Black and blue

I bruise easily. (Ooh, that sounds like a song lyric. But then I'm probably mishearing the song in my head).

As a child, I wasn't a tomboy exactly, but I read a lot of books about tomboys and I wanted to be one. I used to play in trees, fall over quite a lot and be generally quite scraped. I also did up to 10 hours gymnastics a weel, including lots of bar work where I ended up with really quite bruised thighs. And really hard, calloused palms. I was also a tad, umm, reckless about my own personal safety, once nearly breaking my neck falling off the bars. I was convinced I was invincible, and so sported lots of cuts and bruises resulting from my daredevil antics.

Now I'm 24 and theoretically an adult people look at you funny if you climb trees. There are also less opportunities generally to extend the bounds of human capability in a bruising fashion - I don't ride a motorcycle - with all the health and safety regulations.

However, I still manage to end up with marks all over my body. Currently I have a welt on my hand, some scarring over my left fore-arm, a couple of scratches on my leg, one REALLY BIG bruise on my right thigh, and lots of little bruises which you can't really see but I know they are there.

Basically, I'm really quite clumsy. For a former gymnast, I am extremely accident prone, I stub my toes ALL THE TIME, I walk into things, I bang my head on car doors and I lift hot trays out of the oven without appropriate protective gear. I tend to scream and yelp when these things happen because it really, really hurts - even if only for a fairly brief period. I feel like hitting whoever is closest so they can see how much it hurts.

There isn't much I can do about most of this, it's just the way I am. A lot of the toe stubbing is done in the morning before I put my contact lenses in. But there is one thing I can change. For months I have been being stabbed all over my body by errant springs in my mattress - which I've had for about four years and was second hand to begin with. It is the source of most of my otherwise inexplicable injuries (the other is drinking injuries, which probably deserves a post in itself). I wake up extremely discomfitted, bruised, and tired. And apparently not sleeping enough makes you fat (some study I read the other day).

So, this weekend, I'm buying a mattress, I even spent about an hour lying on them the other day to see what me and HF liked the best.

Although, of course, it being from MFI, I probably won't actually get it for about 8 months).

I really hate MFI. I got the big bruise there when I walked between two ill-advisedly close bedsteads and smacked my thigh into the bedknob. Grr.

More on that story later.