When you were seven, you thought you would have three children by the age of thirty. You thought 'nineteen' was old.

You are thirteen. Your favourite teacher sees you after school getting a snack on the street with your friends, tells you off for eating street food and then asks, "Marshmallow, when you are grown up, what do you want to be?". You think for a minute, then say, "Well, when I'm older, I want to be able to wear trainers every day because my mum tells me high heels hurt your feet." Your teacher laughs and says, "I guess that's a good place to start."

When you were seventeen, you thought you would have three children by the age of thirty.

You are nineteen. You visit your teacher in high school after graduation. She says, "It's great you look your age, everyone else who has visited was wearing so much make up it looked funny." You wonder whether it was natural to not have been wearing make up while everyone else clearly had been. You have not even met a boy you like enough to have a conversation longer than two minutes yet.

You are thirty. You go to a random party held by a distant acquaintance. A twenty year old thinks you are her new BFF after a brief conversation about her experience in Ghana as a summer intern. Your husband is at a bachelor party across town. You have no children yet. You meet single people, married people, dating people, young people, old people. You meet journalists, PR agents, lawyers, artists, politicians, lobbyists and writers. No one mentions your age. No one reminds you that you had an ideal image of what you were supposed to be when you were thirty.

You are thirty, living a life. A life that was not what you asked for, but what you have made. Your choices. Your ways. All on your time. You realize exploration of your identity and your ideas are still going on. Life does not stop at a set ideal or notion.

How can one not be intoxicated on a summer night such as this?

The subprime market shakeup led to a frenzy of work at the office. For those of you who haven't heard about this, basically mortgage companies woke up to the realization that the mortgages they've been giving out for free are actually things people have to pay off, and not many people could once the interest rates went up a teeny, weeny bit. This led to a general state of misery for the large banks on Wall Street who had been buying and selling these mortgages as if they were actually assets worthy of any value. So those investors who had been buying these things freaked out, and then everyone else started flaking too.

To keep it short, that had a direct impact on my workload for a while but I think now the Street (as they say) is either dead or people are holding their breath, the way victims do in horror films before they get slashed (as they inevitably do). So this week things quietened down noticeably.

Oh, to have so much free time! To be able to plan dinners and other activities! To breathe the air of a free man! It hasn't been this great since the Killers were labeled the best 'British' band from the U.S. Giddy with my regained freedom - punch drunk, almost, I must say - I agreed to a young colleague's suggestion that I enter a race.

Did I say race? I'm running 4 miles on April 29th, 2007 in Central Park for the Thomas G. Labrecque Foundation. This is what I have to run!


Of course, my humble aim is to merely finish the course, without feeling like I've been brought back from the dead afterwards. So wish me loads of luck everyone, I need it.

No, not my babies, not yet, anyway. I'm talking about my friends. It seems I am in the middle of a baby boom all by myself - or so I thought until I realized I am in my thirties, my friends are married, and for better or worse it is the natural course of married people to have children, as a general rule. So I've been seeing lots of baby clothes and toys - sadly, ineptly picked (I fear) and because I have never given thought to what would be needed in the event of babies entering into your life, it never occurred to me that anything other than clothes and toys would be useful (prams! bottles! discount diaper vouchers! and so forth).

The new parents at my office are divided into the ones who stumble across the corridors and mutter randomly, "I really need to sleep," and those who look cheerful and normal and say, "The baby is great, do you want to see pictures?" I am not sure what is different between the two groups. Is it because the latter group somehow stumbled on the shortcut to good parenting skills? What makes someone a good parent anyway? Who decides what this stuff is about? I have always thought it a natural event for MH and I to eventually have children. But it's funny that despite my acceptance of the idea to have children, I have no idea what I should be doing, or when we should be having them. Does anyone? I feel like I'm the one person in the office who didn't get the memo, so to speak. Perhaps all my concern is just a natural fear of the unknown and all I need to do is figure out how to eliminate at least a portion of the unknown.

Maybe it's not even that. Maybe the question should be, in a world where the population is projected to reach 9 billion and we are concerned about the use of the Earth's resources, should we even be thinking of having children biologically as opposed to adopting? And should I even be having these concerns before trying to become pregnant - touch wood, but the reality is there are people who have difficulty getting pregnant. And forget about looking after the baby - who said I'd make a good guide to life, a trusty parent?

I would love to ask people how they made the decision for when was right to have children. But at the same time, I know it's a personal decision - like being in love, it either fits or it doesn't. I guess that's one of the reasons why I struggle with it: I don't always trust my judgment in emotional matters.

Bah.

Maybe it would be an idea to have the pregnancy occur 'accidentally'.



Even seals are pupping.

Well, not really, but they were the highlight of my visit. Incredibly stinky though, and one of them peed into the ocean (shock, horror).

Perhaps wearing a skirt to work (albeit with long coat and boots) was not the best thing to do when the wind chill factor brings down the temperature closer to -11. I barely survived the walk into work.
"I cannot believe you are a wearing a skirt!" one of my female colleagues cried out when she saw me in the corridor.
"It's my way of saying f___ it to the weather," I said, shuddering inwardly at the memory of the chill wind around my knees earlier. Tomorrow I will most definitely wear trousers. With leggings.

I struggled home in the bitter harsh cold, past 10.30. MH is asleep. He always sleeps early. We joke in the family that this is why he keeps his youthful looks - he is very boyish still in his mid-thirties - but I think it is probably the truth. In the beginning I had a hard time adjusting to his sleep schedule and I recall getting up at 2 or 3 am because I had gone to bed too early for my body clock. Now the latest I stay up is around midnight. He is not very happy with me tonight because I came home late, after having drinks with colleagues, without having told him in advance. I don't know what happened to me today, usually I am very good about these things - I firmly believe that if you want your spouse to spend time at home you should set the example first - but today had been a really strange day at work. I was so lethargic, so unmotivated and not ready to plunge into conversations with bankers about their deals. Having a beer after work sounded like just the thing. Drinks on school nights are one of those rash but liberating ideas.

I had left a new beef stew on the stove in the morning and MH was at home finishing it off by himself while I was out. When I came home I tried not to hug him too hard because I knew he would smell the alcohol on my breath (why is it that just two beers will make you stink like you've been swilling it all night?). MH muttered something about not spending time with him. Poor dear. I wonder what he thought of the beef stew. He may be a bit sulky tomorrow. I will hug him later when I go to bed and hope he isn't too upset with me.