Yep, you read it cor­rectly. I received a major league sized pearl neck­lace last night. I had to beg for it. Ini­tially the guy was only will­ing to toss me a lit­tle one. I wasn’t going to set­tle. I’m a girl with a huge per­son­al­ity. I wanted a neck­lace that suits me. Then, with my lit­tle eye I spied the UBER sized pur­ple one you see pictured.

It was in the wee hours of the morn­ing of Relay for Life and I was exhausted! How­ever, run­ning on noth­ing but adren­a­line and caf­feine, I pushed myself to keep on rawkin’!

I wasn’t alone. Dozens of other peo­ple were try­ing to keep the lev­ity and spirit of the occa­sion excit­ing. Lap after lap. I’d been danc­ing and jump­ing around while the band Take Over played. The po-po, the 5–0 had come in to tell them to take it from 11 to 3. Appar­ently there is a city ordi­nance or some­thing nutty that won’t let that much sound per­me­ate the air after mid­night. I didn’t get it because this was just one night. A spe­cial occa­sion! A gath­er­ing of fund-raising, rejoic­ing, memo­ri­al­is­ing folks! Let the boys play the rest of their Stone Tem­ple Pilots tune … but rules is rules.

My nephews, a friend and I were mak­ing our way around the track when we came upon the stage. By then a dj was crank­ing out 80s tunes! WOO! That gave me the boost of 4 cans of Mon­ster energy drink. That’s when a band mem­ber pulled out the Mardi Gras beads. I was on it! He started toss­ing them out to the weary walk­ers. I had to get in on it. The first I grabbed was the lit­tle wimpy sil­ver strand. I had a blue disco ball one the size of the pink strand, but I traded my nephew for the pink. He just didn’t feel right wear­ing pink. Who could blame him? We’d set out to make another lap. I turned to see the ginor­mous set of beads wrapped in the clump. I had to have them. I went to the stage and pleaded, “I want the big­guns! I need proper adorn­ment.” He replied, “Huh?” Point­ing to my basooms I declared, “THESE need proper adorn­ment!” And he gave them up. Not eas­ily mind you. He tossed them in the air gen­tly. Clearly he wanted to make me jump for my prize.

[breas­tic­u­lar units were not exposed for the sake of the beads]

For the rest of the time we were at the Relay I proudly sported those gems. I felt I had been justly rewarded for over-extending myself. I had walked inter­mit­tently since 2:30 p.m. At one point I stuck the ear­buds in and power walked. It was hot; yet breezy. My SPF 35 proved to be enough. No burn!

After the gru­elling, sor­row­ful week my fam­ily had shared, our par­tic­i­pa­tion in Relay for Life — Team: Hunger for a Cure was just what we needed. We laughed while not for­get­ting our recent loss of father, hus­band, brother-in-law. We remem­bered those we’ve lost to can­cer. We cel­e­brated my sister’s con­tin­ued tri­umph over can­cer.