Here’s the deal: I work at being a fit and healthful individual, because it gives me energy to live inside my life. But let me be frank. I do not run marathons. I have never been a muscle junkie. And no one could ever accuse me of looking malnourished. (I will forever be in love with butter and chocolate malts.)

I am happy, healthy, and have no qualms about being solidly average sized.

But after I learned about the twins, one of my first thoughts (after the initial holy-crap-we-need-two-of-everything-freak-out week) was, I better start lifting weights – now.

This is tricky though. I’ve taken a hiatus from teaching group fitness (instructing Pilates with a belly full of twins? No, thank you.) I’m not training for a backpacking trek, and my personal hand weights are wasting away next to my painting smock in some improperly labeled box in the basement. So I’ve had to come up with a new routine.

Enter: The fitness center at my workplace. Because everyone loves sweating to the 80’s with their coworkers in the middle of the day.

But if I want to get any exercise, this is the only “free” time in my schedule to do it. So, I dutifully pack my gym bag 2-3 times a week, walk circles around the gym like a lab rat on autopilot, and then lift weights.

Anyway, here’s the best part of the story.

On this particular day, I got warm enough to want to shower after my walk, so I grabbed a couple of gym towels and headed down to the locker room after my work out. Notice I say two towels. Just to be safe. 17 weeks is no joke this time around – at this point I am already rocking a sizable girth.

I got undressed, and proceeded to try wrapping one towel around my hips, and one over my top. Except that neither of them were now big enough to close around my newly grown belly. So there I stood, mostly uncovered save for two postage stamp towels, surveying the 20 foot distance from the lockers to the showers. It may as well have been a football field.

As grace would have it, the room was empty. So I took a deep breath, grabbed my clean clothes, and made a beeline for the shower with my hind end flapping in the breeze.

Apparently, I need to start packing my beach towel in my gym bag.