Fifteen more hours of on call and then I'm on maternity leave! I waver between finding this ridiculous and feeling that it's actually about time: on one hand, I'm still chipper and energetic most of the time and The Company could get another couple of weeks' work out of me; on the other, I'd prefer to spend these days walking a lot and taking naps instead of sitting in an office chair and defending my belly on the subway at rush hour. On the other other hand, I have to go find food for myself now? What do people eat when they don't have five Google cafeterias and a coffee bar catering to their every whole-food-organic culinary notion? Do I know how to cook anything that isn't breakfast? I don't have the right life skills for a staycation.

This part of Brooklyn is baby-oriented enough to be able to support a new pregnancy mailing list every month. December2012babies is full of activity right now, with a few early babies, a lot of anxiety and tons of exhausted teachers and hairdressers and other doers of real jobs who'll be working right up until their due dates and even afterwards. I'm staying quiet: I can't really admit that "Yeah, we get four weeks off in advance, but I was really enjoying my project so I only took three", can I? Poor teachers, especially. I can't imagine.

Anyway, on call ends at 1am and the kid can come when she wants after that... though we do have Billy Connolly tickets for Thursday, so no rush.

Of course we're likely still weeks away, but things are definitely shifting around in there and every day brings new and exciting phenomena. I can mostly tie my own shoelaces again! Sometimes I snore while awake! It's a time of great indignity. Strange biology too: at 2am I was losing at Go against my phone and wondering whether this new kind of intermittent twitchy back pain that had arrived was going to develop into something interesting. Spoiler: it didn't and my secondary on call didn't get a late night "tag, you're it!" phone call. So a regular Sunday morning it is.