The Luckiest Unlucky Person in the Universe!!

That would be me!  I made vague mention of achiness in yesterday’s post… to cement my doo hickey durr butter status, here is the story.  We drove to St. George this past weekend in Southern Utah, which would have been cool and all but the stars of doom and clutzitis followed me down that way and made sure they made their presence known.  I ain’t even joking around.  They hid themselves beneath one of my fat flabs and got nice and comfy until they could make their September debut… they come out at least once a month.

All was somewhat well (according to my lowered level of well anyway) until early Sunday morning when a few of us decided to go on a hike.  It was early due to the fact that St. George is a desert and still gets up into the mid to late 90s in the day time.  Who wants to swelter to death in the desert!?  I mean besides a super model.  The hike went okay on the way up.  I skipped trying to scale the slippery flat rock part of the process.  Something about gravity and weight and clutziness and because it was the smart thing to do.  That and every time I tried to walk up it I’d immediately slide back down to the bottom.  PASS!

On the way back down from the hike, not 100 yards from the car, my ankle turned and I went flailing head first like a torpedo at an all-you-can-smoke rock concert.  As I was lying there picking red dirt from my nostril spaces, I was most amazed that nothing felt broken.  My ankle hurt, my side hurt, my pride hurt, but nothing was broken.  I got up and hobbled my way to the car, thanking my lucky nostril hairs.

Not 2 or 3 hours later on a set of cement stairs, taking pictures of sister Lindsay’s family, I stood up from sitting on a stair, got all discombobulated, forgot I was on stairs, missed a stair and went head first flailing and skidding my way down 3 or 4 stairs.  I sat there with my nose pressed against the pavement for longer this time… because I was shocked at my idiocy level… TWICE in the space of 3 or 4 hours?  REALLY!?!?  When I finally came to, I swore… helled and damned all over the place (the nephews were tres impressed)… now instead of hobbling on my left ankle, my right knee was jacked up and I felt like a Mack truck had drug me behind it along the freeway for 12 hours.

And today… well, today on the day after, I feel 99 years old.  Bending, walking, putting a dagnabbed shirt and deodorant on… PUTTING PANTS AND SOCKS ON… all not possible due to my creakitis.  I also take 18 hours to walk up a flight of stairs on account of the fact that I have to do one at a time whilst leaning against the wall.  Is this what it feels like to get old and decrepit?  Whiplash is a real thing, yo!  Meanwhile, if anyone needs me I’ve reserved a room in the nursing home/psychotic ward.  If they let me take my strait jacket off once a day, I’ll be sure to answer the phone.  And that’s the story of how I garnered the title of Luckiest Unlucky Person in the Universe!  How many nearly 300-pound folk can go flailing around face first several times in a day and still be unbroken?  I rest my case!

Question of the Day:  Have you ever face planted?  Broken any bones?

 

Fresh Sardines on a Rock…

This past Saturday we headed up to Tony Grove to have a pic-a-nic for Madre’s birthday.  The whole fam damly came… including the nephews.  They were obviously not as excited about the beauty of Tony Grove as I was.  COME ON!!!  I guess I’m getting geezerly before my official geezer time… because I do enjoy me some nature sitting time… whilst picking spinach out my dentures.  Sadly, the sitting time was limited to as long as it took to eat… and then we did the hike around the lake/grove I have to do every time I go.

The last time I hiked around it, I ended up with dust/dirt caked on my legs clear up to my knees.  It was nastee… and I wasn’t wearing shorts… you are definitely welcome.  I was wearing my usual ugly pants uniform… black and stretchy… but I guess they kept falling down and then sweeping the dust up so it was causing a mini cyclone effect inside my pants legs.  This time I was determined to have silkenly clean legs… so I did what any normal sane person does and I brought rubber bands and then bunched the bottoms of my pants up into balls and secured them with the rubber bands.  I tell you what, Gertrude… you ain’t never seen anyone so dagnabbed fashionable in your entire lifetime.  Project Runway… I’m your next model!  I’m sure Lindsay would have put her head through a brick wall had we not been hidden away amongst the naturey things.  I was doing no favors to my title of Hillbilly Redneck Chic status.  Whatever… everyone was just totes jealous, yo!  It was either that or my bikini… again… YOU ARE WELCOME!  The legs turned out much better this time… some slight dustiness… but only on my socks and bottoms of my rubber-banded pantaloons.

Nephew, Christian demonstrating the 60 dance… 60… YAY!!!

Nephew, Ethan found this nastee dead baby fish thinger… picked it up and then hightailed right on over to me because everyone knows how much I love feeesh… NOT!!!!!!!  Also, you will notice Madre and Lindsay’s hiking foot attire?  I just can’t even with these two.  I CAN’T!

Throw in some caviar and you got yourself a meal fit for a walrus!   GROSS!  I’m afraid that if I was starving to death in the wilderness and my only option for survival was to eat dead fish guts, I’d waste away to nothing.  New weight loss method just waiting to come out? NOT on your life, HCG diet!

Question of the Day:  Have you ever fished?  Do you enjoy eating fish?  

 

Mood Lifter? Take 2 Nature Pills and Never Call Me Again…

Due to the nature of my job, my days off from work are far and few between.  In the olden days of weighing 530 pounds when I’d have a day off, I’d spend the whole dagnabbed day sleeping intermixed with eating… with a dollop of drooling on the couch whilst watching the Food Network.  That was about as much energy as I could muster back then.  These days I always want to do things.  I use my obsessive planning skillz to make a list of said things I want to do… I like to do something active and outdoorsy… and I like to call up my best pal, Oprah and ask her for a loan.  She must have given me the wrong digits on accident since I always get the disconnected number message when I call.  THE NERVE, Opry!

This past Monday I had a day off… having worked the previous weekend.  I have been lamenting that I haven’t done a dang thing this summer… nothing summery at least… nothing just for the fun of it.  I’ve basically been sticking close to my daily routine… creature of habit… and slave to not enough time in a day!  My plan for this day off was to head up to one of my favorite places on earth, Tony Grove… do a little hike… do a little jig… eat a sandwich in the outdoors… take some pictures… and then just sit in my camp chair in the sun and foam at the mouth… or read, whichever came first.  Due to issues I won’t go into on this here blogging space, my plan to leave in the afternoon did not come to fruition… instead I left at 5:30 to make the 45-minute drive up the canyon… and I was pissed.  No… not pissed… I was madder than a skunk trying to escape a perfume-making factory.  I was mostly mad because I’d wasted a perfectly good day waiting around… and yes, I may have overreacted… but I treat days off like they are rare and precious jewels… and to have missed out on one, angered me.  That, and my control issue of obsessing over schedule… I don’t acclimate very well… just one of the issues on my 5 bajillion-page list of issues I need to work on.

I was tempted just not to go… show them!  But at the last minute, I sucked up my pride and drove on up.  If you’re ever feeling like you want to punch someone in the brainium… just go sit surrounded by breath-taking beauty and shut the heck up… by the time I left a few hours later, I felt like a whole world of anger had been lifted off my shoulders.  Next time I’m not waiting around… I’m just going and doing… and shutting up!

See that HUGE-mongous crow right there… there were approximately 85,000 of his kind flying around and cawing like it was a funeral procession.  My fear of birds didn’t help matters any.

Dude used this canoe to paddle out to within feet of 2 huge bull meeses (cuzzin Carl… where’s my meese-hunting lessons?!!)  Of course I was too whimpy to get close enough to get any pictures of the duo… but they did bathe in the grove for several hours.

Close your eyes and squint real hard like… see those two black-horned things to the right of the grey flat rock… them’s are my meeses!  I named them Fred and Barney.

Go toward the light!  😛  Gladly!  Thank you, Tony and your Grove for providing so much beauty and solace on a bad mood night.  Next time let’s get together for longer, k!?

Question of the Day:  Do you have a place in nature that makes you less grump-tastic?  

 

Give Me Two Good Reasons…

I have been torturing my brain trying to think of things I’m going to accomplish health-wise this year like it ain’t no thang.  While I’m sitting here plateauing and not losing any weight, I might as well do something besides count the 3 hairs on my scalp and talk to the voices in my head.  Oh, hey… hair number 2 is in dire need of a deep condition.  I know I’m trying to take the lazy route when every time I think of something, I immediately shoot it down as too much effort.  TOO HARD!!  I don’t want to!!  They’re having a Saved By The Bell marathon on channel who cares!

Last year I had a couple of things going… one was to hike more than ZERO times during the summer.  Seeing as I had always hated hiking and exertion and steep mountains and dirt and bugs and sweating, I went on very few hikes before last summer… and by very few I really mean only the ones they drug me on at Young Women Girl’s Camp as a teenager.  I think it was because it totally jarred me out of my usual comatose state of couch sitting… and my heart beating out my chest was not a pleasant feeling for a comatose individual.  Long story short… I did about 5 hikes last summer… moderate hikes, but hikes nonetheless… which is approximately 150% more than the 15 years prior.  I also vowed to bike at least 500 miles outdoors, which I also accomplished.

What next?  I can’t wrap my brain around a half marathon yet because I can’t run very well… stupid flapping bane of my existence totes makes sure of that (TMI… see how good I am at informing of the TMI parts AFTER I’ve spouted about them… you can thank me later).  I guess I could make my own route and walk my own half marathon on my own time.  I brought up that I wanted to do a 5K, but then Lindsay brought up the point that that isn’t much of a stretch when you regularly walk at least a 5K most days of the week.  If I do it daily… how is that an accomplishment?  I kept trying to tell her it was about the feeling of having wogged (walk plus jog, but really walk more than jog) it in an official setting, but I don’t think she bought it.

Questions of the Day:  So, those of you who are 5Kers in readerville… give me a couple of reasons why a 5K is worth it?  Any ideas for a physical accomplishment I could set as a goal this summer?  What are your goals, health wise?

Forest People… I Have A Few Notes For You…

I’ve now officially been on 5 hikes this summer, so that totally qualifies me to have a say in changing some of the common practices of the forest.  This past Wednesday I had a day off from work, having worked the previous weekend, so I jaunted myself up to the land of meeses and broken bridges to take in some nature.  I said to myself… Self… there are very few remaining nice days left before winter blankets your soul into an everlasting marsh of despair and sorrow… take advantage!  (No, I hadn’t just been watching Deadly Women… why do you ask?)  I never intended to do an actual hike while I was there… my intention was to sit my rump in a camp chair in the sun and read a book after walking around the lake once.  End of story.  That would explain why I was in no way, shape, or form prepared to do a hike.  Case in point:

My back pack?  A Honks Dollar Store sack which I just happened to rip within the first 5 seconds on the trail.  Most people carry, you know, granola bars and water and a sack lunch and first aid kits and, you know… smart things in their backpacks.  What did I carry in my torn up Honks sack?  3 packages of AA batteries, 8 ounces of water, a camera, and a video recorder.  Why 3 packs of AA batteries?  Obviously, so I could start me a fire using a battery and the rays of the sun and roast invisible marshmallows whilst gnawing on the cardboard battery package.   Plus, if I ran across a fellow hiker whose electric razor ran out of batteries on the trail, I’d be all like… a hero or something.

I also was wearing rocking horse shoes and socks with a hole in the toe… prime hiking gear!  I passed all of these folks on their way down from the trail who were all decked out in their mountainman best… and here I be walking past with a plastic torn-up Honks sack hooked to my arm.  Why the idiotic decision to hike despite the lack of preparation?  I wanted to tell myself I could do it.  And I think I could have done it if I’d actually started at a decent time… instead I started at 4:00 and ended up turning around 80 minutes into the hike up because I was afraid it would be dark before I could make it down and then I’d get trampled by meeses who don’t like AA batteries.  I’m almost sure I was within steps of the final destination of White Pine Lake… but I had been saying that for the last 20 minutes… a girl’s gotta draw the line somewhere.  Besides that fact, downhill for me is a lot more difficult than uphill… just because 2 little ankles ain’t meant to support 298 pounds of weight on precarious, uneven surfaces… all the while fighting with gravity and a holey Honks sack!   Forest people… you ought to consider installing big flashing signs along the trail (after paving it) that say things like:  You’re almost there, sport! or Keep on truckin’, pardner. or Don’t turn around now, you only have 20 feet left.  Something that tells me how the dagnabbed much longer I have to go… come on now!  Who needs an Eagle Scout project!?  I’d do it, but they only allow we girls to make and sell cookies… Thin Mints anyone!?

Three total hours later, I’d made it back to my car, exhausted, dying of thirst, and stiff as a stale corn muffin… just in time to miss the darkness.  I can’t say that I had that much fun on this particular hike, due to my idioticness… and I was stiff and sore in the leg region for a few days afterwards, but I’m still glad I did it… even if I did fall short of the destination… y’all… it’s totes about the journey!

Question of the Day:  Do you consider yourself spontaneous?

This is what I looked like at the start of the trail… literally 2 steps in:

And this would be what I looked like all the way back down:

Except with less neatly brushed hairs.

 

 

Who The Crap Is Tony!?

Tony… Tony Grove that is.  My evening adventure tonight included a jaunt up Logan Canyon to spend the evening/night at Tony Grove Lake and do my version of a “hike.”  Not all this straight up the mountain crapola on a biscuit.  Stop the insanity, Yogi Bear!  Just a nice little trail walk around naturey stuff… a few inclines… a few declines… a few rocks… and beauty a plenty!  Bring me that, please!  I didn’t even need my hovercraft invention for this sucker.  Madre came with me and of course where there are flowers to be stolen, Madre will steal them… I tried to be the flower-stealing police, but she still walked away from the place with a huge armful of illegally gotten goods… case in point…

She was also on this kick of complaining that we did not bring a pic-a-nic, which reminded me of my sweet Gramsy Berger, who loved herself a good pic-a-nic… especially if it included her favorite feeeesh.  I had to stop Madre from horning in on everyone else’s picnics on several occasions… she even went so far as to ask some fishermen/women if they were having any luck with the feesh, in hopes that they’d be all like, sure and why don’t you come on up to our campfire and partake of our feesh and loaves!  Instead we had to make due with blueberry rice cakes, water, and an apricot which just so happened to be stowed in the car trunk.

Back to the adventure.  I hadn’t been to Tony Grove since I was a teenager… even thought it’s about a 45-minute drive up the canyon.  Bad idea, Whitney.  I’d forgotten how beautiful it was up there.  It has surpassed the beauty of any of the other hiking/day trip adventures I’ve been on this summer.  Bear Lake is pretty, 2nd Dam is pretty, Spring Hollow is pretty, Green Canyon is pretty… but Tony Grove was breathtaking!  I think I broke my camera taking so many crapified pictures.  It was also freeing.  I hiked me that trail with no problems whatsoever… no complaining about sweating or feet issues or it getting dark, etc.  I survived crossing a broken bridge:

Climbed up a rock and sat my receptacle on a fallen tree trunk… never would have had the confidence to do that before… can’t heft my weight up that rock… I’ll totes fall off the tree… etc., etc., etc.

 

But mostly, we just took in the nature… total spirit booster, mood lifter, and all around good thing!  There was a quote I snapped a picture of on one of the signs around the trail… pretty much sums it up:

You said it Bob… even if you did pass on tragically young.  We’re already planning our next venture up to the lake… pic-a-nic in tow this time… I’ll take a pass on the feesh, though…

Question of the Day:  Where’s the last naturey place you went to?  Any recommendations? 

Hiking… Take 2

If at first you suck at hiking… take a nap instead!  That’s my motto!  Y’all may remember take 1 at hiking (my uncage the singing bird bucket list item).  This past Friday night, I decided to try this hiking thing again.  This time, I was a teensy bit smarter… no rocking horse shoes and no 90-degree inclines. I guess 2 out of 5 ain’t too bad because I still left after 8:30 at night and I still didn’t have a hiking stick… I also still weighed 18 to the 2nd power minus 12 pounds (minus 10 now… buh bye plateau… hello scale movement!)  Sometimes I remind myself of one of those old crankity women who like to complain all the time.  You young whipper snappers… turn down that devil music… my dentures are rattlin’!  I sure did my share of it on the trail… my knees hurt, the wind blew a dune of sand into my eyeballs, there’s a spider!!!!!, they need to pave this thing it would be much easier, are we there yet?, why don’t they build a McDonald’s along this trail… etc., etc., etc.  And that was all within the first 3 minutes!!!   I’m pretty sure I complain to alleviate the nerves and to silence those voices in the back of my noggin’ telling me you can’t do this!  I also got onto this kick about it getting dark… because you know since we were approximately 1 mile into the canyon, we’d have to make camp, and no one would find us in this vast wilderness, and winter would come and we’d be found the next summer frosted into the shape of that kid from Home Alone after he put on the after shave.  Oh, the HORROR!!!!!  I even found evidence that the last hikers on this here trail were NOT vegetarians!!  I’m just saying… case in point:

That there ain’t no kumquat wrapper!!!  I tell you what!  Madre had to smack me upside the head a couple of 800 times, but I kept a walking until she got so tired of my it’s getting dark rants that we turned around and headed for the car.  I’m not getting royalties from my work on the movie, Home Alone…. thank you very much!

Hiking is going to be out of the loop for a while until I can figure out my dagblasted plantar fasciitis issue.  My feet hate me and they hated that I exerted them on a hike in non-rocking horse shoes!  Stupid feet.  I will have to be the fat chick on the bicycle until I can get up the desire to go see a podiatrist.  Oh, doctors… why can’t you be more like Google and less like expensive.

To update the other bucket list items… I’m currently at 115 miles on my biking to Las Vegas journey… 385 left to go before it starts to snow.  As for the trip to Palmyra, NY.  I jumped and bought my one-way tickets to get there (they were having a sale)… still have no tickets to get my receptacle home, so I might have to move into whomever’s house is on the East coast… either that or hitchike back.  What could go wrong?  Donner Party!

Question of the Day:  Where are you at in your bucket list item accomplishments?  Updates!  Any advice on plantar fasciitis cures?