battle wounds.

first thing you need to know: i like bruises. 
second thing you need to know: i'm pretty much incapable of telling stories without taking the Ted Mosby approach. they're lengthy, they're detailed-but i assure you it only improves the story. also, my mom has always told me i'm the best story-teller she knows. and come on. every compliment a mom gives is pretty much factual. so you can take that to the bank. (but seriously, i have no real performing talent. so i've always embraced this "talent" my mom always told me i had. so deal with it.)

when i was 19, i moved to Provo, UT to go to cosmetology school. i was living with my best friend, Brittany. aside from her, i only knew 2 other people in the whole city and i was sort of completely unsure of how the whole "make friends" thing happened in a college town that big. the college i had attended the year before boasted a student population of about 700 (yes, hundred) and the town it was in was home to less than 7,000 people. friendships just fell into your lap at that school. and that was sort of convenient and nice. Provo, home of Brigham Young University (student population: 34,000) had a city population of nearly 118,000 at the time i was there. the only thing falling into my lap in Provo would be some sort of bird excrement. or snow. always snow.

so i relied on my best friend to introduce me to her friends. she had already been living in Provo for two years so she was my go to person for friends and things to do. sorry, brit. i'm sure that was annoying. 

through her, i met a group of guys who were fantastically hilarious and lots of fun to hang out with. they would throw us in the backs of their cars and drive us into the mountains and build fires for us to roast hotdogs and marshmallows on. it was pretty sweet. 

one day, after school, brittany and our friend jordan (one of the aforementioned boys we were pals with) invited me to join them in a trip to...something/somewhere. i don't really remember where we were going, but they were in a hurry.

so much of a hurry that there was no time for brittany to get out of the front seat of jordan's jeep to slide the seat forward and allow me to climb into the back.

so much of a hurry that i was required to climb up and over the jeep and launch myself into the back through the roof area. like some sort of vandal. 

at the same moment i propelled myself in a downward motion towards the back seat, jordan began to drive. (again, we were apparently in a rush to get to this place i can't recall.) the combination of my self propelled movement, jordan's forward movement of the car and the fact that i was in one of the more awkward positions of my life resulted in me landing, abruptly and haphazardly. right on top of the click in portion of a seat belt (does that have a name?). luckily i had my thigh to break my fall.

i remember laughing really hard. mostly because i was in a funny position. partially because when i'm in a lot of pain, i laugh. 

(so child birth should be a real gas.) and i was in a lot of pain. shooting, throbbing, burning pain went down my thigh and somehow i managed to rip my jeans.

brittany and jordan thought i was being slightly dramatic. until this bad boy showed up. 

let's not talk about how tan i once was. it's depressing.

and it hung out on the side of my thigh for a number of days. this was actually taken as it was on the mend. seriously. that bad boy was pretty  dark and gruesome for a while.

i knew a girl named adrienne. she and i were pals. but not the kind that hung out. she wanted to change this. (because obvi.) and she proposed it with this comment, "we should be the kind of friends that do things together." 

since i love a good bruise story and was thoroughly obsessed with my thigh shiner, i responded to her by saying, "i think we should be the kind of friends that talk about bruises." 

i think i dropped my pants to show her my bruise at that point. i don't recall. but yes, my bruise solidified our friendship and yes, she and i are still friends today.

up until that point, that bruise from jordo's car was the biggest i could remember having.

let's jump forward a few years.

i was brand new married. i was working at jenny craig. i was mostly the receptionist but i also did things like stock the food and clean and break down boxes and run around getting/doing things for the  other employees. let's just call a spade a spade. i was nothing short of a servant. but whatever. the dress code at jenny craig was "business casual". which is just a weird, nebulous declaration of style if you ask me. it just sounds like the mullet of wardrobes. (business in the front, party in the back. you catch my drift?) anyways, i often found myself unsure of how to dress for that job. technically i was the receptionist and the first person people saw as they walked in. but i was also the newly hired girl who did e'rythang..like scrub the toilet. more often than not, i wore my "business casual" outfit with a pair of vans. it was just easier to get things done and to move around if i wasn't wearing heels. and i don't own a pair of dainty flats because..umm..have you seen my legs?

one morning i guess i was feeling fancy. or something. and i decided to wear heels. i seriously don't know why. maybe one of our corporate people were coming? it doesn't matter, all that matters is that i came to know my way around that building standing at about 5'3 (since the vans give just a teensy bit of height). that day i was probably 5'6-7 ish? which meant everything felt differently. the sink in the bathroom was so much lower. my chair at my desk was so much farther down. i didn't have to climb on the shelves to get some stuff down from the back. and the soft, side portion of my thigh was now at the perfect level to bump into the sharp, rigid portion of a table i had to walk by about 200 times a day. and i pretty much did bump into. a lot. i didn't bump into very hard though, and a lot of the time i would do a sweet swerve motion at the last second to move around it. nothing painful.

until i went to go unlock the door (that had to be locked if there was only one employee in there) for my co-worker who was coming back from a quick bank trip. seeing her at the door, i ran to unlock it and let her in. but this time, in my abrupt forward motion, i slammed so freaking hard into the side of that table, i fell over and had to crawl to the door to unlock it. (in no way was this embarrassing/humiliating/pathetic.) 

again, i couldn't help but laugh. i knew i looked like an idiot. but seriously, it hurt so bad. within a matter of minutes i had a bruise forming on my outer hip/thigh area.

it was roughly the size of my palm and it lasted for at least a solid month. the morning after it happened, my alarm clock went off, i stood up from my bed and fell over again because my entire left leg was aching. for a few days i was forced to limp. which made for awesome conversation.  and me showing a lot of people who probably didn't care to see that much of my thigh. 

at any given moment, i have at least three bruises on me. and if i'm lucky, i can remember where one of them is from. i bruise like a peach (what's more vulnerable than a peach?! name that movie.) and it's hard to keep track of every bump in my day to day life. 

(last story, i promise.)

saturday afternoon was a beautiful day. garrett and i watched General Conference from home and kept the front and back doors open and let the perfect spring breeze blow through the house. when the front door is kept open, gilly is either put on an extended leash-esque contraption that lets her wander around our front porch/yard but keeps her from running into the street to chase a squirrel-or a baby gate is put up and she just lays inside the house in the sunlight that pours in.

after conference, i told garrett to come with me to take pictures for my Firmoo Glasses post. overestimating my ability to step over the baby gate, i threw one leg over and, naturally, my back leg got caught. it was all very fast but i essentially jumped a bit (fromt he shock of having my foot caught and in an effort to release it at the same time) i tripped on the welcome mat outside our door and i fell. so hard. it was like i had jumped up and then landed on my hands and knees. the gate came crashing down and i didn't move. i just remained, braced on my hands and knees, and tried to figure out what i wanted to do more-laugh or cry. i honestly did laugh for a short second. but, like a little kid who takes cues from his parents, i followed suit with garrett's emotions and when he came running up to me asking if i was okay, i felt my body giving way to the cry option more than the laugh. i fought it. because i know i must have looked hilarious. and guys, my glasses flew off my face and slid across my porch. that's rich. but for whatever reason, despite how badly i wanted to laugh (and how much i can laugh about it now) i cried. my hands, my knees, my shins, my shoulders, they all hurt. but i was over it in a few minutes and garrett and i were laughing about it by the end of our photo shoot.

my knees (and also my shoulders-from bracing my fall) have been achey since saturday evening. but there was no knee bruise. until  yesterday, as i was doing yoga, i realized kneeling was hurting a lot more than it was before. i pulled up my pant leg and there it was. a budding bruise for me to write and tell stories about.

i can pretty much guarantee this guy will be hanging out on my knee cap for some time. 

also, as a side note: it's really hard to take a picture of your knee without it looking like a Thnee, which, as you may have guessed, is the upstairs neighbor to the Cankle. 

that's all for today. sorry it was a long post. 

but they were good stories, right?

just say yes.

love,

kate.

lyrics: i swear i didn't mean for it to feel like this, like every inch of me is bruised