Today I'm going to play Guitar Hero. I have been waiting for this day for years. Just over two years ago, when I was pregnant and looking forward to maternity leave as if it was going to be a fabulous vacation, I planned to play Guitar Hero every day, becoming an expert, able to beat anyone who challenged me.

This did not pan out, and I did not play Guitar Hero once during my maternity leave. Maternity leave consisted of holding and feeding my newborn daughter, and watching judge show after judge show on daytime TV. I also drank large quantities of Diet Coke through a straw and wore a huge green matronly robe. On occasion, I successfully managed to put my daughter down in her swing long enough to wash some dishes or do some laundry. But there was no way, as far as I could tell, to successfully hold a newborn while also vigorously playing the fake guitar.

So here I am, jobless, on a cold winter day, with the wind howling around our condo, and the perfect opportunity to play some Guitar Hero. Will it be the start of a long and successful pseudo guitar career? An abysmal failure that lasts 15 minutes? Most likely, it will be something in between. And it beats watching daytime TV.