out of our skulls. my dad always told me as a kid that boredom is a state of mind. if we’re bored it’s just because we’re not creative enough (read: too stupid) to come up with something to do. and then he or my mom would threaten us with dreaded chores like cleaning out the laundry room. i sometimes tell my kids the same thing these days. but, there is a limit to a person’s motivation and ingenuity i think. and we have been pushed over the line. we’ve played games and gone to museums and gone shopping and watched movies and read and played on our iwhatevers and had plank contests and played games and…..

yesterday was supposed to be our first climbing day on north mountain at hueco. such high hopes and excitement have been carrying us through almost this entire past year thinking about it. such a list of problems to start working! instead we have been stuck in el paso, in horribly cold weather (for climbing) waiting for the heavens to spew forth its frozen havoc and shut everything down. the heavens remain heavy and gray but dry and silent; and if this was our only worry, i probably wouldn’t feel so beat down right now. i wouldn’t feel beat down right now because we would be putting our stuff back in the van to spend a chilly day at hueco and camping in the van tonight. finally using our heater. finally surrounded by rocks and not strip malls. finally doing what we drove all this way to do. it’s not just the weather though. we’re all in various stages of a nasty cold. oren has had it since before we left. seb contracted it within the first day or two in the van. and now i feel it coming on, crouching in the back of my throat.

today was to be our second day on. a day when we would start feeling really good and rejuvenated from the rest we took last week. going back to climbs we started working on yesterday and maybe ticking them off. instead, we’re stuck in el paso, stuck in our room trying to give the poor sick people a good solid rest today in hopes that we’ll wake up tomorrow ready to bound out the door and go climbing. stuck and bored out of our skulls.

the only thing keeping me from curling up in a fetal position and weeping is this: monday, november 25, sunny, high of 49. one more day in limbo, and it almost seems to good to be true.

Posted on November 24th, 2013