I can see my body transforming before my eyes. A month of intense Bootcamp exercise classes every M-W-F has made a major difference in my body and mind. I not only feel stronger, but I am stronger. After the first week I could already do things I couldn't do at first.



My curves are coming back, being chiseled away by countless lunges, squats, push-ups. I looked at myself in the mirror naked for the first time in a while getting out of the shower and I was so amazed at what I saw I stopped and just stood there for a while. I was shrinking! There was more definition between my butt and the top of my thigh. The bulge of my stomach was going down. And then I saw something that really freaked me out. My scars were moving! The physical landscape of my body was literally changing!



Right before i found out I was pregnant with the twin I had several moles removed on my abdomen and the stretching of my stomach during pregnancy really did a number on the healing of the dark circles of new skin. my son always pokes at the dime and nickle sized spots and says, "Boo Boo?"



So when I noticed they were suddenly more toward the middle of my body than to the side, i was shocked! I am shrinking! My stretch marks were moving, coming closer in together. Soon they will meet up in the middle of my stomach and what will happen then? I am no rooking in the stretch mark department, I've had them my whole life, but I have never seen them move! Now, if I could only make them disappear, but really, who cares? I kinda like my war wounds!

How many diapers can one person changes in a day? How long before my trash can doesn't smell like shit, no matter how many time you take it out in a day? Will my counter top ever be clear of bottle parts, sippy cups, sticky spots? Its like a reality show gone wrong; how long will Leah last before she trips and busts her ass on all the toys covering the floor???



Most days I am good at being a Super Mom, but some days I just want to beat their ass and cry with them. When all three are going at the same time and I know there is no relief pitcher coming to step up to the plate anytime soon, I wonder what the hell I got myself into.

Is the grass always greener on the other side? Do we always want what we can't, shouldn't have? Are memories sometimes sugarcoated, sucking us back into old patterns because we forget quickly lessons learned.

What is old is new again. Cycles of new life and the retired dead follow my thoughts like a determined stalker, my mind is never alone long. Can going backwards ever move us forward?

I feel like a generic version of Carrie on Sex and the City without the intrigue of sex posing all these questions. I'm going to stop now.

Break out the hot rollers and hair spray. Black dresses and suits, jackets and shoes. There's been a death in the family and we put on the front there is fun in funerals. Shopping sprees, as if I have the time, money, or energy to show myself in pubic. I have a medicine head, sinuses all stopped up, chest on fire. Forcing shallow bursts of ogygen just to the surface levels of my lungs requires too much effort. Sometimes I wish I were a computer and someone would turn me off. Or I could just spontaniously shut down. Maybe that's what happens when we died, we've finally taken enough shit in this life tiem and the mother board fizzles out fast and we finally meet our maker.


I long for a deep breath. A laugh that did not bring on bouts of coughing that sounds more like a barking fit. I used to get sent out of classrooms for coughing like this. It's a family trait, one of the many I wish I did not inherit.



Families are funny things. Your tied to them in a genetical sense that you technically have soem of the same genetic make-up to your blood. But how much does blood bond people? Does it tie us together for eternity, a lifelong witness to our sins, stories, sadness, success?

The memories bond us in insignifigant ways, flashes of an already old man enjoying life from his recliner. I am not ready physically or emotionally for a funeral tomorrow. I don't even want to eat all the fattening food that will be present and mess up my hard work at bootcamp. I miss the sweat. I want to get back to my summer of sweat where my body is what is crying and in pain, not my heart.

Summer of Sweat

There are splatters and droplets of blood on my tennis shoes. I watch the sweat drip from my nose and fall on the dirty mat, mixing with the filth of the person before. I push harder. I grow stronger, I can feel it. That's what the burn means, the progress of pain.



We are on day 3 of Bootcamp. I close my eyes and lean my head involuntarily towards the sun. For the first week of July, the 70-80 degree low humitity weather is more than luck, its a sign. I can do it. I am doing it. I kick it up a notch and force my knees higher, squat lower, punch harder, jog faster.



Blood sweat and tears.

'The summer of sweat', my husband and I named it. I could cry now from being so happy and sad at the same time, blessed beyond believe my life has turned out the way it has. Stressed from the wearing down of the back to back to back doctors appointments, co pays and perscription refills all summer. We've spent more time packing, preparing, traveling, journeying through the labryth of hospital hallways and medical building bathrooms, waiting rooms, and parking garages than I ever cared to know about any of those thngs. After x-ray treats, surprise outpaitent toys and books and stickers.

Children's hospitals have got to be soem of the most depressing places in the world. They make you feel thankfukl the only thing wrong with your kids are a bone infection in Bryce's spine, Carly's thrush, and Alyssa's vesicourteral reflux, fancy medical terms for her urine flowing bacwards from her bladder back into her kidneys resulting in urinary tract infections.

Life is good today. Burn baby burn.