We're driving through dry farmlands on small back roads in Southern California for hours on end. For the last hour or so, we've been having a long discussion of the socio-economic future of the western world: our thoughts about how things are changing, and what cultural trends we might be seeing within fifteen or thirty years.

We pull over to the side of the road so Pär can run out and pick a fluffy wad of cotton off a cotton bush. He is fascinated to see for himself that cotton actually does grow out of the ground. He can hardly believe it.

A mile later, we pull over to the side of the road so Pär can run out and pick some grapes off the vine. They are huge and juicy, almost unrecognisable from the grapes we get at the supermarket, more like bunches of some other fruit, plums maybe.

We each munch a grape and drive in silence for a short while.

Out of the blue, I speak. "You get to toilet-train the kid."

"Excuse me?"

"I call. I call you get toilet-training duty for our child."

Pär rolls his eyes, throws his hands up in exasperation. "Fine, uh, you get the teen years then."

"I'm just saying, I don't want to deal with toilet-training."

"We'll take it as it comes, Karen, and we'll do it together. It's not something we have to worry about for a while, anyway."

"How long?"

"I think you usually teach kids that when they're about three years old."

"What! Are you serious? My dog knew enough not to piss on the floor by the time she was three months old!"

"Well," Pär snaps, "it's too late for us to get a dog now, so we'll just have to make do with the baby instead."

"If Tot is a boy, can you show him how to pee standing up? I'll take care of it if Tot's a girl."

"Yes, when it comes to that. There's a long in-between stage, too, where the kid knows how to use a toilet but still needs the parents' help."

I moan faintly.

"None of this will be a big deal to us once we actually have a baby around," Pär says. "We'll get used to all the toilet stuff, it'll be normal."

"Oh god. I just don't want to become one of those mothers who think it's okay to talk about the contents of their baby's diapers in polite social conversation, you know? And they always come up with cute little names for it. Even El calls her baby's poop 'mustard'."

Pär wrinkles his nose in distaste. "Yiich."

"Yiich! What can I say to her? For the love of all that's decent, woman, I don't want to hear about your baby's condiments!"

"I don't think you'll ever become someone who talks about Tot's poo much outside of the home," he says reassuringly.

But here I am, sort-of writing about it already on the World Wide Web, and it's still only hypothetical poo. Oh god help me.