Climbing the walls


La Serpiente was sick today with a cough, so she spent the day driving my wife mental while I hid at work. She had recovered enough to go to her ballet class this afternoon, and to spend the evening fighting with her sister over Lego. So by 7:30, nerves were fraying and my wife was looking murderous. So rather than point out it was her turn to put the girls to bed, I did the sensible thing and took another turn at the helm.
This wasn’t hard. The hardest part was staying awake myself in a darkened room, after a long day and a short night. La Serpiente went down in the blink of an eye, while Destroyer kept pretending to go to sleep and then demanding that her mother brought her some water, like some ridiculous maternal butler. I left the room after twenty minutes without further complaints and went climbing.

On Saturday I was introduced to a wall of numbered holds, where if you start with your left hand on hold number 1 and your right on number 2, then you can’t move your right hand until your left is on 3, and then the right has to move to hold 4, then the left to 5, and so on, until you fall off. The first time I tried it I got as far as 5 and then fell off. The second time, I managed to get to 9, and the third time (yesterday) through luck and flailing I got to 10.

Today I made it as far as 18, after which my forearms felt as if they were twice their normal size, pumped up so much I couldn’t see my veins, and slick with sweat. And then I fell off, so I suppose that was that.

I only wanted to be away for an hour, and it’s about 15 minutes scootering from home to the wall, so after half an hour of hard work I washed the chalk off my hands and went home.

Our flat is both incredibly windy (as we’re on the top floor) and incredibly hot (because we’re in the tropics) so we seem to oscillate between too cold and too warm (punctuated by either windows or doors slamming because of the gusts of wind). The kids don’t get woken by this makeshift percussion so I suppose that’s alright.

Still, even in this whirlwind of madness, my wife has managed to unpack more boxes and luggage, and it feels like we’re close to being completely moved in. Or not in a place where the next time we move, there’s boxes that remain unpacked since two moves ago.


Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.