Why I Need To Hire Smokey The Bear As My Gym Trainer.

Watching my body adjust to postpartum life has been like a ten week walk through funhouse mirrors. My fat cells can't quite decide where to settle, so they spend a week in my stomach, then down to my ass, around to the thighs, with a few lone explorers checking out the living conditions of my upper arms.

When I started working out again, Chris begged me, in quite the Sir-Mix-A-Lot fashion, to "please don't lose that butt". I've always been blessed in the booty department, but things have gotten a little out of hand lately. Out of two hands, actually. I have a spare tire, all right. Only it's not in the normal spare-tire-around-the-midsection locale. I couldn't get the metaphorical spare tire up over my birthing hips, so there my fat rests, in thighs and ass.

I hadn't paid much mind to it until last week, when I did quite a bit of walking around. I had chosen to wear a skirt that day, which made me feel pretty and ladylike... until I was actually in pain from my thighs rubbing together when I walked. By the time I got home, I'm not kidding you, I had two red patches on my inner thighs from the skin-to-skin contact.

"Chrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrris!" I squealed. "You're not gonna believe this. It's worse than my ass almost bouncing me off the treadmill."

"Uh-oh," he said, knowing that he was crossing into dangerous territory.

"LOOK!" I screamed, spreading my legs and pointing. He raised an eyebrow. "NOOOOOOOO NO NO NO, not that! Here!" I shouted, showing him the silver-dollar sized rashes on each inner thigh.

"What... the... hell?" he asked, suspiciously.

"I got these FROM WALKING! My damn thighs are rubbing together so bad that I got a rash! I'm just lucky the friction didn't start a forest fire!!!"

"Yeah," he said, a smirk sliding across his face. "Literally."