Combining my two Blog

This will be my last post on Carver's Sight or is that Site? for the foreseeable future. After I publish this post all new posts, following this one, will be on my other blog. You can click here for that blog, Carver's Photographic Journey. I started blogging here in August of 2006 as a way of dealing with Stage III melanoma, the interminable follow up appointments and scans, as well as the physical problems I've had since the groin lymph node dissection. I stayed on edge because I ended up with ongoing and at times debilitating health problems.

When I first started blogging, I used photographs to serve as breathing spaces in between the flow of words. I also used this blog as a way to house links to research, clinical trials, and information about advanced melanoma.

As time went on, I became more interested in photography and less interested in discussing my health issues. When I first started my other blog, I called it Carver Cards and my idea was to have each post on that blog be one large format photograph. Carver Cards was the name I used in the 1990s when I made stationary cards with my flower photography on the front. 

I wanted two blogs because my original idea was that I would continue to write about what was on my mind on this blog while keeping the other blog free of health whines.

As time went on, I didn't want to continue talking about myself (other than in terms of nature or other interests) on either one of my blogs and they have both gradually ended up being places where I post photographs and participate in online group themes (Photohunters, Nature Notes and Today's Flowers on this blog and Our World, ABC Wednesday, SkyWatch and the Weekend in Black and White on my other blog).

I will probably continue to participate fairly regularly in the same group themes but there isn't any reason not to do that on the same blog. I decided that Carver's Photographic Journey was a better choice for that purpose. I changed the name of Carver Cards a while back because that blog had become a photographic journey of sorts.

I have a superstitious side which has made me afraid that if I close this blog I'll have a cancer recurrence.  The lymph nodes in the basin where my nodular melanoma spread to were removed in March of 2005. I started out with a poor prognosis because my primary was so deep and the melanoma had spread to a lymph node. However, after so many years it is highly unlikely that my melanoma will have spread to an organ or other nodes and even in the unlikely event that it does, I doubt I'll want to talk about it.

I still see a number of medical specialists although I've started streamlining how many I see. I've found that limiting the number of doctors I see is good for my health overall.

I had to give up on most of my exercise efforts and attempts to get back to where I was physically, prior to when all of my health issues began, but I'm starting to walk again regularly which helps me mentally.

I think I'll end it here and continue with my photographic meme posts on Carver's Photographic Journey. However, first I'll digress. I've never understood the word meme. When I first saw meme, I thought it looked like ME ME but found out it's an umbrella word for organized participatory blog themes. I googled meme and found this definition on wikipedia: a meme is "an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture." There is a long article going into the origins and expanded meaning of the word meme which was first used in a book published in 1976 called The Selfish Gene. 

When I googled blog memes I found this, also on wikipedia: an internet meme is an idea, style or action which spreads, often as mimicry, from person to person via the Internet, as with imitating the concept. I have to say that I think there should be a better word for the participatory activities on the Internet. It's not imitation when each person is taking a theme and showing their world through photographs, essays, etc. 

Also, what I like about the memes I participate in is that I learn more about people from different parts of the world as seen through the eyes of their camera or poetry or essays. Even if I wanted to imitate blogs I visit, that wouldn't be an option because people are sharing their neck of the woods so to speak and we all live in different places, visit different places and have different camera equipment, creative and technical skills. I lied before, I didn't end there, I'm ending here.

Nature Notes: Pleasant days for walking

The big change at the moment is I've had some sunny days with cooler temperatures for walking.

Although most of the leaves are still green, more trees are starting to change their colors and a few are already dropping leaves.

I love the way I can walk any time in the day I choose without it being too cold or too hot. It helps motivate me to walk.

In the summer if I don't get up and out very early, I lose my window of time that is good for walking. In the winter it can be hard, some days, to get motivated and go outside when it very cold in the morning. But days like these, any time of the day is good for walking.

These shots are all from a walk I took on Monday at Shelley Lake which is at the end of the road my subdivision is in. I didn't walk all the way around the lake but instead took a side trail, after checking out the ducks.

It's nice to see how much water there is in the creek beds. I remember walks when they were practically dry. The shot below isn't very good but you can see the great blue heron in flight which I never seem to catch.

The shot below is another one which isn't that great but I'm including it because of how I caught the turtles sunning on the log. At first I thought they were just bumps on the log and then I realized what they were when I noticed some of their little heads stuck out.

I'm going to try to walk every day it's not raining. Since we have more rain in the forecast that won't mean I'm going on a walk every day but it will be more than I have been doing.

I guess I'll wrap up this meandering photo walk with a duck splash.

Please visit the home of Nature Notes for more participants.

Season of the Paint Throwers

Last year around this time I posted about the paint throwers and once again I see it the same way. Where I live the fall colors are getting started in earnest but there is still a lot of green and I feel at times like I'm watching each leaf change.When I look up at the trees and see a spot of color amidst the sea of green it really does look like someone has been throwing paint. There is so much to see both in my yard and as I venture out into the neighborhood. It helps me get at least a little energy for venturing out for fall clean up and neighborhood walks.The shots above are my trees and the ones below are within a few blocks from me. I haven't mentioned my exercise log lately, in part because I hit a summer slump. I have continued to keep it as an ongoing record to help motivate me to be more active.
I started my most recent log on March 7, 2008 and for two months I was doing quite well. I reached day 60 having either walked or done an alternate form of exercise for 50 out of 60 days. Then as it inevitably does, the summer heat began to affect my energy.
I started driving to stores which were close enough to walk to and my walks were more expeditions than a daily routine. I hit day 218 yesterday with 101 days where I got some form of exercise out of 218 days. Not quite every other day.
To me the challenge will be to regain my momentum this fall. I know last fall, or autumn as it's known in many parts of the world, I couldn't get the momentum back. Then it got colder and my motivation didn't return until the spring.To me the reason it's important than I regain my momentum is that I'm not getting any younger and it will not get any easier. It's easy to wallow in self pity if I allow myself to. As I've mentioned many times on this blog when I was in my mid forties I made a conscious decision to hit 50 in great shape. I spent several years getting into increasingly good shape eventually losing most of the weight I gained in my early forties and building up to over 5 mile jogs almost every day. I was also starting to swim and work with weights to mix it up. Then came stage 3 melanoma, the groin lymph node dissection, peripheral neuropathy, myalgia, lymphedema, and I gained back most of the weight that I lost because I couldn't jog or do any intense exercise without pain. Do you hear me splashing in that pool of pity. I haven't done that in a while so one last splash and onward and forward. Or as one of my fellow melanoma bloggers used to say about herself (Heather who sadly didn't survive melanoma), it's time to put on my big girl pants. When I think about Heather, Shannon, Sheila, Kim, Sarah, Michelle, and so many others who didn't survive melanoma and carried on with strength and grace to the end; I can't wallow in the pity pool for very long. I have been so fortunate in so many ways and I have to find a way to keep putting one foot in front of the other. I didn't intend for this post to take this turn but since it did I think I'll stop here. I also think I'll go for a walk sometime today.

Too Faced . . . Melanoma Research . . .

If anyone is here for my weekend snapshot post, that is below this one.
Lori the inimitable Miss Melanoma who blogs at the Official Site for the Fun Side of Cancer wrote a post about how Two Faced Cosmetics has raised over a million dollars for the Melanoma Research Foundation . On Two Faced gives back it says -"Too Faced is proud to sponsor the Too Faced Love Lisa Melanoma Resarch Foundation Grant inspired by Too Faced Co-Founder and Creative Director Jerrod Blandino’s sister Lisa Blandino, a mother battling skin cancer. Lisa Blandino’s story is one of courage, bravery and hope for a healthy tomorrow. Through sharing her experience with others, Lisa, along with her brother Jerrod, hopes that this grant will increase awareness and education about skin cancer."Lori, Miss M, did a drawing of her blog readers to win a free selection of two faced make-up which was kindly donated by Katherine Bates a two faced make-up-artist to help raise awareness. Guess what? I won ! ! ! The makeup is so much fun. Complete with eyelash jewels. Have you ever heard of such a thing. Below is me with jewels on my eyelashes.
Besides being fun makeup, I like it because it's easy to remove and stays in place when you want it to. It has vitamin e and other nifty ingredients in some of the products. All that AND they are trying to raise awareness about skin cancer.
All of the products in the photographs in this post were part of what I received for free. This may be the one and only time I write about any specific product or brand on my blog but I find it so very refreshing for a company in the beauty industry to take a stand about skin cancer that I have to say I am very pleased to find out about this.I was walking with a friend this morning and telling her about winning the two faced make up and she said, maybe this is a sign. You're starting to walk again, you have new fun makeup, remember when you were on that health kick, running, cut your hair, wearing makeup . . . The photograph above was taken during that time period. I wanted to show an out of town friend how much progress I was making. I was 47 years old.The shot above is me Saturday night all dolled out in my two faced makeup, age 50, three years after melanoma and the lymph node dissection which rendered me N.E.D. (no evidence of disease). It's been a struggle to remain active because of chronic pain and other health issues which I've had since melanoma entered my life, but the good news is I'm still here. I don't want to end this on a down note. I am so glad to read on Miss M's blog about campaigns which are designed to reach young people about protecting their skin.Miss M recently wrote about Paige Wood who is touring with the Vans Warped Tour and is working with the Vans World Charities about skin cancer Awareness. Melanoma has become the most common cancer for women between the ages of 25 and 29 so it's so great to hear about the efforts of Two Faced and Paige Wood and others who would have a big appeal for that age group. I was diagnosed at age 47 three years ago but my nodular melanoma popped up when I was 27 and I was told it was nothing. I was incredibly lucky that so far it only spread to one lymph node. I am also lucky that I can walk around the lake with my friend and chat about fun makeup even if running may no longer be in the cards for me. A big thank you to Lori and Katherine for the two faced makeup.

Flying with the Kite, vacation, exercise log

I don't think I've ever seen a kite boarder before my recent vacation. Looked like so much fun to be flying with the kite. I remember thinking sail boarding looked like fun when it came out, and at the time it seemed very novel. I guess kite boarding is the latest thing now. Then again, I'm so behind the times it may have been around a long time and I missed it.
I took the second photo from inside looking out the large window. My sisters are the pair on the beach and my brother in law is on the porch. It was much cooler at the beach than it's been at home but it was hot enough so that it was nice to be able to sit inside some and still have a good view for photo ops.
I took the picture above while I was on a walk. The group of seagulls were so much fun to watch. Hard to know what they were doing in their little group. The stayed just past the dunes but too far from the ocean to be on the lookout for fish. It was almost like they were hanging out having a chat. One would fly in and join them, then another would fly off.
I have never been to the beach and done so little walking. The pier in the photo above is what I used to consider my short walk and I didn't even make it to that pier. I am continuing to keep the exercise log I started 103 days ago and I have gotten some kind of exercise 66 of those days but most of it was when I was walking every day. First I over did the gardening which slowed me down and then the heat came in like fire.
I am not going to let myself get discouraged. For one thing, at this point I've gained so much weight that if I don't at least hold my own I'll make a less than optimal situation worse. I had brunch with a friend yesterday and we're going to try to start walking together early in the morning at least once a week. Every little bit help and if I can walk with her once a week and if Bill and I can walk some together on the weekends, I'll only need to motivate myself a couple of other days to do something on my own.
I have barely scratched the surface of the photographs I took during my vacation but I'm sure I'll be scattering them through upcoming posts for a while.

Thank you, tags, exercise log, and such

Tomorrow marks day 40 of my decision to try to walk at least 1 mile every day or do alternate exercises on the days I didn't walk. It's turned out a little differently than I originally planned. I'm walking 2 to 5 miles six days a week, and the past few weeks I haven't taken my camera at least 3 times a week so I could have a brisk walk without stops and starts. Since I'm walking about three times as far as my original plan, I need that one day when I rest. It's startling how quickly I've fallen back or rather leaped forward to where I was when I stopped getting regular exercise which was about 6 months ago.I suppose that the fact that I did at least keep walking with Bill on most weekends, during my six months of basically giving up on being particularly active, helped enough for me to establish a regular routine again. So far, knock wood, I am not finding myself feeling worse which was what happened for a while when I tried to be as physically active as possible.
I want to thank A Small Town RN who blogs at A place I call Home for passing the Be the Blog Award on to me in this post. I always enjoy visiting her blog both for her beautiful photographs from where she lives on Vancouver Island, BC as well as her thoughtful posts which cover a variety of topics including ones for her perspective as an RN. I appreciate her thinking of me for this award.Mary at Work of the Poet kindly thought of me for the Circle of Friends Award. I appreciate that so much. I enjoy her sense of humor, photographs, and posts on a variety of topics. I am so glad to have met Mary through blogging.I want to thank Mousey at Say Cheese for thinking of me for the Around the World Tag. To be honest, I'm so slow that I never quite run fast enough to tag anyone. Just kidding (sort of). What I thought I'd do is copy the links to the participants below in case anyone wants to visit some of the blogs. I didn't add my name since I'm supposed to tag 5 people and, as I said, I'm slow. But I thought I'd at least put the links here in case anyway wants to browse some of these blogs from around the world.

Instruction:1. Place your link after the list. If you have more than 1 blog, feel free to add them all here!2. After placing your blog’s address/es, you must tag 5 or more bloggers that is not yet in the list, this is to keep the ball rolling.Links around the world tag (update as of Mar. 11, 2008)

1 - Momhood Moments 2 - Business Mars 3 - Pinay Mommy Online 4 - OnlineBiz and Resources 5 - A Simple life 6 - moms….. check nyo 7 - Mommy’s Little Corner 8- Princezz 9 - Princess 10 - Random Thoughts 11 - Paradigm 12 - See Me For What You Will 13 - Pamp’s Blog Corner 14 - Pampered 15 - HappyHeart 16 - Qtcotzkie and Baby 17 - A Sorta Fairytale 18 -tragicseven 19 - Listen to the Beat! 20 Just Saying 21 Tipsy Tips 22 Different Angles 23 Delicious Corner 24 I Care 25 Blog Blag Blog 26 Daily List 27 - Life’s Journey 28- Welcome to my Crib 29 - Hearts Desire 30 - Island Paradise 31 - Texas Life 32 - Long Journey 33 - D’ Cooking Mudra 34 - My life 35- Swept Away 36 - Winged Words 37 - Rainier and Katrina 38 - Life! Learn it. Live it. Love it. 39 - Colour Our World 40 - The Next Chapter 41 - Painted Life 42 - La Place de Cherie 43- Chez Francine 44- Le Bric à Brac de Cherie 45- Missbodybeautiful 46. My Thoughts and Moods 47. My JOurney 48. Celebrate Life 50. Deeply In love 51. mY pReciOus 52. mY vOyAge 53.denz techtronics 54. denz recreational 55. Cashing 56. Icelog 57.Life’s Impression 52.Liza 53. Its Not A Weekend;Its a Lifestyle 54. Napaboaniya APAD 55. My Wanderings 56. Maiylah’s Snippets 57. Picture Clusters 58. Say Chesse 59. Stopover Your URL Here