Seven months can fly by scary-quick.

After tying my personal identity inextricably with my corporate life; after delivering a helluva project that proved an exercise in long-suffering and triumph, I cut the cords yesterday at 6.17pm and finally walked out the door. (I ran back in later at 7-something to retrieve my phone charger, earphones and “Well behaved women rarely make history” fridge magnet, which kinda ruined the drama. But you know what I mean.)

Yesterday over dinner, I felt like I had just embarked on a holiday with a wishy-washy start date, and an even more uncertain end. How many times have I been told to savour this freedom for as long as possible because when she finally arrives, I’ll look back on this in wonder. How many times have I been told to sleep, as if sleep were a commodity one could store up and then cash in on later. The body doesn’t work like that.

And yet, sleep I did. I crashed my monthly writer’s group meeting for five minutes to buy a signed copy of a novel that had been brewing since my last meeting with them in September. Had a surprisingly lovely Italian dinner with Tony at La Scala. And then drove home, blogged a list of things I wanted to get to from Monday, crawled meekly into bed… and slept for 12 hours.

This morning, I feel unemployed.

I am wearing a ticking time bomb, if the world is to be believed. My life, as I’ve known it for the past eight years with Tony, will apparently come crashing down the moment we hold her in our arms and make googly eyes. And so I’m slightly stressing over what to do first – get our personal things in order, or run out and manically enjoy my new, temporary liberty like a woman on death row. In amongst everything, I feel resentful of the implication – the expectation, almost – that this will be my last shot at some sort of personal happiness before I lose myself altogether and become a mommy.

How prosaic. And we all secretly protest the pedestrian, or at least fiercely determine that it shall never apply to us. But I’m not getting much positive reinforcement that I will be capable and able of resisting the ordinary.

But! On to more important things… like betting.

Majority of the office folk have dibs that Blobette will announce her arrival this weekend, because I’ll finally relax and my body will kick into gear. I surreptitiously cover where I think her ears are, everytime someone says something like that. But statistically, they say the first baby usually comes after the due date. And if several others are to be believed, I look like I’m carrying a 6-month old, and not a baby due in 3 weeks.

So – when do you think Blobette will arrive?