Crankypants

So I´m feeling immensely sorry for myself at the moment. In fact, you could even say I´m wallowing in self-pity. I´ve been fighting off a cold for the past few days, and after a particularly strenous sheep adventure today it feels like it´s turned into a flu. Fever, chills, body ache, nausea, sore throat. I´ve been lying in bed since after dinner, falling in and out of a feverish sleep and wondering what I can do about the big workday ahead of me tomorrow.....

Rugged outdoorswoman I am not. Today we hiked up a mountain, to the top, very quickly, and once we were there we chased sheep through marshy ankle deep moss and over slippery rocks and up and down and up and down the mountain. For 6 hours. What I am feeling is the flu could actually just be exhaustion I suppose. But it sure feels like flu.

I don´t even think I can get into the details of what we did today. Parts of it were fun, but I was wheezing and panting like an old dying dog continually all day long, except for the hour that they left me sitting by the hut because they were going off to find some sheep over the other side of the mountain and "didn´t need 4 people" which I believe translates to "you sound like you´re dying and you´re slowing us down" which was true and completely fine by me.

The problem with the strenous activity today was that every single other person there was either a local (used to the terrain, and pretty hardcore overall) or a hiking enthusiast (who runs up and down mountains for fun on their days off). I can safely say I was the only out of shape city girl who hasn´t climbed a mountain since junior high.

The extra frustrating part of this situation is that despite all my efforts and feeling so lousy at the end of the day, I really can´t say I was very helpful. Through no fault of mine, the sheep I was helping herd for about an hour ended up going back up the mountain and we therefore left them for another day since they were being so difficult. And every other hour of the day I was just trying to keep up with the speedy mountaineers.

The photos I took make it look like an awesome hiking adventure, and perhaps in retrospect I will look back at them and say "How cool that I did that!" but right now all I want is for someone to check my temperature and tuck me in and bring me soup and let me stay in bed all day tomorrow. I´m wondering how I possibly am going to do this all over again in the morning?
I know I sound like I´m being a baby, and maybe I really am, but my body is not used to this, and I think that this particular task may be a bit too advanced for me. It´s like throwing a beginner into the super advanced class or something. I mean, come on, I thought I was cool because I never complained about my 5th floor walkup as much as visiting friends did. This was slightly more intense. I kind of wish I could go into a 3 day coma to avoid more of this mountain stuff. Oh lord.


It´s really beautiful up there. If you´re not at death´s door.