Gnarly

So my husband is an avid rock climber and he works at a rock gym. He is teaching me to climb. I'm not very good (5.8 is the hardest climb I've done successfully), but it is pretty fun so I tag along about once a week. Yesterday he had me try something new. I bouldered. I was pretty nervous about this at first because I'm not very good compared to all his buddies in the gym and they were all in the bouldering area when we walked in trying this super hard move. As the gross feeling in my stomach started to become apparent he told me it was my turn. I tried it and failed. I felt pretty dumb. Then I wateched them all do things and fail. Then I got more confidence. I never made it to the top, but I did get past one pretty challenging section. Next time I'm going to dominate. I think bouldering is probably my favorite type of climbing! It is challenging, but totally ok if you can't get up to the top because everybody is testing their limits on this. Plus, it's social! Since the climbs aren't that high a group of people just stand around chatting and watching the super-human dynamic moves of the other climbers. (I can't do dynamic moves.) Well, one of the times I was trying a route I fell and as I was going down I smashed my knee on a hold. Where it hit swelled up. I was so excited because that would mean I was going to get a bruise that would most likely be pretty gnarly. That way I could show it to my sister and it would be worse than hers. She bruises like a peach and thus always has tons of them on her knees even when she didn't really do anything to get them. This morning I woke up and checked out my knee. To my dismay the bruise is only about the size of a quarter. Although it is darker than usual it is nothing special, except for the fact that the fabric from my pants rubbing across it hurts like mad.