Billie's Ongoing Saga

Not quite but it sure looks like it according to this blog.  The truth of the matter is that I am so busy with life that I don’t have time for the blog.  I may come back to it. 

Update on Mr. Intelligent… still with him.  Things are going good.

Friday night, a storm whipped through the area.  It started quite suddenly.  All of a sudden, gusts of wind ripped through the neighbourhood and rattled the windows on the condo.  My first thought was that another earthquake was happening and the cats scattered to the four winds.  Immediately after that, the rain started pouring down.  It was quite ferocious for about 10 minutes and then we lost power.  That didn’t concerned me at all until the following morning when you started to hear reports of half a million without power in the region.

But as the heat ramped up outside (to 100) and inside the condo, I started to get concerned that we didn’t have A/C.   We could potentially vacate the condo but the cats sure couldn’t.  As I was trying to figure out how to find the cats a place and get that elusive ice which was sold out everywhere, I got this clever idea of phoning the health club I belong to.  If they are open then my office is open and I could drop the cats off in the office.  And as a bonus, they had an ice machine and I was given permission to fill up ice for the freezer. 

Off I went to the office.  The cats were NOT happy that I left them but they just didn’t understand how bad it was going to get and it got bad in the condo.  We were able to go to a friends house in the evening which gave us some relief from the unrelenting heat but it seemed like such short relief when we returned to our dark and hot condo.  Just lying on the couch had us dripping sweat today.  I stole all the ice from the office and some from the health club which allowed us to fill up the freezer.  I think I managed to save the peameal bacon roasts that my mom brought down from Canada.

This morning at 11:30am, we finally got power.  I think around 2:30 it looked as if the central A/C was finally reset and our house will finally get cooled down.  We are off to get the cats and hit a pool.

This was quite a miserable weekend and one I hope I don’t repeat it any time soon.

Yesterday, I was weeding the garden and I saw this tree growing through one of the concrete blocks that was lining the garden.  The tree was probably about 1.5 inches in diameter so I was thinking no big deal… I will simply chop off the top and then tip the concrete block over.  Uh… yeah….  Look at this root system!  And that was after I chopped off the roots with an axe and a shovel.

I am leaving it up to Mr. Intelligent to deal with actually getting the tree out of the block.  I did my part of it.

Now does this not look like some sea monster!!!

Well… it turned out that Mr. Intelligent’s leg injury from a couple of weeks before the big walk did us in.   We thought he was healed and over it because we had done some other hikes since then but apparently he was not.

We ended up packing it in at the first check-point which was just 12 miles into the hike.  It was a disappointing result but at least we tried our best.   We have declared a moratorium on hiking and haven’t hiked since then.

Yesterday, we ended up cycling 62+ miles.  It was my first day trying cleats and I have to say that it did not go well.  I ended up smacking my head on the pavement at least once and fell 4 other times.  Pathetically enough, 3 of those times was while I had one foot uncleated and on the ground.  I also had lots of problems getting the shoe into the clip-on target which was very frustrating.  Lets just say it sucked a significant amount of joy out of the day.

Did you know that Eduardo called me to say I could see the kids again?  It is not often I am speechless but this found me speechless.  So far,  I have just spoken on the phone a few times with the kids.   I am not 100% sure what to make of this or even how to approach it so I am approaching it slowly and cautiously.

On Saturday,  I will be hiking from Washington, DC to Harper’s Ferry, WV in the One Day Hike.  The total distance is 62 miles.  We start at 3am and must finish by 12 midnight.  Mr. Intelligent and I are doing this together.  We have serious doubts about whether or not we can finish it but we are going to give it our best shot.  In training for this, I have walked distances I never thought I would ever walk.   Even if we end up not being able to finish it,  I have accomplished distances that I had never imagined would be possible and that is an accomplishment in and of itself.

And that bed?  I can’t say that it is any better for my back but he loves it and is off the couch.  It also gives me twice as much space under the bed for storage which is very important in this house!

The bed that I had was a very luxurious pillow-top bed.  It was soft and sinky feeling and I bought it because the old bed was hard and bothered my shoulder to no end.  This bed solved the problem with my shoulder hurting but bothered my lower back to no end.  Occasionally, I even slept on the couch because I found it to be more comfortable.  So essentially, I woke up most days with pain in my back for the last 5 years or so.  I felt like I had to stick with this bed because I spent so much money on it and I couldn’t figure out how I could guarantee that the next bed would be better.

Mr. Intelligent hates my bed and says it is way too soft.  It bothers his neck and his lower back so he has taken to sleeping on the couch when he comes over to my place.   This is completely not optimal in my opinion.  It really weirds me out to have him sleeping on the couch.

He has a memory foam mattress that he loves.  I don’t actually  find it any better than my bed to be honest in terms of back pain.  After much discussion I decided to purchase a memory foam mattress for my bed in the hopes that it would be better for my back and get Mr. Intelligent off the couch.  The two of us looked together and finally purchased the best of the best from foambymail.com.  It had a 4″ 5lb memory foam top combined with a LUX foam base that was harder than the regular foam base in the hopes that it would provide the best support under the memory foam. 

So I got the mattress today and unpacked it.  It was much softer than I was expecting.  His bed was hard but soft in a weird way.  I mean it feels hard when you first get on it but then doesn’t actually feel hard when you lie on it.  This bed is actually very soft to the touch although it doesn’t feel like it gives as much as you would expect it to based on how much it gives when you initially get on it. 

Will it be too soft?  Will my lower back pain go away? Will Mr. Intelligent finally be happy with the bed?  Stay tuned….

On Monday, April 16th,  my divorce with Eduardo was finalized.  It was rather anti-climatic.  I went into court and was the first case heard.  We were out of court within 15 minutes and my ties are finally severed.

That chapter in my life is now closed and I am free to open up a new chapter and begin writing anew.  I don’t know what this chapter will hold but I can’t wait to find out.

Our ski season ended with a whimper.  We skiied on President’s Day weekend.  I bought Mr. Intelligent a private lesson for Valentine’s Day and scheduled his lesson for that Saturday morning.  The weather was freaking awesome!  The instructor finally said I was out of Level 5 and into Level 6.  Woohoo!

The following weekend we didn’t go because Mr. Intelligent hurt his foot.  The next weekend, the weather was crap.  Then crap the next weekend and the next and before you knew it… ski season was over.

Never fear though… Mr. Intelligent had dreamed up another way to keep us busy!  We are now in training for a 62 mile hike (100k).   We have been hiking miles and miles every week.  Last weekend, I hiked 10 miles on Friday and 21 miles on Saturday.  Saturday kicked our tails so we didn’t hike on Sunday.  Both of us got blisters on Saturday and I added a few more last night when I hiked 13.5 miles .    I don’t know if I can hike 62 miles straight but I do know I have put in longer hikes than I have ever done in my lifetime and it hasn’t killed me.   My feet might have a different opinion though.

The big hike is at the end of April.

Mr. Intelligent and I decided to take our first ski trip to West Virginia.   A bunch of people he knew were renting a house on Timberline Ski Resort and a room opened up in the house so we snapped it up and headed off on our adventure.

We started out Friday night and loaded up his car with way too much stuff.  I only used about half the clothes that I brought and I swear we brought back at least as much food as we took.   Somehow I did leave the mustard behind *sigh*

Our travel was completely uneventful right up until we looked at this grey line on the map and discussed how it would take at least 20 miles off our trip.   How bad could the grey line be we said?  And so we stopped at the turnoff and looked at the road and decided to take it.   About 2 miles up the road a sign said: “No snow maintenance past this point.”  That should have been a sign – literally – of what was to come but we ignored it.  After all… there was no snow on the ground at this point.  Little did we know that snow was going to appear in another mile and that road was going to get steep… so steep you seriously couldn’t see where it was going to end.   You know where this is going right?  We got stuck and couldn’t go forwards.  So we had to go backwards until we could get turned around and return back the way we came with our tail between our legs. 

We continued onto to Timberline resort in the growing snow and slippery conditions.  It was so slippery that we couldn’t get up the road to the house we were staying in.  Now I understand why the ad said “4 wheel drive recommended”.   One of the guys came down in their truck and we loaded up all our stuff leaving our car by the lodge.

Friday  night we hung out.  Saturday morning we got up early to go out skiing and skied until lunch.  We skied back to the house wrecking our bases on some crunchy gravel. Doh! And then to some skiing in the afternoon followed by supper and relaxation in the hot tub.  It was very weird hanging out looking at people’s hair getting crispy with frost.

The next day was frightening cold so people were slow to get out the door.  We only skied for a couple of hours before returning for a long lunch and then sking for just another couple of hours in the afternoon. 

I enjoyed the whole weekend and fell just twice.  I ran down blue and black slopes with relative ease.  There was only one slope that I didn’t do – a double diamond run.

On Monday, we returned to town via New Germany State Park.  We dropped by and did a bit of cross country skiing before continuing on our trip home.  We also stopped by the Blue Goose bakery that made the most awesome pies.  Wowsers!!!!  Worth the stop!

I shall call my first ski trip a success and hope to repeat it next season.