Autumn Blessings

It is a beautiful fall morning here. Perfect sweatshirt and jeans kind of weather. The perfect kind of morning for a walk. So I did.

Before I headed out the door, I asked my super-techy husband to hook me up with some sort of tracking device on my phone. No, not in case I got lost. But rather so I can quit driving all the routes I walk to see how far I've gone. People are starting to think I'm casing their homes. So anyway, he hooked me up with the SportsTracker Pro app on my phone and off I went.

As I walked, I rejoiced in a few other things:

I am thiiiiissss close to my 15 minute mile that I'm gunning for. In fact, according to my new nifty app, I'm only 46 seconds off.

It was really peaceful and quiet. Well, other than the music on my iPod. But I actually turned that off halfway through my walk so I could listen to the wind rustling the leaves. Way cool.

To the person who had a fire going that early. Is there any better smell than that on a cool, autumn morning?

The new songs I bought the other day at iTunes, like this one and this one. I was getting really tired of my same old playlist.

Yeah, I think it's going to be a good day.

Can We Share the Love?

The other day I was walking to lunch when I encountered the giant billboard to the right. That afternoon I went to the grocery store and was greeted with racks and racks of pink paraphernalia. That evening, my husband brought home the pen below. And I went into total Jan Brady mode.

I've been mulling over whether or not to write about this issue for a very long time. I don't want anyone to think I am in any way, shape or form against raising every last penny toward fighting and curing breast cancer. But there's something that's been bugging me about the whole world seemingly gone pink.

The NFL wears pink ribbons on their uniforms. Every year on Mother's Day, Major League Baseball players swing with pink bats and are decked out in pink wherever possible.

But guess what? There are other diseases that afflict women and moms. And the women who suffer from them are every bit as strong and brave and scared as hell. Know what the number one killer of women is?  Heart disease. (And by the way, I love this new PSA by Elizabeth Banks. It's brilliant.) Number two is cancer. Not specifically breast cancer, just cancer.

I lost a friend to leukemia. She fought like hell, but lost her battle and left behind two little boys and a husband who adored her. Was her fight any less worth heralding because it was her blood instead of her breasts that betrayed her? I often wonder if it's because hearts, brains, lungs, uteruses and a whole slew of other body parts aren't as sexy as breasts. What, no "Save the Ovaries" bracelets?

Again, please don't think for a moment that I don't support doing everything we can to annihilate breast cancer. I do. I'm just wondering if maybe we can't somehow share the love for all those fighting--regardless of what disease or illness they happen to have.