Let’s just say that blogging on this personal site has been on the back burner for 2011.  But considering that it’s the last day of the year, I might as well post, just so that I can continue to call myself a blogger.  Granted, 19 blog posts in one year hardly qualifies me for “Blogger” status in my opinion, but I’m taking on the fact that I’ve been doing some blogging on other important sites too.

In recap, 2011 had both highs and lows.  And I’m not just talking about my blood sugar levels.

Early 2011 we took a family trip to Disney World and had a magical time and we also took a road trip to see family we have in Pennsylvania.  One of the stops we made was in Hershey, PA where we toured the Hershey Factory and made our own chocolate bars!

Somewhere in the middle of 2011, things got super busy with work (common and typical).  I again served as a Director on the Greater Springfield Board of REALTORS® MLS and in 2012, I will be the 1st Vice President and I’m looking forward to a term as President in 2013.  The Board itself is doing some incredible things with an MLS Regionalization project that I’m very involved in helping with.

The Donald and I, working as a team, have continued to sell a lot of real estate, rent a lot of property and we spoke at the National Association of REALTORS® Annual Conference for the third year in a row!  It was an exciting time in Anaheim, California.

I am very excited about what 2012 holds for my career with my work with the local, state and national Associations of REALTORS®. I am serving on quite a few state and national committees, including vice-chairing the NAR Property Management Forum!

In addition to continuing to write continuing education courses for REALTORS®, we also worked on a bigger web project called Landlord Red List.  The site is designed to assist Landlords from across the country in how to process rental applications that they receive from potential tenants.  The project has currently been put on hold as we are looking at some re-design and hope to launch it soon.

At the end of the year, my office moved into bigger and nicer digz.  Since I’m still in the process of getting things settled and hanging pictures on the wall, I will have to post more pictures and invite you to our Open House soon.  It’s an incredible building and we’re excited about the growth of Dizmang Properties.  The new place has beautiful office space, including classroom space for us to teach real estate classes.  There is also a large warehouse space in the back that will allow us to efficiently run our property management maintenance out of.  It’s nice to ditch the 3 or 4 storage units we have had and have all the supplies and crews under one roof.  However, watching them take down my old office was really a reflective moment for me.  I had spent 11 years in that office and have accomplished A LOT.

JDRF has of course made some big changes including a new logo in 2011.  It thrills me that they are somewhat re-branding themselves to be the ultimate leader for finding the cure for type 1 diabetes for BOTH children and adults.  (See the “T1D” within the logo between the “J” and “D”?)  They have seen that there are many adults that have type 1 and it’s not just the children that we are finding this cure for.  Locally here, JDRF Ozarks held their 2nd annual Jingle Bell Bash in December and it raised $78,000 for type 1 diabetes research!  Who would’ve thought that the our local chapter would have come so far, so quickly?

Thankfully, the hubs still has a cush job with AT&T and he really is my ultimate support to get the things done that I need to get done every day.  He also leaves me sweet notes in the garage each week so that I see them as I’m coming and going out.  Yeah, it’s the little things that keep me going.  We celebrated our 13th wedding anniversary in October and had a good time gambling it up at Downstream Casino.  Ahhh, the crazy things we do!

And today my sweet baby youngest child, Collin, turns 8 today on New Years Eve.  He and his brother, Jake, and their Dad sure make my world go ’round.

I didn’t mail out Christmas cards this year, so if you’re a close friend/family member reading this post, don’t be offended. I still have a passion for shoes, I have loved watching my niece and nephew grow up and having them live so close…  Sheesh! 2011 has been a wild ride.  Clearly you can see that I’ve been pretty busy, hence the slow blog posting.  I will make an effort to keep things fresh in 2012.  Don’t call it a resolution, call it a comeback.

Happy New Year y’all!

The story has been told so many times, that if you truly set your mind to something, you can get it done.  Okay, granted it takes a little hard work too.  This past year, I have seen a dream of mine become a reality and develop into something official.  No, it’s not something as shallow as my new shoes, nor is it the satisfaction of paying down debt, but it’s something my heart is very tied to.

The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation has a mission to raise money for research to find a cure for Type 1 diabetes or juvenile diabetes.  It’s something that I was diagnosed with 16 years ago and I’m just as desperate to get rid of it today as I was back then.  In my medium-sized town of Springfield, Missouri (approx 250,000 people), there was no local chapter of JDRF until now.  The closest chapter was in St. Louis, about 3 hours away.  To me, this was unacceptable.  Our town has a lot of people affected by Type 1 diabetes, and we deserve more than the mediocre support that was being offered by other organizations.  So in late 2007, I set out to start an official chapter of JDRF here in Springfield.

On a volunteer basis. (I have that day job, remember?)

I petitioned some help from the St. Louis chapter, and they backed me up nicely.  I put a listing on Craigslist looking for the other Type 1′s in the area and planned a meet-up.  The response I got was overwhelming and in December 2007, the grassroots members met at a little coffee shop to proceed forward with getting this off the ground.  Throughout the next year, we were met with some local opposition, but we persevered with small fundraising events and a big summer outdoor BBQ gathering with a silent auction that raised $3,000 with approximately 50 new people showing up.  In May of 2009 we held our first complete volunteer Walk To Cure Diabetes at Jordan Valley Park.  To my pleasant surprise, over 500 people showed up and we raised $35,000!  And since then, we had several meetups, support groups were formed, poker tournaments, advocacy meetings were held with important congress people, and we became more and more established in Springfield.  You couldn’t stop our ambition.

Fast forward to 2010, and the St. Louis office hired our first official staff person.  Jennifer Cotner-Jones came in and secured some big corporate names and she put some of her expertise to work in gaining families and dollars.  She helped us coordinate the second annual Walk in May 2010 which raised $75,000 and kicked off the gala season with the Jingle Bell Bash in December 2010 where we raised $28,000 for research. It’s official, JDRF is here in Springfield, there is no stopping this ambitious freight train now, even if I wanted to.

And now, with a deep sigh of satisfaction, I am up late writing the agenda to preside over the first local board meeting of 2011 scheduled for next week.  Although I refuse to rest on my laurels (whatever the heck that actually means), I can’t help but look back and reminisce at how far we have come.  I certainly couldn’t have done it all by myself, and I don’t claim to.  But it was my dream that just happened to be similar to other people’s dream.  So I made it reality for me (and them) by setting my mind to get it done and putting my heart into it. The best thing about it is that we’re are even more closer to a cure than ever before.  You have heard of the Artificial Pancreas Project, right?!

And now I’m going to put my heart into the shoe line I am designing.  Afterall we will all need something to wear at the next Walk.

What motivates you?  For me, it’s been a pair of Christian Louboutin shoes.

I have a little bit of a shoe obsession, and these have been on my radar for well over a year.  I finally purchased my first pair last month and now I’m hooked.  They are a classy, patent leather pair to wear to work and they do not have a super high stripper heel height like some haute couture Fendi’s I’ve seen.  Ironically, my new Christian Louboutin pumps are extremely comfortable!  The fact that I can wear them all day makes me think “screw you diabetes” and that feeling is more than worth the price I paid for these shoes.  Now, I’m motivated more than ever to work hard to earn the money to buy more shoes and to also keep my crazy blood sugar levels stable.

So for those of you that are still with me and haven’t tuned me out just yet… here’s the details:  I tried them on at Neiman Marcus just to make sure the fit was right.  Then I ordered them on netaporter.com, of which I am more than pleased with their service.  I have carefully protected my new luscious red soles with the crafty handiwork of Cobblestone Shoe Shop in St. Louis.  Before I even wore them out, I had this amazing shoe repair store place their quality Christian Louboutin red protective soles on the bottoms of my new investment.  I worked with Jeff in the Creve Coeur location on Olive Street in St. Louis and he was so good to me.  Again well worth it.

So thank you for letting me rave on about my new shoes.  I needed to get my mind off work for a little bit.

My beautiful Hawaii trip didn’t let me take a break from my type 1 diabetes this past week. Although the trip itself was fantastic, sugar-wise it was rough. And not just in the way of roller coaster sugar readings due to the five hour time difference. (Note to self: remember to change time on insulin pump and adjust basal rates accordingly before you get there…not three days in.)

There were a few embarrassing moments where the Omnipod insulin pump on my arm did not fit in while wearing a bikini or a cute strapless sun dress. I had a tiny freakout moment on the beach one day when I heard the hushed voices of “what the heck is on her arm?!” coming from other beach-goers behind me. Full on panic set in (I’m kinda prone to anxiety attacks) and I wanted to leave. I was so wanted to quit diabetes!! This panic attack was hard to recover from, even with the endless support of the hubs.  However, I slowly got over it until this photo was taken.

'Pod On The Beach

I had tweeted this pic out because I loved the view, the moment with Ty, and the cool capture using the Hipstamatic app. But in my mind, the unfortunate downside of this photo was the Omnipod on my arm that was staring right back at me annoying me and taunting me like it had done all day. And like a rush, the frustrations I had dealt with over the last few days with T1D got to me again. So in my tweet, I vented something along the lines of “cute photo with the exception of the ‘pod on my arm.”  In my mind, I figured I would just expose it up front, rather than worrying about the hushed whispers of 1,900 Twitter followers and 700 Facebook friends.

What surprised me the most was how supportive my non-D friends were in their comments. However, the “Diabetes Online Community” or DOC gave me a total different reaction.

I got comments from the DOC along the lines of “when did you decide not to be a diabetic anymore?” or “why do you care?” and I was called out on Twitter by members of the DOC stating things like “diabetes doesn’t define you.”  Uhh, let me be clear, I never said that “D” defined me.  It was a comment that I made that could have easily been replaced with “I wish I would have tied my hair back.”  Why the heck would people (of my own kind), who know and understand this disease because they live with it, not let me vent about it?

I will let this go, but seriously people… I thought we were in this together, where is the love?

As Smokey The Bear would say, “Only you can prevent forrest fires.”  Uhh, no I can’t because I have tried.  I am speaking of the figurative forrest fire, not the literal ones.  I’ve been known to have too many irons in the fire at one time, but my irons have caught fire and now I’m right in the middle of a huge forrest fire and trying to put it out.  But it’s what I love to do, so here’s the 911, I mean 411 of what’s up.

First, Springfield’s 2nd annual Walk To Cure Diabetes was this past Saturday, May 22, 2010 at Jordan Valley Park.  It was a fantastic day for it and you can see all of the pictures here.  We had just over 500 people there and raised $75,000 for type 1 research.  It was great to have close friends and family come in town for it.  There was even a post on it, written by Scott Strange (who drove down from KC) over at Strangely Diabetic.  Not to mention, Sarah Blacksher wrote about it too.  It was a huge event and I will post on it and my thoughts about it later.

Next on my radar is RE BarCamp St. Louis. June 14th at the Stegton Regency Banquet Center in St. Charles/St. Louis, MO. All my REALTOR® friends getting together to talk tech.  I’m so thankful for outstanding friends like Chris Drayer and Karen Goodman (just to name a few) for their help in getting this off the ground.  You guys surely rock!!

And of course, there are all of the continuing education courses.  It’s a renewal year for Missouri real estate agents and The Donald and I have been teaching classes like crazy. There’s one going on tomorrow.

My new company web site should launch this week (or next).  And who knows whatever happened to that getpaul iPhone app.

Following that is the Dexcom/Omnipod event in Springfield.  This is scheduled for June 24th and was technically supposed to happen this year, but it was put on hold.  Now it’s back and in full force.

And uh, there’s that personal blogging thing.  As usual, the ball gets dropped here too.  It’s dying of smoke inhalation.

It’s always nerve-wracking when you plan to meet up with strangers, whether or not it’s a blind date. Luckily, I haven’t done too much of it in my lifetime in regards to blind dates.  However, recently it’s been more and more of a normal thing for me to meetup with people that I have met on Twitter and Facebook in both my real estate worlds and my type 1 (or DOC) worlds.

Anyway, the backstory leading up to my last meetup was that the hubs and I took an extra-long weekend to go away to Kansas City.  I had one day of work stuff that I had to take of while we were there, but other than that, we had no plans.  We just wanted to hang loose, shop, maybe see a show, and just do something together.  I had tweeted out that we were in KC and I had a few responses from some of my type 1 friends that live in the area saying that we should get together for lunch.

So I met up with @Strangely_T1 and @kelsee for the first time.  There was no better place for us type 1s to meet up than The Cheesecake Factory, right? <insert irony here> Nonetheless, we indulged in carbolicious entrees and sugar-rich desserts.  It didn’t matter because no one was judging us, we all knew how it was.  We just tested, bolused and calibrated all of our devices and spent a couple of hours talking about life in general.  There was no awkwardness or nerve-wracking feelings of meeting up with strangers with these guys.  We are family, whether or not we meet in real life, all brought together by a bond we share calculating insulin to carb ratios.  It was a good time.  And yes, the cheesecake was worth the extra bolus.

T1D-Meetup at The Cheesecake Factory in Kansas City, MO 5-8-10. Jessica Hickok, Scott Strange & Kelsey Metcalf

Dear Congressman Blunt:

When we met with you in your office back in August, I had forgotten to e-mail you a photo of the group when you so graciously posed outside in the stifling heat with all of us from the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation here in the Ozarks. Please find the photo attached.

When we met on that grueling hot day, the Special Diabetes Program (SDP) hadn’t been introduced yet. But alas, it is upon us again as the legislation was introduced on September 29, 2009 to renew the SDP.

Although you are familiar with the bill H.R. 3668, I just want to bring to your attention that it currently has 75 co-sponsors and yet none of them are from our great state of Missouri.

You had told me last August, in your office, that you would vote to renew the SDP for five more years so that it will include $200 million per year in federal funding for type 1 diabetes research at the National Institutes of Health.

Congressman Blunt, I am counting on you to co-sponsor this bill and renew the Special Diabetes Program to help find a cure for juvenile diabetics like myself and that precious 3 year-old named Hayden that you held on your lap that day that we met in your office. You were there for me during my freshman year at Southwest Baptist University in 1995 when I was so sick with diabetes, and I’m hoping that you will be there for me again by co-sponsoring this bill.

Thank you for helping us find a cure.

Sincerely,

Jessica Hickok

It’s been a long time since I’ve talked about my struggles with type 1 diabetes on this blog.  No doubt if you’re part of the DOC (diabetes online community) that is part of my Twitter possee (Twosse?!) then you’re probably sick of hearing about real estate and wondering “are you ever gonna talk about your disease again?!”  Well, first let me say thank you for sticking it out with me. My career has been on a crazy, good ride and has kept me extremely busy lately. But as you know, my diabetes doesn’t quit and I’ve had my ups and downs.

First off in updating you, I’m kinda mad at my ‘pod right now. The Omnipod insulin pump has been great thus far with only a few minor kinks. (How there are kinks in a tubeless pump system, I don’t know, but there are.) However, most recently I’ve had some static issues with the pod and the personal diabetes manager a.k.a the PDM (the blood checker machine that runs the pod). Apparently static electricity build up causes the pump and PDM to quit working properly.  I can’t get any of it to stop the incessant beeping and it will not activate or deactivate any of the pods.

*deep sigh*

So I gave up and went back on shots for the time being.  Sure, I could solve the problem by calling customer service AGAIN, but I’m tired and don’t want to. *insert whining here*

Now I’m checking into a new pump as I really have my eye on that Solo insulin pump but it’s not out yet.  I will keep you posted.

And finally, I am sick of the lows.  I’m sick of eating.  I’m sick of crashing low at the most inconvenient times.  Skittles are the only thing that seem to save me.  And I’m pretty sure that the red skittles have more power than any of the other colors, but that’s just a theory brewing in my head.

Oh well, I press on. At least I have finally posted a long overdue d-blog.

No doubt, I’ve been inundated these last 30 days. And updates to this blog seem to be the thing that slips off the radar first when I’m the busiest.  I keep thinking that things will slow down, but for some reason my calendar is all fired up and things are getting booked left and right.  So here’s the recap of the most recent events….

1. The biggest thing that happened was our big session at the National Association of REALTORS® annual conference and expo. The Donald and I presented “8 Effortless Tips To Tackling Rental Property Management” and everything went fantastic.  We couldn’t be more pleased with the outcome.  For more details see my Flickr page, or join our Facebook group.
2. My sister made a beautiful bride and pulled off a YouTube worthy wedding party dance complete with moves like The Sprinkler, The Q-Tip and some hilariously bizarre tiki moves.  I’m not even embarrassed to admit that I took part in it.  The wedding went off with relatively little, if no family drama.  The Flickr pics are all posted here.  Oh and welcome to our crazy family Ethan Hall!
3. I met up with friends (new and old) in real life.
4. My a1c has gone up ::hanging my head in shame:: and now I’m having to re-focus and continue to monitor things on the Dexcom a little closer.
5. Nonetheless, I still hate diabetes, which is fueling my passion for pulling off the 2nd annual Walk To Cure Diabetes this May here in Springfield.  Our “walk season” starts now and you can help us meet/exceed our goal of $50,000 by registering your 2010 walk team now.
6. Yes, there was a Hickok Family sighting at High Street Baptist Church for the first time in 9 years.  Thank you to the “Hillenblog” family for their warm invite, hospitality and words-can’t-describe-it Hillen Tacos.
7. We celebrated a turkey-less Thanksgiving with our best friends and it was a welcome change to the ordinary.

So there are just a few highlights.  What can I say? Life is good.  I’ll just try to do better at keeping you posted on how it all goes.  After all, there is an REBarcamp in the works, a new property management software and iPhone app in development, big growth for my company, real estate certified education classes awaiting approval, and maybe the book will be published this next year.  Who knows, but let’s just hope that my calendar can keep up!

I was scanning in old photos the other day for my sister’s upcoming wedding video and I came across so many fun ones from when I was a kid.  With Halloween just around the corner, I felt like I had hit the jackpot when I came across pages and pages of me and my little brother (obviously before my sister was born) dressed in our Halloween best each year.  The eager faces of collecting all that candy brought back huge floods of memories.

Of all the children diagnosed with type 1 or juvenile diabetes, I feel like I was one of the lucky ones.  I didn’t get the disease until late in my teenage years and I had plunged myself into several years of Halloween candy gorging, prior to my diagnosis.  Now after living with the disease in my adult life, I sometimes get the comment along the lines of “you must have ate too much candy to get that.”  Uhh, no, that’s not true.

It’s often that type 1 and type 2 diabetes gets confused by the general public that just doesn’t know that there is a difference. Diabetes type 1 and type 2 are almost two very different diseases, I don’t think that they should even be called the same thing.  But no one asked me my opinion when they were naming the diseases.

Type 1 usually strikes in children and adolescents.  That’s why they call it juvenile diabetes.  It is an autoimmune disease, meaning the body attacks itself and it’s own cells.  Although we are still researching what actually causes the body to attack its own pancreas, it has been said that the trigger to the disease is usually after the body has fought off an infection, virus or some other sort of sickness.  I personally remember getting the disease a few weeks after I had battled a pretty good case of the flu and strep throat.  Your pancreas, which produces the insulin to fight the high sugar levels, quits working for the rest of your life.  And you must take insulin either via daily injections or infuse by a pump to fight the sugar levels in your body.

Type 2 diabetes is known as adult onset diabetes.  This usually happens in older adults with a sedentary lifestyle.  In this case, the pancreas still works, it’s just doesn’t play nicely with the cells in your body.  The cells are locked down by a layer of fat that does not allow the insulin to get in and do it’s job.  A lot of times, type 2 diabetics can take pills to open up the locked down layers and let the insulin into their cells.  Sometimes they do have to take insulin injections to help supplement the insulin levels.  But the good thing about this type of the disease is that it can be cured…most of the time.  If you eat healthy and get some exercise you can usually rid yourself of the type 2 diabetes.

But, I am not a doctor, so if you’ve come here looking for medical advice you might want to keep moving along.  I am only telling you my take on diabetes so that you know that there is a difference.  And so you don’t freak out about you, or your kids, eating too much candy this Halloween.  You can’t get it that way.

P.S. Thanks Mom for being a good scrap booker, the photos were fun to look at it.  But seriously…what is up with all the face paint year after year?