Dear CurlFriends, Curls in Disguise, Chemo Curly's & WavyCurls too,
I am so crazily excited to tell you about this event I can barely type! My Friend, Curly Mentor, the original DevaCurl Angel Lorraine Massey is coming to see us at our boutique in Dundas! On October 25th Lorraine & her amazing staff "Curl-Man" David will regale us with curly tales, tips & tricks to help you live frizz free no matter how curly or wavy you are! Bring us your curls, whirls, nappyness and all & we'll teach you the magic of the Deva! Leave your blowfryers and your troubles at the door, we'll spoil you with curly deals & a refreshment or three!
Bring a canned good to donate to the local food bank & we'll trade you for one of our favourite bathing treats.
I cannot wait to see you & all your smiling faces to greet our guests! More details and RSVP contact below... Yours as always, Noëlle Want to reserve your free spot at the CurlyCon? You choose- October 25th 1:00pm or 3:30pm to reserve by phone 905 627 9379 or email ellenoire@ellenoire.com or use this link to the website... Watch this video for more info on DevaCurl!
My friend Jenny is hoping today is a New Day....I guess she had a crappy one yesterday. The words "New Day" always make me think of this song...
I first remember hearing it when my beloved Dissipated 8 sang it at Middlebury... and listen to it on an ancient scratched CD when I need to. The song ties so many people and so many memories together it is hard to even know whether it is actually memories I think of when i hear it or I just sense the many faces and landscapes pass through me as I hear the words and music. The Mountains, my many many friends over many many years... and it has become one of my fave songs that is also tied to my breast cancer years... as some of you know my doctor gave my a semi official cancer free status yesterday... or as I like to call it... No Evidence of Disease (aka NED) So, today truly is a New Day!
Someday, maybe me and some of my many many friends could get together so I can get a chance to sing it...if, I could actually get through it without crying that is... Cheers to a New Day! For Jenny....and for the memories of Yolande and RanD because you are part of all my New Days
By the time you read this, I'll have an IV needle in my arm... or maybe I'll just be sitting in a waiting room, waiting for someone to put a needle in my arm. Today is my last cancer treatment. Barring anything unforseen, and of course assuming that I don't get cancer again... I won't have to be back in a cancer treatment chair ever again.
I just finished watching my favourite TV show a few hours ago. So you think you can Dance... have you ever seen it? I started watching it last summer when I was in chemo. It made the summer pass a little quicker, getting excited every week about the dancers and who would dance what style and how well. There was a brief time I though I wanted to be a dancer, and this show has stoked that fire a little. I don't watch much television and this show made me fall in love with a show for the first time in a very long time. This season a choreographer named Tyce Diorio created a Dance piece dedicated to his friend Michelle who has endured Breast Cancer. In the audience when it was performed again at the finale tonight? Christina Applegate, who was diagnosed when I was in chemo. She was crying, I was crying .. lots of people watching the show were crying.
Skip the talking at the end, if you want to... and yes, I wish it was the original Kate Bush version of the song too.
I wonder, if I saw this last year while I was still in hardcore treatment how I would have felt. I wonder if I had seen this before I got cancer would I have really felt much at all. I wonder, if cancer had never touched me, where would I be?....who would I be?....What is this failing business, this chapter of cancer ending.. what is it all about? Where is it all leading me?
This morning, I found the hairdressing scissors that my mother used to cut our hair my whole life. She cut my customers hair until a few months before she died from cancer. 3 summers ago I watched her health decline after 5 years in chemo. I was there everyday through every step of cancer treatment and her death process. Last night someone told me I should be using those scissors to start the next phase of my career.
This afternoon I chatted with one of the favourite people in the neighbourhood of my store. His wife has terminal cancer, she has had treatment after treatment after treatment. I looked into the eyes of a man exhausted by the pain of watching his wife suffer, he saddened himself by the fact that he was grumpy today when she never complains about the daily injections, nurse visits and dressing changes. I told him I get his part in the cancer stuff... and for the most part.. I get hers too.
Tomorrow I pack a gift for another cancer friend in her 3rd summer on chemo.
Today I met a customer who was diagnosed with breast cancer soon after I was...she disappeared after her treatment started. I worried about her. I was very excited to see her! Her newly grown hair looks like what we refer to as chemo curly....
... Yolande said it best.... her Dad was dying and I was telling her about something not very nice someone said to me ... she said " no negative thoughts, we don't have room for anything negative" Yolande died on the 4th of July 2006... just a short few weeks after her Dad. I guarantee you Yolande will stand by me with this post.
I don't like the media, I don't read newspapers, or headlines, or watch the news EVER. I think most of the lies and the way the truth is spun to sell advertising is shameful. I don't check the weather, I don't read People magazine.. I think it is all a big waste of time. Since being involved to a great extent with social media I am exposed to a lot more news. Happily, it comes as little one line blips that I can choose to read more about or not.
This past week I have read countless comments about the death of all the celebrities. I grew up watching Johnny Carson and Ed McMahon seemed to be a gracious and lovely host who had a long long life. Farrah Fawcett...I still have all my books and of course the Charlie's Angels t-shirt I begged my parents to buy me at the EX. Cancer took you too young, and everyone knows what I think of that fecker cancer...One day I'll watch your documentary about your travel with cancer, but for now it's too soon while I wrestle with the same devil. Michael Jackson...well... I'll get into it about him... but I liked him too.
I've been thinking about this post all week, the day that Farrah and Michael Jackson died when the nasty and negative Michael Jackson comments started. It has astounded me how incredibly mean spirited some of the comments and jokes have been. The thing that upsets me most have been the comments from the people on FaceBook that I have allowed to be in a list called "friends" many of the comments have made me think twice about who I really want to be friends with.
I was a half black little girl when I first saw Michael Jackson on TV. Like many many girls in the 70's and 80's Michael Jackson and the Jackson 5 were amongst our first crushes...I was more partial to Donny Osmond, but had a soft spot for my early crush on MJ my whole life. Those guys were on my first digital clock radio, in my first Tiger Beat magazine, on my Saturday morning cartoons, they were the posters on my wall and the pictures under my pillow at summer camp. MJ and Donny never called me racist names on the playground, never teased me for wearing purple socks, or hand me down clothes. In a world where I was lonely they were there.
As I am typing this, my friend Randie who died on July 1rst from Breast Cancer is being remembered in a memorial service by her friends and family. Randie was in my support group, but we never met... and I miss her. Today someone said to me on FaceBook when I commented on his badmouthing the coverage of MJ's service "Enjoy your grieving process for someone you did not even know" As I said... Randie and I never met.. and I knew her for a much shorter time than I experienced Michael Jackson in my life. Randie, I have a feeling... although I did not "know" you ...that in the heaven that I believe in... you will find Yolande, and my mother and a heck of lot of other people and all of you... will be walking... MOONWALKING with the beautiful Mr Michael Jackson.
The things people say, the mean things people type... actually scare me sometimes. If someone from your street that you did not like died, would you sit and complain about what a jerk he was and say how you "don't understand why anyone would mourn him"? ...NO, you would just not attend his funeral, and perhaps feel bad for his children. So WHY is it ok for you to talk about Michael Jackson like that? I certainly hope I don't get on your bad side.
"Why should we care about him, it's not like he cured cancer or something?" No..he didn't but he gave millions of his dollars away to honourable charities. "He was a Pedophile" .. well, that was never proven... "I never liked his music" soooo, why are you even talking about him???? (I bet you a cocktail that you danced to his music at least once in your life) Truly people, do you not have anything better to do with your time than to go on about someone you "did not know" or even like?
Don't get me wrong. I am by no means perfect. I complain about my doctors on this blog, on twitter I criticize how people park, or drive or dress.. but honestly..I don't think I use people's names or make mean comments or jokes about anyone after their death. Ok, sorry I lie ...my mother was a royal pain in the ass and I say so but she knew I loved her.. and she knew I thought she was a pain in the ass...
I grew up in a house with very little money, but radio and TV were pretty much free...so we listened and watched... I never owned a new record until I was about 11(Patsy Gallant, 1976's Are You Ready For Love?, with the disco single "From New York to L.A" yes, I still know all the words) I had an Osmond's album from a Garage sale... and I bought a Jackson's greatest hits cassette in the early 80's and learned all the words to Ben 10 or so years after it was released. We watched videos when MTV had free weekends on Canadian TV or on City TV's "The New Music" and we tried all the dance moves ...Didn't everyone who saw MJ do the first Moonwalk on TV try it in their living room that night??
Anyone who has ever desired to dance on a stage and tried to get even close to any of MJ's steps knows he was a genius in that realm. I spent a lot of time on dance floors in high school wearing one white glove and a bow tie dancing for hours... and having other people ask me to teach them how to do the robot, or the moonwalk. Was I good? Who knows... the only thing I cared about is that I was dancing. From the minute I was allowed in 7th grade to go to school dances, I was dancing. I didn't care if people teased me about my outfit, or the music I liked because I was dancing... and in my head I was in the happiest place I could be.. and Michael Jackson was on the speakers on many of those nights.
All I know for sure is that Michael Jackson meant something to me. Did the media blow MJ's death out of proportion? Sure, but they do that to everything. Personally, I think a football or hockey or golf game on the front page are annoying, but when your FaceBook status goes on about some game or player or other.. I refrain from calling you names for liking those sports.
All your comments have made it clear that you did not think Michael Jackson was perfect....Do me one favour?? Call me on the day that you are.
Today I feel like I can never get ahead.. financially or emotionally. I also feel like I am a whiny pain in the ass on this blog because I whine about the fact that I can never get ahead financially or emotionally.
Yesterday my precious post chemo gift kitten got really lethargic and was acting strangely, and today she is at the vet getting tests run.. since whatever is wrong has stumped the vet. Is it wrong for me to feel really really angry that not only do I have to deal with yet another financial set back with the vet bill... but also face the fact that my kitten may be soooo sick I will have to put her down? All my fault likely... I totally and utterly forgot to get her shots done...we wanted to let her have a litter of kittens and so I never took her to the vet... and I swear to GOD.. ya you.... GOD!!! that I completely forgot about the shots I was supposed to get. She kept running away and we were always so happy to get her back.. and she has been such a fun thing to have about the house with my cancer and my failing business and all it.. I just plain forgot. What the hell is God trying to test me with anyway....For GOD'S sake... gimme a break already!!!
One of my Breast Cancer buddies died last week... she was diagnosed at the same time as all of my cancer sisters....and now she is gone. Gone from her 6 year old, gone from her husband, gone from everyone else who loves her..
I could bore you with a list a mile long to tell you all the crap that sets me back week over week over week. Heart tests are going badly, Heart tests are fine, Can't pay the rent, flood at the store, flood at my house, cat ran away, no money for groceries, can't sleep, sleep too much, can't find a babysitter, can't afford a babysitter, can't buy stock for the store, have too much stock at the store collecting dust, new bath product store opens two doors away, Someone dies, someone else dies...another local store scoops one of my product lines, toothache, earache, and on and on and on...
What is it all about? Am I at fault for all of this? Do I care too much? Maybe when all warm blooded creatures come near me I should just ignore them.. I certainly spend a lot of time mourning them, worried about them, feeding them....waiting for them...
Sometimes I am just tired. Not body tired... just emotionally wiped off the map for a few hours while I nurse the kick in the gut all these things do to me.
My mentor wonders why I don't get enough done in a week. I wonder how I even get out of bed at all.
I 've played Job in an early posting... I think I've survived the 10 calamities...someone hand me a hammer and call me Noah because building an ark would be easier than this...
I was in this musical a long time ago..still know every note..
This morning while working on the finances for the store I realized something. If 80 of my customers came in and spent $100 I could pay the rent this month. I can hear you gasp from here… wow, that’s a lot of money! Yes sadly it is. I’ll tell you the story, so you will understand. I have explained how small retail works on this blog before, but I’ll give you another quick version. In a normal retail (in a small company, that is less than 5 years old) year you sell as best as possible and spend all year using up what you saved during Christmas sales until the next Christmas season. You pay the bills, your staff and the little left over is for the boss. If you did your job right you end the year with little or no debt… and start all over again hopefully growing sales every year…. At some point in theory you become profitable that all the time spent pays off.
Last year when I had cancer I spent more than is normal both paying medical expenses, and paying for extra staff to keep the doors open while I was ill. We started this year in a bad place because bad weather and the recession killed our Christmas season. By February the savings were gone, and we have been struggling ever since. We have been digging a deeper and deeper financial hole every week.
This past weekend we booked a festival booth and paid for the booth and a lot of extra stock… but the organizers did not promote the area we were in so we lost a large amount of money because we sold next to nothing. This tore through most of both the little money and the goodwill from lenders that we had left. Sometimes, something little like this is all it takes to sink the proverbial ship.. and take a business down. We are perilously close to being on that sinking ship.
So today while working on the finances for the store I realized something. If 80 of my customers came in and spent $100 I could pay the rent this month. This means simply that with 80 people buying $100 (or 160 people spending $40, or 320 people spending $20 and so on.. ) I could pay back the friendly lender that helped us with the festival, pay the staff, the phone bill, and the rent…. This won’t pay all the debts… but that is for another blog, another day and another equation… today.. it is 80xU= ellënoire wins and gets to go on for another few weeks... The whole store is on sale, so your $100 will go a long way…
P.S. While I was writing this entry.. a friend just spent $100… so now it is 79xU!!!
Noёlle's news from the ellёnoire boutique and beyond! Natural Fragrance, Skin Care, Hair Care, CURLY Hair Care and Natural Nutrition to complete the circle! .. and I'll never forget to talk about...cancer!
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