By Mary

You know that first day of the year that it’s really warm and sunny out, when winter ends with a sort of shocking, unbelievable glory and everyone sort of stumbles outside shielding their eyes from the sun as if we just dodged an apocalyptic encounter with an asteroid? When really, it’s just that everyone’s given up the hope of ever having sunshine warm their pallid skin ever again, but here it is, the SUN, my GOD the SUN!? It happened here in the Twin Cities, and then it happened several more times, enough for us to think that it’s safe to lug all our woolen winter crap to the basement. Which, of course, is just asking for an April snowstorm.

The groundhog doesn’t mean so much here. Rather, we watch for some jackass to go outside in shorts to mow his flattened, sad little lawn when it’s 40 degrees out, his blinding-white little chicken legs for all to see. I love that guy. The sight of that guy means spring has sprung.

Other than that guy, it suddenly seems like there are hot guys everywhere. Handsome fellows who have been holed up in their apartments (apparently doing push-ups, because damn) are out on every trail and bike path. Likewise, thus begins what my husband calls leg season. It’s not so much that women are wearing anything extra skimpy. It’s that when women have been covered from head to toe in shapeless layers for so long, there’s a moment of Woah when they’re suddenly out jogging in shorts. And everyone’s in a good mood. There’s something about the quality of sunlight that makes people look like they’re almost glowing from the inside.

So it’s time to pump up the bike tires and go find the roller blades and reinstate the fantasy that I’ll run into Josh Hartnett on a jog around Lake Calhoun. He’ll invite me to his lakeside mansion and fall hopelessly in love with me and I’ll have to turn him down on account of the husband, but maybe we’ll fly to Milan together for a few days first. Which is okay since Josh is on the list of Ten Famous People I Get a Free Pass For (Should the Opportunity Arise) that my husband has agreed to on the condition that I agree to his list too. (Alyssa Milano*? Seriously?)

I have to confess, though, that despite the sunny awesomeness, I have not been very good about meeting workout goals lately. If you read my first post-partum post, you may remember that I asked all of you to please yell at me like a middle school gym teacher if I started to slack. Welp. I have slacked. You may start throwing tomatoes.

Okay, maybe tomatoes is extreme. I’m doing a good job of beating myself up about this all on my own, actually, so rather than yelling, you might want to say something nice and encouraging like “Returning to work after a baby is hard. You have to re-work your schedule yet again, and it’s okay to mess up sometimes. Just start again and it’ll be okay.” That would probably be more effective.

I have plenty of lame excuses for this, of course, and I swear I’m going to get back on track right NOW. (I did a 5k “jog”  today. How many calories does barfing up a lung burn?) But man, I’ve been very busy pulling my hair out lately. Maternity leave ended March 1, and I didn’t expect work to get so busy so quickly. I’m glad work is busy—I worked really hard for this overbooked problem, actually. But I need to shift things around and find a way to get out there again.

Meanwhile, I unearthed my pre-pregnancy work clothes and HA! Nothing fits. I’m within 10 pounds of pre-pregnancy weight, but I’m also shaped differently and all soft, so nothing fits at all. So new plan is this: I need to get in shape for rowing season, which is just around the corner. And when I do, I’m going to take some of the money I earn this spring and go shopping. I’m not sure what I’m going to wear to work in the mean time. Maybe Josh Hartnett will loan me his credit card while we’re in Milan. 

*I’ll just say this now so Scott doesn’t bug me to change it later: I’m kidding, everyone. My husband doesn’t really like Alyssa Milano, he likes Tina Fey, who is smart and funny and a writer who has cute glasses. 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 30th, 2010 at 8:45 pm and is filed under Blogs, Stretch Pants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.