Skin Aware

A few years back, a friend of mine had what she thought was some kind of clogged pore on her face. She thought maybe she needed a good facial, but she found out that she had skin cancer. Her story inspired me to get some spots checked out at that time and luckily, they turned out to be benign. The past couple of weeks, I started noticing a spot on my nose and forehead that was concerning to me so I booked an appointment with my primary care doctor to get a referral to a dermatologist. I was curious as to how long I've had those two spots (I figured they'd also ask at my appointment) and so I started looking back on photos. I found photos as far back as 2020 with them! I have no idea how I overlooked them over the course of the past two years! I do know that with covid spiking, I had put off doctor appointments, so that may have been why. But still, I don't remember ever really being concerned or noticing them until now.

Picture below taken in 2020

I had my appointment yesterday. It was the first appointment that I have had with my new PCM. Aside from my female checkup last year, it was the first time I had been to a doctor since 2019. My doctor wanted to go through everything. I booked an appointment to get a referral to a dermatologist and I left with a future heart monitor test, a retina specialist referral and a dermatologist referral. Needless to say, my new doctor is quite thorough.

Why a heart monitor test? In 2015, my brother passed away at 40 due to his heart. I have had some heart issues such has high heart rate and what feels like palpatations. When my brother passed away, my doctor at the time wanted to do an echo and put a heart monitor on me for a month, just to make sure all was okay. I had the echo done, but with no follow up, so I am not sure how that went. I never did the 30 day heart monitor. If you read my previous blogs, I mentioned having high anxiety during this time period. I declined the heart monitor because I was just too nervous about it. After all of this, my current doctor wants to go ahead and do the 30 day heart monitor now. I am ready for it.

Why a retina specialist? Well, this one certainly surprised me. Prior to the appointment, I had to fill out a big packet of forms. One of those forms asked if I have ever experienced temporary blindness. I said yes. I honestly was not sure if I should have, given the circumstances, but I did. My doctor asked me about this and now I will tell you about it. When I was about 8-10 years old, or so, I was at Walmart. I remember walking down a main aisle when all of a sudden my eyesight started to fade away to darkness. It freaked me out. I started yelling for my sister as I was bumping into aisle displays. I had my hands out trying to feel around, trying not to fall or bump into anything. I do not know how long this lasted.. maybe a minute, maybe a couple of minutes? I have no idea. I could hear my sister say, "Jaimee, I'm over here!" Later, she told me I was so pale when that happened, it looked like I had seen a ghost. After that, it didn't happen again until I was 18/19 years old. I was working at JCPenneys and as I was walking to the fitting rooms, everything started to fade out again. I knew exactly what was about to happen. I started walking faster to the fitting rooms until it all went dark again. I didn't want anyone to see me lose my eyesight. I got down on my hands and knees and crawled the rest of the way to a hallway next to the fitting rooms. I sat there until my vision came back. Again, I am not sure how long it lasted. Time was not important to me, I was more concerned about whether I was going to get my vision back.

I am now 38 years old, so it has been 20 years since this last happened to me. The doctor asked if I ever got checked out for this and I never did. She said that I needed to go see a retina specialist. I find this surprising because it hasn't happened in so long. I am going to feel kind of silly when I get asked about this by the specialist. With that said, I am not free from eye problems so the appointment won't be a total wash. For the past 3-5 years, or so, I have been dealing with recurrent corneal erosion in my left eye. It is a very painful condition where I will sometimes wake up in serious pain in my left eye. I take eye drops every night to try to minimize it from occurring.

Lastly, I got my dermatologist referral and I am pretty nervous about it. I keep telling myself that it's good that I am getting this taken care of now. That it's very important despite what the results might bring. I asked my PCM what she thought of the spots and she said that she doesn't *THINK* it's pink melonoma, but that she was going to send me to someone who would know for sure. I honestly didn't expect her to say the M word. From what I have researched, I didn't really think it was melonoma, but maybe basal cell carcinoma or squamous cell carcinoma (no skin cancer would be great!). Now I am more concerned that she mentioned melonoma. Even if she said she doesn't think that's what it is.

I will keep the blog updated regarding everything going forward. I am praying and hoping for the best!

Years in Review: Part Two

Hello, again. It is now 2022. I am terrible with consistency, if you haven't noticed, haha. The most important thing is that I keep coming back. This time, I took a look through my blog and realized just how long I have had it. Since 2009. That blows my mind. If only I would have been more consistent.

My last entry entailed much of what happened in 2015. It was a year of struggle, indeed. I chose to reflect back upon that year due to the struggles. Moving forward with Part Two, I am going to highlight the parts of my life over the course of the following years that helped me to get back on track to healing. At the end of Part One, we were approaching January 2016...

At this time, my health was finally starting to improve. I was starting to get a handle on my anxiety and panic attacks and I was slowly gaining my appetite back. On Facebook, I kept hearing about these super soft leggings and it piqued my interest. I was never really a leggings person, except maybe during my young childhood years, but I thought I'd give them a try since so many of my friends were raving about them. At the time, trying to get a pair, any pair, was a battle. People would swiftly type "SOLD" whenever a consultant would post a pair. They were selling like hotcakes! I finally claimed a pair of my own, received them, and fell in love. I walked to my daughter's room and held out my leg and said, "Feel them," with a big grin on my face. At that moment, my daughter was instantly sucked into the craze with me.

Unless you lived under a bridge during 2015 to now, you probably know what leggings company I am talking about. Yes, Lularoe. In March 2016, I onboarded as a Lularoe Consultant.. or retailer, as they are referred to in recent years. There is a whirlwind of controversy surrounding this company, but I will say that looking back, I have no regrets. It entered my life at a time where I needed a distraction. I had also always wanted to have my own boutique and this was the perfect opportunity for me. In the beginning, lots of money was to be made. I was super busy, doing online parties almost daily. I also ran a multi consultant sales group. Honestly, it was a great time in my life. In June 2016, we were doing well, so my husband and I took a trip to Tampa to go to a Lularoe training event. While there, we booked a horse trail ride where we road horses in the bay. It was amazing.

Fast forward to September 2017, we began to get concerned with the future of Lularoe. There were some shady things occuring, which led to our decision of cuttiing ties and going off on our own path. In October, we opened Jacoda Southern Boutique. We started off online/doing vendor events locally, then we rented out space in a local vendor mall, then we ended up opening our own storefront.

As you can see, doing Lularoe helped me to fund my dream of owning a boutique. Unfortunately, in October 2019, we closed our doors. I could have kept going, but the location of our boutique was not great and financially, it was costly. I could have went back to my roots and did vendor events again, but I decided to walk away. I began to get into reselling and found that the profit margin was much bigger than selling boutique clothing. I still do some reselling to this day. If I hadn't gotten into reselling, I may have kept my boutique open. There are a couple of things that I think about when I think of if I had kept my boutique open. One, I would have gone back to the vendor mall. And two, 5 months after I closed my boutique, Covid-19 hit. It would have been difficult maintaining a boutique during that time period. Most importantly, if I were in the vendor mall, I wouldn't have been able to sell because they closed down during Covid. I wouldn't have been able to access my inventory. Also, later that year, 2020, a hurricane hit and destroyed the building. The owners ended up selling the land and walking away. I would have been back at square one again. Which would have been fine and I would have figured it out, but I was already headed toward a different path.

The dream has not left me, though. My husband asked me last year, "If money wasn't an issue and you could do anything you wanted to do, what would you do?" I instantly said that I would have my own boutique again. Maybe one day.

Happy New Year: Years in Review - Part One

We are now in 2019! What?! I have not posted a blog update since 2014 - that is quite a while. Years go by so fast, I can hardly believe it. When you are a child, it feels as though you have forever, right? Then you become an adult, get married, have children, and before you know it, you are looking back wondering where all the time went and how you got to be the age you are. I find myself in disbelief that I'm going to be 40 in less than 5 years. I don't even feel qualified to be 40! haha. But it is, what it is.

So many things have happened within the past 4-5 years. 2015 was my hardest year, yet. Though it pales in comparison to what others may have gone through, the truth is, I struggled that year. 2015 started off great. My husband and I decided we were going to become more active in our lives, do more activities that would bring us pleasure. We figured since we lived in basically paradise, where people typically vacation, why don't we pretend to be vacationers once in a while, too! Both our children were in school. Hubby was working nights, so we had the day time to ourselves. We went "mountain" biking on nature trails and kayaking at one of our local state parks. Mountain biking was quite a workout and took time for me to get used to it, but it whipped me into shape quickly. But, best of all, I was spending quality time with my husband.

Life started to take a crazy turn, thereafter. In April, my brother's dog was hit by a car. I was so sad for him. I swear, it affected me hardcore for about a week. I had only met his dog once, when we went to visit in 2014. But, this was my brother's dog and my heart broke for him. We would go on our trails and my mind was just consumed with sadness.

We faced financial struggles in 2015, which led to us trading in our vehicles for one - a mini van. It wasn't like we couldn't get by, we just could barely get by. We had to be responsible adults and do what was right. At this point, I was working as a medical courier. I'd have to get up in the middle of the night and travel the interstate to a few towns over. And on Saturdays, I'd have to drive to Panama City and back. With both of us working, we were still struggling. So, I bawled all the way to the dealership to trade in the one car I had so badly wanted and loved. My husband, equally upset, because he, too, had finally had his green truck. I'm also going to just throw in that our marriage also wasn't well during this period.

In May, I was almost involved in a bad car accident. I believe God was with me this day, or my guardian angel. I was driving my route, in my "new" minivan, when I suddenly had a terrible feeling. I, then, looked into my rear view mirror and saw a truck coming over into my lane and was THISCLOSE to clipping my back end. It all happened in slow motion for me. I felt all of the hair stand on top of my head as I watched this truck take a 180 degree turn, just missing me, as he smacked into the concrete barrier. He came to a halt facing the ton of traffic that was behind us. Luckily, they stopped before hitting him. I did not turn around. We were between two concrete barriers, no room to pull off, and I had just went through a stop light. This was a very high traffic area and I really had no way of turning around. This haunted me. I wanted to know if the guy was okay. I know that help was called because there were so many cars behind us. I searched the internet for days to find something on it, but I couldn't. I was so rattled by it all.

Then in June, I was informed that a very close family member had cancer. I was devastated and scared. In July, I received a phone call from my mom that my brother had passed away. The same brother who had lost his dog just months prior. I couldn't believe it. This was the worst news of the entire year. My heart was broken. I didn't know what it would mean for our family. What would life be like without Mark? I was in shock. I just remember getting off the phone and laying on my bed in a daze. I can still feel it so vividly. How did this happen? I kept asking myself. He simply went to bed and never woke up. He didn't even know. At least, we were told that it was peaceful.

The next couple of weeks were spent making plans to travel to Minnesota for my brother's funeral. I kept hoping that this was a stunt and that he'd be alive when we got there. But who does that? Right? I would have taken it, though! When we went to his wake, all I could do was think, "wake up! wake up!" But, this was real. He was gone from earth.

In October, we were visiting family in Louisiana. We were heading to the Gumbo Festival, walking down a sidewalk, when my son tripped. He started crying and we didn't understand why, until my husband picked him up and saw that he had cut his knee straight to the bone.

The days that followed were so hard. He would wake up in the middle of the night, screaming that he couldn't handle the pain. He had tons of stitches, both internally and externally. Unfortunately, I can't remember the exact number. Maybe 10 externally and 15 internally? Anyway. It was a rough go for him. And it tore me apart seeing him in so much pain. When he returned to school, he was in a cast and couldn't do much. He had to sit with the teacher during PE and recess. When he wasn't hobbling around in his cast, he was being pushed in a stroller by his teacher. We were told there were no crutches small enough for him and we weren't offered anything else.

November came around, and it was my daughter's birthday. We decided to do a bowling party for her. She invited a bunch of friends, of which only 1 showed up. The morning before her party, I woke up with the biggest panic attack I had ever had. I went to the hospital that morning and on the morning of my daughter's party. I was in and out of ERs until the end of the year. I was having a mental breakdown. I was done. The year had did me in. I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep, I was shakey all the time, I had stomach issues, I was in a constant state of panic. No one could help me, that was my reality. I was alone. I dropped 20 pounds in a matter of 2-3 weeks. But by January 1st, 2016, things were improving for me.

To be continued........

T Stands for Talking

Today, I feel like writing about my first born, who is my only daughter and will always be my beautiful baby girl. I love this girl to pieces. TO PIECES. And, she is so social and outgoing to the point at which it leaves me and my husband wondering where she gets those traits from because we are more introverted. She is probably this way because I encouraged social behavior in her pre-school years. We were very social and active, often attending playdates. I always encouraged her to approach other kids to make friends. I think this is a huge part of who she is now, not that I'm really complaining, I think it is wonderful that she isn't scared to approach other kids and has the desire to make friends.

Our daughter, being the extroverted type of person, tends to come home from school with marks on her behavior card every once in awhile. The mark she gets the most is a T, which means talking. She has gotten NL once, which means not listening. Every time she comes home with marks on her card, she loses her TV(in her room) privileges, to also include any kind of computer/Ipad activity. I also expect her to fully explain to me why she received the said mark. She always struggles with explaining why she received the mark, which frustrates me, and so we(I) spend a lot of time talking about it which wears her down emotionally. There are days that I look at her behavior card (to sign it) the morning of school, which isn't smart on my part but most of the time she doesn't get marks so I don't expect to have any issues. This morning was different, however, she received another T mark.

This morning initially started off great! I woke up, she woke up earlier than normal and decided she wanted breakfast at home instead of school. So, I made her some oatmeal, some toast, and fixed her a glass of juice. Then, I grabbed her behavior card and that's when the morning took a turn. I asked her why she received a T, and she went silent. The most I was able to get out of her was the obvious, because she was talking. I explained to her what her consequences were going to be (loss of TV/Ipad privileges), which she probably expected. Daddy woke up a little bit after our conversation, and was able to get more information out of her by telling her he was going to clean out her room of everything but a bed and a dresser if she didn't explain what happened. Our goal in this is to get her to own her behavior, which she has shown not to do in the past. She usually places the blame on other people. She eventually said her friend asked for help on the work. Which is kind of sad to me because I feel bad for my daughter for the fact that I know she is a kind soul and willing to help anyone in need. However, she needs to know that the rules are different at school, and peer help isn't always welcomed if not otherwise advised. So we explained to her that if someone asks for help on school work, she needs to tell them to ask the teacher. In the end, it's good if she tells us what happened so that we can work through it with her. However, she makes it hard on herself up until the point of explanation because she doesn't want to talk or she says she doesn't remember why she got a mark. We ultimately end up spending way more time on an issue like this than necessary. This is something we are trying to work on with her.

Now, fast forward to me dropping her off at school. This is where this mama really started to feel bad. She was about to be let out of the car by a teacher when I told her that I knew she would get a happy face today because she is a good girl. This caused her to tear up and we hugged and I gave her a kiss on her forehead. The teacher opened the door, and Hailee completely tripped out of the car. :( The teacher asked if she was okay, and she got back on her feet and started to walk, so I yelled "Hailee", and she turned around with sad eyes and shook her head yes and went on her way. This ripped me apart. So now I sit here and I really miss her, I wish I could give her a big hug. I am sad because my goal was to start her day off right, and it backfired so now I feel like she's going to have a bad day because I chose to look at her behavior card this morning rather than yesterday.

Parenting is really hard. Disciplining can be harder. My daughter is a wonderful, kind, and positive spirited person. She doesn't like to get in trouble and she roots for the underdog. There isn't a bone in that girl's body that is mean, troublesome, or hateful. This is why I suspect that I don't like to discipline her because I know she isn't a bad girl. She likes to talk, and that's not a crime. But, I feel as a parent, it's my job to teach her that she needs to respect her teacher, her peers, and she needs to listen at school. I need to teach her this every step of the way, because if I don't, I'm afraid it'll snowball into bigger issues as she gets older.

Something that I deal with that is sad and maybe a little illogical is the fear of a school shooting, or anything happening to her at school. I fear that I will give her a hard time about her behavior and something bad could happen and I could regret it for the rest of my life. But, more importantly and perhaps logically, I also have to think about the future and her growing up to be a responsible, respecting, well behaved individual. I can't live my life in fear of something happening to her, I can only love her to my fullest extent and teach her the good in life, hug and kiss her when she leaves and wish her a really great day..for that is my duty as her mother.

We just celebrated our first Halloween back in the states! The last time the kids truly got to trick or treat until their little feet got tired, was back in 2010. Hailee was Jessie from Toy Story and Andrew was a LSU Tiger. We were able to spend Halloween in Louisiana, and we had a blast. The following June, we moved to England, and much to our surprise, we found out Halloween is not as celebrated there as it is in the states. Nonetheless, Hailee was able to dress up as a pirate for school, which was about the only dressing up she did as we did not Trick or Treat that year.

On Halloween in 2012, we decided we were going to attempt to take the kids Trick or Treating because we felt they were missing out on our traditions. We drove 30 or so minutes away from home, and another 15 minutes around a town which people claimed Halloween was celebrated in. Finally, we found some people. We parked the car, walked for about 15 minutes in the freezing cold, miserable weather, when we noticed Andrew was shaking because he was so cold. Cody loaded him back up into the car, and me and Hailee went to a few more houses with Cody following behind us in the car, before calling it a night. It wasn't the best Halloween but at least the kids were able to experience it. Sadly, I don't have any pictures from this adventure. Hailee was a bat-erina and Andrew was a football player.

Needless to say, we were super excited for this year. Hailee was able to dress up twice on Halloween. For school, she had to dress up as a character from a book. She chose to be Belle from Beauty and the Beast. For Halloween night, she was Draculaura from Monster High and Andrew was Thomas the train. It was the perfect night to go Trick or Treating, not too hot and not too cold. We live in a huge neighborhood, so we took the kids around until they were no longer interested. It was a super fun night!

Hailee wrote me(and Cody) this really sweet letter today. In her note, she says "after my concert" because she loves singing and is like a lot of girls when it comes to dreaming of being a singer some day. As the letter goes on, she says that she'll have three Yorkies for me when she is older. I have always loved Yorkies, and so she has always said this to me. She also says that she'll have a chihuahua and three black Labradors for Cody. You can totally tell that we love dogs in our family, and the love for dogs has spread to our children. :) The letter proceeds on about her wanting me come visit her for lunch one day. I'm hoping to do this soon because I know it'll mean a lot to her. <3 Thank you, Hailee, for the sweet note to us. I'm documenting it on here so that I'll never lose it. I love you, baby girl. Love, Mommy

Rocky Bo Bocky

Since I've completed my catch up blog and tried to rush six months of my life into a rather small blog post, I'm now going to post about a dog that I found last May. I purposely didn't add him in my last post because I wanted to make a post all for him so that I could introduce him properly. By now, you may have heard about my nearly 9 year old minpin, Pebbles, and my 2 year old British Black Labrador, Lincoln. I have posted about them in the past right here: Pebbles and here: Lincoln. And if I sparked any interest in you at all and you have dug deeper into my past blog posts, you will find that I have expressed that I am an animal lover and would one day love to dedicate my life to saving and helping animals here: I heart animals!.

Now onto Rocky. May 15, 2013, started out like any other normal day. My alarm went off, I woke up, woke the kids up, got everyone ready to bring Hailee to school, and out the door we went. On my way back from dropping Hailee off, I saw a dog on the main road outside of my neighborhood. He was trying to cross the road, but every time he tried a car would pass and he'd jump back on the grass. Of course, being the dog lover I am I felt compelled to do something to save this dog before I saw it get hit. So I turned into my neighborhood, rolled down my window and tried to get his attention. He looked at me and seemed interested, so I opened my passenger side door. He slowly crept up to my hand that I was holding out for him to smell. He took a few seconds to smell my hand and then he hopped right on in to my car. He was so cute the way he just sat in the seat, enjoying the nice cool air as we drove back to what would become his home, my home. I pulled into my driveway, pulled out my phone and called my husband(who was at home). He answered and I told him I had a dilemma, haha. Immediately he thought I had been in an accident, he told me this later. I continued and said that I picked up a dog, and the dog doesn't have a collar so I needed help getting him in the house. I could feel the lack of thrill over the phone about my dilemma, but out he came to inspect what I had picked up off the road and brought home.

I'm going to interrupt the story right here and be quite honest about the fact that my husband really wasn't surprised that I picked up a dog and brought it home. He knows how much I love animals, and knows that I have a big heart when it comes to them. While he sighed and didn't want to believe that I brought a dog home to add to our other two, he welcomed this sweet dog into our family because deep down he has a big heart for dogs, too. :) This is a guy who I expect not to be too thrilled externally when I get pets because each and every time I have brought a dog home, he isn't exactly jumping up and down. Take for example when I got Lincoln, our British Black Lab. Lincoln was just 8 weeks old when I got him. We had to do the whole puppy phase, and yes it was frustrating(you can see that I touched on this within past blogs), but Cody has always wanted a Labrador and I will admit the timing wasn't perfect because we were in England. And yes, it caused us many problems trying to get a military approved airline to fly us ALL back together. But, we made it all back together and I give Cody the most credit for being able to get Lincoln back to the states with us. Cody fought DAILY for weeks to make sure Lincoln came back with us. He sold his Camaro in England to get the $1000 it was going to cost us to bring Lincoln home. To say that Cody doesn't care about dogs would just be a big fat lie. :)

Back to Rocky, so we took him through the house to the backyard so that we could introduce him to Lincoln and Pebbles in an open environment. Lincoln was excited to meet Rocky, they ran and ran and ran all over the backyard. Pebbles didn't care too much about Rocky, but she would later take a big liking to him. She has a different relationship with Rocky than Lincoln does. She doesn't play with him but she is very caring towards him. Lincoln's relationship with Rocky is a very playful one. Lincoln is the baby of the three, that we know of, and he is the most playful. Rocky doesn't always want to play and the good thing is, is that Lincoln gets that. The first day went great, the second day Rocky escaped from our yard from a little hole in the back behind a tree that we were unaware of because our other two dogs have never tried to escape. I thought that was it, he was gone. But, my daughter was in hysterics by the time I came inside from the backyard, she had seen the escape! She was bawling, and I had to get her to school. I didn't know how I was going calm her down between then and dropping her off for school. A miracle happened, though. On our way to school, down the street there was Rocky. I opened the door to my car again(DEJA VU), and in jumps Rocky..like everything is just peachy! I was reminded of just the day before as he sat there enjoying the cool air once again. haha. He was soaking wet, by the way, in my brand new car. *sigh* I didn't allow fast food in my car, but hey, come on in little wet dirty dog! The things I do for animals! haha. Hailee was happy, BEYOND happy. She said to my statement of "Ugh, he's soaking wet and all over my seat", "WELL, at least we found him, mommy", how can I argue with that? A girl just like her momma. *beams*

When picking up a dog off the streets, you don't really know what you are getting. As far as you are concerned they don't have a name, they don't have an age, they don't have a back story, and heck, sometimes you don't even know what the heck kind of dog they are at all. So, we brought him to the vet. He wasn't mircrochipped, the vet said Rocky has Beagle in him, and that he is at least 3-4 years of age. We spent a couple months hanging flyers, reaching out to social media, and we informed the shelters. We still have yet to hear from anyone who knows "Rocky". We have had some people say that he looks like a dog a homeless guy had, I don't even know where to begin on that lead. Last month we took him to the vet because Rocky was acting very lethargic, and found out that he has heart worms. So, was he abandoned because of this? Was he homeless for a while? I don't know if we will ever know. At the very least, I would love to know what name he used to go by, but he has adjusted to the name Rocky well, so that's all I can ask for I guess.

Since we've had him for almost 4 months now, we have pretty much declared him as ours. He has been updated on his shots, and is under care for heart worms. He is already fixed, so we don't have to worry about that. The past few months have been an adjustment for him(as well as for us), but I really think he has accepted us as his family at this point. My closing thoughts for this blog post would be that going from 2 to three dogs was really overwhelming at first. However, I've always heard that going from 2-3 kids is the hardest but any after that isn't a big deal. I feel like that now with dogs. Will I become a dog lady? I don't know. I have browsed shelters looking for small breeds that have been in the shelter for too long and are walking the euthanasia danger line. I'm considering adding one more addition, an addition that really needs a home..will I?? I don't know, I guess time will only tell.

Take care!

Jaimee