The Most Extreme Ultimate Ultimateness Pt. 3

The first time I did the Foothills Ultimate Hike, I pretty much decided I was never going to do it again.  Then that childbirth thing happens where you know there must have been pain but not enough to cover up all the good stuff that came out so you decide to sign up for it and have another baby.

That time we ate our way to Indiana.

So, at this point in the game you may very well know that food is my love language and it is with this information that I present to you the time my friend Candi and I ate our way to (and from) Indiana.  I am convinced that we may very well have taken this trip even if Candi had not signed up to do the Tecumseh Ultimate Hike in Indiana because she is not only my hiking BFF, but also my food spirit animal.  

Here's how I got on the line for $7500:

Natalie really wanted to do an Ultimate Hike with me.  I've done several hikes, Eve had cancer, Daniel and Matt shave their heads for St. Baldrick's.  Natalie wanted to do something (besides having cancer).  I get it; because our bunch is such a loud-mouthed family about childhood cancer, Eve is usually center-stage.  Nat just wanted to have her own way to contribute (again, without having cancer).  So, sure.  You can do an Ultimate Hike with me.

Clean pee for sale

NINETEEN DAYS until I take Natalie (10) and Daniel (9) with me on their very first Ultimate Hike in the Dolly Sods Wilderness.  They are trying their hardest to raise twice the minimum so twice as many kids might be cured twice as fast.

Epilogue

So, I've definitely not been the post-iest for a couple of years.  We continued to go to Duke every three months for scans.  Eve has had enough radiation to fuel a back-up generator at Shearon Harris.  I laugh when people are scared of getting cancer from going through a machine at the airport; you have a better chance of getting cancer from being treated for cancer.  We've been billed for CTs, MRIs, echos, x-rays, ultrasounds, some nuclear medicine scan that is so far removed from my brain that I couldn't pick it out of a line-up...

The Talk.

The children asked innocently enough over dinner.

"How do the babies get in the mommy's belly?"

It's September! Be aware! Be very aware! But also please do something! Exclamation point!

If you are friends with anyone on Facebook who has the unfortunate luck of being a childhood cancer parent, your newsfeed might already be filled with pictures of bald kids/pie charts of side effects/questionable clip-art of gold ribbons.

The Promised Bacon

Yo!  You know what you need in your life?  MO' BACON.  Mo' bacon is mo' better.  Vegetarian?  You could use some more quiche up in that mouth.  Real men, real women, real children...they all eat quiche.  Not those fake men.  They eat plastic corn on the cob.  Not the fake women, though, because they're dieting.

What's up?

Nothing much here. I've been watching a lot of Netflix.  Like, A LOT.  That's why I haven't been blogging.  It must be showing because someone in my tap class recently asked me if I was pregnant.  And it wasn't a man.  And it wasn't a joke.  And when I told her no, it was just a food baby, she didn't believe me and asked me AGAIN.  So I guess I need to either do jumping jacks while I watch Netflix or eat more fiber so I can deliver my food babies before tap class .  Once, a few years back, I ate a lot of Fiber One bars staying with some family not knowing the effect that more than one would have on my body and I can assure you that you do not want to eat more than one Fiber One bar per twenty-four hours unless you are well-stocked on toilet paper and want to read the same two issues of Consumer Reports in your aunt's bathroom.

The first and second time I did bad things in the woods.

As has been a trend lately, all of this happened several months ago.  I was just too traumatized to post about it immediately following the event.  This is how I remember hiking through a monsoon in the mountains on my period.

Girls' Weekend

I see lots of people post about how they are desperate for a girls' weekend out of town.  The thought of going to the beach for a weekend with my girlfriends while we do nothing but refill our beer coozies in between eating copious amounts of nachos makes me go, "Naw, that's for wussies.  Let's go to West Virginia so we can go hike 20.7 miles in the mud and while we're at it, let's see how many animals we can kill with my van.  Now THAT's a girls' weekend.  As long as there are gnats.  Don't forget the gnats."

Benjy

Last month I was totally in the mood to not get up early in the morning and tackle a long-ass hike but I was kind of in the mood to get up early in the morning and watch other people tackle a long-ass hike, so I got in my van and spent a weekend volunteering at an Ultimate Hike.  It was a lot easier than actually fundraising and hiking.  Plus, I got to turn off the Kidz Bop on the way down and listened to all the horrible CDs I bought in high school that I believed to be the epitome of good music but turns out to be 80% horrible.  And I screamed that 80% at the top of my lungs BECAUSE I COULD.  The other 20% I sang in my Aaron Neville voice.  I know, you're disappointed you weren't riding shotgun.  You should be.  I AM GOOD.

The Most Extreme Ultimate Ultimateness Pt. 2

(Part 1, or "how I hobbled through the mountains last year," is here.  Part 1 is not intended for people who may be considering doing the Ultimate Hike.)

Despite a best effort from one of our coaches to pack days ahead of time, then check, double check, triple check, and quadruple check our bags, I still decided to leave packing for the Ultimate Hike until one hour before I needed to leave.  Because I like leaving much to chance.

And also because I forgot to wash my stinky wool socks until the morning of.  But I quadruple checked that I had my knee braces.  BECAUSE OF PART 1.

And when I say, "I did things in that forest I never thought I'd do in a forest," I do not mean I was pooping in that forest.

In between the tooth fairy not coming to visit Natalie (but she left a note in the underwear drawer that she'd be back the next night because we have the TOOTH FAIRY OF THE YEAR in this house) and Nat waxing poetic about her dreams of growing up ("When I'm 18, I want to bring peace to the Middle East  cure cancer  learn the art of hard boiling eggs without turning the yolks gray sit in the bathtub and drink Diet Pepsi"), we've been all kinds of busy around here.  Like hiking.  And doing sweaty hike laundry.  And then forgetting about the laundry and throwing a damp washcloth in the dryer every few days while you run the touch-up cycle in the event you may one day remove the hike laundry from the dryer and actually fold it, but who do you think you're shining on- you know you're just going to leave that sports bra and moisture-wicking shirt in there until your next hike and let your sweat drown all your wrinkles away.

Worst. Day. Ever.

It’s been a while.  This is the all-you-can-eat buffet of blog posts, with lots of strange things that you would never expect to be side-by-side under the sneeze guard.  As with all things on the buffet, most anecdotes will not be held at the proper temperature and most definitely will have been violated by sticky kid fingers.  Eat at your own risk.

Snickers, bacon, tacos...oh my!

We have had a busy few weeks around here.  When you don't hear from me, it's because we're too busy being normal? not having cancer definitely being normal definitely being kind of almost normal.  It is easy to blog often when you are sitting in a chair in a hospital in a waiting room.  It is not easy to blog often when you invite your kids to make a birthday cake out of candy.  Have you tried to clean up after inviting your kids to make a birthday cake out of candy?

The Most Extreme Ultimate Ultimateness

This is me and fellow momcologist/hiker, Candi, on our way down to Georgia to carb up for the Ultimate Hike:

Note how blissfully unaware we are of what we are getting ourselves into.

The A-List

These are the people so far who proudly hate cancer and love children with me:

Adam & Brigid Eshbaugh
Amber Robles
Amy Rosa
AnnMarie Marchese
April Schweitzer
Barbara Albro
Biff & Twana Saunders
Brooke Howells
Chris & Dianne Khin
Dan Cohen
Dan Wechsler

Sweet Mother of Cuss.

It's no secret. This hiking thing is kind of a big deal for me because:

1. The last time I have exercised on a regular basis was in high school;

2. My butt is starting to morph from flat, white mom butt to a nondescript less flat shape;

3. I like seeing how many avocados I can go home and shove in my face when I'm done;

4. I really enjoy eating red electrolyte gummies.

Christy and the Not-so-5-Avocado Hike

Eve started dance class. The girl who never lets her heels hit the floor was ready.

(Except for the tights. Gotta cut those feet out of those tights. And the tap shoes. No, no, no. None of these six pair of shoes we have at home will do.)

For the first class, she made it through ballet. She even looked happy to be there for a while.