• Random and Odd

    I can walk today!



    Waterfall of fun!, originally uploaded by Suddenly Single.


    The plan wasn’t to spend the whole day out in the canyons on Saturday, but that is what happened.
    It was spose to rain on Saturday so I was thinking that we could get in a quick 3 mile hike. I prepared the Cambelbaks the night before with plenty of water, trail mix, a sammich, and a Cliff bar. MORE than enough to get us through that short hike.

    When I opened my eyes at 6 am I could tell it was going to be a beautiful day. The 3 miler turned into the 13 miler.
    Half way through I realized I didn’t put enough water in the packs and we would have to find our way to a waterfall. Luckily, this time of year there was plenty.

    Sunday I woke up and texted the ex to see if he wanted to squeeze in another quick 6 mile hike from Foresthill to Cool. He said he was too sore and after getting up and stretching out, I realized I should probably just rest for a day. I didn’t just rest…I slept like the dead.

    A hot tub was offered up for my lounging and recovering, but when it came down to it, I had to text him back with, “I don’t think I can even drive.”
    I drive a clutch and the thought of that much work almost made me pass out.

    Now it’s Monday and I am SHOCKED that I can walk. It’s truly amazing how forgiving my body has been to me. I have abused the hell out it for 38 years. Three children and years of eating nothing but crap and the lack of movement is staggering. Now here I am, one month into hiking and I’m going 13 miles and able to get up out of a chair and not wince and whimper.

    I think if there is one thing I want to get out of this is to get OTHERS to follow me. If you have been following me for any point of time, you can see the progress I have made…I’m not fucking with you people, IF I CAN DO IT…YOU CAN TOO! I don’t care if you have one leg and the other is a cast, use the arms! GET OUTSIDE. “it’s too cold!” … yeah, I know it’s cold, grab a jacket that you can tie around your waist, because trust me, after walking a little while, you will be hot. “It’s too hot!” Go invest in a camelbak and hydrate yourself.
    YOU WILL NOT REGRET IT!

    I tried to get my friend Mike to join me this weekend. He said his car was frozen and he wouldn’t be able to…maybe next time. I replied with, “You’re going to regret not going…unless this is the time I get attacked by mountain lions, then you’ll be really happy you stayed on the couch.”
    He texted me later with “5.5 miles, I don’t feel so lazy” I replied back with, “I’m on 8 miles with 5 more to go!”
    ME…KRISTINE…the one who hates to drive 8 miles…

    I’ve gotten emails from people who have been motivated by seeing me get up and move…I want EVERYONE to do this, it feels so good. If you want a cheerleader, i’m your girl! If you need someone to email you and remind you, TELL ME….I will do it.
    This isn’t something that I want to keep to myself, this is something I want for everyone I know.

    It’s only been a month, you’re not that far behind me. Next year I am signing up for the 50k endurance trail run. This year is just about learning how far I can push this body. So far, 13 miles.
    My goal to walk, run, hike 30 miles in 30 days was blown out of the water with a whopping 58 miles in 27 days!

    YOU CAN DO THIS TOO! I promise!

  • Random and Odd

    Oh, ouch. I hurty.



    IMG_20110226_161807.jpg, originally uploaded by Suddenly Single.


    Yes, you’re reading that correctly. 13.6 miles on Saturday.

    We decided to make all the hikes we have done into one big one.

    In order to avoid Random and Odd becoming a giant Hiking Blog, I decided to create a blog for just the hiking part of my life: HIKING WITH THE EX.: http://hikingwiththeex.blogspot.com/

    It’s still in the process of having everything added and all the post written. Where it will go or turn out to be, who knows.

  • Random and Odd

    or did I win?

    Somewhere in the middle of the night what started out as cuddling turned into a professional wrestling bout.

    The snoring was likened to growling and the only way I was going to get back to sleep was to maneuver my body into a position where I could bury my head under the covers.

    Face to face cuddling isn’t how it started out, but when I moved my leg to do the strategic flip and roll move, I was pinned down with an iron arm and held into place.  If I speak he will awake and find his way back to his corner so I have to make a small squeaking sound that will release his grip and allow me to squirm from his grip and find my spot.

    Tonight, all of my classic attempts were not working.

    Slowly I put my shoulder into his and the growl that escaped from his chest stopped me dead in my tracks. The grip tightened and I had to struggle for a breath of air.  I would have to resort to talking.

    “flip over, please.” I quietly request.

    This next move wasn’t one I had encountered in the year and half of cuddling.  He released his right arm, tightened his left and rolled over taking me with him.  The head lock cuddle was usually only used in the beginning of the sleep pattern and with little effort I could slide down and out, but this time he had a death grip.

    The fact that I switched sides with him earlier in the night probably threw off his maneuverability and he was just putting me back in my rightful spot.  This spot tonight was in direct line of the fan that keeps his molten lava body temperature at a tolerable level.  For me, it causes my already freezing body into hypothermia.

    Instead of tempting the fate of getting back out of bed and on the other side of his warm body that will block the fan, I stay where I am placed.  My teeth are at the borderline of chattering so I move my foot to find his. In his sleep he detects my foot movement which has been brought to my attention drives him up the wall. He grabs my foot with his two feet and I am not even kidding, he slaps my foot with his and pushes it away while pulling my upper body closer.  Mission accomplished, I am back to front with the human heater and my body temp is going back up.  The flaw in this plan is that my body is blocking his from the fan and he is going back to boiling and I can actually feel my skin burning where we are touching.

    It’s 3am and I must find a happy medium.  I climb out of bed and survey the situation.  His body knowing that I am not in the bed any longer begins searching and after a few moments, he falls back into his snoring slumber sprawled across the middle of the bed.  I see an opening towards the top of the bed and try to curl my way into that spot.  A few moments of peace before he scooches back into his spot, grabs me back into the face to face cuddling position we started in.  His hand finds my hair and pushes it out of his face and I just finally give in.

    He won.

  • Random and Odd

    Goin’ good!


    My girls are with Gma and Gpa this week for their break.
    I got a call at 9:30 last night from Alyx, “Mom, my tummy hurts.” Being 3 hours away there wasn’t much I could do. “I’m trying to sleep, Aly!”

    I called her this morning and she said, “I think I had too much popcorn and candy at the movies last night.” to which I thought, ‘spoiled brat.’

    My involuntary vow of poverty has me trudging. To trudge: the slow, weary, depressing yet determined walk of a man who has nothing left in life except the impulse to simply soldier on.
    Eat popcorn and candy…AS IF THAT IS AN OPTION! I’m living on trail mix, tuna and lemon water. Not because it’s a new diet fad, but because that is all I can afford until payday. I lost three pounds yesterday, but I almost passed out on the treadmill.
    There has to be a happy medium somewhere in my life.

    HAPPY. I forgot to mention happy. Yes, I am broke as a joke, my friend is struggling with issues that I can’t help her with, and my stress level is through the roof…but i’m happy.
    Some shit went down, but it got worked through and through the fine art of communication, things are back on a road we can both travel on without looking for the first exit sign.

    I’ve been praying a lot lately. It’s mostly for my step-step son and his family, but it’s gotten me in the habit of handing things that are not in my control to a higher power.

    I found out a way to not stress out at night. I walk my trails and figure out where I am going on Saturday. It’s been working. I was asleep early last night with dancing switchbacks in my head ;)

  • Random and Odd

    Just not feeling it…



    OUCHIE!, originally uploaded by Suddenly Single.

    The more I am outdoors the less I like the gym.

    I find myself not even counting the days before the weekend, but the hours now.

    It’s only Tuesday. That’s like…HOURS AND HOURS away from my next adventure into the canyons.

    On Sunday I bounced down from the rocks we had to scale and on to the beach, “WE MADE IT TO THE RIVER!” I yelled out. Right about then 3 of these scretchy ass birds flew from the river bank and scared the living shit out of me.
    I’m not quite the hiker I want to be yet. It will be nice to have a bike or bird fly out at me and not scream like a sissy lala.

    Good thing I am getting the hang of all of this hiking before I finally get my coveted invite to hike with Mara and her friends.

  • Random and Odd

    Rockin’ this party 8 days a week!



    What a beautiful hike!, originally uploaded by Suddenly Single.


    I’m getting excited as the weather is finally getting better. It’s spose to rain all week, but clear up on Sunday.

    March is a busy month. I have a wedding I am shooting for two of my skyfriends. No, it’s not jumping out of a plane!
    My other sky friends are having their Bye To Winter party at the end of March and if it turns out anything like the drunken texts I got last year, it should be fun. It’s the weekend the girls are at their dad’s house so there is no reason I can’t find a spot on the carpet and crash for the night. Oh wait, they put in hardwood. Probably won’t care by the end of the night.

    I got an email on Friday night with the details of a high school friend’s death. I was in shock…and to be honest, I still am. This person was larger than life and I never would have guessed he would leave the earth this early in life. My heart goes out to him and his family. My heart goes out to the person that sent me the email because he was best friends with him and it must have been very painful for him to write that email to me.

    The email I got this morning from a different friend made my day. To know that my path in this life is helping someone else always makes me happy!

    Things are good.

  • Random and Odd

    Another amazing Saturday and Sunday!



    IMG_20110220_124638.jpg, originally uploaded by Suddenly Single.

    Saturday morning I called Dan to see if he wanted to get in a quick hike in before Alyx’s black belt class. He agreed and we grabbed our gear and headed out to Foresthill bridge.
    I’ve been gathering pictures of the trails to start building a website for our hikes, and this is one we had already done. We decided to go up past Mossy Trail and go the next three switchbacks we hadn’t gone on before. The incline is what I am now calling ‘the ass kicker’.
    There was rain all week so we knew the trails would be squishy, but we weren’t prepared for the snow. We reached the top of the trail and it actually lead all the way to the bridge top. The sense of accomplishment was awesome!
    Going back down the trail was a comedy act. I was too busy focusing on the up incline and wasn’t thinking how brutal it would be coming back down!

    We had already planned a hike for Sunday. Last week we took the girls on a hike and it lead to an outlook, but they were done after the three miles there and we knew the three miles back would probably kill them. We decided that we would carry on to the second part of the trail this Sunday.
    This morning we got to the look out and there was no one there. The first half of the hike was downhill into the canyon to the dam they never finished. We got down to the bottom of the canyon and I started joking that we were so off the Western States trail I could hear banjo’s playing. Right about then I heard a guy coming up behind us. He was carrying trimmers and a big pic handle. “oh god.” We could scream and no one would hear us!
    He turned out to be one of the hikers that was building the new part of the trails and was a wealth of information. He told us all about the failed construction of the dam and all about the trails. His name was Tom and he gave us a new route to take. We had planned on making it to the river and turning around, but he convinced us to go down the river and back up to the other trail and make our way back up.
    We sat down on some rocks down by the river and had our trail mix and Cliff bars. The hike back up would have been worse, but the hike the day before had geared me up for it. We found our trail and started back up. We then met up with someone who had a secret trail we hadn’t been on before. He too gave us all kinds of information as we made our way through the rock walls and down to the waterfall. As we hit another switchback we met another guy who gave us information on the trail and we said our goodbyes and headed back to the truck. We soon realized we were back on the trail from last week and the hike was going to be a brutal uphill climb. The trail was complete mud, but we made our way through it without too much trouble.

    We checked the GPS trail tracker at the end of the hike. 11.7 miles. That was our longest hike so far.
    The trail guide was rather impressed that us ‘first seasoners’ were taking on so much after only a month of hiking.

    I’m so impressed with the endurance level I have now. Just last week I was hurting getting up the inclines of that switchback, but this week I only had to stop a few times.
    Next week we plan to take on a hike from the bridge, up to the look out down to the river, back around and to the bridge. Next week our goal is 15 miles.
    We started the training so I will be ready to climb Lassen in August. I’m already ready and so excited to see where this will take us.

    The second hiker was talking about the two essential hikes of anyone that has put on a pair of boots or trailblazers….Mt. Whitney and Half Dome.

    I have two new hikes to prepare for now!

  • Random and Odd

    I believe…



    I believe…, originally uploaded by Suddenly Single.


    I heard this song last night at the gym and remembered a couple times in my life where this song brought me to my knees in tears.

    When Dan and I ended our marriage and I started to figure out who I was without being a part of someone else and I was blessed with this strength, I began to understand what ‘joy’ really meant.

    That woman in her apartment with her 3 very, very little girls eating PB&J and enjoying nothing more than sitting out at the pool or going to the park…I thought she was so strong. I wasn’t all that strong back then, but I was strong enough to stand up for what I believed in. I believed that SOMEDAY I would be able to find true happiness and show my girls what that looked like.

    I thought I had failed them, but I realized something yesterday. My oldest daughter who was about 6 or 7 when her dad and I split up was on a date with her boyfriend of almost 3 years last night. My middle daughter sat on the floor of the gym as I tossed her father the medicine ball and said, “I’m glad you’re friends.”

    11 years ago I was willing to walk away from my whole life, the security, the safety for what I believed in,—that there is something you never compromise on…and that is the real thing you NEED in love.

    I’m willing to be alone for that.