Thirty five minutes left to midnight, and I am tempted to wait up and see whether my husband will come back as a pumpkin. Good for him, this is the second Friday in a row where he has been out. It makes me feel less guilty about the small tubs of ice cream, the Chocolate Brownie Avalanche, and the threesome mint chocolate bars I feast on while pretending to take the baby for a walk in the pram.

What a life, eh? I normally feel guilty whenever I go out without him; I doubt that he ever feels this way about me. Today, is the day after Valentine’s Day. I was never really big on pink hearts and chocolates, and I don’t remember getting any. Last year at this time I got a small teddy with a heart; it was a mass present from work. It still made me feel happy, because by then I knew that I had a tiny baby growing inside me, and the small teddy was going to be its first toy. For months it sat on top of my monitor, and whenever I looked at it I smiled and thought of my little baby. Now the bear is attached to my son’s mobile and he is the one who looks at it and talks to it every morning.

This year was supposed to be great, and it is really going nowhere so far. I am treading water, reading trash, knitting from stash and blogging nonsense. Today I tried to take a positive step and do some freelance work. I bid for a job and ended up doing its proofreading. It was hardly worth the effort, but I thought of it as a marketing strategy, to get to know new clients and break new grounds. I am bidding for other jobs and applying to agencies that are looking for a word-crafter. Hmm, that is actually a good name for a serious blog that combines knitting with writing, maybe one day once I get this nastiness out of my system. Will I ever get that far? I wonder.

Fifteen minutes left to midnight, and still no sign of my pumpkin. Tell you what, I am going to brush my teeth and turn in. I have had this glaring monitor and the humming of my processor fan keeping me company for almost five hours now; I have had enough of this miserable evening. I am going to meet some interesting people, in a trashy novel.

At five minutes to midnight my husband arrived. He said he prefers hiking to doing the rounds of the bars. Somehow I am optimistic that he will find more substance with me than with these false friends. Hopeful.