The Day an Entrenching Shovel Hit Me in the Face

Some days you feel like a badass after a great day of climbing. Some days you get a shovel to the face. And sometimes, just sometimes, those two days are one in the same.

Let’s go back to December 10, 2018…

So there I am, feeling pretty successful after about four hours of climbing in beautiful Mount Lemmon. It was Colin and my first time climbing in a month, it felt good, and we were wrapping up the day. I was packing up the van and I’m pretty sure I was telling Colin how proud I was of us or something when WHACK! out of nowhere, something big, heavy, and HARD hit me in the face.

Let’s see that again in slow motion.

Shocked, I held my face a bit and looked around to find the culprit. What did I see sitting at my feet but our very own entrenching (aka poop) shovel, described by Amazon itself as having “heavy duty steel construction” and a “serrated edge to help break hard surfaces”. LIKE MY FACE. As I came to learn, our poop shovel had been sitting on top of one of the boxes on the bed. When I grabbed the box to put it in the garage (our under-the-bed storage), the shovel slid right off and conked me on the money maker.

Colin came running over and asked if I was ok. I asked, “It’s not bleeding, is it?” More of a hopeful question than anything… He replied that, yes, I was indeed bleeding and let’s get me cleaned up. Upon seeing blood drip from my face, something released inside me and I started to cry – quite a lot.

Accurate.

Colin cleaned me up as I was showcasing ugly crying at its finest. All the while, he was trying to determine if my injuries matched my level of crying, because if so, they must have been pretty serious (spoiler alert, they didn’t match up). If you ask him, Colin would say that there were more tears shed than blood and I have to say… he’s right.

Now, I feel it’s important to note that our poop shovel never actually comes in contact with poop. Dirt, rocks? Yes. Poop? No. Its purpose is to dig holes and fill them up again. It does the job quite well as it is undeniably sturdy, which is normally a good thing… unless it’s falling down on your face, of course.

All was not lost though. That night, Colin and I went to Outback Steakhouse. For van lifers who cook nearly all of our own meals, I have to tell you, this was a treat (we had gift cards, like the ballers we are). We even got dessert. To really make the most out of it though, we brought in the laptop, downloaded movies off their wifi, and played a few games of Backgammon over a bottle of wine. I guess what they say is true: behind every poop-shovel-to-the-face is a silver lining.

poop shovel face
A+ Trooper 

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