Mind yer beeswax.

There's a baby in the office today. You know the routine. The person that everyone erased from their memory the moment the "You're Having a Baby!!!" balloon floated out of sight down the stairwell on their last day turns up six months later, exhausted and with unbrushed hair and yesterday's shirt buttoned up wrong, lugging a tired miserable baby who can't figure out why Balamory isn't on this morning. Colleagues, both close "friends" and that odd woman from Accounts who smells of biscuits and cat, flock to ooh and aah over the squealing chubby monster while the hapless mother bravely fields questions that range from the mildly intrusive ("so are you still breastfeeding? how many months is that now?") to the downright personal ("so how long did it take for that vaginal tear to heal?"). And for some reason, if I venture to within fifty paces of someone else's baby, I become fair game for a little light interrogation myself. As the Other Half and I both work for the same company, although on different floors, our relationship seems to be the preserve of the entire workforce. We are routinely asked (often by people we don't actually know that well) about how our divorces are going, whether we'll be living together soon, how he's getting on with Small Person etc. It's also a regular occurence, particularly when I'm within brooding range of someone else's child, that someone will blatantly enquire as to whether we'll be procreating anytime soon. Aside from the fact that it's nobody else's business, I often wonder what possesses someone to ask something so intimate. What next? Will I be expected to send a round-robin email detailing our sex life? Put something on the bulletin board regarding our underwear selection that day? Click "forward" and copy the entire company, from the Board down, in on that email conversation we just had about the weekend?

In other news, there's a family gathering this weekend. It's an emotional minefield - more later.

I'm hungry.