My friend Deb joined my Avon team last month. This morning, I received an email from her that I wanted to share here. I hope my advice helps Deb, and anyone else who is thinking about participating in a charity walk.

I open my book (Avon Walk) last night and start reading it. I read about the sleeping bag, the tent, and packing a backpack for it, and collecting money, and about the night before, and I start to go…Overwhelmed much? Then I realize, it’s my fear of failure, I think. I mean, crap, if other people can do this, I can too.

Deb

Deb, the easiest thing to do is the donate money to walkers. Walking is the hard part. We walk because cancer isn’t easy. Imagine being a new mom, who just found out she’s got breast cancer. Or a grandmother to 7, who found out her cancer can’t be cured, and this will be her last Christmas. Cancer is hard. Chemo is hard. Dying isn’t fun. This may sound melodramatic, but it’s true. Compared to all of that, raising money, camping, and walking is the easy part.

Take it step by step, and you won’t fail. You can raise the money. You have plenty of friends and family members who will donate to your cause. If you still need help, have a fundraiser! Stand out in front of a grocery store and beg for loose change. Stalk the people you work out with at the gym.

Make a list, and gather your supplies. If you forget something, they will be 2,000 other campers willing to help you out. Walkers are among the most helpful and friendly bunch of people I know, and they won’t hesitate to lend you a hand.

Camping? My idea of roughing it is staying at a 2 star hotel, but I camped. I slept in a tent, I showered in the back of a truck, I went without air conditioning. If I can do it, anyone can do it.

It’s easy to get overwhelmed when you look at this event and it seems like you’re staring up at the side of a mountain. Once you start raising money, and working towards your goal, you’ll realize that you’re now halfway up the mountain, and it wasn’t even that hard.

Take it one step at a time. You CAN do this. You can do anything you set your mind to!

There’s a new hair care line from France making a big splash here in America. Boost is a new line of hair products that promises to fix issues like slow growing, or thinning hair, without making the hair you have weighed down, heavy feeling, or oily. The products use herbal extracts instead of silicones to keep your hair feeling oil free and weight less. The line even includes products that can assist with Alopecia Areata, which is a rare condition in which patches of hair are lost from the head.

During trials of the product, 16 of 35 patients showed a significant improvement while using the Alopecia Areata hair care products.

When I was 14 or 15, I started getting really bad headaches. A few weeks after the headaches started, I noticed a clicking feeling in my jaw when I chewed gum. It got to be quite painful, so a trip to the dentist was in order…and he told me that I had TMJ. When your Temporomandibular joints of the jaw don’t work properly, it can cause painful chewing, headaches (even migraines), an aching jaw, and even ear aches! My Temporomandibular joint disorder was very mild though, so once I stopped chewing gum, and did a few gentle stretches for my jaw (recommended by my dentist) I stopped having any pain.

For some though, that’s not enough to solve the problem. TMJ can be treated with the Night Guard, a new mouth guard that will users from grinding their teeth at night. Bruxism is the term for grinding the teeth, and it can also cause TMJ. People who grind their teeth at night sometimes clench their jaw as well, and the use of a night guard will protect your teeth and keep you from experiencing TMJ due to what you’re doing when you sleep.

When you think of algae, you probably think of the green slimy stuff on rocks at the pond, or perhaps the greenish tint your pool gets when you don’t put enough chlorine in it. I recently read about a type of fresh water algae, called Spirulina, that is 60% protein. For people who can’t get enough protein on a daily basis, Spirulina pills are an easy way to get your daily dose of protein, along with iron, calcium, and magnesium. While all of the Spirulina health benefits aren’t known yet, it is believed that digesting Spirulina may help:

• Diabetics decrease the need for insulin
• Control free radical damaged caused by Parkinson’s and Huntington’s Disease
• Act as an anti-inflammatory for arthritis sufferers

Spirulina can also help people in countries who don’t have access to high protein foods, solving the age old issue of malnourished children starving to death in places without meat or dairy.

I’m a nosy little thing when it comes to celebrities, so when I see these new moms who always happen to be Hollywood A-listers strutting their stuff down the red carpet a few months, I always have to wonder HOW they got back into shape after giving birth. Especially the moms giving birth to twins…yeah, Julia Roberts, I’m talking about you! Is it some wacky cabbage diet? 8 hours a day of working out? Or have those hot celebrity moms gotten their very own tummy tuck, courtesy of a doctor who performs celebrity plastic surgery? And if these Hollywood stars aren’t talking about their surgeries, how does a California plastic surgeon make a name for himself? It’s not as if you can announce that you performed a nose job on someone after they’ve paid you to keep your big yap shut! It’s got to be pure torture, not being able to brag on the fabulous work you’ve performed.

That said, wouldn’t it be nice to have the cash to have your nose job done like a celebrity? A posh office with state of the art technology, nurses catering to your every whim and need - not like in a regular hospital where you press that darn call button for hours before someone pays you any attention! Te office has a private entrance away from the paparazzi, and you can leave and get into a waiting limo, without anyone knowing you had a little work done! If you’ve got to have plastic surgery, that’s the way to do it. Living large and all that - rodeo drive style! Maybe you’ll even see one of those Hollywood A listers on your way in…

Anyone old enough to remember a show called Maude, starring Bea Arthur? It was on in the 70’s, and was extremely ground breaking at the time because it covered a topic no one ever talked about…not on TV anyway….

Menopause.

Now, you can’t escape seeing the topic on TV - people joking about hot flashes and commercials for medication to help women cope with it. But if you’re going through menopause, you probably don’t want to take advice from a TV character - you want to listen to someone who has been there, done that. MenopauseAtoZ.com is a site that talks openly and honestly about menopause symptoms and other menopause issues. Of special interest is this menopause ebook entitled “Menopause A to Z” - it’s got everything a woman needs to know about surviving menopause and living with it.

Warning…shameless begging ahead!

I started this blog last year before my first walk so that I could share my experience, and I even blogged DURING the event from a hotel room that night (our campsites were rained out) - how’s that for commitment?

The blog is up for the best charity blog award at the Blogger’s Choice Awards.

Now, normally, I wouldn’t care much, except that I’m going to be at the conference where the awards are given out, and how neat would it be to actually be there to win? Some blog about helping kids is nipping at my heels, and not for nothing, but I don’t see them walking 60 miles. The most I saw was mention of a 2.3 mile walk, which as you all know is a warm up for me. I’m walking 60 miles, for the 2nd time, for my cause. And isn’t that worth a vote? (All of the above is completely tongue in cheek - kids are a worthy cause of course, but I do want to win)

I hope that if this blog wins, we’ll get a little more attention from the blogosphere for the cause. More attention means more donations, and more donations means more women with healthy breasts. And really, do you want to be AGAINST healthy breasts?

You do need to register to vote, but please consider doing so to help me out. If you can’t afford to donate, or simply don’t want to part with $20, this is the next best thing you can do to help me out. When you register, just return to the ‘best charity’ blog category and vote for 3DayMom here:

http://www.bloggerschoiceawards.com/blogs/show/166

I have several blogs up there in different categories, but best charity is the one I REALLY want to win. However, if you’re so inclined to vote for more once you vote for 3 DayMom - here are the links for all of my blogs:

Best geek blog:
http://www.bloggerschoiceawards.com/blogs/show/130

Best shopping blog:
http://www.bloggerschoiceawards.com/blogs/show/168

Hottest mommy blogger:
http://www.bloggerschoiceawards.com/blogs/show/169

Best sports blog (my husband):
http://www.bloggerschoiceawards.com/blogs/show/101

I got a GREAT email from the Breast Cancer 3-Day today!

Congratulations – you’re halfway there! Thank you for your hard work fundraising and for your support of Susan G. Komen for the Cure and the National Philanthropic Breast Cancer Fund.

Because 10 million women around the world could die from breast cancer in the next 25 years without the cure, we are fighting every minute of every day to save every life.

Give yourself a well-deserved pat on the back – and then keep going! Continue with the same fundraising techniques that have been successful for you already, and add a few new approaches to your plan. Visit the Fundraising Tools page at www.The3Day.org for additional fundraising tips and ideas.

Please extend our thanks to your donors. Every dollar makes a difference!

Thank you, donors! Some of you are listed over there in my sidebar —>

If you’d like to be listed there, all it takes is one $20 donation. Your link will stay up til the end of this year, when I start fundraising for the 2008 walk! Leave me a comment if you’d like to donate with your PayPal account, or donate online right now at http://the3day.org/tampabay07/colleenc

Some of us need a little jump start to get going in the morning. Most people choose to wake up with coffee. Me, I have to have a can of Coke. Obviously, the reason that some people choose coffee and I need a Coke is due to the main ingredient in both drinks - caffeine! A new bar of soap is being sold that’s infused with caffeine, and it’s called Shower Shock. (Not so sure on the name - I picture a hair dryer falling into the tub and electrocuting someone!) The caffeine in the soap absorbs into your skin for that morning pick me up.

I’m not sure if I’d like this or not - I’ve gotten so used to my morning Coke!