It's Only a Flesh Wound

I came back from a day hike with my dad and had some scratches all over my leg and a giant bruise. I jammed my leg into a rock, and tangled with a small pine tree while doing some scrambling. My daughter saw it (it was a lot bloodier when she saw it, the photo was taken post clean up) and said, "Mommy, you come back from all your adventures with boo boos." Yup, that's me. Super clumsy.

My mother always used to call me Calamity Jane because if there was a table to be run into, or a bottle to knock over, I'd be the one to do it. But since I've gotten more adventurous, my injuries have become more frequent (thankfully I've never broken anything more than a toe). In Costa Rica, I ended up with a third degree burn on my leg from an ATV. While hiking in Virginia with my brother, I stumbled off of trail, landed on some rocks and my ankle got all swollen and I had a nice abrasion from wrist to elbow. I went for a bike ride near my friend Maryanne's house and ended up falling and scraping up my leg and arm (same arm as during hiking)! I got a nice gouge in my leg from my 100 mile bike ride. In addition to the bump this weekend, I also slammed my little toe into a rock during my triathlon and maybe broke it, but at the very least cut it open so it was bleeding (didn't notice until after I completed my race). And that's not even counting all of the bumps and bruises that are constantly covering my legs and arms. Sometimes I feel like I'm dressing like an Amish person, in order to cover my assorted injuries at work.

But again, while I'm always a little bit banged up, I've been extremely lucky to only have surface wounds. Some of them hurt more than others, and some of them really sucked, but they all healed up in time (though I've still got a couple lasting scars). It's probably a bad sign that my 6-year-old, who freaked when I came home from Costa Rica with a giant burn on my leg, has just started writing off these flesh wounds as normal, but at least she knows her mommy is made of some pretty tough stuff and that a few little bangs aren't going to slow me down (or not for long, anyway).