Funny how goals change.
When I was in college, I was going to set the world on fire and make my first million before I was 30. Now I would settle for my own bag of chips.
I used to dream of the day I would conduct high-level business meetings and astound the audience with my brilliance. Now, I just pray for the same number of socks to come out of the dryer that went into the washing machine.
I used to fantasize about racing around the world to save a business deal but my main fantasy today is to take a bath without interruptions.

As I approached the magical age of 30, I discovered, much to my shock and astonishment, that I desperately wanted a baby. This is from someone who kept her NOW membership card next to her driver's license and genuflected before Betty Friedan.

Unfortunately, we found out wanting a baby and having one were not the same thing and not as easy as it looked like on television. Month after month, I was painfully reminded of our failure to reproduce and each cycle was like a small death. Finally, the blessed day when my pregnancy test was positive arrived and I immediately dropped out of the Master's program at college, rearranged our finances and started shopping for a bigger home.

I miscarried the day before my husband had major oral surgery and had no time to grieve because I was trying to figure out how to put a turkey through a blender.

Now, here I am, 42, with two kids, a husband, three dogs, three cats, two guniea pigs, a rabbit, an out-of-order house and a yard that gave up the ghost. My main goal in life is to obtain rights to the remote control and to find new places to hide.

I am amused to find my children rediscoverying my old loves: MAD magazine, The Beatles and The Simpsons. They don't understand why I still say to "dial" a phone or why the shows on TV Land are not always in color. But they also don't know the fears that the Cold War and the draft put into my generation. They'll never see a computer punch card, television dial, scratch a record or step on a pop top. Racism has always been illegal during their lifetime and women have always voted. "Pong" is considered ancient history and computers have always been user friendly for them.

But that's okay with me. I found a new place to hide the chips.