To Be or Not to Be Skin Cancer?

Ear­lier today I had my biopsy done.

It’s my sec­ond go at this so I ini­tially wasn’t too ner­vous. Sit­ting in a cold wait­ing room can take its toll on a girl.

I kid you not.

Nor­mally my doc­tor sees me pretty fast, but today she must have been run­ning behind because I had to wait for about an hour in the wait­ing room. Which of course made me very anx­ious? I snapped pics to try and zone out. Lis­ten­ing to Blue Octo­ber def­i­nitely helped.

In the end my doc­tor removed two sam­ples from two dif­fer­ent moles that looked wonky to her. Since I am a melanoma sur­vivor she is send­ing my sam­ples to a lab that spe­cial­izes in skin can­cer. She and I are most con­cerned about their loca­tion. They are on the same side and in the gen­eral area of my back where the last one was. Any weird look­ing mole on my body is going to be con­cern­ing in gen­eral how­ever because “once you’ve had melanoma, there is a chance that it will come back—either near the orig­i­nal tumor or at a dif­fer­ent place on the skin”, makes us both a lit­tle nervous.

I’m very lucky to have an awe­some doc­tor. I’m actu­ally very scared about hav­ing to go back to see­ing the doc­tors at a mil­i­tary treat­ment facil­ity (but that is an entirely dif­fer­ent post-one I am in no mood to write about now-or any­time in the near future.) If it does turn out to be pos­i­tive I’ll have to go have the actual mole removed for stag­ing. Then that will deter­mine the next step. Depend­ing on how deep it is deter­mines how much sur­round­ing skin is removed. Right now I’m not think­ing about that — I’m just wait­ing for the results.

I did come away with five whole stitches and as an added bonus my son thinks I’m “way cool!” He has yet to expe­ri­ence the plea­sure known as stitches. He can’t wait to get some of his own-preferably from a skate­board­ing injury.

I mean­while am thank­ing my lucky stars that he hasn’t injured him­self in such a way as to neces­si­tate stitches!

Now it’s just a “wait and see” scenario.

In the mean­time I’m con­sid­er­ing mov­ing to Alaska, the Pacific North­west, the weather in Seat­tle is pretty much, rain, rain, and more rain right? Some­place gen­er­ally un-sunny is exactly what I need. I really want to live in Europe for a bit and up until now had my heart set on either Spain or Italy– but the weather there is gen­er­ally warm…right? How’s the weather in Eng­land? Cold, rainy most of the time eh? I dunno. I’ll have to do some Googling.

Oh…After my appoint­ment I went for a lit­tle retail ther­apy at a few local con­sign­ment shops. I scored a vin­tage Izod jacket and a jew­elry box as well as some books. I only paid $20. After I went to CVS and got some new nail pol­ish. (I’ll share the col­ors with you later — but my new favorite is actu­ally a favorite color of mine (see my shirt in this photo for a gen­eral idea of the color.) As a lit­tle treat I pam­pered my toot­sies and am happy to tell you that they are per­fectly prim at the moment. The hubs cooked an amaz­ing lunch (he also vlogged it so you can be sure that will be up soon.)

In all my day had some good high points and some seri­ous low points which included a lit­tle heartache.

I’ll deal.

Love & Sunblock,

nicóle

For more infor­ma­tion on melanoma please visit: www.melanoma.com

Protecting My Skin

Pro­tect­ing my skin is a major pri­or­ity for me. Not only because it is the smart thing to do and by doing so I avoid any sun dam­age that can age my skin, but because in 2006 a mole on my back turned out to be melanoma-the worst kind of skin can­cer a per­son can get. The kind that can spread through­out your body. Let me tell you sit­ting in my skin can­cer spe­cial­ists’ office and hav­ing him tell me about sur­viv­abil­ity rates over a mole on my skin has a weird way of putting things into perspective.

I grew up in Miami. I also have extremely fair skin. As a child I prac­ti­cally lived at the beach, and although my mother did a good job of pro­tect­ing my skin I still man­aged to get burned. As a teen I can espe­cially remem­ber a few really bad sun­burns. Turns out it was more than likely that dam­age that caused my melanoma.

A few weeks ago I dis­cov­ered another weird mole on my back. I’m going in this Wednes­day to have it biop­sied. I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t at least a lit­tle worried…

That is why when I was approached by Neu­tro­gena to test one of their sun­screens (I already use a num­ber of their prod­ucts includ­ing their sun­screens daily) I couldn’t pass it up.

For about a month now I’ve been using Neu­tro­gena Ultra­Sheer® Liq­uid sun­screen with an SPF of 70 daily. This is my new favorite sun­screen espe­cially for every­day wear. It goes on flaw­lessly under my makeup and is not greasy at all. It also doesn’t have that very strong “sun­screen” scent that I’m not a par­tic­u­larly big fan of-an added bonus. It comes in a 1.4 oz bot­tle and should be shaken with each appli­ca­tion. It’s got a lit­tle mar­ble in it so you can hear that it’s mix­ing. The con­sis­tency is that of a very liq­uid lotion and it absorbs quickly into my skin. I use it on my face, neck, and décol­letage daily. I’ve also used it on my arms and shoul­ders with great results.

Each time I’ve used Neu­tro­gena Ultra­Sheer® Liq­uid I’ve put on makeup includ­ing foun­da­tion and I like that it doesn’t make my makeup look funky. It actu­ally acts as a great matte base which is a won­der­ful bonus espe­cially because I must wear sun­screen everyday.

I highly rec­om­mend this prod­uct because I think its great and I can’t stress enough the impor­tance of pro­tect­ing your skin-regardless of your skin tone.

Would you like to review prod­ucts, too? Then go to http://giantwavepool.com !

Dis­clo­sure of Mate­r­ial Con­nec­tion: I received the prod­uct men­tioned above for free for review pur­poses from Tidal Labs. I was not required to write a pos­i­tive review. The opin­ions I have expressed are my own. I am dis­clos­ing this in accor­dance with the Fed­eral Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Con­cern­ing the Use of Endorse­ments and Tes­ti­mo­ni­als in Advertising.”

Changes Are Coming To This Blog


Very shortly I’m going to be mov­ing — yes we’re sell­ing our house, but that’s not the move I’m talk­ing about. I’m going to be clos­ing house here at The Pink Chan­de­lier and will be mov­ing to Write­Spell, www.writespell.com. I also pre­dict another change in a much more blonde direction.

Cheers!

RED) — Just A Thought">Join (RED) — Just A Thought

I’m a big sup­porter of the (RED) cam­paign.
And not just ’cause the t-shirts are pretty freakin’ awe­some.
That’s all.

If you don’t know what (RED) is, here’s some info from their web­site joinred.com

(RED) is a sim­ple idea that brings together our power as peo­ple who buy, with our power as peo­ple who care.

When you buy (PRODUCT) RED items, up to 50% of the prof­its go directly to those who need it. (RED) has some of the best brands in the world cre­at­ing (RED) prod­ucts to help elim­i­nate AIDS in Africa. Amer­i­can Express, Apple, Buga­boo, Con­verse, Dell,  Empo­rio Armani, GAP, Hall­mark, NIKE, Pen­guin Clas­sics, and Star­bucks are all work­ing together to make it happen.

For more infor­ma­tion check out joinred.com

*No I wasn’t paid for this post. Just wanted to share. That’s all.

Pop On Pals — Product Review

A few weeks ago I intro­duced Pop On Pals to my two year old, Evan. As I opened the box he squealed with delight and couldn’t wait for me to find the scis­sors to open the box before he began play­ing with it (see photo below). Evan doesn’t nor­mally enjoy toys for his age group, pre­fer­ring instead to play with his older brother’s (age six) toys. I can’t really blame him, his cars, and legos are very entertaining.

I am happy to report that Evan actu­ally played with his Amuse­ment Park and con­tin­ues to do so almost daily. His favorite part is the roller coaster (I’m not sur­prised) and he also enjoys putting his lit­tle pal on the fer­riss wheel for a spin.

Con­tinue read­ing Pop On Pals — Prod­uct Review

I Wish I Could…

Dream JarRecord my brain. That way when I have a kick ass dream-that inspires a brand new story I don’t have to get out of bed in the mid­dle of the night.

I could just lay there and nar­rate silently what I wanted to get out of my head so as I don’t for­get it. It’s while I’m lay­ing there half asleep when my ideas are great. For what­ever rea­son once I get out of bed their awe­some­ness seems to dissipate.

Or per­haps its because I’m awake and the doubt mon­ster starts to creep in.

Either way I was up from a dream wide awake and said to myself. “Self that is pretty awe­some. You should write it down.” Look­ing at the clock and see­ing that the num­ber four was in front I laid in bed with my son’s foot on my chest for another twenty min­utes until I real­ized that I wasn’t going to get any sleep until I actu­ally wrote the scene I’d dreamt about down.

Nor­mally when this hap­pens I jot it down in a note­book I keep by my bed or make a voice memo on my iPhone. This morn­ing how­ever I had an urgent need to write. This hasn’t hap­pened to me in quite some time so I wasn’t going to fight it.

This dream resulted in the begin­nings of a new story. I’m very excited. So much so that I think I’m going to put the one I’m cur­rently writ­ing on the back burner think­ing instead that per­haps this new story needs to be writ­ten first.

Wish me happy writing.

Or bet­ter yet…

Word vomit!

Photo: weheartit.com

ProFlowers Orchid-Green Plant Review

I recently received a lovely Song of India Orchid Gar­den from ProFlowers.com. I love orchids and so when the oppor­tu­nity arose for me to receive a deliv­ery from ProFlow­ers and tell you all about it I thought an orchid would look quite lovely in my kitchen and it does.

My orchid was deliv­ered via national courier and although I could tell that it had been well pack­aged when shipped some­where along the way it got a lit­tle banged up.  When I saw this I was quite wor­ried that the plant inside would be dam­aged. Luck­ily ProFlow­ers took pre­cau­tions and the plant was wrapped in cel­lo­phane and aside from a few of the blos­soms hav­ing bro­ken off the plant was in great shape. Although it was dis­ap­point­ing to see three blos­soms had fallen off (or been bro­ken off by rough han­dling by the car­rier) it did not dis­tract from my orchid’s beauty. I also liked that Pro Flow­ers included an instruc­tion packet ensur­ing that I will be able to enjoy my orchid for quite some time.

Here is the plant’s descrip­tion per ProFlow­ers:

For a very unique pre­sen­ta­tion, we’ve paired a fresh yel­low Pha­laenop­sis orchid with Song of India foliage plant in an ele­gant black tapered tin. The pair will add an exotic flair to any décor. With proper care, the orchid blooms will last 8–12 weeks, and the foliage plant will con­tinue to thrive until the orchid is ready for the next bloom­ing sea­son! Care instruc­tions included.

I think choos­ing a green plant when you want to send a gift other than flow­ers is an excel­lent idea. Not only will your recip­i­ent  be able to enjoy your gift for much longer than flow­ers; the gift of a green plant is sure to become “part of the fam­ily”! Green plants make won­der­ful house­warm­ing, grad­u­a­tion, pro­mo­tion, or “just because” gifts.


I received the Song of India Orchid Gar­den free of charge to facil­i­tate this review.

Snapshot Life

My life would be full. My photo album would be burst­ing at the seams with pic­tures cram­ming up every avail­able space and fill­ing out, falling to the ground, like a bread­crumb trail where ever I went. The pho­tos sym­bolic of love. The love I feel, have shared, and have felt from others.

Stardust Realized

Yes­ter­day my friend Noelle asked me to help her revamp her wardrobe to reflect her style. I hap­pily obliged and we went about play­ing dress up in polyvore. I love polyvore it is a great out­let for me to express all things pretty and girlie that I don’t really get to share with any­one here at home-seeing as how I live with a bunch of boys!

Lately I’ve been fas­ci­nated by the stars-okay I’ve been fas­ci­nated by starlight for ages but this morn­ing I cre­ated a lit­tle ensem­ble for some­one make believe named Lil­liana. Yes. Polyvore is like Bar­bie but for big girls!

Noisy, Colorful, Lively

quotes, living lifeI came across this the other day and I was instantly attracted to it. So I set it aside and decided I’d write about it later on.

I looked at it again this morn­ing and was sud­denly struck with…well, the obvious.

I’m sure, beyond a rea­son­able doubt when Mel Brooks made this state­ment, “If you’re quiet, you’re not liv­ing. You’ve got to be noisy, col­or­ful, and lively.” He was talk­ing about chil­dren. I’m also pretty sure (we share the same birth­day — that’s why I’m sure) he was specif­i­cally talk­ing about my children.

No. He’s never actu­ally met my kids. But that has no bear­ing on the fact that he was talk­ing about them.

Allow me to explain further…

Last Sun­day after Mass we took our boys to Wal-Mart. They behaved so per­fectly whilst in Church that we must have been high on joy because we thought we’d be able to go in and get out rel­a­tively quickly.

I don’t know what we were think­ing. I really don’t.

An hour and a half later, after chas­ing after, brib­ing, and then finally giv­ing in and feed­ing them a McDonald’s happy meal we man­aged to get out unscathed.

I say unscathed because no one was phys­i­cally injured this time.

The last time we went to Wal-Mart Evan, while try­ing to get out of the cart fell back­wards into a very full cart of gro­ceries. Luck­ily he landed on the bread and cereal boxes and by some mir­a­cle of God man­aged to not crush the eggs.

Again, I don’t know what we were think­ing because after Wal-Mart we made a go for Costco.

Yes. The hubs and I are glut­tons for pun­ish­ment. We must be.

Ten min­utes into our food sam­pling escapades Michael decided he was tired and needed to sit down. Off went the hus­band to fetch a sec­ond cart so that both boys can sit in the ginor­mous bas­ket that is a Costco shop­ping cart.

Things were going rather smoothly after that. Until we reached the frozen food sec­tion when Mike decided he’d had a rest and no longer felt tired. Evan being the lit­tle brother under­stand­ably wants to be “like Mike” –so as soon as Michael’s feet hit the floor, Evan began wail­ing to be let out. A wor­ried glance passed before the hus­band and I as we set the lit­tle guy free under the assump­tion that his father would hold his hand and I’d push the cart.

Things didn’t hap­pen quite like that.

Pic­ture this:

Lit­tle boy run­ning a muck in a very crowded over-sized super cen­ter. Me feel­ing like I could use a drink. (Or rather grab­bing a bot­tle from the wine sec­tion crack­ing it open against that huge and mostly empty cart and chug­ging straight from the bottle-while try­ing not to cut my lips.)

It didn’t take long for the hubs and I to decide to call it quits. While I checked out he went off and bought them a berry smoothie.

Look­ing back though-while I sit here at nap time I can’t help but smile. My chil­dren know how to live. They are full of color, vibrant live­li­ness, and with all that Cuban blood in them they cer­tainly are noisy!

As much as I’m smil­ing right now, I don’t think we’re going to try shop­ping together as a fam­ily for at least another ten years.

Yeah right. Who am I kid­ding. We’ll be back at it this weekend!

Photo: weheartit.com

Update Your Wardrobe for Cheap

I vlog about how I update my wardrobe for cheap!

Jar of Hearts

A few weeks ago I was watch­ing So You Think You Can Dance when this song came on. I imme­di­ately grabbed my iPhone and went in search of this song “Jar of Hearts”.  It was love at first lyric for me. I intended to write a post about it but for­got until last night while watch­ing my favorite dance show and saw Christina Perri per­form. This gal is phe­nom­e­nal. Her voice is won­der­ful. Watch her. I’m in musi­cal love. You will be too!

I’ve watched all her videos on YouTube and aye ya yay! Que musica!

And who do you think you are
Run­ning around leav­ing scars
Col­lect­ing your jar of hearts
And tear­ing love apart
You’re gonna catch a cold
From the ice inside your soul
So don’t come back for me
Who do you think you are


I was not paid to share my new musi­cal crush. I did so out of the kind­ness of my heart and my absolute ado­ra­tion of music.

Photo: weheartit.com

Give Thanks

thank you Giv­ing thanks and being grate­ful is prac­ti­cally an art form these days. So many have this atti­tude of enti­tle­ment. I can’t express enough how impor­tant it is for me to acknowl­edge and give thanks for the many, many, bless­ings in my life. It is also very impor­tant for me to teach my boys to be appre­cia­tive of the many bless­ings they have been given. I know I cer­tainly count my lucky stars for the won­der­ful priv­i­lege it is to be their mother.

With this in mind I’m going to make it a reg­u­lar occur­rence to pub­licly share my grat­i­tude. I may do it in a let­ter to some­one, thank God for some­thing great or even the sim­ple every day things. After all I truly love the mundane.

Please keep an eye out for them. I may even get around to leav­ing a “Mr. Linky” where you can cel­e­brate your own spe­cial way of giv­ing thanks and spread the grat­i­tude and love through out the blogosphere.

As my first form of giv­ing thanks I’d like to thank you. Thank you for tak­ing the time to read this post and if you do com­ment. I know we all live really busy lives and the fact that you stopped in to read what I’ve writ­ten really does mean a lot to me. Thank you to my loyal read­ers who for some strange rea­son come back again and again. Thank you if you’re a new reader, I cer­tainly hope you enjoyed your time on my lit­tle piece of the internet.

Photo: www.thenotebookdoodles.com

Apartment Hunting

This week­end we’ll be look­ing for a new place to call home. Our house is cur­rently under con­tract and we’ve got a ten­ta­tive close date. We’re hop­ing that every­thing can be done by then. With that date in mind, we’ve got about six weeks to find some place new to call home. I was going through my closet try­ing to decide what I was going to wear because after we’re done hunt­ing my hus­band and I plan on tak­ing the boys to Chuck E. Cheese (yes I know we’re glut­tons for pun­ish­ment.) Then later we’ll have din­ner at Carrabas. It has been a while since I played in Polyvore and with the idea that visu­al­iz­ing our new home and every­thing I want in it would be a good thing, it was the per­fect excuse to play!

My major require­ment is the bath­rooms.  The floor plan I used is actu­ally one that belongs to an apart­ment com­plex that is more like town-homes and that is first on my list. We cur­rently live in a three bed­room town­house but I’m think­ing we could prob­a­bly man­age to down­size to a two bed­room — espe­cially one that has a loft where the boys could play. All of this is depen­dent of course on avail­abil­ity and what they actu­ally look like!

Apartment Hunting

Whimsy Me

Photo: Alice Wain­wright Park, Miami, FL. Source: www.flickr.com/photos/vgm8383

I woke up with a sense of whimsy.

Whimsy as defined by dictionary.com is the qual­ity or state of being whim­si­cal or fanciful.

Yep. I’m feel­ing whim­si­cal; much like I did when I would play dress up in my mother’s heels or hide and seek among the coral rock of  Wain­wright Park. A park that was mag­i­cal through my lit­tle girl eyes. A place where my grand­mother would take me almost daily on our after­noon walks when I was a gaped tooth lit­tle freckle-face.

I would imag­ine I was on a great safari on walks through the “jun­gle” or an arche­ol­o­gist climb­ing to her next great dis­cov­ery as I scaled the great­est coral moun­tain ever to be discovered.

Imag­i­na­tion is impor­tant. It is impor­tant for me to fos­ter a love for the imag­i­nary, for the magic that can only be found in make-believe in my boys. I think I’ll build a den out of sheets today (it’s bed linen wash­ing day after all) and play with my boys. I’ll start us off on some adven­ture and hand the reins over to Michael and let him take us to places only his imag­i­na­tion can think up. I think I’ll start us off skate­board­ing in space or rid­ing a roller coaster into the ocean.

Stardust

Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded.
And the atoms in you left hand prob­a­bly came from a dif­fer­ent star than your right hand.
It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics.
You are all star­dust.
All the things that mat­ter for evo­lu­tion and for life weren’t cre­ated at the begin­ning of time. They were cre­ated in the nuclear fur­naces of stars. The only way for them to get into your body is if those stars were kind enough to explode.
— Lawrence Krauss

If God cre­ated the heav­ens which I believe He did, then this is cer­tainly plausible.

Either way my favorite part of this quote is “You are all stardust.”

It is poetic.

Much like life itself is. There is some­thing divine in all liv­ing things. Perhaps…It is stardust.

I’m going to go to sleep think­ing tonight about the stars. Not some­thing com­pletely out of the ordi­nary for me.

Photo: zztorazz.deviantart.com

60 Second Cocktails

I love a good cock­tail. I also love one that I can whip up in a snap. I also love sup­port­ing the men and women of our armed ser­vices. As an Air Force wife the USO is a pro­gram that is near and dear to my heart. Which is why I just had to share with you a very easy way you can sup­port our troops by sim­ply click­ing “like”.

BACARDI USA’s “Salute to Summer’s Best 60 Sec­ond Cock­tail Pro­gram,” will be donat­ing $1 to the USO for every new face­book fan they gain up to $100,000. That’s right. For each per­son who “likes” the 60 Sec­ond Cock­tails face­book page Bac­ardi will donate one dol­lar. How awe­some is that?

Very. Very. Very awe­some! Con­tinue read­ing 60 Sec­ond Cocktails

Turn Someone’s Life Around

A friend who also hap­pens to be a soror­ity sis­ter (which makes her even more awe­some) posted on her face­book tonight that she gave a ride to an expec­tant mother nine months along. She is that sort of per­son, always will­ing to lend a help­ing hand. If there were more peo­ple like her I think our world would be much nicer.

Some­time this week in her honor I’m going to go about seek­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for ran­dom acts of kindness-something I do when the oppor­tu­nity presents itself but I don’t pur­posely go about look­ing for it.

I mean I’ve paid for other peo­ple at a tole, or put in a few quar­ters in someone’s meter that was about to expire, given food/money to pan­han­dlers etc. I haven’t gone out of my way to look for ways that I can make a ran­dom person’s day better.

I will now.

I feel good already!

Soul Pieces

Always remem­ber, only your heart can be bro­ken.
Your soul and all its pieces, are immutable and unchange­able,
and most impor­tantly impos­si­ble to destroy.

I didn’t write that. I’m not sure who did, I read it some­where once and wrote it down. Tonight, I felt like shar­ing it. I don’t know if it’s because I’m sit­ting here watch­ing Titanic, and it’s got me in it’s roman­tic, sen­ti­men­tal, sad grasp; but I was reminded of this quote, so I got out my jour­nal and decided to share it here with you.

Love, our hearts…our souls. Top­ics I love to talk about.

I think they’re inter­twined like those bam­boo money trees. They com­pli­ment and enhance the other, much like blush, mas­cara, and lip gloss can each enhance the eyes, cheeks, and lips. When each is com­bined can make a face just a lit­tle bit pret­tier. Unlike makeup how­ever our hearts, the way we love and our souls (ide­ally) are not superficial.

They make up who we are. Are heart ache, our joy, all of it. It’ what life is about. A series of moments, expe­ri­ences, choices.

That…I believe when we close our eyes for the last time never really goes away.

Love and Sentimentality,

me.

Photo: weheartit.com

Passionately Curious

I find it curi­ous that one of the great­est minds of all time believed he had no spe­cial tal­ents. Hum­ble or self deprecating?

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