Last night, I turned up at the climbing wall, which was hopping. Lots and lots of people, and while the routes are really nice ones, they tend to cross each other. This means that Jeff could have fallen right on my poor head when I was top-roping a 10a and he was leading an 11c/12a (which reminds me of a funny, near-death story involving my friends climbing in Wales, and one suicidal sheep). If that had happened, it would have been my fault for not taking a pause, grabbing onto a quickdraw, and keeping out of harm’s way in case he fell, which is what I did.

I didn’t do much climbing. I’m a lot weaker than I used to be. It’s like Flowers for Algernon.

On the ground, I tried to give Natalie a mint while she belayed Ji. The Tic-Tac fell, and Natalie’s bare foot flashed out to cover it. “Five second rule!” she cried.

I was scandalized. “Not on this floor, and not when you’ve just put your foot on the mint!”

The math is simple. Chalk-covered, black rubber-scuffed floor + sweaty foot recently crammed into a climbing shoe= rapid cancellation of the five-second rule.

Natalie and I then had a discussion about how there are five-second rules, and five-second rules. A grape on your kitchen floor? Sure. A grape on a NYC sidewalk? No way. A grape on the floor of a public bathroom? Never!

In other news, we finish watching Mean Girls in my creative writing class. Very fun. Even better, astronomically better, is that I just found out that one of my dear friends, Tiffany, is flying from Vancouver to meet me in L.A. at the end of May. Hurrah! We’re going to try to go to the beach. Lovely, lovely.