Fear

Fear. This makes me think of phobias and we talked about all different kinds of phobias in health the other day. Some of them were really silly like fear of gravity and fear of looking up. Those may seem silly, but everyone has phobias. I'm terrified of sharks, but I think they're the coolest things ever. I'm that person that will make sure there's other people surrounding me in the water so I'm the least likely to get eaten. I'm also the kid that sits at home for a week every summer in from of her TV and watches Shark Week by herself. Just thinking about getting in a cage with them freaks me out and I don't think I could ever do it, but it blows my mind when I watch other people do it on TV. I've had enough scary moments with sharks outside of the cage. One time we were snorkeling and a bull shark swam about ten feet underneath me and started circling. I froze and stopped breathing. While I was in fear of my life, I couldn't help thinking about how beautiful the shark was. It was pretty small and realistically, it probably wasn't going to hurt me. I always think the worst when I step into the ocean though. I always assume that I'm going to get eaten by a shark. Every time. The entire time I'm in the water that's in the back of my head playing over and over. My brain has stopped working now and I don't know what else I was going to say. Most likely another one of my shark stories, but the more I think about them, the sillier they seem. Explaining something that was terrifying for one person might not be terrifying to another person. I'm going to go ahead and tell another story though. One time my family was swimming and we hit a sand bar so we were playing catch and enjoying the sunshine. There were some noodle waves, but no big waves or anything. I call waves that don't break "noodle waves". But anywho, there was some seaweed and stuff in the noodle waves and then all of the sudden there was a shadow of a big fish. I knew instantly that it was a shark. My dad told me not to move, but knowing I was the closest to it and most likely to get eaten first, I ran (as fast as I could in water about chest high)and hid behind my dad. The shark headed straight for us and then apparently it decided we weren't worth his time because he turned back around and kept going down the horizon. 
...loopdeeedooo...
Finding beauty amidst fear. I wonder if that's what people feel like when they're about to die. They're scared, but maybe they're reflecting on some of the  beauties they experienced throughout life. I don't really want to talk about death or scary things anymore though. Maybe something a little bit happier. I would discuss the sunshine, but it's freezing cold and the sun is hiding from us today. Missouri weather is bipolar. I thought Georgia's weather was bad and then I moved here. For example, on Sunday it was so nice outside. Breathtakingly nice. I got off work and picked up my dog. We drove to the park with the windows down and sunglasses on. It was a perfect day. I guess the rest of Missouri thought so too because the park was full of people walking their dogs and also of people walking their children. My dog met lots of other dogs and I enjoyed people watching. We played frisbee and then set up my hammock and rested in the last bit of sunshine before the wind started up and the weather dropped. Well, the next day it was negative degrees when I woke up and it was like breathing in ice. It was terrible. And the last couple of days have been like that too. In Georgia it's really cold right now too. I'm happy for all my friends though because they're getting to enjoy some snow days. Some of them got stuck in their cars for up to 8 hours yesterday and others had to spend the night at school. That's pretty scary. There's also some humor to be found in those scary moments because Georgians are not used to this weather so they start doing crazing things like pour buckets of water on their driveways to create a sledding hill made of ice and others raid the grocery stores like the apocalypse has come. I remember one year when it was only snowing a tiny bit. They closed the schools for a week and Walmart was out of water and canned food. My family, who moved to Georgia form Colorado, thought this was hysterical. So yeah, it's been pretty cold here and because I had a taste spring the other day, I am so ready for this cold to end. 
...loopdeedoooagain...
Colorado. Last hear I visited my homestate and my sister, nieces, and I decided to go camping in the mountains. Now, I've talked about camping a little bit before, but this was legitimate camping. That means, no bathrooms, no restaurants nearby, and no cell signals. We were in the Rockies. My nieces had never been camping before and I had never been camping in the Rockies and my sister had never been either. So it was a new experience for all of us. Again, like my other camping story, we didn't have and men with us. We started out our trip driving about 4 hours into the mountains. We stopped in this little town that was about 2 hours away from camp and ate dinner before heading onto the gravel road and up into the trees. By the time we got to the gravel road, it was getting dark. So we were driving into the dark and to a place we've never been before on a road that has no destination besides the mountains. There was literally no way to figure out where you were, you just kept going until you decided you liked a spot and wanted to set up camp there. So we found our spot and set up the tent with the use of the headlights. We crawl into our sleeping bags and start settling the girls down. They fall asleep and I'm drifting off when my sister wakes me and asks me if I hear anything strange. Sure enough, I heard footsteps. We started hyperventilating. What were we going to do?! What if they were escape convicts or what if it was a bear on the prowl?! We had no weapons with us and no way to hide. All we could do was sit and wait. So we did and the noises kept getting closer. Then we saw lights. That knocked a bear out of the options. So obviously it was an escape convict. Now we really started getting scared. So we devised a plan. My sister was going to go start the car and see if she saw anything and I was going to grab the girls and jump in and we were going to get out of there. She got out of the tent to look and jumped right back in because the lights got closer. What if they got to us before we could get to the car? So paralyzed by fear, we stayed in the tent. The noises died down a little and the lights dimmed. We woke up in the morning and went on a walk. Our convict was an old man that decided to go camping at two in the morning.