Geocaching

For about a year now I have been hooked on geocaching. It is fun, family friendly and free!!

Don't know what geocaching is? Basically other geocachers hide containers all over the world and you use gps coordinates to find them. You can read more about it on the website HERE.

Now to my post:

About a month ago the Alabama State Parks set out a series of caches in parks all over the state. The first 75 people to find all 8 get a special prize. This is no easy task since these caches are all the way from Ft. Payne to Mobile. To top it off they are puzzle boxes. Once you FIND them you have to figure out how to open them.

Up until yesterday we had found one of them located in Desoto State Park. Getting into that took forever!!!

Yesterday, after  having to bury our pet bird and just really needing to get away from the house and all the memories, we decided to do one located in the Guntersville State Park. Easy as pie! Found it, opened it and got our stamp and left.

So after that one the manfriend decides that we have time to make it to Birmingham for the Oak Mountain cache. Where this picture was taken.

There are two different perspectives happening at this very moment. I had just slipped on some leaves and was sitting there. Manfriend ( who snapped the picture) thought I looked cute sitting there resting. In his defense we had just hiked uphill for quite a bit but come on!! I have never needed a 10 minute break while hiking.

Meanwhile in my head this conversation is happening:

Oh my f&@!!?& God. I have f?!&@ up my knee. Can he carry me? Oh s&!@ , he's going to have to carry me off the g@/?)$@+# mountain. OH GOD WE ARE GOING TO DIE UP HERE!!!

You might be wondering why I didn't just tell manfriend that I had hurt myself. Well at this point we had drove over an hour, paid 6 bucks and were like 200 feet away from this cache. They would have to pull my cold, dead body off this mountain before I left without getting this cache. Manfriend would have insisted on going back to the car. Then I'd have to make a makeshift shank using all natural  materials, stab him, hide the body and THEN walk 200 more feet to the cache. No way I could do all that before it got dark. So I got up, put my big girl panties on and we found the cache!!

At this point I am really glad I didn't have to shank manfriend because there is no way I could have figured out the combination to get into the box without him. We get our stamp, pick up an official Alabama State Park pathtag and head out.

Thanks to a hint from a previous cacher we decide to walk by the edge off the little stream instead of taking on the inclined mountain side we had come in on. Things were much safer this way. Unfortunately everything looked different and I had another conversation with myself.

Self, we have a problem. You've done went and got yourself lost on a mountain. You are going to be out here all night before they find you. It is probably going to get cold and there are bugs. Shit shit shit YOU'RE GOING TO DIE ON THIS MOUNTAIN!!!

Again, you may be asking yourself why I didn't just think about using my PHONE and calling for help. I'm sure I would have eventually but my mind usually goes straight to the worse case scenario in situations before I'm able to rationalize.

We finally make it off this God forsaken mountain and head back to Huntsville. And my brain starts talking again. I've had two near death experiences today. I deserve wine!! 

Normally this wouldn't be an issue. Wine and I get along very well. But this was a very, VERY bad idea. Why? Because it shut my brain off and I completely forgot our post mountain geocaching procedures. That's right folks. We did not do our tick checks. Which brings me to today. This glorious and beautiful. Easter Sunday I woke up and found a tick on me. *shiver*  Tick was removed without incident and I can still limp around so we are now off to enjoy today with family. 

Ps-weighing in at 164 nowadays. :-)

Oopsie

Well, it has been 1 year 3 months and 18 days since I posted on my blog.

Why?

Well let's see.

First the fun/awesome stuff.

I started dating a wonderful man. We made it "official" in January 2013 and even though the first year was filled with all kinds of ups and downs we fought through it. We decided right off that "WE" were worth trying for. Worth fighting for. And that is exactly what we did!

My offspring turned 6...then 7. Wow. I have a 7 year old. Every day she makes me smile and laugh and pull my hair out. I won't even get into the disgusting pig sty of a room I have to clean out once a month or how she still can't eat without getting it all over her face. (Really?!? There is one hole and you can't hit it??) She is my light. My blessing. My heartache and all my fears of this world being as horrible of a place as I imagine and see every day is all rolled into my faith and hope for her to do better. To be better. To make this world a better place. If anyone can do it, she can!

The icky stuff...

I went through a couple jobs, unemployment and just had no direction. Still not sure if I really do but I'm at least on a paved road now.

I stopped running. I stopped calorie counting. I put on some weight. The lowest I ever saw was 157 and that was when the manfriend and I first started dating. I last weighed in at 165 something. It doesn't sound like a lot but thinking about how HARD I tried to get below that 160 mark makes me sad that I just gave up.

I joined Scale Back Alabama with a group of friends 10 weeks ago with a goal to lose 10 pounds. Easy enough, right? ha! I weighed in officially at 172 and go in Friday for the final weigh in. No doubt it won't be much of a loss since it will be in the evening. Probably a total of 4-5 pounds. Blah.

All this to get to the point of I'm READY!! I'm ready to start back. I'm ready to run (ok..walk fast), to eat better. To get to my goal weight. Which I think is 155..lol.

Some motivational images...

The swimsuit I want!!

My weight loss progress from before...

I'll take another one in the morning to get a "starting point"

:)