Velveteen Mind

Yo Gabba Gabba! I'm sold.

"There's a party in my pants!"  Wait, no, that wasn't it...  Oh yeah, right:  "There's a party in my tummy!"

I just walked in the door and caught the tail end of the new Nick Jr. show Yo Gabba Gabba!  It caught my attention because Elijah Wood was on teaching some motley crew of robots and monsters how to dance the "Puppet Master."   I've been crushing on Elijah Wood ever since Radio Flyer, which is just wrong, I know.

There are so many things wrong here and yet it all feels so right.

If you haven't already, you've got to catch an episode of Yo Gabba Gabba! next week, airing on Nickelodeon's Nick Jr. at 10:30/ 9:30 Central and then tell me what you think.  It's a faboo mish mash of Sid and Marty Krofft style muppets, backgrounds that look as though they have been taken directly out of old Mary Blair illustrated Little Golden Book books like I Can Fly, and a sense of humor much like Cartoon Network's Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends.

I was so ready for a show like this.  And their production blog is called Yo Blogga Blogga!  where you can see pictures of the "for cast & crew only" Paul Frank Yo Gabba Gabba! wallets.  Really, I'm sold. 

I may change my mind later, after say, one more episode of this Sesame Street on LSD psychedlia, but I love this show.  Yo Gabba Gabba! has a new fan.  Now if only I can convert my children.

And now, because my page doesn't load slow enough as it is, here is Elijah Wood doing the "Puppet Master."  Don't say I didn't warn you.

Team WhyMommy: I'm All In, MoFo!

My husband, Maguire, has been poking around my cre8buzz profile, checking out my friends' pictures and their blogs.  He gets into an absolute clicking frenzy, I tell ya.  His favorites, so far:  moosh in indy and Oh, the Joys!  He thinks J at Oh, the Joys! is hot sex on a stick and has also decided that having a girl wouldn't be so bad after all, based on the hilarity that is the moosh. 

Sexy ass on the brain and babies on the heart strings is not a good combination, folks.  Not for me, anyway.  It's right around this time of the year that I tend to make babies, too.  Watch out.

And now for the segue that will make your head spin:  This all brought us to a discussion about breast cancer.

Wow, right?

While clicking on everyone's blogs, he asked me, "Hey, why aren't you on Team WhyMommy?"  Good question, my man.

For a long time, I saw the Team WhyMommy button popping up here and there and thought it was just one more lame social networking thing for stay-at-home moms or something.  Then one day, I finally clicked on it and realized that it is actually a support system of sorts for a fellow blogger that has inflammatory breast cancer.  Aah, breast cancer...

Every woman in my family has died of breast cancer.  I would say that the exceptions, of those that have died, are very few.  It is astonishing.  Deep in my heart, I think I do believe it will be how I die.  As it is close to me, I support breast cancer charities, peev people out by donating to charities at Christmas in their name (I know, roll your eyes if you must), and have a button on my Links & Blogrolls & Buttons - Oh My! page that, once clicked, will provide a donation toward free mammograms, at absolutely no cost to you other than a couple of clicks of your mouse.  Really.

Needless to say, I was just trying to find the right time to sign on to Team WhyMommy.  I figure tonight is as good a night as any.  I'm just in the mood.

Here's how it works:  You copy the Inflammatory Breast Cancer post at Toddler Planet, WhyMommy's home.  Add the Team WhyMommy button, and link back to both Toddler Planet and the Team WhyMommy RoundUp at Don't Take the Repeats.  And/ or just add the button and link to your sidebar and let your readers figure it out.  And then you spread the word. 

I'm all in.  Particularly because despite all of my experience with breast cancer, I didn't know about inflammatory breast cancer, either.  She just might have ultimately bought me some time.  Here's her story, if you haven't already read it:

We hear a lot about breast cancer these days. One in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetimes, and there are millions living with it in the U.S. today alone. But did you know that there is more than one type of breast cancer?

I didn’t. I thought that breast cancer was all the same. I figured that if I did my monthly breast self-exams, and found no lump, I’d be fine.

Oops. It turns out that you don’t have to have a lump to have breast cancer. Six weeks ago, I went to my OB/GYN because my breast felt funny. It was red, hot, inflamed, and the skin looked…funny. But there was no lump, so I wasn’t worried. I should have been. After a round of antibiotics didn’t clear up the inflammation, my doctor sent me to a breast specialist and did a skin punch biopsy. That test showed that I have inflammatory breast cancer, a very aggressive cancer that can be deadly.

Inflammatory breast cancer is often misdiagnosed as mastitis because many doctors have never seen it before and consider it rare. “Rare” or not, there are over 100,000 women in the U.S. with this cancer right now; only half will survive five years. Please call your OB/GYN if you experience several of the following symptoms in your breast, or any unusual changes: redness, rapid increase in size of one breast, persistent itching of breast or nipple, thickening of breast tissue, stabbing pain, soreness, swelling under the arm, dimpling or ridging (for example, when you take your bra off, the bra marks stay – for a while), flattening or retracting of the nipple, or a texture that looks or feels like an orange (called peau d’orange). Ask if your GYN is familiar with inflammatory breast cancer, and tell her that you’re concerned and want to come in to rule it out.

There is more than one kind of breast cancer. Inflammatory breast cancer is the most aggressive form of breast cancer out there, and early detection is critical. It’s not usually detected by mammogram. It does not usually present with a lump. It may be overlooked with all of the changes that our breasts undergo during the years when we’re pregnant and/or nursing our little ones. It’s important not to miss this one.

Inflammatory breast cancer is detected by women and their doctors who notice a change in one of their breasts. If you notice a change, call your doctor today. Tell her about it. Tell her that you have a friend with this disease, and it’s trying to kill her. Now you know what I wish I had known before six weeks ago.

You don’t have to have a lump to have breast cancer.

P.S. Feel free to steal this post too.  I’d be happy for anyone in the blogosphere to take it and put it on their site, no questions asked.  Dress it up, dress it down, let it run around the place barefoot. I don’t care.  But I want the word to get out.  I don’t want another young mom — or old man — or anyone in between — to have to stare at this thing on their chest and wonder, is it mastitis?  Is it a rash?  Am I overreacting?  This cancer moves FAST, and early detection and treatment is critical for survival.

Thank you.

Evidence File for The Betty

In honor of my debut piece over at BlogRhet, Lifting the Veil of the Inner Blogologue, I thought I would do the other BlogRhet contributors proud by sharing what I was doing yesterday while all of their thoughtful commenters were adding their wisdom to my think piece:

I was directing a sexed up liquor ad.

Yep, you read that right.  GingaJoy and Her Bad Mother will be so proud that they allowed me onto their wicked smaht blog.

The Queen of Shake-Shake and I were invited over to Suburban Oblivion's home for a little playgroup yesterday.  Naturally, someone smuggled some alky-hol into the joint (before 5 o'clock, can you imagine?!) and well, we somehow ended up filming what easily equates to more evidence for our being admitted to the Betty Ford Clinic.  Or committed.

Our favorite Playgroupie was supposed to be in attendance but pulled the sick-kid-card on us, so we had to send her something to rub her nose in all of the fun she was missing.  That meant the camera.  And once you put the Queen in front of the camera...  no holds barred, folks. 

In our defense, this is the deep South, where cocktails are as common as sweet tea at a church picnic and the stifling heat can cloud even the most conservative of judgments.

That being said, enjoy!  I present to you the short but potent premier of...

Evidence for the Betty.

Starring The Queen of Shake-Shake.

Videography by Suburban Oblivion.

Directed by Velveteen Mind.

Inspired by the absence of Playgroups Are No Place For Children.

She takes direction so well, don't you think?  Seriously, who wants to come down and play with us at a Southern Bloggers Conference of our own?  All of the strawberry margaritas in a bucket that you can handle! I didn't even know they made cocktails available in bucket form.

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Ya'll please come over and visit me at BlogRhet.  I need to prove to them that I'm more than break o' noon buckets of booze.   I need comments, people, more comments!  Let's fool them into thinking that I'm an audience magnet.  That is, after you comment on how cute Heather is in this video.  Don't you love her? BTW, my title is taken from one of her post tags.