4 bedroom house (much of which I rarely see) and I live alone with 2 cats. Clearly that is MUCH more space than I need. (I bought it for the resale value. Or at least that's what I tell myself.)

Most of the time, I can keep most of the clutter in check. It's easy since I live alone and there is no one to come around and mess it up. The problem is that I have simply been too busy lately and if I'm going to do something, I want to do it right. I hate the phrase "for now" ... as in, "Oh, we'll just put this here 'for now'". All that means is that you don't want to make a decision about something right now and eventually you'll have to not only deal with that thing, but also the mess created by not doing it the right way the first time. Argh! Very frustrating!

The bain of my existence has always been my office/den/craft room. I swear it is the place where all papers go to die. This small room (probably about 14 X 13) contains all of my yarn for crocheting, pictures, paper and stickers for scrapbooking, my treadmill for working out at home, books for leisure reading and all of my bills to be paid and filed. That's a lot for one room to function as! I have two other rooms that I could use downstairs in the finished basement, but it somehow feels depressing to relegate myself to the basement for crafting when it's my house and I should get to use it as I see fit. Unfortunately, that leads to a very tiny room being stuffed to the gills with....stuff.

For a long time, I've wanted to REALLY organize it (as well as my scrapbook supplies, which is on my list), but I just couldn't seem to figure out the best way to configure the room and the stuff in the room. So, that leads me to do nothing. For me, the Perfect can be the enemy of the Good and the consequences are the "BEFORE" pictures of the room. I'm mortified that I let it get that bad. I sometimes think that on those cleaning/organizational shows, that they must stage those rooms. There is no way that people can have THAT much stuff on their floors, dressers, beds, closets, etc. Unfortunately, I am living proof that they are not staged. There was yarn, books and papers that needed to be filed simply covering the floor. It was so bad that I couldn't even get to the treadmill if I had wanted to. (It's a good thing I have that gym membership!)

So, I decided to just do it! To just organize the room the way that I really wanted it organized. Troy was away for the weekend working on his motorcycle and I have National Scrapbooking Day coming up, so I wanted to get REALLY organized. My plan was to spend Friday evening and all day Saturday really gutting the room and finding a place for everything so that everything could be in its place. Fortunately for me, a little inspiration (aided by some internet searching for craft room makeovers) and a big win at poker ($230) helped bring my plan to fruition.

I knew that there were a few things that I wanted to make sure were part of the room, so after work on Friday, I set about putting my plan into action. I have a fabulous Bonde bookcase from Ikea that I knew would hold much of my supplies as well as quite a few boxes, etc for holding smaller items. My mom and I have made a bit of a resolution to more consistently work on our scrapbook (once a month, minimum) and she comes down to my house for that. I wanted to make sure that my room had a space for each of us to work. We usually work in my backroom of my house where we set up two 6 ft tables, but it's not well heated and I hate for her to have to drag all of her stuff all the way back there. Besides, I don't like having to move my stuff either! A few years ago, she gave me an old desk that was hers, so that would work for one desk, but I needed another. My solution was to pick up two white cabinets ($24.99 each at Target) and combine them with a white melamine board I already had for an instant desk. I think it turned out quite well!

I also needed something to put all of my pens and paper into so that they were handy. My thought was that if I can see it, I will use it. Otherwise, out of sight, out of mind, right? So, I also scoured a thrift store to come across several items that would fill those needs nicely without putting a dent in my pocket.

So, with my supplies gathered, I started gutting the room. By about 1 AM on Saturday morning, I had moved the big white Ikea shelf to the other side of the room (not an easy task by myself - it's a good thing I have carpet in there!), put both of the new cabinets together and placed the board on it for my makeshift desk. It was starting to come together, but I was exhausted, so I headed to bed. I actually slept in until about 9 AM on Saturday, but got to work as soon as I woke up.

On Saturday morning, the mess in the room had seemed to multiply overnight. Now, not only was much of the craft room still a mess, but now there were discarded boxes in the front room, boxes of yarn in my bedroom and a chair full of stuff blocking the hallway. Were things really getting better? What had I gotten myself into?!?

I had previously kept all (most) of my scrapbooking supplies in the little closet in the room, but I knew that that would be the future home of my HUGE stash of yarn, so I cleaned it out and moved the bookshelf near the other one in the corner of the room. Now that the big furniture was basically in place, the real work began. For me, I hate the fiddly bits of life. The paperclips and pens, notepads and stickers. All of that stuff seems to multiply if it's not properly contained. So, I set about containing it. I slowly filled (and cataloged) the books on the bookshelves. I organized completed scrapbooks and supplies ready for future use. I interspersed cute chachkis in amidst the bookshelves. It was so nice to get to take my time. There was no one there to roll their eyes when I took my time putting all of the paper in a certain order or to complain that I had the TV up to loud (it was room away). It was simply amazing to roll around in all of the compulsiveness that is my perfectionism.

And now that it's done, I am overjoyed. I know that this week as I prepare for National Scrapbook Day, all of my work will pay off. I know exactly where all of my photos and memorabilia are. I know which paper and stickers I have at my disposal. My pens are at my fingertips and ready to use. There is no excuse now for not getting those projects done.

Speaking of which, a friend of mine got married about 4 years ago and I was in the process of putting a little wish book together for her that contained all of the well wishes from the people who attended her bridal shower. While I was cleaning, I found the nearly finished book. So, this week, with my space all clear, I will FINALLY finish that little book for her. It should make a excellent anniversary gift, right?