Loser, loser, loser

This whole tick thing has me paranoid. I have washed all the sheets, all the comforters, shampooed the carpets, and inspected the dogs. I even touched my " roots" up with some hair color, knowing the smell alone should kill anything that is crawling. But I continue to have nightmares about ticks, woods and flying monkeys. To cure this, I am going out for a normal day of caching, and I am taking the " pot stirrer". Now, she is the first to admit that she doesn't have the " drive" to geocache, as I do, but she goes along, "to keep me alive". Nice. So we head out to a town...how hard is a town? We pick up a couple of "no brainers" and then we get to the park. This is a cache, that has been adopted from a previous owner. According to the story, the previous owner disappeared, or something. The cache had been disabled, but some cachers,( who had found the cache earlier) checked on it, the cache was still there ( kinda hard to find) in a cool hide, so they adopted it. Still following me? So, we follow the present directions, which doesn't say too much, but it takes us to a cannon. We know it is magnetic. We search....we search...we search. No luck. We read the other logs. We have been in the same place as everyone else. We found the birds nests, we found the wasp nests, we found everything but the cache! We had our hands in every nook and cranny of that cannon! It is not there! Ok, so one of the other logs said it was " a find" on his 4th try! No, way we are getting it today! We are going insane. The "pot stirrer" is fed up! It is not here! So, we reluctantly leave. I am starting to feel these losses. I am starting to take this personally! I am ready to turn in my geocaching patch. I am not worthy. But, I say on the way home...maybe it is a bolt? Yep, that has to be it... a green bolt.