handing over the harness

It is with great sadness and lingering nostalgia that I inform you that I cancelled my membership at Rock Oasis (i.e., the climbing gym) this past weekend.

There isn't actually anything wrong with Oasis; the fault, as they say, lies with me. I hadn't been climbing for a few weeks — the violent cough from April did a number on one of my intercostal muscles, which had to heal — and, upon my return on Saturday, we found that my harness no longer actually fits. It fit well enough to climb easy top-rope routes, but was close enough to my hips that it might have been dangerous if I ever flipped over. (Note: I have never flipped over. In my entire climbing experience I have only ever seen one person — maybe two — flip entirely over, and both of those were people who caught a foot on the rope while leading a route. Flipping over is not a huge concern.)

So I climbed, taking it easy, testing my muscles — 5.8s and under. I'd lost quite a bit of strength during my time off and, as Pd pointed out, I'm climbing a lot farther away from the wall right now, which is taxing my upper arms in ways I'm not necessarily used to. Anyway, there I was, on an incredibly easy climb, when the route asked me to reach out a foot or two above my head to the next hold.

And I couldn't.

Not because I lacked the strength, or the balance. Not because it was too high. No, it was because such a move requires one to almost shimmy against the wall — imagine: when you reach for something, you usually lean in as close as you can — and there was a very positive (read: sticky-outy) hold around my abdomen area ... and I couldn't get my baby belly over it. Seriously.

So I decided that that was a definite sign from the universe that maybe I shouldn't be climbing any more. (Although I maintain that harder climbs don't generally have sticky-outy holds, so really it would have been fine.)

We took a picture of me in my climbing gear, in which I look hilarious(ly humongous), and then I handed my harness over to a friend of ours, who has just recently started climbing and is about my size. I mean, I'm not going to be using it anyway, not for another four months plus, and she had been renting one of those awful and ludicrously oversized ones from the gym ... but still, it cost me something to do that. Couple that with the fact that I caved on Friday and went maternity-clothes shopping — I had hoped to be able to coast along on expandable sundresses for a little while, but this wretchedly cold and wet spring put paid to that — and I've kind of been feeling like a walrus. A walrus with a sense of humour, mind, but still.

We've also started demolishing the sunroom, and now it and the den are a big mess. (By "we," I really mean Pd. Technically, I napped.) So I couldn't find the USB cable for my camera this morning, and can't post that picture — although, honestly, in the sober light of day, I'm not sure if it's for public consumption, really. I think maybe I still want some public sense of plausible deniability: you know, I am big, but not that big.