Hello, and welcome to my blog where I write about books but also lament, worry, and try to staunch the unrelenting passage of time. I show up every few months and proclaim “oh, what a year!” before retreating back to my non-Internet life, where I go to work, write book reviews, care for my family, and go to bed at 9pm.

Now, I am thirty-two years old. Mom age. Like I worried about a year ago. A year ago! How could a year have gone by already! This has definitely been the quickest year of my life. An actual blink of an eye. Oh, what a year! So much has happened since March of 2016. I went to Denver. I went to Michigan. I moved apartments again. I pushed a baby out of my body. My baby was a little baby with lots of hair and then a chunky little baby with less hair and then a bigger bald baby and now he is a scooching all over my apartment, pulling himself up to stand, almost toddler baby. With hair. And seven teeth.

For seven of the last months, I was a stay at home baby-mom. For two, I was a full-time working-baby-mom. Before that I was a blithe, dewey-eyed, Zantac-popping pregnant lady who probably had her hardships but had also never fished a half-melted baby bottle from the bottom of her dishwasher four minutes before she needed to leave for work or been peed upon during a 4 a.m. nursing session.

We went to North Carolina. We went to Michigan and Illinois. And then Michigan again. Then Mexico. And although I was technically already 32, we did just get back from a whirlwind 48 hours in Michigan. Again.

And although it may not seem that there would be any days left in between all of this, we also had eleventy-million out of town visitors and houseguests.

Oh, what a year!

It’s March now. We’ll probably have a few more houseguests, but now that I’m a Working Mom who needs to earn back her vacation hours after taking a long(er than 12 wk) leave and everyone who needs to get married is married we will be sticking close to home until August. Five whole months to… be whoever I am at thirty-two. I’m feeling grateful that the unnerving post-baby dissociation has indeed lifted and that I’m feeling pretty settled into a work+baby routine, but I also feel like I’m still feeling out the edges of my personal life, to be honest. What time should be mine and what time should be for my family? Is getting up early even worth attempting when your baby is still an unpredictable night-nurser? Is going to the gym once a week adequate, or should I force myself to do push-ups in my living room after bedtime? Should I even be trying to do any single thing other than writing letters to Senators and watching the news and throwing money at people who can do more to help than I can because by the time I’m 33 every cultural and political institution that I esteem and rely on might evaporate if I don’t?

I’m thirty-two. I generally eat good food and read good books and get enough sleep. I have this little family I can’t get enough of. I don’t have time to do my hair or Photoshop my pimples away.

I feel afraid every day, but so lucky. So, so lucky.

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