Doesn't even stand a chance.

This is my lunch box. Usually, each morning, Ben packs a lunch in it with pride. Lately, each morning, I pack a lunch in it with haste. This week, its contents are lucky if they make it till noon. I'm amazed at how constantly hungry I've been this week. I'd call it embarrassing, but I'm trying to discover a mental cave to go to where I say to myself, "Who cares? I'm married and pregnant, who'm I trying to impress?" It is this mental cave that allows me to leave the house each morning in pants with large, wide elastic bands at the top and frumpy-feeling shirts that tie in the back, with seams just below my boobs. There is no such thing as stylish maternity clothing- it's all a lie. And there's no such thing as race weight when you're 5 months pregnant. Time to suck it up.

Ben returns home tonight. I hope he doesn't hate me for the new frumpy clothes. We have some Rad Plans for the weekend which I'm excited about. Saturday we're riding trail with a nicely sized group of nice people. Only, I loaned my Spot to teammate Ariel for Dirt, Sweat, and Gears, so I had to borrow a bike to ride Sat... and Jen offered up her Juliana. When I picked it up last night, Jen handled the issue of pressure in the rear shock as delicately as you could imagine-- pointing at the weight-to-pressure chart and saying "I'm not sure what you need..." and I just came out and said, "I'm there," pointing at a weight that usually would send me off on a 10 mile tempo run. Either way, Saturday will be first soft-tail ride ever. I really hope I don't like it, though one can't really judge how much they like a bike (or its suspension) when carrying 10 extra pounds and pregnant, I've decided. But riding a Santa Cruz will no doubt result in me randomly shouting out, "and it's Steve Peat!!!"

Then Sunday we welcome home a woman I've missed very badly in the last few months- Audrey. If you're free, why not come join in? It's been a long, cold, pizza-lacking, random-bits-of-Chicago-architectural-history lacking winter without her. I have designs in my mind of making an absurd cake for the occasion, but we'll have to see if reality will allow it to happen.