Sit[ing] Right Down and Write[ing] Myself a Letter

Dear Anna from-a-week-ago,

Hey! Long time, no time-traveling letter!! Good to be writing you from where I sit on your future Sunday night. I just wanted to drop you a note to let you in on a secret that you might not know yet...

You're pregnant. Which means you've got a lot going on, you know, inside. And that means that you should consider, maybe, not doing so much on the outside. Want to review? Let's see what you have scheduled for the upcoming week:

Monday- 4 mile run, day with the in-laws
Tuesday- 12 hour work day (!!)
Wednesday- 3 mile run, then class, then dinner with friends, then a fundraiser
Thursday- 9 hours of work followed by a 3 mile run
Friday- 5 loads of laundry, 3 hours in a car, 2 mile run
Saturday- 6 hours of work, 3 hours in a car
Sunday- 6 volunteer hours at a water station, 3 year old birthday party, family dinner

And guess what? On Sunday night (that would be tonight) you are so tired you just cry for a few hours. Your throat hurts, your head is pounding, your feet could fit into your husbands shoes, and you're d.o.n.e. I'm not saying you should do anything differently in these next 7 days... I'm just sayin', maybe think about scheduling more couch-time. K? Thanks.

Sincerely,
Anna from-a-week-from-then

Week 21

It's finally summer! I finally ran a 5k again! People on the street are finally realizing there's a baby in there (not just too much cheese)!!

And I'm about to take a cold shower, because, dang, it'll feel beautiful. More later.

Flowers for Anna-non

In school, "Flowers for Algernon" was one of my favorite short stories. I have always been a sucker for using text and punctuation to relay information beyond words.

Having this second baby is a lot like living through that story, physically. I started out slow and fat, got really lean, really fast, ran a marathon at the peak of my training and coasted along for a while. But now I'm at the part where I'm watching everything start to fall apart. My body is pooching out in different places (totally healthy, I know). One by one my pants are getting put in a box... along with old race shirts in the Small and Medium range. My splits have gone from 10's to 12:30's to lucky-if-I-finish-a-5k-in-less-than-45-minutes.

And today I went for a walk. I never intended to break into a run- I dressed for, and prepared for, a walk. Sigh. Super-sigh. Luckily, I keep remembering that this isn't permanent. But it's just such a weird feeling to be getting slower, and bigger, and to be running shorter distances. The backwards feeling is undeniable.

I know "Flowers for Algernon" is more about mentally disabled people than the glib problems of being a slower runner. But each time I look at a positive split (for you non-runners, that's a bad thing) or see the walk-breaks getting more frequent, I can see what's coming up, and it's not easy for me to be ok with it.

Please don't read this as me not being insanely happy for everything else that's going on in my life right now- the world is doing amazing things for us- I really couldn't be asking for anything else. I've prayed and hoped and waited for this exact time of my life for SO LONG that it's weird that I'm even registering this as a disappointment.