Do you live in or around Durham, NC? If so, have you heard of The Scrap Exchange? I visited it for the first time on Black Friday, and it immediately became one of my most favorite places on the planet. You can buy anything and everything that you need to create anything and everything. Here is some more info, directly from their website:
The Scrap Exchange is a nonprofit creative reuse center in Durham, North Carolina whose mission is to promote creativity, environmental awareness, and community through reuse. Since 1991, we have been collecting materials from local businesses and residents and distributing these reclaimed materials through our retail store, community events, parties and workshops.

When we visited, they were having a fundraising event called “Smash-Fest.” They were selling broken pieces of ceramic stuff for $1 a piece. After we made our purchases, we proceeded outside to the lovely bonfires and live music. They had a huge wall set up where they showed a movie while people smashed their ceramic pieces against the wall. (It was a very therapeutic way to rid ourselves of the frustrations of Black Friday shopping madness.)

After the event was over, their plan was to gather all of the broken pieces and create a mosaic, which they would then sell. Such a great idea for a fundraiser, right?

I was happy to have scored exactly what I went there to find. I have a client who prefers that I make large-sized cards for him every year for Christmas. It is always difficult to find the right size envelopes that will fit the card and at the same time look nice. Thanks to The Scrap Exchange, I was able to find a ton (well actually three pounds) of envelopes! Best part? The envelopes were only $1 per pound. Woo hoo!!! I also scored sticky-back Velcro and some cute metal embellishments that I’m sure I will find a use for.

It is a great place for college students (it is located near Duke University) because they have vintage posters and other funky stuff at rock-bottom prices. A student can do some fabulous dorm-room decorating with the stuff they sell. From fabrics, to fasteners, to test tubes, to vintage spindles, to old National Geographic magazines, to boxes, to … whatever your heart desires. Call it a Goodwill store for the crafty person, at prices that are so low they almost give away the stuff.

More on what I put inside the envelopes coming tomorrow.

Check out The Scrap Exchange’s website HERE. They have an events calendar and other cool info.

(This is my personal review of The Scrap Exchange. The thoughts are my own, and I was not paid in any way to write this review.)

January is always a busy month for us.  Right after Christmas, we have three birthdays in a row:  Adrienne’s on the 3rd, mine on the 6th, and Neil’s on the 16th.  We also have the privilege of attending the Palm Beach Police Foundation’s annual ball held at Mar-a-Lago (Donald Trump’s home) in Palm Beach every year.  The Ball usually falls the first weekend in January (after New Year’s Day weekend) and Neil and I use it as a way to celebrate our birthdays.  (You can see some fun pics of us here, here, here, and here.)

The month of January 2011 was set to be even busier than those of years’ past.  Not only did we have the Police Foundation ball to attend, but we also had a wedding and the Cystic Fibrosis ball to attend.  Three big events, two of them black-tie, all before January 15th.  Let me just say that after our yearly January outing, we usually never leave the house again until the next year.  Our neighbor’s always tease us…we never leave the house, but when we do, we do it BIG!

My mom and dad usually attend the ball with us.  However, they skipped it that year because my dad had to have a procedure done.  I can’t remember now if he had it done before or after the ball, but I know that they didn’t go.  They did however, attend the wedding and the Cystic Fibrosis ball with us.

There are several things from January 2011 that I do remember.  I remember that the procedure that my dad had was a result of his having a melanoma removed.  The melanoma led to a CT-scan.  The CT-scan led to a little spot on his lung.  The procedure was to take a biopsy of the spot on his lung. 

The biopsy wasn’t very conclusive, so the next step was to surgically remove the spot.  The plan was to remove the spot, have it analyzed, and then proceed from there, all while he was still in surgery.  Let me just fast-forward and say that after a few hours he came out of surgery with 1/3 of his lung and a cancerous spot removed.

He was in the hospital in Stuart, so I went there as much as I could (with laptop in hand so I could play Farmville with him) and to sit with my mom.  We knew that he would need chemo, but the doctors all seemed very optimistic.  I was glad that Adrienne had a car because I didn’t need to worry about being at the bus stop at a certain time to drop off and pick up the girls.  I spent the nights with my mom at her house. 

On her way home from the hospital every night she stopped and got donuts.  We devoured them. We also looked forward to seeing what the hospital cafeteria had to offer every day for lunch.  I remember that we were looking forward to “Luau Day.”  How sick is that?  Looking forward to the daily menu at the hospital cafeteria.

Little did I know that in just a few short weeks, we would be reading the menu at a different hospital, for a different reason.

In the fall of 2010, Neil asked me to make an appointment for him for a physical.  Let me just say that a man who never asks for directions certainly never asks to see a doctor.  I had finally found a great family physician and Neil decided he should get checked out, too, since I raved on and on about how thorough she was with me.

His appointment was at the beginning of December. (Wow.  As I type this I realize that his first appointment was almost two years ago.  Time flies.)  He had all of the typical tests that a 51 year- old guy gets.  Among the tests was the preliminary screening for colon cancer. No worries.  When the results came back, the nurse called and told him to make an appointment for a colonoscopy. 

A couple days later, the office called back and left a message on our answering machine.  The nurse wanted to make sure that he made the appointment with the gastro doctor.  Not only that, she told Neil to make sure he went to see him sooner rather than later and to make sure to schedule the colonoscopy right away.  That sent me into a slight panic.

His colonoscopy was scheduled for 9 am on February 10, 2011.  He had to be there at 8 am.  Let me just say that at this point it was just a routine colonoscopy.  So routine in fact, that I dropped him off, came home and went back to bed, (the outpatient center is five minutes from our house,) and waited for the call that he was finished and awake and ready for me to pick him up.

That is when my world stopped.  Around 11 am on February 10, 2011.

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He was sitting up in the outpatient surgery hospital bed, already dressed and ready to go.  He was wearing his jeans and blue plaid long-sleeved shirt. (I always tease him when he wears that outfit, especially when he is travelling.  I tell him he looks so hot that the women must swarm around him.  Yes, I am very jealous of other women looking at my man.  Kinda funny…it’s not that he looks like George Clooney, but he’s mine!)  When I saw him the first thing he told me was that he had just had the best sleep of his life.  He said he never felt so rested.  Must have been the Propafol…you know, the Michael Jackson drug.  Just then, the gastro doctor came around the corner.  I thought I was in Munchkin Land, that is how miniature the gastro doctor is.

I will never forget his exact words:

“Your husband came in severely anemic.  In fact, I’m surprised that your primary care doctor didn’t pick up on how anemic he actually is.  I know why he is anemic.  He has a tumor.  In fact he has a very large tumor.  He needs to have it removed.  And he needs to have it removed right away.”

One thing I learned from watching E.R. is that when a doctor delivers devastating news to a family, they usually back into the bad news.  Like, “Your son came in with severe injuries from a car crash.  We stabalized him for awhile, but then he coded.  We did all we could, but he died.”  They don’t start off with the bad news, they back into it.

Knowing that Dr. Munchkin Land was pulling the same trick as George Clooney, aka Dr. Doug Ross,
I blurted out, “So you are trying to tell me that my husband has colon cancer?”

“Yes, your husband has colon cancer.”
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