Day 137 – My toe hurts. I don’t wanna hike.

My toe was still throbbing in the morning. And it was big and red and swollen. Obviously I could not hike. Let’s be real honest. I had no real interest in hiking. I had one last day with my mom and I was going to spend it with her. Plus I still had some errands to run. We had breakfast and I blogged a bit in the morning before heading into town for lunch and one last visit to the outfitters.

Mom let me drive… illegally… since my license had actually expired the day before on my birthday! It was my first time driving in over FOUR months. It felt awesome. Do you know how FAST you can go when you drive. I think I have the wrong idea with all this hiking business.

We headed to Panera for lunch. It is our favorite place. Panera twice in ONE week on the trail… such an amazing birthday week. Then it was off to the outfitters where I got some new water/camp shoes. While I was trying on shoes the salesman commented on my swollen toe. “Hunny, that looks infected.” Oh shit. Infected, of course. I thought it was just swollen from stubbing it but after shoving it in my boot the day before I think it was getting a little worse… I planned on hydrogen peroxide-ing the CRAP out of it when we got home.

After the outfitters we went to a yarn shop for mom and then headed back to Donna’s for one last night. What an AMAZING gift Donna gave us to spend this time at her home. It was nice to have a home-base and to just be able to be together with lots of comfort and space.

I spent the evening blogging, snacking and playing with the BEST PRESENT I HAVE EVER GOTTEN! Of course one of the first orders of business was to update my background photo. Now I get to have my beautiful baby in my lap every night before I got to bed. I love my ipad. I love my ipad. I love my ipad.

You know what I also love? My MOM! What a great four nights with the best mama in the world. It’s not the easiest job in the world, being my mom… but she does it well and I am SO lucky that she came all this way to spend my birthday with me and she worked so hard to make it so special. We were both feeling pretty anxious that night. Knowing that saying goodbye was going to suck the next morning… but the sooner we said goodbye the sooner we would see each other again.

I stayed up way too late blogging and packing and just pacing around the house and when I finally put myself to bed I STILL couldn’t sleep.

Here are some late-night thoughts before trying one last time to sleep. My final leg of this journey starts tomorrow. Here’s hoping the best is yet to come. Even though I have NO idea how I could ever top this birthday week I just had.