Adventures, Sarcasm, Dead Animals, and A Bunch of Fish: How Do You Say "Tecumseh"?

So since my head has been shoved in a book for the past month and I've been so stressed that I have a stress-induced eye twitch in my left eye (I'm so attractive) and I broke out in hives last week from stress yet again, I figured hey why not climb a mountain to make myself feel better. At least get some fresh air! So my cousin Sam is a total badass. She is doing the New Hampshire 48 mountains over 4000 ft challenge- she is on 23 (well, 24 now that we did Tecumseh). I have done 4 (5 now after Tecumseh). See where this girl would have problems? The last mountain I did was in July before Alaska and school and everything else! [Shreddin] Sam has been doing them continuously. So anyways, I'm not going to complain too much to start this off! We woke up at 4am (WOOF) to head up to Waterville Valley New Hampshire to get to the trail for Tecumseh. We stopped at Dunks so I could like, get coffee and not fall asleep. 20 minutes later, my mouth is wide open in the passenger seat and I'm drooling all over myself (so when I'm not breaking out in hives, and my eye isn't twitching, I seem to be drooling). I swear you could feed me when I'm asleep in a car. So when I sleep normally (this is all by assumption, I actually have no idea if this is real life) my mouth is closed. BUT when I'm uncomfortable, like in a car, I look like I'm yelling and drooling. Throw me a few snacks and I'll never know. Good way to get Molly fat: feed her some cookies and snacks while she's sleeping/drooling all over your passenger window. Anyways, I woke up (sorry Sam!) and we started off hiking. It was COLD outside like, freezing. So, I layered up: base layer, long sleeve, sweatshirt 1, sweatshirt 2, wool jacket/shirt. 30 seconds after walking: I was sweating PROFUSELY. Goodbye both sweatshirts! So Tecumseh is a cool mountain for two reasons: one, it's right next to Waterville Valley ski area, where I ski, and you can see the ski slopes the whole time and two, it's only 4003 feet and 2.5 miles to the summit! So we were truckin it up the mountain, like, hard core. And it was basically all uphill after the first half mile (wow Moll, never would have guessed that climbing up a mountain would be all uphill: Out of shape, uh huh!). We had been hiking for a while and I was finally like damn, I need to stop and breathe and blow my nose and eat a snack and live for 50 seconds here. The problem with hiking in the cold is your nose runs. So my nose is running. I grab a Dunks napkin (I know, I'm so smart for grabbing some!) while climbing uphill and blow my nose. Note to all um, you can't breathe and blow your nose at the same time. So you just let it flow, or you stop to blow. Anyways, total diversion with that. So we got to the top in an hour and forty minutes (twenty minutes before her book said we should have- champs). There were bobcat and coyote tracks everywhere. I told Sam that there were bobcat tracks. She thought they were vicious, so I told her all about bobcats. We decided I was basically the "Ghetto Hunter" hiking and Sam was the EMS posterchild. I know about all kinds of woodsy stuff, and she's a champ hiker. Like "Dual Survival" (plus look at my clothes in the pictures- oversized hunting garb). Anyways, it was chilly and windy at the top. The views were absolutely gorgeous and there was an inch of snow. Just stunning. The whole 2.5 miles uphill of death were all worth it for the 10 minutes we spent on top (happens that when I died and needed a break, we were literally 15 minutes from the summit: of course). The great thing about heading downhill: you can talk. The whole way up is basically silence, gasping, or trying to talk, but instead awkwardly breathing heavily behind the person you are hiking with. So we chatted it up the whole way down the mountain (which only took an hour!) so we finished the 5 miles on Tecumseh in record time. I'd say we are pretty badass McCarthy women. We packed the car back up around noon (after laying on the rocks and dirt in the parking lot and trying to stretch our butts... um, ouch) and headed back home, and naturally 20 minutes later, droolfest began again. I'm a tired woman, okay? Last touch to the day. We got to Sam's house, and I had to drive home from there. I'm tired and out of it, so I'm trying to avoid this big tree in their yard. I'm trying so hard to avoid the tree that I cut across like their whole yard and heard "BANG....waaaaaaaahhhhhh" I was like what the hell is that? Totally knocked their mailbox over. Congratulations, self, you are a constant disaster.