In Los Angeles, everyone wants everything, and they want it bigger, better and with firmer breasts. I can't even begin to try to get in on all of this. I'm always teetering at around 10 pounds overweight, my breasts were born saggy, and my thighs have been expansive since the day I was cured of my teenage anorexia. I hate shopping, despise all things fashion, and putting on makeup depresses me. Clearly, I should be living in Maine in a pair of L.L. Bean Blucher Mocs and grandma's sweater. My private revolt against all thing Los Angeles is walking around the glitz and glamour looking as hideous as this all must sound. Barney's on excursion to chip in on a birthday present for a girlfriend? I'm there in sweats, ponytail, and UGG slippers, but the kind from Target so they're not even real UGGs. I worry the salesgirls.

So all this effort to stay authentic in my wanting to be comfortable and not caught up, and here I am wanting more children than Brittany, Gweny, and Angelina combined. Babies—everyone in town is having them and now I too want in on the craze. Forget the Chihuahua or the Birkin bag; it's a baby you want tucked under that breast if you really want to be in. I've derived all my power from being out and here I am thinking, I have to have more than them! It will make me feel like I'm better than them! It will be empowering! I'm the person who quits at Scrabble and gives up the last tennis game in the set because the wanting to win bores me, or maybe I'm afraid of losing, or something, whatever it is that makes me hate competing… Well, here I am wanting to get in on the action, big time. If only I didn't quit therapy, but who can afford it when I have a baby care for, not to mention, a nanny to pay?

Never mind that even though my daughter is seven months old, it still feels like she has colic on some days when she just wont stop crying, ever. How about that taking care of just one infant makes it mysteriously impossible to get much more done in day than a shit, a shower, and answer a few emails? Even more significantly, I have no idea how making that baby will even happen as my desire for sex is presently on par with that of my wanting to return to the Mommy and Me movie at the Grove. And by the Grove*, I mean our local outdoor mall, where I spend many a napless afternoon strolling baby in a bleary-eyed haze, in and out of Crate and Barrel, Baby Gap, Sur La Table, et al., the splash of the choreographed singing fountains music to my cried out ears.

What the hell am I thinking? It's downright impractical and irresponsible to even think of having another kid. I have no real job, no real income, and I'm not really sure what my official career is. Unlike Angie and Brit, there will be no staff taking care of my brood while I go off and make my millions. Or get a great laser peel. My boyfriend is not nearly a business man but an artist like me, only younger, better looking, with optimism and hope on his side. Maybe he can make it! Maybe he can be the one to make those imagined millions so I can kick it and raise the kids! (An entirely new can of worms that I'll deal with next month) I know. You're getting depressed. I don't blame you.

Every day I calculate. I do the math: Ok, baby is seven months old, so if I get pregnant now, she'll be how old when Baby Number Two is born? I am supposed to be in a movie in March. If I get pregnant in January, I'll be three months preggo when we shoot. Not bad. The CVS test is what week? The second crib will go where? How will it all pan out? I imagine breastfeeding the newborn and explaining it to my one and a half year old. I configure all of us getting in an out of the car and how it'll go down technically. What will happen if Baby Number Two cries and wakes up Baby Number One?

So, disturbingly, this is how I spend my days. In a fantasy spiral about Baby Number Two and not even knowing what my real truth on the matter is to begin with. Is it that I'll be 41 in 4 months and my biological click is ticking it's last great tocks before dying a sudden and final death that makes this passionate thinking about a mini-brood out of my control and plain old Darwinian? Is it that I have bought into Baby Mystique, baby as ultimate sign of looking to the outside world like your life is mature and grown up and together and possibly delicious and perfect? Sure, I'll take some of that. Is Baby the only luxury item I can afford, at least in concept? Or, maybe there is something about the fact that a baby is the one thing you can have that's all yours and truly is bigger, better and more priceless than any Mercedes, Neutra home, or great eyelash extension job in town. I still don't know. None of it makes sense on paper. But maybe that's what Motherhood is about. Wading one's way through conflict, confusion, and indecision. Thing is, you're doing it while looking into the eyes of the yummiest miracle in town. No wonder I can't help but crave more of it.

*MOMMYWOOD FOOTNOTE: The Mommy and Me Movie is the 11 am showing of whatever the popular film of the week is. Usually something bad and starring someone you hate, a movie you would never see unless under the circumstances. First sign you know this ain't the movie date from yesteryear, the hundreds of strollers parked out front the theater's doors. Inside you soon realize the lights are going to stay on and turned up volume is just shy of puncturing your eardrum but that's okay, as it's the only way to drown out the sound of CRYING. Sprawled out on blankets littered with, not cokes and popcorn, but sippy cups and cheerios, hundreds of babies and the exhausted, expressionless parents that accompany them, desperate for a few moments of escapism. As if. They are up and down the aisles, bouncing and swinging and squatting, anything to quell the shrieks that seem to multiply upon themselves. There are changing tables set up at the exits and the room is filled with the quiet resolve of a fighter in the last rounds before he goes down. If you happen to catch the eyes of another burned out mommy, you may smile knowingly and divert your eyes quickly; the shared feeling false hope is almost embarrassing.