I've had a little time now to think about what happened yesterday, and none of it really makes any sense. I mean, even if I was exploring careers in music, which I'm not, an employer doesn't free you like some caged bird on which he's taken pity. Companies act in their best interests, not the individual employee's, so my boss must have had a selfish reason for letting me go.

I've come up with a few:

• He was dissatisfied with my work, and was trying to be polite, so he came up with a bogus reason rather than hurt my feelings.
• He found somebody to do my work for less money.
• Related to the previous reason, he found someone who could do my work and who was qualified in project management stuff - somebody who could take over more company-specific responsibilities.
• He found out I was trying to get pregnant, and decided to get rid of me. This is what my husband believes.

The first reason is stupid. Boss-man has no reason to care about my emotional well-being. If he didn't like how I handled my job, he either would have told me and fired me or told me and given me a second chance to improve. Neither of those would involve sugar coating the truth. Besides, it's not his style.

The second is more feasible. Diana, the temp who was in covering for the coworker who went to Rome last month, has been doing an excellent job, and I believe they pay her less than me. She's more qualified, too; she used to own her own business, but lost it in a messy divorce. She's probably got business chops left over from that, which would kind of allow her to also fall into reason three.

I don't want to believe number four could be true. The guy is a jackass, but I don't know whether he could stoop so low. My trying to conceive is not so big a secret that he couldn't have found out; at least two people in our office currently know that I am trying. A reason like this would also account for the lame reason he did give me. Moving in two different directions? Good luck in your music career? Please...

In any event, it's over. I'm not going to try to fight it. Even if he did fire me for pregnancy, there would be no way to prove it. I sent out an email to everybody else in the office, thanking them for the pleasant time I had working with them and saying goodbye. Boss-man said that nobody else knew (of course, if he was replacing me with Diana, I'll bet she knew), so I'm sure they were shocked when they came back from lunch and I was gone. Eric said events like that would certainly make him worry about his own job security.