I am with my parents and my friends, B and K. I am visiting in the Washington, DC area.

I am spending too much money. I buy something that I want but don't need. I feel ashamed, because B is an economist and he is only two years older than me and ready to retire and I am not. And so why am I buying something instead of saving? And I buy an old car, which is not sane. And then lose one of the new things I've bought...

...but. I have a job and have to get there, or go talk to them. My mother has had another baby. I take the baby in the car and drive to a hospital. So I needed the car and don't feel guilty. My parents and my friends are perfectly calm and ok with this, they stay where they are, relaxing.

At the hospital, the baby is hungry. I ask a man outside the shop at the hospital, an employee, if the shop sells baby formula. He shakes his head. "It's better for babies to be breast fed." he says, turning away. I do not think that I should explain that it's not my baby. I go to another building and there is a female nurse. My phone is dead and I have to contact the job, as well as my folks and friends. I eye the nurse's phone charger and hope it is compatible with my phone. I start to talk to her. People are leaving the ward, it's a nice place, clean and bright. The baby has been fed and changed.

"My voice is changing," says the nurse, "but my voice teacher says that I will be fine once the change is done." I know she's speaking about a change with menopause and I realize that the voice does change, but it's subtler than the teen boy voice change. And medicine doesn't care about women so it has not been "studied".

I have a phone charging cord, but not a wall plug. I think, it all takes three times as long to do anything with a baby. I love this baby, but it's not MY baby. Why am I taking care of it?

And I wake up....

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