Freak-end

Too much time off makes me neurotic.

Case in point: Since I've started REI (when I actually get to go home at 5 pm), I've started getting paranoid that I'm going to end up one of these barren middle-aged career women who are suddenly and unpleasantly slapped with the realization that their professional aspirations have cost them their biological ones. The magic number, apparently, is 37, or earlier if you're one of those unfortunate premature ovarian failure types. Asking me to get pregnant with a stable home situation by age 37 sounds like a lot to ask of me right now. Silently, I freak out in the clinic as I watch these women pay thousands of dollars to get Clomiphened, sperm injected, ultrasounded and phlebomotomized. It makes me cringe to see the hope and fear on their faces during each follow-up, as they tell me that they pray nightly for that miraculous joining of sperm and egg. It's not because I think they're pathetic. It's because I can see myself becoming one of them. It's because fertility means a whole lot to me, yes, little feminist, pro-choice me. Egads.

Then I get home, away from the clinic, and realize that I've got over a decade to go before that magic age hits, and I scoff at myself at how crazy I'm being. Yet that feeling of nervousness that my biological clock is ticking towards destruction - that feeling never really goes away. Holy Christ, I am entering the land of my mother and her incessant attempts to set me up with every single boy she knows.

Frown and consternation. Read books and try to forget about it all. Recommend to all my friends that they read Watchmen and then watch the movie. It wasn't half bad. Stop freaking out.