lazy afternoon

Look what I did today!


Oh, I have missed this. It turns out to have been a longer hiatus than either of us wanted or anticipated — just over nine months for me. And the baby is worth it, of course, but oh — I do love this.

There's a little bit of cognitive dissonance right now — I haven't climbed in so long that I no longer have any idea what I can and cannot do. They have some really nice, crimpy and technical 5.11s up right now that are incredibly enticing, but I don't think I'm quite there yet. Quite. Half my brain knows this. The either half just wants to throw myself against the wall and stick somehow.

So I stuck to easier climbs: I started on a 5.8 with a slight incline, which was nice and didn't require any thought, although I could feel the muscle strain. And then I did a 5.10c, which was crimpy and should have been a cakewalk, but wasn't. (I finished it. I couldn't allow myself not to. But it wasn't as pretty as it should have been, and my footwork, thought never my best feature, was just sad.) And now my fingers hurt. As they should.

One of the things I'd missed about climbing — and exercise generally, although, for me, it's particular to climbing — is going out for food afterward. I'm not the kind of person who worries about calories or "working off" a meal, but there's just something immensely satisfying about eating right after a good workout. It's the gratification, I think: there's you, bonetired and happily exhausted and ravenous, and then suddenly — through very little actual effort — there's food, all hot and caloric and yummy. (It has to be hot, and preferably greasy. A cold chicken wrap would just be wrong.)


There's a new café in our gentrifying neighbourhood, the Lazy Daisy, that I've been meaning to drag Pd to try. It is all about organic and local whole foods, and it's lovely. And, even better, it turns out that they serve brunch.


And it turns out that I am a sucker for foam art, so I am theirs forever. (This is hot chocolate, not coffee, but the principle holds. It's all the same foam, in the end. And yes, I had what amounts to an organic, free-range, locally-sourced Egg McMuffin. I regret nothing.)

Also lovely, and something I had missed?


The equally traditional, equally satisfying post-climbing nap.