I need smacked

Now before you all get too excited and volunteer to be the one to smack me, I first want to say thank you to all of you for your heartfelt, caring comments on my last post.  I had a really good day, filled with happy memories and I think that was partly because of you guys.  I also wanted to say that my thoughts go out to all of you who have also lost loved ones.  I know it’s not easy, but I believe that it helps us to share those experiences.

Congratulations, also, to Perry for posting my 1,000th comment.  Thanks, Perry!  I wish I had a prize for you!  (Of course, all of you wonderful people contributed to that!)

Also, I meant to include this picture with my post about all the hiking I did last week, but somehow it got left out:

Kung Fu Panda is one of my favorite movies EVER.  If you haven’t seen it, see it!  It cracked me up.  I gave my mom a list of books that I wanted for Christmas, and then realized on Christmas Eve that I already had one of them.  Sure enough, it was there when I opened my packages on Christmas morning.  So I took it back and got a Kung Fu Panda calendar.  This is the picture for February and has been my mantra for this month – hence the pushing myself in the hiking department.

Which leads into why I need smacked.  I’m a crazy person.  Last night, before I went to bed, my throat was really dry.  The kind of dry that just doesn’t go away no matter how much water you drink.  The kind of dry where you end up cussing ‘cuz you know what’s a-comin’.

This morning it was still there.  I also started to feel that weird unexplainable feeling in your head that just reinforces what you know is coming.  But did I stay home?  Nooooooo.  Did I stay in bed and rest and take care of myself?  Noooooo.  I decided to go ahead with my hike, although I did stop and pick up some Zicam.  I’ve never used it before, but everyone I know raves about it, so I’ve decided to give it a shot.

So I hiked.  Three miles, I hiked.  Did I mention that the crazy part about it was that it was 20 degrees when we started and only 30 when we stopped.  I felt like a popsicle.  I’m a nutcase.

I took a nap this afternoon for about an hour while my mom was getting a massage, and then took about a three hour nap tonight.  When I woke up from this last nap, my throat was feeling even worse.  Damn it!  I don’t want to get sick!  I’ve had various stomach ailments, but haven’t had a full-blown cold in over two years.  Interestingly, not since I started Weight Watchers.  In fact, both of my parents were down for about a week last year with a terrible cold, and while I got the sniffles a bit, I never got it like they did.

So while going out in freezing weather for a three-mile hike probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do, I’m fighting this with all I got.  If the Zicam doesn’t help my symptoms at all, I’m going to fall back on my old standby:  Tylenol Sore Throat (liquid).  Man, I love that stuff (as much as you can ever love cold medicine).  If you ever have a sore throat, I highly recommend it.

So please keep your fingers crossed for me!

Now, back to my day.  It was really nice.  I walked a one mile easy walk with my mom, and then went and walked the one mile tougher trail.  When you add the extra distance from the cars to and from the trails and then between the trails, I’m sure that added another mile. I also thought about and tried to channel Diana and Carlos and MizFit and all of those other crazy workout demons out there that inspire me to keep going.  I really pushed myself.

When I first started up the big steep hill that starts the advanced trail, I got a pretty good scare.  I heard a rustling and saw a big bushy tail go bouncing into the woods away from me.  Yikes!  We’ve never seen any animals out there (except for dogs with their owners), but they have signs posted around informing you of the different trees and animals you may run across (such as bobcats and copperhead snakes).  Unfortunately, as my mom and I have discussed several times, none of these signs tell you what exactly you should do if you should happen to come across such animals.

So I stood there for a moment, wondering if I should continue on my hike or turn back and go the other direction.  Getting mauled didn’t sound like my idea of a good day.  When, all of a sudden, I heard the rustling again and this time, it was bouncing towards me and then off to the side.  It was a deer!  A deer with the bushiest longest tail I’ve ever seen.  Feel my relief.  The funny thing is that my mom and I had just been talking that morning about whether we would ever see any deer out there.

And not only that, when I was almost at the end of my hike, I was calling my mom to find out where she was and heard a rustling again.  This time, two deer walked past me behind some trees to the trail.  I quickly got off the phone with my mom and snapped a couple of pictures.

(click on images below to see larger images)

And then, while one of them walked on, the other one started walking down the trail TOWARDS me!  I think that if I hadn’t started backing away, it would have come right up to me.

It was actually kind of a cool experience.

So that was my day.  Ate WAY too much, and am starting to feel crappy, but got lots of exercise!  We also had a good day remembering my brother.

Thanks again for your thoughts!