The count is on: Five weeks, five days till quitting time

I've started telling people I'm leaving work at the end of February. I began with my boss, (who wrote an editorial from the delivery room hours after giving birth to her youngest child). She said "Tell your doctor to come talk to me. I was here one day and delivering my babies the next." Mostly she was joking. I explained that I'm no good to her at 50% capacity anyway, so it's just as well that I leave before I totally burn out. I do hope this puts the rush on her to GET SOMEBODY HIRED ALREADY - we are already short one hand, and this baby is coming whether there's a full staff on deck or not.

Then I told my mother. "What, already?" Mildly accusing. I told her something's got to give, and the only thing that can give is work. I think she heard the panic through the telephone line, because that was all she had to say about that.

I told my aunt. That went well.

I believe having a set date is important. Everything else in my life right now is so uncertain. Of three major changes coming in the next three months - leaving work, moving house and having a baby - I don't know when any of them are going to happen. They're all inevitable, but that doesn't make preparing for them any easier. I can only hope they happen in that order!

So my last day on the job will be March 2: That equals six more newspapers. I can handle six more papers. I survived the last six. No reason to think I won't get through the next half a dozen.

March 2 also happens to be exactly two years less a day since I started in this job. (Ha! Like a jail term!)