It took about 3 weeks before we got our approval letter to go on Stay Alive Island.  Delinda was driving me nuts.

"What if we don't get accepted?  What if we Do!?" she kept asking.

Her husband Steve kept telling her to stop worrying about it.  Just wait to see what happens and then worry.  Finally we got the approval letter.  Then Delinda really started to worry.

She first started to worry about her job and having to take such a long leave of absence.  She worked at home for a travel company.  She was the only one that did a whole bunch of stuff that I didn't understand.  When she first told her boss, she freaked out.  She had also tried out for the show but didn't get accepted.  She was quite mad at Delinda for that reason alone.  Finally, Delinda had to go to a higher boss and explain the situation.  That boss agreed as long as Delinda wore shirts with the company logo on them.  She agreed, but when she was on the show, they blurred out the logo. 

After she got her work all situated. She started the whole, "What should we bring?  How should we plan and come up with a strategy?  Matty, you need to stay focused.  You're not crazy about this show so I need to school you."

That's how we spent the next three months.  As soon as Delinda got off work she would come over to my house.  First, we had to build up our physical strength.  That was a little off the beaten path.  We attempted to climb the 'mountains' around the phoenix area.  However, we needed much more strength building before we could really attempt those.  We were out of breathe before we even got up the first hill. 

"Delinda, are you sure we are able to do this?"

"Yes, we've got three months to get ready.  We can do it.  Maybe we should start walking at the mall first.  Also, let's start a gym membership."
"Make sure we don't sign a membership.   We'll be losing three months if we do."
"How do you figure?"
"Two mounts on the show, one month recooperating."

"Two mounts?  What are you thinking about?"
"Climbing these two mountains.  I meant months you know that.  What do you say, do you want to go to Swenson? We could call Jared and Steve to bring the girls to meet us."
"Matty!  We are in training.  That means no ice cream.  Are you eating those bars I sent over."
"I had one.  Are they suppose to taste like cardboard?"
"Yes.  Let's go to the mall and continue our work out."

This went on for the next three months.  After two weeks at the gym, we were able to tackle the mountain again.  We didn't get as far as we wanted, but we were making progress.  Our husbands had other ideas to get us physically fit.  We both rolled our eyes at them at the same time.  The next part of our training was eating unusual foods.  This was enough to make me want to go back to the cardboard food bars.  The first thing we tried was sewer roaches that my husband found in our tub.  Phoenix has some really nasty huge roaches, believe me.  Delinda and I both squirmed and begged our husbands to try them first.  They both laughed at us.  Meanies.  Then Steve offered to grill them for us with hot sauce.  We agreed.  It still wasn't pretty.  However, the hot sauce burned our tongue enough so that we really didn't taste them.  The next thing we tried was grasshoppers.  We had to go buy them at a pet store.  It was a very interesting conversation with the store clerk.

"Hi, what will you be feeding these grasshopper too?" she asked with a huge smile.

"We'll be eating them," Delinda answered.

"Oh, that is funny.  No, seriously are they for a bird or a snake?"
"We are serious.  It's for us.  We are in training," I told her.

She stared at us in disgusted disbelief.  I couldn't take it anymore.  "Ha-ha we got you.  We are getting the grasshoppers for my daughter's pet turtle."

"Oh, yes I must admit.  You two did have me going for a moment."

We decided after that for our strange experiences we shouldnt' tell the truth.  When we brought the grasshoppers home Jared told us that we should eat them alive.  He reasoned that whatever we would have to eat on the show would probably be alive.  After eating all the crazy stuff, we decided this would be a good time to train in the fasting.  We made it a whole 36 hours.  I snuck out at midnight and ate a jelly-filled donut.  We had our husbands teach us how to start fires without matches, build our own beds and cut wood.  Of course, we wouldn't have axes on the island so they told us the best kind of wood to get.  Finally we worked on the brain.  We did all kinds of different brain teasers.  Each of us picked up a 1000 piece puzzles.  Then we had our husbands give us sequence tests.  They also built us a obstacle course.  We were extremely bad at our balancing.  We had the bruises to prove it.  By the end of the three months, we felt ready.  The week before we went to a spa.  We each got a facial, pedicure, manicure and massage.  Yep, we were ready to go.