travel bugs – The Romance Factor

I’m going to kick off this post with a touch of seriousness and say that depression sucks. Today was definitely a down day for me, and I’m blaming depression because in all honesty, there was nothing that happened to me that was sad or anything that should have made me as mad as I felt at times. It comes and goes, and it’s better than it was several years ago, a fact I attribute to my husband and to being more active. That doesn’t mean I’m “cured.” Now that the days are shorter and the weather is getting colder, I think my seasonal affective disorder is kicking in. We made it to the gym tonight, but I’ve been struggling with getting there, even though I know I feel so much better when I do. I think I need to start kicking my workouts up a notch though. I’ve been talking about doing that for about a month, but it really is to the point where I’m not working up a sweat, and I kind of want to.

I am going to end this bit of depression talk with a little PSA: if you’re depressed, please seek help. Talk to someone. Go on meds if you have to. Exercise. Do whatever you have to to make yourself better, and remember you’re not alone. I’ve always been open about my depression, so it saddens me when someone is struggling with it, and for whatever reason feels too ashamed to reach out. Believe me, you are part of a larger group, you are not alone, and you are not at fault.

As down as I felt all day, after a workout and some time with Jon, I perked up. After the gym, we grabbed some dinner, then had time to kill before our geocache event. First, we were going to go geocaching, but it was dark, and I know myself and my tendency to get frustrated, so we decided to nix that idea. Then we were going to go to the library and use a computer to try to solve some puzzles on a local mystery cache trail. However, there were no parking spots. We ended up at the mall where we finally found little zombie dolls to attach to our zombie travel bugs.

I think we’ll be sending those out into the world this weekend, unless we get wild and make our own geocaches to put them in, which will take a little extra time. My zombie is so cute (mine is the vampire girl), I kind of don’t want to get rid of her now.

The event started at 8am at the top of Manhattan Hill. There were several people there we’d met previously, a few who remembered us, and a couple cachers who wanted to meet us since they’d seen our names online. It’s such a good group of people. They’re all friendly and cool to talk to, and even though I get anxious being around new people, once I’m visiting with this group, the anxiety goes away and Social ‘Manda shows up. This event was a “flash mob” to get together and earn the souvenir celebrating Geocaching in Space.

After visiting for awhile, we said our farewells and came home. I’m going to finish this up, map out some geocaches for the weekend, then shower and get some sleep. I’m prepared to feel better tomorrow, and I want to be productive. Two days left of the week! Yay!

It rained today. A lot. I’m grateful it wasn’t snow, but it would have still been a nice day to stay inside and knit or sleep. Having said that, things were pretty wild on the murder mystery front. Some of my co-workers are taking this very seriously. Part of me is really happy about this. Part of me is worried that my ending will disappoint. These people are ruthless, so I have to be on my A-game.

The day in general went by fast, though I wasn’t feeling great. Stomach issues and a touch of what threatens to be a cold. Still, I was ready to go to the gym after work. We haven’t been in several days, and since the rain was going to keep us from geocaching and/or walking, the gym was our best option.

Two things happened when I left work, however. First, I realized I’d forgotten to change into my outside-of-work shoes before leaving the office, and those happen to be my active shoes. The ones I wear at work, while comfortable in that setting, aren’t great for the gym. Still, I could have overlooked that and used the spare pair I keep in the trunk. I could have also overlooked the wet pant legs I had from walking through puddles.

What was harder to deal with was the sudden headache that happened as I was getting into my car. It felt like someone had come up and smashed the back of my head with a bat. Maybe they did. Either way, it took any exercise out of the equation because just driving was hard, so we came home, where I got into my pajamas, took some ibuprofen and spent the evening watching a movie and knitting.

The most exciting thing that happened was that our zombie travel bugs arrived!