…beyond nice.

Did I mention that I’m prone to bad cases of the dramas when I’m in pain? After whining about my muscle aches and lack of respect from my leg muscles, I walked around a bit, and my legs were in decent working form.

Now I need to cancel my order of hot pink walker with ice-ax holster and Costco pack of Depends.

I still need Hulk pants though. Do you think maybe I can bring Spandex in as fashion wear?

I just got back from a crazy backpacking trip with some 2 hours of Class 3 scramble at the end. I must have banged the crap out of my legs on the boulders, because my legs look like I got in a kicking fight with an extra short midget with a mean round-kick and didn’t emerge victorious. I am also in the saddest of physical state right now. I have to walk with my legs straight with knees locked, kinda swinging them around in an awkward arch. If I try to bend them ever so slightly, as with habit, my whole body slumps over because my leg muscles are boycotting me at the moment, and any sneak attempt to use them has been met with great resistance. Face plants be damned.

There was an old guy walking into my family restaurant yesterday with a walker, he moved very slowly and stiffly, and when he got to the edge of the chair he plopped down on it without a knee bend, and I realized that old guy had stolen my patented move. But he is old, so I don’t know if I will pursue legal action. Yet.

As stated too many times before, I’m very short (4′ 11.75″), and my SUV is very tall, I have to stand on the running board to climb into it. This requires a knee bend. Which basically means getting in and out of my vehicle is all kinds of drama. If the boyfriend is around, he will join in the drama by laughing at me and telling me I’m pathetic while trying to lift my ginormous ass up into the car. I’m usually laughing too hard at myself while feeling too much pain that I’m screaming, “Stop laughing at me. Oh! I’m going to pee on myself!” He doesn’t know he’s just one muscle spasm from getting the uncontrolled golden shower. I should seriously consider Depends Undergarment For Adults. It may be time.

People should not complain about their body if they are in their fittest form of their life. But. My butt has gotten huge. It’s from all the mountain climbing. My jeans are now getting tight around my ass and thighs. Sometimes when I sit down, I feel like my thighs will Hulk-grow out of my pants.

A lot of men have much nicer legs than women. They are naturally taller, thus legs longer. My favorite pair of legs is on a drag queen.

My sister and I were clubbing in Vancouver when they happened to have a drag competition. The most beautiful drag queen of them all wore a long slinky red gown with high slits up the side to showoff legs that goes for miles. She was tall with a short torso, which made her ridiculously leggy in the way that fashion designers draw models with unreal proportions. My sister and I are both exactly 4’11″ and 3/4″. We envied and drooled over her long shapely legs. Legs that were probably nearly as long as we were tall. Drool.

The boyfriend has nicer legs than me. My ass trumps all, but I do have leg envy. He knows this too. He taunts me with talks of wearing short dresses and showing off his nicer legs in them. Of course as a guy, he does have leg hair, and does he ever have them. He’s half Korean plus Asian mutt but part Samoan, and I think the Samoan blood gave him thick rich hair, head and legs.

We hiked Mailbox Peak this Saturday. Being the swamp season that it has been here, there were endless streams of bugs chasing us up and down the mountain. Even at the summit, we were swatting bugs away. At one point, one fly got caught in the boyfriend’s leg hair, and I watched with a mixture of horror and delight when it starts climbing around in it. I told him, I think there’s a fly climbing around in his leg hair. He flicks it off with disgusts, “Ugh, was he doing jungle gym in my leg hair?” I nodded. I’m sure if I watched carefully, I could have seen it do summersaults around a hair, or perhaps some fancy pole dancing action. Either way, it was gross and funny for me, I win.

Now, when the boyfriend gloats about his sexy longer legs, I get to advise him to shave his legs first, because bug’s jungle gym legs just isn’t as dead sexy.

Wow…there are a couple write-ups so long overdue. I’ve been at lost for words to describe the whole experience, I can’t tell if it’s because of the days spent in low oxygen level or just being a few weeks out of practice is causing my writer’s block. A small part of it, I attribute to the fact that the days following two back to back epic mountain climbs leads to life feeling…not quite real. I don’t know how to say that without coming off as a douchebag with existential crisis, but right now, I feel like my head is stuck in a cloud and nothing feels real.

Perhaps this is not that different than coming back from Burning Man, where reality has a different meaning. I would never in Seattle, consider hugging a random stranger before introducing myself. I tried walking around Seattle in a bikini-top over the weekend, people stared and stared. Oh cover the children’s eyes. Burners often come back feeling like living the Burning Man lifestyle is the only way to go, and soon as one burn is over, they spend all their time preparing for the next burn. And also only their Burner friends are “real”. I’m not that douche that will tell you that Burning Man is home. I don’t think Burner life or mountaineer’s life is “the way”. Neither life is really sustainable for me, in both situations I spend much of my time wishing for a shower and flushing toilet, while wishing to not burn/freeze to death.

Now that I think about it, I’ve been having a real hard time sitting perfectly still since I got back from my mountain climbs. I haven’t read a single book since I got back. When I was sitting on Rainier, freezing my ass off, I kept thinking, when I get back, I would love nothing more than to sit on the beach and read a good book. Since I got back, I only want to get back out  to the mountains or I don’t know, go chop wood with my bare hands.

This middle-class ennui phase will pass.

I am back from Rainier. The climb was spectacular with an exceptional window of weather. Great conditions for going in, climbing and coming back out. I will do a write-up of it when I have a moment, but you can stop worrying about me. I am alive and well. And yes, we hit summit.

Baker climb was extremely rough but spectacular. I will write more about it when I get back from my Mount Rainier climb. I got back from Baker on Sunday, have been working every day since then. I will be leaving for my Rainier climb early tomorrow morning.

No, Rainier was not planned, I got a last minute invite and you know…Rainier has been on my todo list for a few years now, so I would be a fool to not jump on it. So I will tell you all about Baker and Rainier when I get back.

And in case you’re curious, we did hit summit!

I want to live in the city while I’m still relatively young. This way I can enjoy the walking to bars and stumbling home after. So is it bad when after a week of hitting happy hour almost every day, I start planning my happy hour at 1pm? Capitol Hill living is awesomely bad for my liver.

This Thursday my section is heading up for the Mount Baker climb. So far it looks like weather might be decent. Summer is crawling to Seattle this year.

I got moved to Section 2 from Section 1 because they had a couple people dropping from that section due to personal reasons, and since I was only tagging along for the last couple outings they figured it was easiest to move me. They asked me nicely, and I didn’t have any compelling reason to not switch aside from the weekend of the climb being a week later, so I told them I would switch.

Section 1 just did their summit attempt this weekend, and got turned back due to inclement weather.

I don’t think I can stomach training for a third attempt, so please please please let the weather be good on Mount Baker this weekend.

This is my second time, waiting for section 1 to come back with good news, and the second time that it didn’t happen. The first time was extremely heartbreaking with the death of a classmate. As I’ve said before, I didn’t know this classmate well, but I liked him instantly because he reminded me so much of my boyfriend, in mannerism and looks. When someone reminded you of someone near and dear, you feel bonded to them whether its reciprocated or not. I mourned his loss as someone near and dear. Though I did not know him well, I went to his funeral and wept my heart out.

This second time, I was glad that everyone made it home safely, I prayed for their safe return even though I’m not religious.

Either way, this is the week I’ve been training long and hard for. Even if we have to turn away from summit, I feel good that I’m pretty much in the best shape of my life. I feel very fortunate that I am in the position to have the time and support from loved ones to do this.

I almost didn’t hike up Si with 50lbs on Wednesday. My body rebelled. I had a stomach ache all morning. Then when I tried to get the pack on, it was pretty impossible for me to lift it from floor to back. I had to make sure the pack never touched the floor.

At home, I had to make sure the pack was sitting on the couch so I could back up into it. Soon as I clip the waist-band on, the weight is more manageable. Now, I said manageable, not lifted nor distributed beautifully, because oh god did it ever suck. I found a million little reasons why I had to skip the hike. Like, oh I could not find the tripod for my camera.

I had a very late start. On the drive there, the sky was dumping buckets of rain. It was raining so hard, people were driving 50 in a 70 mph zone to avoid hydroplaning. I kept thinking about how much more miserable the hike would be and maybe I should turn around…all the way to the trail head. Then at the trail head, I was thinking the rain was getting my socks too wet and this could lead to a nasty blister right before the big climb.

There was not a single step that I thought this could get easy with practice. But, each 0.5 mile markers went by and then it was the top. It has been so many months since I started training, but until I was at the top, I wasn’t sure if it was ever possible for me to carry close to 50 percent of my body weight up a mountain.

I’m glad I didn’t bitch out. We are leaving for the big climb is this coming Thursday, I’m more nervous over this than the LSATs.

The boyfriend had steak dinner planned out when I got back from the hike. We invited 3 guests over for dinner, but those 3 guests brought 3 guests, so we got to stress test our new place for entertaining people. Steaks were eaten, booze was drank, everyone had a great time.

I’m really loving the new home.

Mountaineering pictures often look so badass. Even my own mountaineering pictures, it looks like we are taking the mountain down and showing it who’s boss. The reality is so far from this image. Right off camera, I’m usually rocking myself madly and crying for my mommy.

Tomorrow, I will be carrying 50lbs up Mount Si. That’s close to 50% of my body weight, so you know, by virtue of being able to do this, I am a total badass. Right? Oh, how I wish.

I’ve seen other mountaineers train. They bounce past me with their five hundred pounds pack, long muscular limbs, bounding like graceful gazelles. Swooping down to pick up small children and elderly and carrying them up the mountain so we can all enjoy the view together.

I can be the next Bambi. Instead, I’m the neurotic hermit crab that chose a too big shell. Crawling along pitifully. Family walking by, poking it with a stick, “Is it still alive? Maybe it needs water, pour some water on it.” That just about sums up the pretty that is mountaineer me.

I’m still peeling too. Clumps of dead skin flaking off me. Every time I scratch my ears, a piece of skin sheds off. This is only after ONE day on the mountain. We are being warned that FOUR days will be that much worse. Places that we don’t even think of burning will burn. Like the inside of our noses. One suggestion is sticking a finger full of sunblock up the nose. Another is sticking a SPF Chapstick up there. Then, of course, the question is, do you carry two Chapsticks or just slum it up? There’s always the fear that you mix them up when oxygen deprived.

I love dogs. I would love to own a dog, but I really hate picking up and carrying dog poop. I hate it enough to never consider owning a dog until I have a giant yard with a corner set aside for doggie business. Still, people love their dogs enough to carrying some heavy bags of poop around. Guess who else carry poop around. Mountaineers! Yay! On mountains that are covered in snow all year round, human waste does not compost nicely into nature, it gets preserved for prosperity. So we get to bury it next to our tent like treasure than dig it up and carry it out like a prize we won.

The beauty of mountaineering is, despite all the less than glorious moments, the sum of the awesome will still come out so far ahead, that every moment leading up to the summit and back will be so worth it.

When I’m not complaining incessantly on this blog, I’ve been writing on my new blog. It’s a place where I complain about the process of becoming a lawyer.

It’s a goal of mine to learn how to write better, and as such, I want to be able to write more formally, with articles AND swearing only about half as much. I imagine the target audience to be other law students or law student hopefuls. My mental image of them is your average joe before their sense of humor is sucked out of them, but it’s starting to stifle a bit already. There’s a video game called “Bard’s Tale” where the game characters ask you questions and you have choices in response. It’s a bit like the old “Choose Your Own Adventure” books. The options are usually “snarky” or “nice”. I feel like in life, when given choices, I have my mouse pointer permanently over “snarky”. When talking to lawyer types, I have to shift my pointer over. But old habits die fighting, gasping, wheezing.

The new condo is coming together nicely, but we completely missed the mark when budgeting for window treatment. It’s costing us $3500 to dress all our windows, which is at least a grand more than budgeted. Oh, but it will be so pretty.

We bought some curtains from Bed Bath & Beyond and they are room darkening. There are two things wrong with the curtains.

One, they are ugly, the fabric feels stiff, and it’s just not sitting on the window well. It’s like me in a sack dress. I’m short and average build, not the thin and petite build. A sack dress makes me look fat and dumpy. So, I blame the curtains for making my windows look fat.

Two, the darkening works too well. Before moving in, I assumed that as the streets get busy during the day, the noise of other people going about their day will wake me up. It could be because the bedroom is set very far back or just high enough, but I don’t hear much. What little city noise I hear is actually soothing. With the lack of telltale light, I can sleep all day. It’s dangerous for productivity. Not to mention I might miss breakfast and elevensies, the most important meals of the day.