Happy Thanksgiving!!!!!

Leaves of Autumn - A Photograph by Patty Mooney

Leaves of Autumn, originally uploaded by cleopatra69.

Wishing all my blogster peeps a wonderful Thanksgiving Holiday. Please don't forget to express your gratitude for all the good things in your life. As my friend, the writer Don Williams, says, "Giving thanks is the key to happiness." I have certainly found this to be true in my own life. Gobble-gobble!

Shark Crazy - A Poem by Patty Mooney

You and I hand-in-hand near Hervey Bay Marina,

aluminum masts jangling in the sweet salt air

when this guy closes in - stocky, sun-toasted, grizzle-

chinned, gets chatting about sharks. A Great White

chows on Aussies like Vegemite on toast.

That grey shadow moves like a battering ram to

shake loose a limb, wolf it back, gnash it down

to chum. In sea water blood seems black.

"Oz" is one big spot of land circled by Great

Whites, hammerheads, lemons, tigers, blues,

and they linger at Hervey. Vic pulls up

his T-shirt to show the mark of a shark whose jaw

caught the waist, a circle of gashes like Morse code.

"That son-of-a-bitch got away with the taste of my blood in him.

But I've killed plenty since to make up for it."

Vic's going hunting at dusk, got room for two.

I imagine leaning off the bow of his trawler,

like the one Robert Shaw manned in Jaws.

I think of the 20-foot White in formaldehyde

at the shark museum.

Vic points at a fourteen-foot skiff.

Your eyes catch mine.

Erin Has Always Loved Balloons - A Photograph by Patty Mooney

Erin Has Always Loved Balloons, originally uploaded by cleopatra69.

My niece, Erin, knows how to enjoy balloons

Erin and her Unicorn Balloon - A Photograph by Patty Mooney

Erin and her Unicorn Balloon, originally uploaded by cleopatra69.

Some things do not change. And shouldn't.

A Letter About the Importance of Mammograms - by Amy Kitchens

Good morning ladies,

I am sure you have heard the latest buzz in health care that you do not need a mammogram so soon/often. Well I am here to enlighten everyone. I was diagnosed at 40 years old and two months with breast cancer. I have NO family history (I am it) and I do not possess the gene(s) for the disease. I breast-fed all three of my kids for a minimum of 9 months (Mattie). My cancer was detected by a routing mammogram that my gyn guy said I should have since I was “40”. His wife had breast cancer at 41 and 45. She is still alive 20 years later to enjoy her family. One of the many doctors I met with told me that “by the time you detect it yourself it is often stage 2+”. It is staged 1-4. Stage 4 being time to make arrangements for your loved ones. Mine was stage 1 with no lymph node involvement. The higher the stage numbers the lower the odds of recovery and or reoccurrence. It is like VegasJ. That being said it is coming up on 5 years in February. I am, knock on wood, totally fine and fulfilling my “bucket list” in 4 weeks as I make my annual trek to Durango, Colorado. The very place I went after diagnoses and treatment with Cathy Patrick and our boys in the summer of 2005.

Amy is wearing green baseball cap and orange vest

That was an amazing trip on all levels as I challenged my greatest fear……water, and went in a raft down the Animas River after having a mastectomy and chemotherapy (still was bald) and I rowed the raft! What a sensational feeling that was. Getting the air knocked out of me by waves and water while trying not to pee my pants from sheer joy and terror. On that note…..whether you have to pay for it, lie for it (make up a family story) or demand it……GET A MAMOGRAM EVERY YEAR. It could save your life…..it saved mine and I am so glad I did it. Find a facility that now does digital mammography. Any questions are always welcomed. Enjoy your life!!

Take care my friend.

~ Namaste ~ Amy

Pterodactyls - A Poem by Patty Mooney

We poets were once
dinosaurs in a lizard time.

Our poems are beast kids
enclosed in shell.

Pterodactyls, bust through,
take to the sky, primitive silhouettes.

Wings eclipse the moon's big belly,
as egg shards glitter in afterglow.