Bosom Buddies

Bosom Buddies Calendar :To quote one of the women: " In a world obsessed with cosmetic enhancement of the human form, in order to create perfection, mastectomy is the unthinkable operation. My fervent wish is that this calendar will dispel the fears of women facing the surgery and that it will demonstrate to them that they will retain the essence of themsleves as women. the reason we have participated in the creation of the calendar is because we feel good, good about ourselves; and we want to pass that message on in the hope that it will give strength and courage to those who need it"

Not long till my operation............

It's just 10 days now till I go in to hospital for my boob exchange, I've not given it much thought really. It is supposed to be a simple operation, taking out the old implant that did the expanding work for me following my mastectomy last March and replacing it with a permanent silicone implant. I should only be in for one night and then home resting for 2 weeks.

I've got rather attached to my temporary boob, it will be strange to have a different one, the permanent one should be more rounded and hopefully slightly lower than this one, because I do look slightly lopsided. Mind you my consultant has warned me that I will my real breast will still be larger than the implant and may wish to consider having a reduction on that side....... I don't think I want to put my self through that. Though in some ways I have this vague feeling that my real breast is now the alien and that both should look the same as the implant and then I'd be balanced. There is no medical reason to have the good boob taken off, but it will always be in the back of my mind that the cancer could come again. Some women who have genetic breast cancer links do have both removed just in case. I'll keep it as long as I can, as I know a second breast lost would have an enormous impact on both my hubby and I, which doesn't bear thinking about at this stage.

I came across a great article about women who'd had mastectomies and were determined to not let it affect their lives, and wanted to prove they could still be glamourous and sexy, they have done very tasteful calendar. If you're interested go to http://www.bosombuddiestrust.org/

On a more humorous note, but still connected to breasts: My daughter's delightful puppy Molly is becoming a naughty little girl and she keeps stealing clothes . This morning as I lay in bed, contemplating having to get up but not wanting to, I could hear this ripping, crunching noise, going on beside my bed. I looked down and could see Molly was chewing something, I grabbed my glasses, without which I see nothing, and discover she has a white strap in her mouth. It's the strap from my bra, the bra itself lying abandoned on the rug, now ripped to pieces! I grabbed the strap and shouted "No" at Molly, but it's too far gone to repair.

Nothing for it, I'll have to venture out to Debenhams to buy a new bra. I only had 2 that fitted well, now just one! Good excuse to buy another, but it is a chore i do not enjoy. It is hard to find a bra to fit me well, with the implant on one side, let's hope they still have the same type in stock , that'll do me just fine!

I'll have to put yet another photo of Molly up, just because she is so sweet, albeit naughty!! This is a photo of my cousin with Molly & Beth , at my parents house in Norfolk over Christmas. It was the first time I'd seen my cousin for several years, it was so lovely to see her.

Molly, in her Santa Outfit!

Our Christmas tree

This is Molly, our new Lhasso Apso pup, she wore her Santa outfit just briefly on Christmas day, but didn't like it so we soon removed it!

Miss Teen Queen- Vote for Rebecca Waight PLEASE!

Some of you may remember that my daughter went for a photoshoot a couple of weeks back, well she is now through to Heat 4 of the Miss Teen Queen UK 2008 contest, she would love to get into the next stage and to do that she needs lots of votes.

http://www.teenqueenuk.com/ is the site

To vote you just need to text : Rebecca Waight to 84205
Each call costs 60p
or telephone : 0901 656 1515 42
42 is the number specific to Becky,
Sadly there is no internet voting.

Sophie was my blog name for her but she is happy for me to give her real name and thanks you for your support.
She already has 47 votes, but one girl has over 100!
So please vote for Becky!!

Treated like a criminal

On Saturday Sophie and I went up to London for the day, for Sophie to attend a photoshoot for the Miss Teen World 2008 comp, she is through to the 2nd heat.

We travelled by train,· We arrived at B station just before 10am, we parked the car and got the Pay and display ticket, then went to the Ticket Office, only to find it was closed. A notice was stuck to the door stating “ Due to unforeseen circumstances this ticket office is closed today……”
· We went over to the Automatic Ticket machine, there was a very long queue and people seemed to be struggling to get money to be accepted, by now the train was approaching, there were still 4 people in the queue in front of us so we went to the platform.
· I thought we could get a Permit to travel, there used to be a little machine for that purpose on the platform, but it was no longer there. The train was in by now so we jumped on the train.
· We looked for the conductor but could not find him during our time on this leg of the journey, it was a very long train. We had to get off at T B to change for L B. The train arrived at T B slightly delayed and we only had about 6 minutes to go under the platform and over to the next platform, there was no time to go to the ticket office at this stage as we would have missed our connection, I was getting panicky about not having got our tickets yet but thought we would be ok to buy them on the next train.We got on the 10.42 to L B and didn’t see the conductor immediately, but then he came , I got my purse out ready to hand him my credit card and explained we had not been able to purchase out tickets earlier, but he told us that was not acceptable and he had to issue us with penalty fares, I tried to explain that we hadn't had any opportunity to get the ticket but he was a total jobsworth and wouldn't listen. So we had to pay the fare of single ticket and the penalty is double that, then had to buy ticket to our next destination and buy singles to get home. I'm appealing , I feel I've been treated like a common criminal!! I'm livid!

The photoshoot went well and we 've got some great photos. Sophie will be on the website next month and I hope I can ask Purplecooers to have a look and vote for her to get her into the next round.

The room looking more like home again

Well, we're nearly there, I keep saying that, yet another week has gone by and I still cannot totally get the room back to normal, because the other tradesman has not come back to put the skirting on. He said he would come Saturday but then he forgot! So he has promised to be here monday at 8am............... I wait and see. X fingers.

If you look closely you will see Stan's chair, it is covered with a dark red throw. It's an old leather recliner and it has seen better days, the laether is all damaged and torn, but he won't let me get rid of it, but it really lets the room down! It will look even worse when I get my new leather corner unit, but he is adamanant it has to stay!! Pity me!

The sitting room is almost done!

Some of you may remember that we got caught in the floods of July, not as bad as the poor people in Gloucester and Hull, but all the same it was bad enough to warrant our insurance company assessor proposing that the walls of sitting room needed replastering and then redecorating as well as having the flooring replaced.

It has been a long drawn out process, of drying out and repairs. So it has been absolute chaos here, with all the furniture from sitting room having to be piled up in the dining room and in bedrooms and eventually had to put the sofas and dresser in the workshop to get the floor done. The only room downstairs that has kept functioning properly is the kitchen, and a very small space around my desk in the dining room so I can still work and get on the computer.

The replastering commenced on 9 October , but we got of to a bad start as when he removed one huge patch of plaster he discovered it was filled totally with gunk that absorbed water and the wall underneath was soaked, apparently a "cowboy" job had been done just to patch up that area. So we then had to let that all dry, Stan brought his diesel Space heater in and for 2 days we lived as in a sauna whilst the wall dried out! The plasterer came back and did all the plastering and he calculated he would be back to paint on the on the Monday, but when monday came the plaster wasn't dry enough, so away he went leaving me to ring him when it was dry.

Well, I thought it was pretty dry by the Thursday so rang him, but he couldn't make it till the Monday of the next week, and we were going away for half term break, so it was left again until we came back. On our return I phoned him and he agreed to come on Friday.

But Friday came and he didn't..............his child was ill and he was needed to look after her. So we agreed Monday29 Oct.

At LAST on Monday he came and did the painting, he was rather shocked at my choice of colour, I choose "Roasted Red" paint which is a stunning rich red and I so desperately wanted to make the room feel warmer and cosier. The girls all agreed with my choice, but Stan was horrified. But as I pointed out he had forgone his opportunity of an opinion as he had been very stupid, driving his lorry into the drive and broke the cesspit cover, sending the huge concrete block into the depths of the cesspit! He then proceeded to drop the tape measure down the cesspit too, when he was measuring up for a new lid! So I got my red paint. And actually i think it looks pretty good. What do you think?

Then comes the exciting bit the laying of our slate floor. Even before the flood Stan had got it into his head that he wanted a flagstone floor and I had been looking into costs and it seemed very expensive, but after the flood the insurance company agreed to give us the equivalent to the cost of a new carpet to get the flooring of our choice. The Insurance contractors quoted an exhortionate amount of money over £2000 above the cost of carpet, so we said no way and I went to my kind and friendly handy man in the village and asked him to quote, this turned out so much cheaper. I managed to buy the slate tiles on ebay for a very reasonable price and this last week HM & his mate have been here laying the flooring. Now HM is a gorgeous man and I can't help looking at him, he works in shorts and has lovely legs, tall, fit and trim with floppy blond hair . Yummy!!


He'll be back tomorrow to do the grouting and that will be the end of the job, but I am already preparing my list of little jobs that just need a handy man!!