I am turning into a creepy old lady. I knew it would happen, I just didn't know it would begin before I was even thirty. I should probably specify that the creepiness only relates to little kids. I'm talking to strange little kids all the time- in the bank, at the grocery store, while I pump my gas, etc. And each time I get the same reaction- they hide from me. And I can't blame them. Why am I talking to them? What do I want? On some level, am I actually considering kidnapping one of these cute little kids? I think I might be. Somebody put a baby in me already!

Yesterday was Bring Your Daughter To Work Day, and one of my bosses brought his two little girls with him. And I let the girls sit with their daddy for all of ten minutes before I finally gave into my urges and approached them. "Who wants to see where we keep the money?" I cried out to the little girls. "Who wants to see the vault??" And they shyly exchanged glances with each other, and daddy, then clasped hands with each other as to create a metaphorical alliance, and proceeded to follow me back to the vault. Then I showed them how to make copies, and it was all over- the kids were mine for the rest of the morning. We mailed out some letters together, and I want to pre-emptively apologize to the recipients of these letters. These letters were not folded, they were simply crammed into the envelopes by adorable little girls who have never had to stuff envelopes before. "Why don't you tape the envelopes shut?" I said to them, sliding over my tape dispenser and then turning to do something else. A second later, I look back and notice that they've used my whole roll of tape, each envelope circumferenced several times with yard-long strips of unevenly applied tape. "That's okay, good job," I said, and then I asked them to put stamps on the envelopes. Which they did, upside down. But who am I to correct somone else's children? We walked over to where the outgoing mail went and I just prayed that my client wouldn't think that their banker was too retarded to properly mail a letter. Whatever, man! I kind of am.

And so the fun continued.

Seriously, though, I need to tone it down a bit.

I have been busy pretty much nonstop, which is so unlike me. I've had something going on every weekend since we got back from Austin, and this weekend is no different. Tonight, drinks with Gail and Rob and this guy Tim and tomorrow night more drinks with Jess and Tara. Next week, Lisa's baby shower, which for sure should be an interesting time, all things- and I do mean, all things- considered. Last weekend was Marcia and Mark coming up for a trip to the comedy club and a sleepover party, and the weekend before that was two days of binge drinking in Lake Geneva with Dan, Mike, and two girls named Meg. And Chris- Chris was there, but I never mention that he's there because I simply, mentally, include him when I say "I." We've morphed into one. That's what happens after three years of marriage. Which, by the way, we celebrated this past Tuesday. Craziness. How it's lasted this long, I can't explain. I'm not easy to live with. In fact, if I could break up with me, I would. But here I am, living the dream. Living the dream.

I'm worried about the economy. And I'm pissed off that I bought a house right before the start of the recession. Here are three things I got fucked on:

1. No $8,000 tax credit for me!
2. My house is now worth about 15% less than what we paid for it.
3. Mortgage rates are at an all time low, and it's next to impossible to refinance due to #2.

Obama has his "Make Housing Affordable" plan which should, in theory, help a person like me refinance, but I've called my mortgage servicer- Countrywide, which is being absorbed by Bank of America, which will in turn negatively affect me somehow, I'm sure- and they keep telling me that their call volume is too high, they have way too many requests, and they'll most likely call me back. I don't trust them to call me back, and that's why I keep calling them. Conversations go like this:

Me: Hi, it's Jackie again, and I was wondering if I should still be considering my current mortgage situation as "fucked."

Rep: Let me take a look at your statement... Seems you're paying on time each month, therefore you are not a priority. We'll call you in six weeks.

Me: Fine, I'll call back tomorrow.

I really hate the fact that paying my mortgage on time each month means that Countrywide doesn't care to help me. If I weren't such a financially responsible individual, I would cease all payments immediately until I qualified for one of those programs that meant I got to keep my home and also have a portion of my current mortgage balance forgiven. Once again, the solidly middle class gets screwed. Once again, doing things the right way gets you nothing but a swift kick in the teeth.

It's not just my current mortgage problem, though- it's the fact that stores and restaurants are going out of business left and right, that I know a whole bunch of people who have lost their jobs, and that the field of my choice- banking- is suddenly a heck of a lot less stable than it used to be. And our list of past due and delinquent loans has doubled, tripled.

Of course, I'm lucky to currently have a job at all. The nice thing is that my husband works for a prominent, upscale chain of liquor stores, and they're doing phenomenal. Sales are through the roof! They're opening new locations and growing like wildflowers, drunken, wine soaked wineflowers. So, as long as he keeps doing his job well, it's safe to say that he'll be just fine, employment wise.

Because people drink when the economy's in the tank. Also, according to one of my customers who makes engraved dies for the cookie and cracker industry, cookie consumption always goes up when times are tough. I know those two things are holding true for me. Wine, cookies, and for some reason I've been on a big fruit-and-nut granola bar kick. I've been eating, like, two a day. But that has nothing to do with the recession, I'm just trying to get more fiber in my diet.

I draw in my eyebrows. It's not that I don't have eyebrows, it's just that they're faint and sparse and almost completely blend in with my skin. Every morning, I take an eyebrow pencil and outline the shape and color them in with gentle, even little strokes. I've been doing this for ten years, ever since I had my eyebrows waxed when a co-worker of mine- who happened to be a part-time beauty school student- decided to play make-up doll with me. The waxing, that was okay. Painful in a a way that only progress can be, and I've been tweezing ever since in the same general arc. She also taught me how to use concealor, which I had never used before, and to use three different colors of eye shadow for contouring and shading. She picked out blush for my cheeks and instructed me on the art of applying it with a huge brush she'd purchased at the hardware store. She curled my eye lashes and lined my eyes in black. She confided in me that real women don't just use lipstick on their lips- they use a shiny gloss and a matte color and liner for good measure.

I followed through with her complex make-up regiment for a few months after her lessons, and then, bit by bit, the whorish, clownish, acne-inducing layers started falling by the wayside. It was more of a time management thing. It was more because I was lazy. And then, after a while, it was because I simply didn't care. However, the one thing that I am diligent about is the eyebrow coloring. If somebody knocks on my door in the morning, the first thing I think is, "Are my eyebrows on?" I don't look like ME without them properly shaped and colored. I look like a space alien. I look like I've gone back in time and almost prevented my parents from getting married, and instead of my hand disappearing while I play the guitar at their prom, it's my eyebrows that are fading out first. And I'm scared.

Anyway, everything's been fine with my eyebrows for the past decade, but recently something happened. The company that carried the eyebrow pencil in my specific, particular shade of brown simply stopped creating that color. I searched several stores while my panic built up to a crescendo. Then I did what I had to do and bought another shade of brown. I forgot about the dire situation until I used my last shade of Perfect Jackie Brown pencil down to its nub and opened my new pencil and began to apply. Oh... fuck. Oh...no. The new pencil was more green than brown, somehow, and my newly painted eyebrows were like two olive caterpillars slapped carelessly over my eyes. This would simply not do, I told myself as I drove to work with my green eyebrows- as green eyebrows are better than no eyebrows.

And so the search for the right color began. In the past few months, I've used every shade of brown I could find. The results have been as follows:

Too green, like caterpillars.

Too red, like my eyebrows bled for a few days and then just scabbed up.

Too yellow, like my face was oozing two strategically symmetric curves of puss.

Too tan, blends right in with the whole Mediterranean glow I've got going on.

Too dark, makes my eyebrows POP like that baby on The Simpsons with the one black eyebrow.

I'm at the point where I don't know what to do. I'm wondering what the people who see me everyday must be thinking. Do they wonder why my eyebrows change every day? Why they always look different and never look right? Do they think I've got severe emotional issues and I'm choosing to express my angst and depression through the colors etched above my eyes? Do they think that I must be BLIND to leave the house with those twin disasters beneath my forehead? Sometimes I want to simply interrupt people when I see their eyes wandering to the brows. Listen, I want to say. I know. It's a disaster. But until I can find the right shade of brown, I'm going to be looking a little wierd, so get used to it.

Instead, I say nothing, and then escape into the bathroom where I can closely examine my face and wonder where it all went wrong. Was it really just recently when my personal color got somehow discontinued? Or was it ten years ago, when the part-time beauty school student made me aware of the many, many issues surrounding this face of mine? Ignorance, they say, is bliss. Not knowing that your eyebrows can look any different? Ecstasy.

There's an opening in management at a location closer to my house, and the head of the HR department spoke to my supervisor about whether or not I'd be interested in transferring. My supervisor then mentioned it to the man I work for directly (there are a whole lot of people I answer to at my place of work, as you can see), and today he asked me if I was happy working for him. "Yeah," I replied, super professional as usual, "Why?"

He explained the conversations and said that he hadn't wanted to say anything to me because he didn't want me to think he wanted me to leave him. However, he wanted me to know that my name had been thrown out for the position and to see how I felt about it. I looked at him, and then away, and I said, "No, I'm not interested in that right now. I do want to stay here right, and I'm happy here. However, I'm going to be completely honest with you. I'm thinking about starting a family, and when and if that happens, I will want to find a position closer to home. It might be within the next year or so." I could feel myself turn beet red and grow sweaty. This conversation was already awkward, and it had just begun. This conversation was already the worst conversation I've ever had, and it wasn't even that bad yet. Just two adults talking about procreating and the job changes that it might entail.

We talked about me having kids, me and my boss. About how it would affect my career, about how I was already aware of myself growing older, about how I thought I was ready, and about how my husband felt about this life-changing decision. At one point, ridiculously uncomfortable, I blurted, "I'm sorry if this is too much information." And my boss replied, "No, it's not. I like talking about this kind of stuff, it's interesting." And suddenly everything was even more uncomfortable, as if that was even possible.

I was scheduled to leave to meet my friend for lunch at 12:30, but at 12:15, right after my boss said he enjoyed talking about "this kind of stuff," I sent her a quick email. "Leaving now to meet you, super awkward here, can you leave too?" And I put on my coat and basically ran out of the office.

The thing is, I'd already thought about applying for that position. Last week, I thought that there might be a chance I was pregnant. For the record, we're not even trying now, and we're not going to try for a few months. But, there was a scare of sorts, an exhilarating, awful, wonderful scare, and when I saw the posting for the position located closer to my home, I told myself that I would apply if I found out I was indeed knocked up. Turns out, I'm so not knocked up that I've already convinced myself that I'm completely barren. Thus, no need to apply for that position, because even though my commute sucks ass, I like my current job. I like my co-workers and clients, and I like my boss, all terrible awkward conversations aside. So why leave now when I have nothing to worry about except for impending plans that may or may not be realized?

The time between thinking I might be pregnant and then finding out that I wasn't was one of the strangest times of my life. It was equal parts joy and terror, and right now I can't fathom feeling like that for a full nine months. I can't look down at my flat belly and imagine it growing round and hard with a new creation. I can't help thinking of all the things that go horribly wrong, or of all the things that could be miraculously normal, which is inexplicably and equally frightening. This is how we all got here, though- all of us dependent on a mystifying process that could go wrong at any second but somehow usually doesn't.

The truth of the matter is that I want a child. That when I think about the life still before me, I can't see any meaning without one. It hit me like a freight train sometime not too long ago, and now I feel like I've been run over by the need and desire. I walk around feeling the burn from the rails. Everything else seems inconsequential, and while I hate myself for thinking that way, I can't help but think that that's how we're programmed. As a woman, I may be hardwired to start feeling this way here in my very late twenties, here after three years of marriage with a wonderful, loving husband, here after owning a house with a "guest bedroom" that is empty save for three, maybe four weekends a year.

And I am so fucking scared. And thrilled. It's nothing right now- it's an idea, and in me I hold only emptiness. But I've put a face to what might fill the emptiness, a vague composite of the things I love about Chris and the pieces of me that I might want to pass to another. There are no guarantees, and I know it will not be easy, ever. It's not even worth talking about right now, because there's nothing to talk about. This, however, is what I am feeling, and it's coming out in the strangest ways. Tears in the bathroom, waking dreams while I lay in my bed, twinges out in public places, all the things right about how I grew up and all of the things wrong. Family portraits and movies and growing old and staying young. And, yes, conversations about my career that ultimately revolve around an idea of a spark of life.