So I signed up for a half marathon and then promptly threw my back out while moving laundry from the washer to the dryer. I rested for a week, felt better, resumed training, and then threw my back out again- this time while digging through the hall closet in search of a new brush for my Clarisonic. Some might think the universe is trying to tell me something. I agree: J's in charge of laundry from now on, and a good old-fashioned washcloth is pretty good after all. 13.1 in 3 months!

On the eve of my 41st birthday, we decided to run to Target. It's never easy to "run" anywhere with the boys, so I sat on the couch and played 2048 on my phone while I waited for the boys to wrap up their Wii game and find their shoes.

I am a 2048 addict: I can usually hit 2048 about 25% of the time, so now the goal is to hit 4096. I've read online that it's possible, and while I'm sure that there's a way to determine mathematically whether or not it's really possible, I'm not smart enough for that so I just keep trying.

Eventually we left for Target, and in the car, I noticed a sharp pain developing in my left shoulder. It HURT. A LOT. By the time we reached the store, the pain had spread to my left elbow as well.

The boys looked at Lego's while I used my phone to Google heart attack and stroke symptoms in women. By the time we left Target, I was fairly convinced that I was on the Eve of my 41st birthday and having either a stroke or a heart attack. The pain was moving up the left side of my neck, in addition to my shoulder and elbow, and again, IT HURT.

During the drive home, I thought about the logistics: since we just have one car, maybe J should drop me off at the ER? What if it was nothing, and I was going to wind up with an expensive ER bill to remind me of my foolishness?

At home, I searched for aspirin in the cupboard. None. I swallowed two advil and then wondered if that was really the smartest thing if it was a heart attack or stroke. I decided not to Google it because what's done is done, and why freak out if turned out to be a bad thing to have taken?

I sat down on the couch so I could debate in my mind whether or not it was time to say something to J. Automatically, I reached for my phone and started playing 2048, the greatest game ever.

The pain. The sharpness. The location.

Wait, I was holding the iPhone in my left hand. At an angle so I could see the numbers and play my game.

So yeah, on the eve of my 41st birthday, I had pain from a repetitive stress injury caused my addiction to an iPhone game.

I blinked and the baby is now 4, and the toddler is now 6, and my loonnggg commute was every bit as miserable as I'd expected. Thanks to a reduction-in-force, my commute is now 10 minutes vs. an hour. I'm working at a new location, the boys are in school- pre-school and kindergarten, J is still mixing loud/angry punk bands, the cat died, the dog got fat, and I totaled my car. That about sums things up except that somewhere during the past 4 years, I also forgot that I started a blog.

A 10 week LOA goes by about as quickly as 1 day back at work, but at least I know that my pants will fit tomorrow.

We decided to treat the final 3 days as a vacation and ate out a lot, consumed too much ice cream, drove down to the IKEA in Tempe, and took the boys to the train park again. (IKEA used to seem so far away, but soon it will be just another piece of the scenery during my loonnnggg drive to work. Now that I've stopped counting down to the end-of-maternity-leave, I can start counting down to the start-of-my-new-position at the far, far, far away location. Five weeks to go...).

I also read Megan McCafferty's final Jessica Darling installation, Perfect Fifths. It wasn't the same- or as good as the other books in the series- or maybe I've changed too much to appreciate them. Spoiler alert: I really didn't want Jessica Darling and Marcus Flutie to end up together. And I skimmed the third of the book that was nothing but dialogue between Marcus and Jessica.

The baby just started crying. It's that time of night when he cries uncontrollably and I feel awful because there's nothing I can do except hold him very tightly and wait it out...

Maternity leave officially ended just under two weeks ago, and my post-maternity-leave vacation time runs out this weekend so it's back to work on Monday. Stress already settled in: the conflicted feelings over working full time, panic over whether or not I can meet expectations at work while balancing a newborn and toddler at home, separation anxiety from the new baby... I slept a total of 3 hours last night even though the baby slept a respectable 5 hours, then 3 hours.

Confession: part of my sleepless panic was worry over whether or not I have any work pants that will fit my post-pregnancy booty. I should probably check into that or else I could be wearing a maternity dress on my first day back, and I don't think even the cutest heels in the world will distract from the fact that it's a maternity dress.

Yesterday I nursed at a McDonald's in Ahwautukee. J reminded me of a study that showed kids liked most any food better if it came wrapped in McDonald's packaging- even vegetables like carrots and broccoli. He wondered whether or not Baby would like my breastmilk better when he nursed in McDonald's. I thought that perhaps I'd need to first tape a Big Mac wrapper to chest.

The best part of this ensemble is that he insisted on wearing it during a trip to Sears with Dad. I can no longer complain about the day he wore swim trunks to Target with me. A diaper hat definitely trumps swim trunks.