Free 365 Nights by Charla Muller

known this was a planned rec activity, I would have been more involved. I guess I’m kinda used to our routine.”
    Routines. They’re a curse and a blessing.
    We had gotten into a lovin’ groove—occasionally in the A.M., but nearly always in the P.M. On the weekend, we would mix it into our “getting ready to go out” repertoire. This caused Brad to be a completely charming dinner guest because he was so darned slap happy, and I could grossly overeat and overdrink and nose-dive into a catatonic sleep at the end of the evening, because our little intimacy engagement was behind us. But the bathtub? Clearly, I had thrown him off with a change of venue.
    It’s September and the early-morning routine is back in high gear: Wake up at dawn, shower, wake up the children, get lunches made, backpacks found, children dressed, teeth brushed, and off to school. As I see my own children hustle off to school and I walk to the end of the driveway to grab the paper, it hits me that I’m the mom here. It’s not me skipping off to school with nary a trouble in the world. Instead, I realize that I have ahead of me years and years of this routine. Years and years.
    It’s a whirlwind, but by 7:45, the house is quiet again; I’m frazzled and popping open my second Diet Coke of the morning. I’m taking comfort in that soft fizzing noise and thinking about the old days, when I was a young and single marketing executive, living in the big city. On the weekend, I could sleep in until eleven, eat lunch at three in the afternoon, take hours to get dressed for the evening, and then cap it all off by watching cheesy Lifetime movies until the wee hours of the morning. Fast-forward five years . . .
    â€œHello. Charla Muller,” I answered into the phone, a pencil wedged in my teeth.
    â€œHey, it’s Nina, how are you?” Nina was calling me from home.
    â€œUgh. I’m so tired I could die. I just went and napped in the handicapped stall. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Hang on . . . I need to put my head between my legs, I’m feeling woozy.”
    â€œWell, it’s two P.M. Have you eaten?”
    â€œWhat? No, not really. I don’t feel good. Don’t really have an appetite. ” I was reduced to mumbling by this point.
    â€œChar, are you sure you couldn’t be pregnant?”
    That woke me up. “Don’t be ridiculous! I couldn’t be pregnant—it’s too soon. Heck, we’re still waiting for our wedding album from the photographer.”
    â€œI want you to go eat a pack of Nabs from the vending machine and go by Eckerd on the way home for a pregnancy test.”
    Whoops.
    Yep, within ninety days of getting married, Brad and I were actually pregnant. So after a lovely courtship, wonderful engagement, and dream wedding: Hello! You’re pregnant, Charla! No, we didn’t plan to get pregnant this quickly, we thought it would take some time, but it turns out I’m very fertile.
    But we were incredibly excited, and had fluffy dreams of cuddling together alongside the beautiful sleeping baby, and moving her into a decked-out nursery that would make Martha Stewart weep with joy. Those dreams were swiftly shoved aside by the sloppy realization of what it means to be parents to a real-live baby. I mean, it’s alive and everything!
    Don’t get me wrong. This is what I wanted. Or what I thought I wanted—in the abstract. And that’s what the future is most of the time—a dreamy, vague notion of some sort. For me, I wanted to get married. I wanted to have kids. I wanted to work—a little (I didn’t want to be CEO, but I did want to be successful). I wanted to live in a great house in a great neighborhood and go to fabulous dinner parties every weekend where I would mingle with my charming, witty, and wildly successful friends.
    It’s only when you look into the shadows of those dreams that you see the