mountains i climb & the cliffs i fall off

I sort of think I am invincible in a funny kid like manner, funny unless you are my hiking or running partner I suppose.  You know those kids who tie a towel around their necks and jump out of trees?

Yep.  That’s me at 38. 

It is a good thing I have so many irrational fears they are like my metaphoric life jacket.  I could probably use a real helmet & a big stick but you can't have everything you want all at once.  Besides it would look weird. 

I do have something I don't want, I have a medical condition brought on by sheer irony, some higher something’s drunken sick joke.  Fire Whiskey night in heaven, 'Who on that little planet could not follow a good plan if her life depended on it?  A big Cool-Aid-Man ‘Oh-yeah’, Misty, that’s our girl.' 

My medical ID bracelet should read: suffers from occasional lapses in good judgment & will lie to your face about it.  It would be way more helpful than Hypoglycemic Type I diabetic.

Okay you’ve just passed out cold before 250 of your closest friends in a physiology class at the U of U, most of them pre-med (don’t worry, the degree is such a pain in the ass none of them will end up being doctors).  You win a label that will change your whole life so let’s set some ground rules…

Rule #1:  Eating a balanced diet does not mean holding coffee in one hand and beer in the other despite the fact they cancel each other out.

Rule #2:  Potatoes are not to be used as sleeping pills no matter how delicious they look.

Rule #3:  Use your big girl words to tell someone when you aren’t feeling well.  Turning to a friend & saying ‘I’m going to pass out’ as you drop does not count.

Rule #4:  Never stick your hand in the middle of a dog fight.  (Well yeah, it has nothing to do with diabetes but I keep doing it so I figured it should be in here.)

Rule #5:  When you think that something you are about to do might be a bad idea, do it quickly.

Let’s discuss Rule #5.  So this one day in the middle of the Utah Winter of 2010-2011, I wasn't feeling great.  So I went hiking.  Alone.  No, not alone the dogs were there and the deer, and the snow, and me.  You can see how sick I am in the pic’s I took but I kind-of knew that it was one of those ‘Once In A Life Time Days’.  You know those days- when you jump & you swear you can actually fly? 

I’m sure that the 10 days following my hike, when I was down with bilateral pneumonia, my doctor & Colby & maybe my friends who had to bring dinner and help with child care thought hiking with pneumonia had been a bad idea. 

I see it differently. 

I see the pureness of deep snow & the bend in the blue sky & me pushing through my own weakness to the top, because along time ago all I knew were my weakness at the very bottom. 

Maybe I’m just stubborn.

Maybe I’m just justifying fighting a fight for myself now I should fought back then.

But maybe I’m right this time. 

Maybe one day I will make a mistake bad enough it will cost me everything I am, but right now the mistakes I am making are what makes life worth living.

Maybe Rule #5 is simply brilliant in its idiocy.  Like the idea that if you can climb high enough you just might be able to fly.  After all swimming is not much more than drowning in style.  And falling is a great way for the directionaly challanged to fly- one direction, straight down. Hard to take a wrong turn with gravity navigating. 

Rule #6: Always try to land on your own two feet.