Oddly, in this age of the blinding white Oprah pantsuit, when everything is illuminated, it seems a Victorian lace curtain still hangs over the delicate womanly matter of our personal expenditures.

Although my life is far from perfect, the irony is that in a divorced parent's custody schedule - with days on and days off - instead of like it was before, when I felt ragged and still oddly guilty all the time, now I feel guilty but not ragged.

I find I'm the sort of harried working mother who has difficulty scheduling in a bit of rest amid the Ptolemaically complicated interlocking gears of professional and personal life.

I think of the friends of mine who were blissfully single in their 20s and 30s. Still single in their 40s and 50s, they seem to be contracting a bit.

Our entire personality, our energy level, and how we cope is hormonal.

The problem is that, partly because we are women, a large measure of our happiness depends on our relationships - including, unavoidably, our relationships with men.