The good thing… wait, strike that… the great thing about being the last to get married and the last to be “settled” and the last to have children and the last to blah blah blah, is that there are people who go before you. And there’s a lot to be said for learning from people’s experiences.

My sister-in-law and my best friend are both in their last trimesters of pregnancy, and in a couple of months I’m going to be an aunt twice over.

As excited and thrilled as I am for them, I have to admit, I’m a bit relieved that they get to do the work, spend sleepless nights rocking the baby to sleep and listen to that incessant crying, while I just swoop in at a convenient playtime for the cuddles and kisses.

I haven’t been around kids since I was one myself, even having an aversion to them at one point. In our early twenties, my best friend (the one who is now pregnant) and I actually had a running campaign to ban children from public spaces. Then of course, the tick-tock of the biological clock happened and she went and got herself knocked up, and I… well, I’m going to master the aunty thing first.

Someone suggested that if I’m looking to flex my creative muscles, I should look into writing for children. Or greeting card writing. Or other creative avenues that stretch beyond just books and articles on social issues and politics. You know, I like the sound of that. I’ve been thinking about it lately… being a children’s author under a convenient pseudonym (I like the sound of M.K. Relph, what do you think?) and playing with a completely different format than the one I’m used to. I do have a publisher who’s interested in seeing ideas from me, so that’s a start, but I know pretty much nothing when it comes to proposals, advances, or agents as concerns children’s books. Any working authors out there that I can learn from?

In other news, I am now deadline-free have five more deadlines, am almost caught up with my reading, and have the distinct feeling that something fantastic is about to happen. We’ll just have to wait and see.