YakTrax

Behold, my beloved YakTrax!! My mom got some as a gift from a friend, and she gave them to me. You put them on kind of like socks - the wire-wrapped rubber is on the sole of your shoes, and there are little lips that come up and secure around the heel and toe of your shoes. With these YakTrax, I can run on hard-packed snow and ice - no probs. They are AMAZING. They don't really help with deep snow, but since Idaho roads are ice-block roads for the majority of the winter, they are perfect.

My 12-day pass at my parents' gym expired (sniff), so I hit the road again to do some jogging on Monday, and DANG. I hadn't run for two weeks - I wanted to take advantage of all the spinning/water aerobics/boogaloo classes, plus the gym's amazing elliptical machines, while I had the chance. My run on Monday was tough stuff. Mainly because of my extremely overactive uterus.

My uterus is a type-A personality. As soon as it figures out I'm pregnant, it cracks its knuckles, rolls up its sleeves, and says, "Let's do this thing." And it blows up quickly. I swear it feels like a canteloupe already in there. One day, I could wear my pants. The next day (when I was only five weeks along), I couldn't. I'm currently wearing old jeans from my heavier days - I'm trying to put off the maternity clothes action for as long as possible. Actually, in reality, I usually wear jammie bottoms when I'm in my house. I throw on jeans for my short forays into the frozen tundra to buy cheese and take Sadie to preschool.

When the babies come out, my uterus again cracks its knuckles, rolls up its sleeves, and says, "Operation deflate is currently underway." And that uterus of mine clenches and twists and gets smaller and smaller at an alarming rate, causing much wailing and knashing of teeth on my part. It's painful. Actually WORSE than labor pains, if you can imagine that.

So on Monday, when I took my six-weeks-along self to go jogging, it felt like there was a basketball being dribbled on my bladder. That was trippy. And not in a good way. So yesterday, I just speedwalked for an hour instead of jogging for half an hour. I hope that's kind of equivalent.