“What are we doing this weekend?” Andy asked. It was Friday afternoon, and we were on the phone.

I have been asked this question nearly every Friday of our five-year marriage. At first, I bristled at the implication that in the unspoken you-do-this, -I-do-that spousal division of labor, “social secretary” had somehow become my job. “I don’t know,” I would say. “What plans did you make?”

Of course, my husband would not have made any. Eventually, as happens with so many stubborn little turf wars of early marriage, I gave up the game and took up the mantle. I am now the one who arranges dinners, finds out if friends want to go see “Star Wars Episode III,” tells my partner to pick up bagels and cream cheese because we’re having people over for brunch. In fact, I now don’t even mind it – it’s easier to have one person running the calendar, and I am the one better suited to do it. Which, I suppose, might mean that in this division of labor, Andy was right all along.

“Well,” I began, “tonight we’re trying that new French-Chinese place on Smith Street with Liz and Josh. Tomorrow, we have brunch with Hallie and Mark, which we might do in DUMBO, in which case, we’ll see if Maya wants to meet up. Then tomorrow night, if we can find something to see, we have movie plans with your brother and his wife. Sunday we’re going out to Jersey to see my aunt and uncle, and Sunday night, we’re grilling with Teddy and Tim.”

“Wow,” Andy said, a bit flabbergasted. “Pretty plan-heavy weekend.”

“Yeah,” I said proudly. “And we’re booked for dinner every night next week.”

“Oh,” he said, surprised but not unhappy. “Any reason we’re suddenly so busy?”

The truth was, with the baby’s impending arrival, I’d panicked, thinking that we would never see people again. I called and e-mailed practically everyone we knew and made plans with them. But I didn’t exactly tell my husband this. To my husband, I said, “I figured we should go out now while we still can.”

“Okay …” he said, in the Andy-is-skeptical way.

“What?” I asked, mildly annoyed. “You’re the one who’s always wanting me to make plans …”

“Yeah,” he said. “And it’s great you made some. But I don’t know … don’t you think we could use a little downtime too? I mean, are you sure you have the energy for all this socializing?”

Full of a-little-thing-like-pregnancy-doesn’t-get-me-down bravado, I made a “pfff” sound. “It’s just hanging out, not running a marathon.”

“Okay,” he said. “You know best.”

The first sign that maybe, in fact, I didn’t appeared early that very night, as Andy walked and I waddled over to Smith Street to meet our first set of friends. Thanks to daylight savings, it was still light out, but I felt a yawn coming on.

“Have we always met people for dinner at eight o’clock?” I asked Andy. When he nodded and asked why, I said, “It just seems sort-of late.” I decided not to mention the fact that, roughly two hours before, I’d had to cut my hunger with two peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches.

Once we got to dinner, the yawns became harder to suppress. When the waitress asked if we’d like to see dessert menus, our friend Liz turned to me and said, “Maybe we shouldn’t keep you out so much longer …” Noting the I-told-you-so in my husband’s expression, I said, “What? Are you kidding? Enjoying dessert is the highlight of pregnancy.”

Between dessert and the accompanying rounds of coffee, we didn’t get home until nearly midnight. The next morning, when Hallie called to firm up our brunch plans, I was still feeling the effects of what now constituted a late night. “Maybe we shouldn’t walk all the way over to DUMBO,” I said, suggesting a nearby diner.

When Andy’s brother called about the movie, instead of going online and seeing what was playing at Film Forum, the plan I’d originally suggested, I said, “That ballroom dancing movie’s playing at BAM, and you know, it’s never sold out and there’s never a line there.” And by the time we’d braved the traffic for our Jersey visit, it seemed wise to call Teddy and Tim to reschedule our grilling.

“Maybe we can do it one night this week,” Teddy suggested.

“Actually, this week’s tight,” I said. I was already mentally sifting through our fully packed week and deciding which dinners I could gracefully cancel. “Maybe some time the week after?”

“Okay,” Teddy said, without proposing a day. “But we have to do it before this baby comes – after that, we’ll never see you!”

The Brooklyn Chronicles, a work of fiction, appears each Friday.Previous installments are at www.nysun.com/archive_chronicles.php. The author can be reached by e-mail at kschwartz@nysun.com.