Niece. Or Nephew.

My sister, who's been trying to conceive for two years, is pregnant. She's due in mid-January, assuming that all goes well. It's early days yet, of course. But it seems to me that those who have such a hard time getting pregnant deserve stress- and drama-free pregnancies and childbirth experiences. If only life worked on "fair" more often.

I hope it's true in my sister's case, even though she's carelessly stomping on my plans to host Christmas here at my home this year.

But life isn't fair to my middle sister. She jokes that she's been smited because she has no morals. I won't comment on that, except to say that she could certainly be a much worse person than she is.

But she seems to be oddly susceptible to cancer. She's 28 years old. She's had "irregular" cells removed from her cervix, and from the bottom of her foot. Oh, and there was that little incident with the brain tumor. So of course it makes me anxious that she used Clomid to conceive, even though there's no hard science to prove a link between the drug and ovarian cancer. It could be that the "evidence" is circumstantial, or correlation rather than causation. I hope so. But who develops skin cancer-like cells on the sole of her foot? And what must it be like to live in her head?

Congrats, little sis. I worry about you. And I wish you all the best. I want you to grow old and fat and happy with many grandbabies.