So months and months and months ago, I was goofing around online and stumbled across a banner ad for M&M candies that you could personalize. I went to the website and checked it out. You could choose either 2 colors, or a variety pack of 3.
You had 2 lines for words, and 7 letters per line per M(&M).
I thought this would be a great way to announce to our parents that they were to be grandparents! I showed it to Troy, and he liked the idea. He wasn’t thrilled about the price, but decided to let sleeping dogs lie, and let me have my way on this one. I will admit they were a bit pricey, but you only get to announce the first grandchild one time!
We planned to order pink and blue M&M’s with the words: “We’re Pregnant” on one, and “Grandma Grandpa” on the other.
So, as you probably saw in my previous post, the morning I got my positive test, I told Troy to order up!

I however, couldn’t wait for the candies to tell my mom. She has been so much a part of this roller coaster  ride with us the past 18 months, that I was just bursting to tell her. I also knew, that being a woman, a mom, and a nurse, (who gave me the Magic Mojo shot) she knew exactly when I would be able to know something, and I didn’t want to lie to her. ( I did enough of that in high school. Sorry Mom) So Friday morning, as I was pulling out of the garage, I sent her a text message. I know, how very modern of me! It read. “Morning Grandma. Got a positive test, waiting on blood work, still a secret keep a lid on it.”
When I got to work I shot Troy an email saying I had texted Mom and was waiting on a response. To my surprise, he was mad at me for telling her with out him. When I did finally talk to mom, she was so excited, and she then told me the funniest story.

Back in good ‘ol 1976, when Mom first suspected she might be pregnant with me, she made an appointment at her doctors office to have blood drawn. They didn’t have the luxury of pee tests back then. She had the blood drawn on the way to work, and at her lunch break, she decided to call and see if the results were in. Due to the fact that Mom’s office is small, and it is impossible to make a private phone call there, she decided to walk to the nearest pay phone to call. She walked down to a pay phone, called the Doctor’s office. The office answered the phone and said

” Oh Mrs. McLaughlin, we have good news for you! Your blood test was positive. You are pregnant.”

Mom’s immediate response was …”Oh, okay.” and she hung up the phone and walked away. She got about a block away, before it all really dawned on her, and she spun around and ran back to the pay phone to call the office back. When they answered she could hear them all cracking up!

“We wondered how long it would take you to call us back!”
Fast forward to that fateful Friday morning, and she opens up her phone to read the text message, sees it and instantly slams the phone shut. A couple of beats pass and she thinks to herself, “oh God, I need to read that again!”
I laughed so hard when she told me that. 32 years later and she had the exact same reaction!

We ordered the M&M’s and it took until the next Wednesday to arrive. When they arrived, Troy was excited. (I knew he’d see it my way!) We decided to tell my Dad on Friday night. Dad had a great reaction. When we  gave him the bag, he looked down at it and just started grinning! Then he asked my mom if she had know and when she said yes, he said “I knew it! Jerk!” He proceeded to give her hard time for more than a week. Periodically calling her jerk.
You’ll remember I mentioned before that Troy was mad at me for not being able to wait to tell my mom.
Troy’s Mom and Step-dad were going to be passing through Columbus on Saturday on the way back from their vacation. Troy had it all planned to tell them at dinner. They arrived around 12:30 that afternoon, and as we were moving from the front door to the living room, I see Troy run upstairs. I knew exactly what he was doing. He came back down stairs and we exchanged glances, he just shrugged as if to say.. “what are you gonna do? I can’t help it”. He hands the bag of candies to Kathy and she is instantly squealing and hugging us both. I just laugh at Troy, and he says,”Okay, I can’t be mad at you  for not waiting anymore.”

The next pair who got the big news were Michael and Natalie. We met them out for dinner at CBC (Columbus Brewing Company). They were already seated when we arrived. When the waitress arrived, Troy ordered a drink, and I a water. We gave Michael and Natalie the M&M’s (modified to say Aunt and Uncle). At first they looked at the package and said ” oh Yum, M&M’s”

Natalie started to put them away in her purse, when she noticed the label on the bag declaring they were personalized.  She looked at them again, closely this time and started squealing. Michael looked at her as if she had lost her mind, and then took the package to look at himself. They were both very excited. Michael is especially looking forward to teaching our sweet baby to say a variety of odd ball phrases. Such not calling a door, a door but a portal. It isn’t a car, but a four wheeled combustion machine. He is so very strange.

A trip to Indiana was our next plan. We called and arranged to visit Ruth and Steve, and have a nice quite family dinner. With the WHOLE family. Not just Ruth and Steve, but the girls, their boyfriends, Ryan, and Uncle Bob and Aunt Rena to boot. I was sure that Ruth suspected something, but she swears she had no clue. Kristy on the other hand was right on top of things. She told Ruth she just knew we had an announcement to make, because we never come to visit in the spring. She was right on both accounts, however, we still have never visited in the spring, because our plans were derailed.

The week we had planned to go was when the morning sickness really took hold of me. Rather night sickness is a better term, add to it motion sickness. I had experienced several bad trips to and from work so being in the car was proving difficult. Still, we packed our bags, loaded up the car and headed out. We made it to Marysville. ( for those of you not familiar with the Columbus area, that is about 20 miles from home). Troy turned the car around and we headed home. I was really very upset that we were not going to get to make the trip. The more upset I got, the more sick I became.

Thankfully I have the most wonderful husband in the world and he really was not upset with me for not being able to make the trip. When we got home Troy called his dad and informed him that we had both good and bad news. The bad being that we were not coming, the good being the reason we were not coming was “his wife was too pregnant to make the trip”

Needless to say they were thrilled, and Kristy was very excited to know she had guessed correctly.  Troy packaged up their M&M’s and mailed them off.  Ruth and Steve then spread our news to the rest of the family that would attend dinner that night. We received many congratulatory phone calls that night and weekend.

Recently Ruth and Steve made the trek to C-bus to take us out to dinner to celebrate. It was wonderful to see them and get to talk the Baby talk with them.

Sharing with our friends trickled out slowly here and there. Most of my friends at work were among the first to know due to my sickness and lack of appetite and energy.  We are so excited that everyone has been so very happy and excited for us.

Troy keeps saying to me ” I can’t believe they are going to let us have a baby!” I am not sure who this mystical “they” is, but here we are and hopefully the Powers That Be will remain our our side as we make this journey.

April 4th we had the IUI procedure done with Dr. Williams at Ohio Reproductive Medicine. Our appointment was early that Saturday morning, and while it didn’t hurt, or even take very long, I ended up spending the rest of the afternoon and evening in bed with some uncomfortableness.  We had to wait two weeks post procedure before we could either A. expect a menstrual cycle, or B. take a home test. I have never in my life lived two longer weeks than those.
On Friday April 10th, I had blood drawn to check my progesterone level. In the past when we have had this done, we had to wait for the score to see if we’d even had a possible ovulation. In this case, because of the vaginal ultrasound (sorry boys) and the shot of Baby Making Mojo I took prior to the IUI, I knew I had ovulated. My score was 59. We were excited, but tried to maintain clam, as we had been burned by high progesterone scores in the past.
Thursday April 16th was day 27 in my cycle. I knew that I could take an early predictor test that day, but also knew it might be a tad early and register a false negative. So I decided to throw caution to the wind and take the test. I didn’t even tell Troy I was going to do it. When the test registered with a blue plus sign indicating a positive result I nearly passed out. When I collected my self, I walked into the other room, where Troy was checking his email, and said
” You’d better order those announcement M&M’s Daddy.”
He jumped out the chair and hugged me right away. He was so excited.
As I headed to work that day I was so excited, and still nervous at the same time. I called Dr. Williams office, and they told me to get blood drawn that night to confirm.
After work we went to Riverside, to the blood draw lab with which we have become all too familiar in the last 18 months.
The next morning Dr. Williams nurse Nancy, called me to tell me the results were in and we had a winner! My score was 68. They were looking for a score between 50 and 500 for this first draw.  She then informed me that she wanted the test to be repeated until my score was over 1000. The score is expected to roughly double every 48 hours. So at that rate I was in for 3 more blood draws.
My second result on Monday was 268, and my third on Thursday was 1018! I was super excited then because it meant that not only were we well on our way, but I also didn’t have to have that last blood draw. YEAH!
I used an online due date caluculator and determined that I am due on Christmas Day! We’ve already started talking about ways to make sure our poor Christmas baby still feel like they have a special birthday, that the day doesn’t get lost in the Christmas mess.

So what’s next? Sharring with the parents (now soon to be GRANDparents) as well as our siblings and a few close friends.
Because this time is still so precarious, we don’t want to shout it to the whole world, which is why if you are reading this blog post, you’ll notice I wrote it while things were fresh and new, but didn’t post it until we knew we were entering the “safety zone”
So, if we’ve seen you between April 16th and now, and have lied to you… sorry. You’ll just have to forgive us on this one.

So, the fertility game still plays on. I thought I would send out an update for those of you who are interested in this particular game.

After two more unsuccessful months with the “clomid break” we went for the meeting to get more information on the IUI process. The first part was very similar to what we have already done; take 150 mg of clomid on days 3-7.  Then the differences started. On day 13 I had a vaginal ultrasound. The ultrasound showed that we had some enlarged follicles on one side, but they weren’t quite as large as we would want. I was pretty disappointed, fearing that this was a sign of a larger problem. My fear was quickly dissipated when the doctor shifted the ultrasound wand and proclaimed.. “Oh Here We Go! That’s what we’re looking for.” I’ve never seen a doctor get so excited about a body part. So, that night we had to take an injection of more baby making mojo. (And when I say we, what I mean is me) 34 hours later, Troy made a deposit at the doctor’s office, so it could be washed. (A process of separating the actual sperm from the rest of the fluid) 2 hours later I came in for my appointment. The whole thing was over and done with in less than 2 minutes.

So now we’re in the wait and see portion of our story. We still had a progesterone level drawn on day 21, and the results were positive. So now we’re waiting for days 28-35 to arrive, so we can test.

The Doctors office wants us to call if we get a positive result so they can have us do a blood test. We’ll do two blood tests a few days apart to make sure that Hgc levels are still doubling.

So how do we fell about all of this? Excited, nervous, hopeful are just a few emotions running through us. We’ve talked about all different kinds of scenarios and plans, but the truth of it is, what ever comes our way, we’ll take it.

Hopefully soon we’ll have some good news to report, and fun pictures to start posting. Until then, we’ll keep our fingers crossed.

I have been tinkering with the idea of writing a post on this topic for a while, but I wasn’t sure if A. I wanted to open up to the world on this one, or B. that you want to hear about it.
Then I decided that the writing process was more cathartic for me, and that it isn’t like the whole world reads my blog. Since most of my readers already know some of these sordid details, I figured what the hey… as Melissa says, “sometimes you just need to blog it out”

Before Troy and I got married we had “The Conversation”. The one where you kind of lay out all the expectations you have about being married. Who takes out the trash, who does the laundry, how nit picky are you on general cleanliness, where do you stand on kids, politics, education and religion. Things people need to discuss so you aren’t surprised down the road.

We were pleasantly surprised to find we had a lot of similar views, and figured our transition would be fairly smooth.
In the “kid” conversation, we also talked about the factor that our age played into the whole process. Since neither of us are spring chickens, we don’t really have the option of waiting to be married for 5 or 6 years before embarking on the breeding train.

In the fall of 2007 we began to inch our way toward parenthood. We stopped using any kind of birth control, and figured we’d just see where things led. Right away we hit a bump. My body, being the boss of itself for all these years, was not doing well with the withdraw symptoms of no more birth control. The old girl just quit working.
So after several months of waiting, one extremely frustrating phone call, and a trip to the doctor, we had an answer. No progesterone.
What does that mean? Well, progesterone is a hormone that helps your body to ovulate.
No progesterone, no ovulation, no chance at a pregnancy.
Blarg.
So after discussing options with the doctor, we started taking medication. Well, I started taking medication, Troy started listening to me complain about side effects.
Each month I take the pills for four days, then on the 21st day of the cycle, I have blood drawn (and you know how much I love that!). A couple days after the blood is drawn the doctors’ office calls me with a progesterone level. Then we cross our fingers and wait. Of the first 6 months we have endured this process, only 3 of them had a score worthy of even hoping.
Earlier in November of 2008, I had a test done to check to see if my old girl had some issues. I had what is called an HSG test. It was semi-painful, and kind of gross, so I will spare you the details. The long and the short of it is that every thing looked good. There was no pregnancy-blocking monster to vanquish.

After the HSG test, we did two more months of Clomid. This was the highest dosage we have tired yet, at 250 mg. There were days where I thought I was going to boil from the inside out due to hot flashes. It is not fun. And again we were met with disappointment. After a lengthy phone call with the doctor, we were advised to seek help from a specialist. Mid December we had our first appointment with Ohio Reproductive Medicine.
The Doctor we met with was very nice. He explained everything from what the body is supposed to be doing, what we’re guessing mine is not doing, and all the steps we will try to over come the issue.
The first step the doctor wanted us to try was a “clomid break”. The idea being that my body wasn’t making its own progesterone, so we dosed it up with clomid, when we weren’t successful (due to the fact that clomid also blocks the estrogen needed to get pregnant), that maybe somewhere along the line, my body figured out what it needed to do, and would make its own progesterone. For the last two months this was the plan. The first month we were glad to receive the news that my levels were within normal range. This month however we were not so lucky. This time around we got the news that I had not ovulated at all.
Now, phase two. I spoke with the doctors’ office today, and the plan is to move on to a procedure called and intrauterine insemination or IUI.
This is the first medically assisted procedure we will try. I am hopeful for this procedure. After months and months of “cross your fingers” or “wait and see” I am ready to move on to something more proactive.

My Mom has a friend she met in nursing school, who spent her career working at an OBGYN office. Jane had suggested to mom, that we go to a specialist, since … and this is a direct quote…
” You can tell just by looking at Kathleen that she isn’t a person who is infertile. She’ll be easy to get pregnant”

I am not sure, but I think there is a compliment in there somewhere…. That or Jane is horrified at the size of my hips… I’ll have to ask her next time I see her.

A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words

Last Sunday Mom, Troy and myself went to a fantastic exhibit at the Ohio Historical Society. From April 25th through July 25th they are featuring  “Caught in the Moment” the Pulitzer Prize Winning Photographs from 1942 through the present.

I cannot say enough about how amazing this exhibit is.  Each of the pictures has been reproduced and enlarged. Next to the photograph itself is a placard that tells the story of the photo and its photographer.

In addition to the pictures, there is a video presentation. The video features an extended look behind six of the award winning pictures. There are interviews with the photographers and others who were witness to the event at hand. One of the photographs highlighted in the video is the 1964 winner, of Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald.

As I walked through the exhibit looking at the pictures and reading the placards, I recognized many of the photos. Some of them are iconic images in American history, pictures like the Oswald photo, the shooting at Kent State, the returning of Vietnam POW’s to their families.

The photographs are in order chronologically, moving through them I of course recognized many of the more recent ones from seeing them in the paper and on television in my lifetime. The rescue of Baby Jessica, the forced taking of Cuban refugee Elian Gonzalez, The Oklahoma City bombing, the shooting at Columbine high school, and of course the fireball exploding out of Tower Two on September 11th.

So many of the pictures are as heart breaking, as they are breath taking.  My favorite picture is the winner from 1984.
Anthony Suau of the Denver Post was awarded for two different sets. One was a series that shows a depiction of the starving children in Ethiopia and for a single shot of a woman in a cemetery at her husbands’ grave on Memorial Day.

It is the Memorial Day picture that brought me to tears.
The picture depicts a widow sitting next to the grave of her husband.  She has her arms wrapped around the grave marker and is just holding on to it with such a strength. Below her arms you can see that the stone is inscribed with all the wars that her husband had been involved in, World War II, Korea, Vietnam etc. This man had been a lifelong dedicated solider and this woman had spent a lifetime loving him and most assuredly waiting for him to come home safe.

The photographer had been in the cemetery shooting Memorial Day events for the local paper, when he had the shots he wanted he began to walk away and that was when he saw the widow. She was hugging the grave, she stopped, then reached out and did it again, and he snapped his picture. When you look at this picture you can see the lifetime of love this woman and her husband shared.

If you are in the Columbus Ohio area, you need to make the time to visit this exhibit.

I was sitting at my very teacher-esq desk at school the other day, looking around at the pile of papers, homework and tests I need to grade, the pile of stuff I need to copy, the state standards I need to consult before writing the new lessons I need to teach, and wondering how I am going to get it all in by April 21st…T Day. (The first of 5 days of standardized testing for 4th and 5th grade in Ohio)
As I reached for the pile to grade, I felt my eye begin to twitch. I thought to myself “Oh, great! Just what I need now.” Later in the hallway I was complaining about my stupid twitching eye and a fellow teacher says to me, “ oh, that is a sign of stress and fatigue.” Great! Even better.

I have been eye twitching for a few days now, and last night, completely unprovoked, my twitching eye begin to water… tear after tear after tear was falling down my cheek. I looked over at Troy and said
“ Wonderful my darn twitching eye has decided to cry. I don’t have time for a complete breakdown, so my left eye has decided to do it for me. Tomorrow it was probably be so depressed it won’t be able to get out of bed and then due to constant stress it will slip into an eye coma… I will have to wear a patch.”
Troy, who is used to my drama-humor when I am upset or annoyed with something laughed as I continued to describe the perils of having to live your life while one of your eyes is in a coma.

Later I was talking to my best friend and I told her I was so stressed out right now that my eye was twitching non-stop. Between the daily life of a teacher, add to it, a union and school board struggling in the public eye to reach a new contract, being evaluated as an individual for job renewal by an administrator that I am unsure of, desperately trying to find the energy to finish a long over due graduate project, needing to finish said project by an ever looming deadline, so I can renew my license with the state, so that I can legally have the job that is being evaluated in the district with a public union/school board struggle.
All of this is enough to send any eye into a twitching frenzy, and none of this even counts what is going on in my personal life.
Thankfully I have a wonderful husband, a solid marriage, and the dog is much more calm than she used to be.

Shannan (the afore mentioned best friend) said I needed to rest, and that maybe I should consider a full on coma not just an eye coma.
I said if I were going to go into a coma, I’d go into a soap opera coma. This is the kind of coma, where you lie in a comfortable bed, surrounded by flowers, and attractive medical staff. You are in nice silk pajamas, with your hair and make-up done perfectly. You have no medical equipment hooked up to you except for the tiny plastic tube that lies under your nose so you can breath pure oxygen. I think this would be great. Especially since no one will have to visit my coma bedside to admit they secretly love me, or tried to murder me, resulting in the coma. Soap Opera comas are the best; because they always solve whatever looming problem the character was involved in prior to the coma. Everyone in the immediate world of the coma victim is so happy when the coma victim awakes, that everything else seems to just take care of itself. This is the kind of coma I want to take part in…. but then again wouldn’t we all?
During my Soap Opera coma someone will finish my project, the contract issues to be resolved, and Troy will finish hanging the new light fixtures in the house… wait scratch that last one, I may never wake up if I have to wait for that.
(Sorry honey!)

Mom calls me a couple weeks before Thanksgiving, and asks me if I would be willing to make the sweet potato casserole. My first thought was “ick.. no!” but she convinces me to do it. I don’t like sweet potato casserole, which I know puts me into a minority but hey, what else is new?

So two nights before Thanksgiving we go to the store and buy the ingredients… which was my first mistake. I went to a cooking website to get a recipe, and the one I chose listed fresh sweet potatoes.. not canned, and since I don’t ever cook with sweet potatoes, I didn’t know that I was already headed down a path to disaster.

The recipe called for 3 large potatoes. I needed to double the recipe (due to the mass amount of people who come to moms for turkey day). So when we went to the store and found before us a large table filled with HUGE sweet potatoes, we decided to buy the three biggest ones we could, A. because they were hysterically large, and B. it would keep us from having to buy six.

So, bright and early on Thursday I got up and began to prepare the casserole. The directions say to bake the potatoes for one hour, then mash, peel skins and and mix in other ingredients.

Seems simple enough… and yet… it was not.

I baked, and baked, and baked and baked and baked… and my giant sweet potato would not soften. I cut them apart, thinking they were too huge and needed to be smaller.. nope didn’t work.

I finally had to call me mom and tell her she was out of luck.

You can see what happened to my sweet potatoes…..

Well, so much for making to try to make something I dislike. HA!

So, I am sorry, but I need a minute on the soapbox. Usually I try to keep these kind of rants between myself, and either my husband or my best friend, but in this case I feel I need to share with you the public not only to get it off my chest, but maybe, just maybe to help inform and therefore keep some other unsuspecting person from being as thoroughly insulted as I was.

Now, I understand that for the most part, we live in a caring community and have people around us who care about our general well being. Granted, the guy in the cube next to you, isn’t up nights wondering if you are happy or not, but he will notice when you have the flu, and express some sort of concern. This is a nice and neighborly thing to do. HOWEVER, the WAY said concern is expressed makes all the difference in the world.

For example, two Thursday’s ago; I began to not feel so well. I had a bit of a scratchy throat. As the days went on, I got worse. I went from scratchy throat, to sore on one side, to sore on both sides, to ear pain and a mild fever.

Now, because I am a schoolteacher and cannot afford to take a sick day every time I have a little bug, I immediately began to self medicate with Nyquil. By the end of the weekend, I was feeling better, well enough to go to work. Yes, I was tired, and yes I didn’t feel up to my usual sunny self. However, the last thing I needed was some “caring” person, to tell me how awful I looked.

I was “cared for” multiple times between Monday and Wednesday.

I was informed that I looked awful, must have a fever, looked terrible, and something is wrong.

WAIT! This all happened on Wednesday. Which was the day I was feeling better. So much better in fact that I had mistakenly told myself that morning I must have kicked the bug, and that I was better.

I guess I don’t spend enough time in front of the mirror.  That or I have somehow become hideous without knowing.

Now upon reflection, I can fully admit that I too, in the past have approached a friend/family member/co-worker and expressed concern for their well being in the form of. “ Are you alright, you look____ (insert negative descriptive word) “

Well NO MORE MY FRIENDS! Having suffered this type of “caring” to the point of near tears, I will now make sure that I stand out, and instead of assuming a person is ill, upset, sad, tired etc.

I will show my outpouring of love, by starting with “ hey, how are you feeling?” then the person I care about can feel free to tell me themselves that they are feeling….. (Insert descriptive words here)

The feeling of fall is back in the air. Kids are all settled into a new school year, and leaves are beginning to change color and fall. Football season is firmly upon us, with tailgaters eating hot dogs, and hot chocolate. Parents are gearing up for Halloween and even some are already planning for Thanksgiving. I love the fall, and with all of its wonderful tastes and smells, holidays and rituals it is no wonder why.
But … while all of the afore mentioned things are wonderful, they are not the main reason I love the fall. No, I love the fall for one reason alone, TV.

I know it sounds bad that a teacher, of all people, is such a TV junkie, but my friends it is true. I love TV as much as I loathe Bottom Milk.
The new season brings so much promise. A chance to spend time again with old friends like Betty, Grissom, and Dexter as returning shows come back with new episodes. A chance to meet new friends, Detective Cruise, Dan, Nick, and Chuck as networks and cable channels alike bring out their newest stars.

When you love TV, like I do, you get connected to the show and its actors. So much so that when a favorite show goes off the air, you are heartbroken (sniff, I miss Veronica Mars). If you loved a show enough you are excited when actors from said show appear in other shows. Kristen Bell (Veronica Mars) will be joining the Heroes cast this season and I can’t wait! Nathan Fillion (Mal, from Firefly) is on Desperate Housewives, and so on.
Many times you give a new show a chance because of who is in it. Peter Krause (Nathan from six feet under) is in a new show called Dirty Sexy Money. Admittedly, a dumb title, but Peter was enough of a draw for me to tune in and give the show a chance. This is the same reason that Moonlight (Kevin Wiseman, and Jason Dohring), Life (Damian Lewis), Pushing Daisies (Kristen Chenoweth), Big Shots (Michael Vartan) and Gossip Girl (Voice over Kristen Bell) made it onto my DVR. Some of these shows will not last the season. Moonlight is tittering toward demise…. Too much like Angel (a beloved show) with out enough snap of its own to carry it.
Sometimes a new shows comes along, and I give it a chance because of one of the cast members, only to discover I don’t know how I lived with out it.  This is true for me in the case of last years new Showtime show Dexter. This one would star Michael c. Hall, also of Six feet cred, AND Julie Benz who played Darla on both Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. I was excited to see stuffy “David” and wild “Darla” together in a show that cast them in COMPLETELY different characters. Dexter is nothing like David, and Rita is the complete opposite of Darla. AND I LOVE IT. Right now Dexter is the best thing on television. That statement from a die hard LOST fan means something.
Right now my poor DVR is sweating under the amount of hard labor it endures each week to tackle my long list of new episodes. Chuck, Heroes, Dirty,Sexy,Money; Pushing Daisies, Big Shots, Gossip Girl, Life, Bionic Woman, Ugly Betty, CSI, Journeyman, Moonlight, Brothers and Sisters, Desperate Housewives, Cold Case, Without A trace, Dexter, Reaper… and I am sure I am forgetting a few. Some shows might get cut by the network due to ratings, like last years Studio 60 (Bradley Whitford.. yum!), others might continue in the quest for success, but will fall off of my radar, like the previously mentioned Moonlight.
The good news for a TV junkie like me, is the fact that cable channels, and even some networks, have realized that the TV junkie needs new shows all year round. Channels like Sci-fi have awesome shows like Battle Star Galactica, and USA kept me entertained this summer with Burn Notice (With Bruce Campbell, how can you go wrong!?) These shows keep me from going through complete withdraw during the summer while all my closest friends are on hiatus. So, laugh at me, shake your head if you will… but I have to go, my show is about to start.

I was getting ready for work the other day when I heard the voice of one Matt Lauer, Today Show Anchor, lilt from my room stating that we all needed to “Think before we Pink”.
As I often find myself thinking while watching the Today Show,
I said aloud, “What the hell is Lauer talking about now?”
I walked into the bedroom to watch a story about how much money is actually given to Breast Cancer Research when we purchase pink items. Okay Lauer, I thought, you have my attention.
The story went on to talk about a project of the Brest Cancer Action Group called “think before you pink”.
This campaign was launched in 2002 in response to the overwhelming amount of products that were pink or touting the pink ribbon. The campaign calls for more transparency and accountability by companies that take part in breast cancer fundraising, and encourages consumers to ask critical questions about pink ribbon promotions.

The report gave examples, the lids of yogurt containers; pink M&M’s, Tic-Tacs, nail files, lipstick, etc. The one that really caught my attention and gave me pause was the KitchenAid stand mixer.
I have one of these wonderful kitchen appliances, and I love it. Mine was a Christmas gift from my mom several years ago. My mixer is not a pink one, but I have always said that if I hadn’t been given my mixer as a gift, but was to buy one, I would choose a pink one.
Now, I am not so sure.
Each time a pink stand mixer made by KitchenAid is purchased; the company gives fifty dollars to the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation. WOW! A WHOLE FIFTY BUCKS! Out of the $399.00 it costs to buy one.
Part of me thinks, that if people are going to buy a mixer anyway, why not have some (even if it is a miniscule amount) go toward something worthy. Another part of me, feels that one would be better off to just send the fifty dollars to the foundation, and save myself the other $349.00…. hence my mixed (forgive the pun) feelings.
It is frustrating that so many of the pink products are aimed at women, and we buy into it thinking, we are getting our cake and eating it too. An impossibility that we all must pay more attention to.

So on the advice of Matt Lauer (something I rarely follow) I checked out the website put forth by the ‘TBYP’ campaign to see who else may be scamming us into purchasing their product for a good cause.

Some things listed were as lame as the 50 out of 400 deal with the mixer. Others weren’t so bad. For example the Georgia-Pacific Consumer Products brand of Quilted Northern Ultra toilet paper will donate 50 cents to Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation for every proof of purchase collected and mailed in from specially marked pink ribbon packages of Quilted Northern Ultra, up to a maximum of $500,000.

The Price for consumers is $2.99 (and up depending on how much TP you buy at once) plus the postage. Not really a bad deal. You the consumer have to put a little work into it, but not much more than what you would have to do to give the money directly to the foundation and skip the toilet paper purchase.

There were several other companies who set up their donation like this one. Consumers purchase an item, and mail in a UPC, or lid and the company turns around and donates the money.

So in the end, am I any less “mixed” up about this donation to a good cause through purchase of a product?  Not really. I still believe that if the consumer wants to buy a $399.00 mixer, why not buy the pink one and help a good cause in the process.
However… why is it that a company that can make a product so well that is worth the $399.00 dollars to buy it, can’t give more than fifty dollars?

Check it out for yourself:
http://www.thinkbeforeyoupink.org/Pages/ParadeOfPink.html

Maybe I am way off in my feelings on this; maybe I should just shut up and be happy that some companies care enough to even donate any money to the cause…. And maybe if we point it out, someone in those caring companies will say, “ hey why are we only giving 12% (forgive my rough math) of the pink profit, maybe next year we can give 20.. or 25.. or even 50% that way more money goes to the cause, maybe finding a cure sooner, and then they won‘t need our money and we can have it all to ourselves… or maybe give it to another worthy cause….

Well a girl can dream can’t she?