No, I am not a battered woman.

A few weeks ago I got an itch for spring and summer clothes and picked up some cute dresses and shorts to wear for the next few months.

And then we moved to LA and joined a jiu jitsu club here and now there's this.

I have no fewer than 30 bruises on my legs at all times. Sometimes I have them on my hips, sometimes they're on my arms and wrists, and sometimes, on special days, my sternum get bruises.

How the hell do you bruise a sternum?

I started doing jiu jitsu in January in Kentucky. Well, actually I started it right before we moved back to Kentucky in 2009, but then when we got to Kentucky, guys were spastic and I didn't much feel like getting my arm broken by a scrawny guy's ego so I didn't go back to it. I'd only done about a month of training before we moved so it wasn't like I was abandoning a sport I loved.

In January, when Mack got back from his hiatus in Cali, he found an academy in Louisville that didn't stink, wasn't full of untrained assholes or women with tattooed throats, and wouldn't kill me with a warm-up built for Olympians. I decided to join, and whatever that gene is that made my dad a wrestling state champion when he was in high school flipped on.

So now I do jiu jitsu in LA, which is, as evidenced by the bruise count, way more intense than it was in Kentucky. My favorite part of class is when my Brazilian instructor (a guy who loves Elvis so much he made him the symbol for his academy... and a world champion) says "elbow" and "guys please."

And even though the bruises are gross, they're kind of awesome.