---

I'm really uncomfortable with something that happened yesterday. I get pretty pissy when anyone talks about banning abortion. Yesterday the Senate actually voted to ban "partial birth" abortion. They already voted on it and banned it in March, but now they're changing the language just a little before it gets sent off to the President to sign into law. "Likely to be deleted: nonbinding language added by the Senate in support of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision."

In addition, they added this little nugget: "The current bill contains an exception when the life of the mother -- but not her health -- is at risk."

I find this atrocious. George's administration has made it very difficult to be a woman in this country. Aside from all the other sexist crap being pulled now that there's no one to guard the hen house, now I have to put up with being told that a threat to my health is not a good enough reason to terminate a pregnancy. I'm being told that the U.S. government thinks I'm too stupid to make a decision for myself.

Yesterday Trish sent me a link to some asshat's blog who called those of who are pro-choice "feminazis." I wasn't interested in debating with the guy because he's entitled to his opinion. It's when fucktards with the wrong opinion are in a position of power -- that's when I get nervous and in the mood to put up a fight.

Look, if you're a man -- I don't believe that you should have the right to tell a woman what she can and can't do with her own body. If you're personally involved in the situation [ie, if you knock up your girlfriend], then fine, by all means, get involved with the discussion. But until a man can spontaneously grow a uterus and carry children in his womb men have no business legislating the do's and don'ts of abortion. Leave the heavy lifting to people who have a clue of what it might be like.

Plus, there's this golden tidbit:

Bush hailed passage of the legislation, which he said "will help build a culture of life in America. I urge Congress to quickly resolve any differences and send me the final bill as soon as possible so that I can sign it into law."

A culture of life? A culture of life? You've got to be fucking kidding me! George starts a war that kills over 5,000 people and he's talking about the sanctity of life? Give me a fucking break.

To end this, I'm just going to leave you with the immortal words of a bumper sticker I'm fond of quoting:

If you can't trust me with a choice,
how can you trust me with a child?

---

I've covered it to death that I don't really like kids over much, right? Normally, I mind my business and they mind theirs. My neighborhood is rife with annoying pre-pubescent male shitheads. They're irritating in the way that you just know they're a few years away from date rape, mullets, and wearing wife beaters for fashion.

I'm sitting on the couch late afternoon today knitting. It had just stopped raining, but the back door to my patio is wide open. All of a sudden I see one of the little bastards peep his head over my nine foot tall patio wall. My "doing something illegal" radar goes on, but I'm not a nosy neighbor so I try to ignore the little shits. And then the clanging starts.

I roll my eyes and continue knitting. The clanging continues for 45 minutes, plus all the little fucktards are out in the alley whooping it up. Eventually I go back to the patio to resume my pre-rain reading and, because the schmucks don't realize that I have ears and if you're doing something wrong you shouldn't broadcast it to the whole world, I discover that they're trying to break into a garage. That's what the clanging was, you see -- one of the fuckers had a hammer and was banging the hell out of the lock.

Generally speaking, if the kids want to act like morons I can usually block them out. But this breaking and entering thing is illegal. Knowing tha by doing so I will turn into the cranky old biddy on the block, I pick up the phone and call the police and rat their dumb asses out.

Of course, it being Philadelphia, no cops ever arrive on the scene. Not that it matters -- ten minutes after my discovery they broke a window to some woman's house in the alley and took off like the devil was after them.

Sometimes I wish there was a service like the SPCA you could call when there are idiotic kids running around. You know how when you see a stray and the SPCA comes in their little paddy wagon, picks 'em up, and then euthanizes them?

Because they're going to be nothing more than a burden on society when they get older.

---

Yesterday I took a stroll over to the kitchenette on my floor to heat up my lunch. I stopped to chat with Roz, an assistant whose desk is closeby. Somehow we got on the subject of going to the gym. She started talking about a friend of hers who has 12 children.

12 kids? Who the fuck has 12 kids these days? My great-grandmother had 14 children but that was back in the 1910's or so when birth control still wasn't readily available and the cost of living wasn't so high.

Then Roz said something that totally blew my mind: she knows someone who has 23 children.

I know that some women really like the feeling of being pregnant, but how do you support that many kids? If you're an ideal family of two parents making the average income [from two wage earners] each kid is going to cost you approximately $170,000 to raise up to age 18. So 23 kids is going to cost around $4 billion. That's not even counting college.

Plus, you know with 23 kids that woman can't possibly work. So the husband or significant other [providing there is a husband or significant other] has sole financial responsibility for the household. And how the hell do you have 23 kids without killing yourself or others? That's a whole lot of wear and tear on your body, not to mention the exercise in patience that would have to be.

I can't even fathom having one kid, let alone 12 or 23 of them.

And now there's some moron in Afghanistan trying to break the world record for having children. He's already fathered 50 kids and has four wives. He says that neighbors give his kids food because he can't afford to feed them all, but he wants to have another 50 kids because he thinks it will be great to break the record. Who cares if most of them die of starvation, right?

People look at me like I'm evil when I tell them I don't want to have children and I don't particularly like children. But with people having 13, 24 and 50 kids I think there's someone in the world more than making up for my lack of interest. It makes me sick that there are people having kids to get government aide, or in order to have a reason not to work -- in combination with people who are having kids because they don't know how not have children due to a lack of family planning knowledge or because of religious convictions it's no wonder the world population is increasing at an alarming rate.

---

I am thrilled to say that I am back in Philadelphia, land of the fourth highest number of obese people in the U.S., home of Brotherly Love. Ahhhhhh!

The remainder of my trip was relatively uneventful. My mom and Ed took us out to eat Saturday night. Normally this would not be note-worthy, since they usually drag us along to their favorite pizza joint. But this place was Special. People they know said it was really nice and the food was excellent. And then I knew why we weren't just heading over to the pizza place.

The last time they came to visit Craig and I in Philadelphia we took them to eat at our favorite restaurant, and they really liked it and were a little disturbed that we wouldn't let them see how much the bill was. The thing is that I knew they would freak out -- the bill was a little over $100 and that seems like a small fortune for dinner if there's no place to eat around you except for McDonald's. So I knew that this was their way of trying to get us back for taking them out.

So we walk into this place and it's almost completely empty in the middle of what should have been their busy dinner hours on a Saturday night, which always makes me nervous. The big draw to this place is that they have a big glassed in cage with half a dozen huge tropical birds in it. Have I ever mentioned how much I hate birds? And I really don't like loud birds. Craig loves birds, so he was interested. So we sit down in a booth and the menu arrives, along with a waitress who reminds me of Flo. There's no pink uniform, but she's got that gum/cud-chewing, down home way about her [including permed frizzy hair that was likely going to end up in my food]. Both my mom and Ed order chef salads, which come with lettuce gleaned from the all you can eat salad buffet across the room and little rolled up peices of lunchmeat. Uh huh. And Craig ordered a crab cake sandwich, which he later told me had the consistency of a brillo pad and he had to hide most of it underneath his burnt pile of fries. I got seafood linguine, which wasn't horrible but tasted vaguely of lemon Pledge. I am an accomplished liar, so my mom and Ed thought the food was delightful and I had received such a huge portion of food that I ate most of it but you just couldn't tell.

The true test of a hick restaurant are what beer they have on tap. And at this place: Bud, Bud Light, and Coors Light. Surprisingly, they did have Yuengling Lager on tap, but there was no beer anywhere on the premises that was any darker than mid-amber. Oh, and a glass of beer was 50 cents. Not that that's a bad thing, but still.

I can deal with bad food at a restaurant. It happens -- not every restaurant we try is excellent. But what made the evening fairly unbearable were two things:

1. The birds were fucking loud. They screeched every two seconds, and it sounded like someone was being murdered.
   
2. Our waitress' grandson was running around the restaurant screaming at the top of his 4 year old lungs. Apparently the waitress thought it was cute, and thought what few patrons there were really wanted to hear this kid wail. News flash: I wanted to throw my linguine on the kid and hurl the ashtray at his head.

Yeah, it was hard to make it through that one without being arrested for assault.

Going to visit my mother's house in the winter is hard to take -- it's so cold you can't escape the house. And the house is noisy. My stepfather is a former EMT who insists on keeping his dispatch scanner on and at top volume at all times. Morning, noon, and night that stupid scanner spits out static and inane chatter about the latest football game, or who's been arrested for DUI, or whatever. I just don't get it -- neither one of them pays any attention at all to world news, but boy howdy if my stepfather doesn't know that Ambulance #10 took a run to the local nursing home to pick up a dead body, his very world will shatter.

It's a shame -- both my mother and stepfather are such nice people. And I know that the lifestyle I've chosen for myself wouldn't suit them, and doesn't suit a lot of people. Country living really does appeal to more people than living in the city, and maybe there is some hidden merit to listening to a police/ambulance scanner 24-7. I just couldn't wait to escape Berwick, and it seems strange to me that anyone wouldn't want to.

I'm so happy that our visits are infrequent.

---

Brooke's baby shower is today and I, being the total cheese whore that I am, was put in charge of getting the cheese tray. So I called DiBruno's cheese shop and ordered up a nice cheese platter with crackers and olives, etc.

I forgot that DiBruno's is about six blocks away, cheese is fucking heavy, and it was supposed to windier than hell out today. I get there and they present me with this massive cheese platter and a bag of water crackers, melba toast, and fresh bread. But no olives. So I had to hike over to their other store [secretly trying to come up with a way for me to get all of it back to work without killing myself or destroying the platter] for a pound of kalamata olives and some marinated mushrooms [because I was there, and I can't resist].

'I'll take a cab!' I think to myself. I'm a genious. But I have no actual cash on me, and there isn't an ATM machine anywhere close. Curses, foiled again!

So I need you to picture this: 5'2" girl in a beige coat with a huge main of fur, stomping down a Philadelphia sidewalk with a gargantuan cheese tray and two bags of other foodstuff hanging off one arm. Fighting the wind, red hair blowing in her face, fighting with the lid of the cheesetray which has suddenly come loose.

For six long-ass blocks.

My arms feel like they're going to fall off my body. And, to top it all off, my hair now looks like ass because I was sweating and it's like a wind tunnel outside. What kind off hostess can I be when my hair looks like Ed Grimley?

And all to celebrate the coming of a baby. I hate babies! And today's adventure doesn't endear them to me any more. Urgh.

---

I often bitch about growing up without either of my parents taking the slightest interest in anything I was doing, but the truth is that now I'm kind of happy about it. Sure, it would have filled me with glee if my mother had been proud of my work with the choir, the yearbook, or the newspaper, or had come to see me cheer at a game even once. But having the freedom to do my own thing without parental involvement gave me a lot of independence and even helped with my decision-making skills. Being thrown to the wolves will do that for you. Heh.

No, really.

Parents who need to be intimately involved with every aspect of their kid's lives need help. I guess it's an issue of trust and control, but I would have been mortified if my mother had called my college professors to complain about my grades. Can you imagine? You spend the entire semester fucking around, getting drunk every night, skipping classes, and then mommy and daddy step in and try to exert pressure on your professor to give you a better grade. Yeah, because that's why people become college professors -- to counsel mom and dad through this difficult time of you not doing a speck of work.

This all can be brought back to the fact that we're building a society of people who refuse to take responsibility for their own actions. Nothing is ever their own fault. Bad grades? Why, it must be because I have a bad teacher! Fat? Well, who knew eating McDonald's every meal of every day could make me fat!? Went on a killing spree? It's those damn rock and roll records!

A few years ago I was contracted to run a cheerleading clinic for a peewee league group of cheerleaders. The age group was from 5 years old to 13 years old, and there were probably about 500 kids. Christy and I planned the whole thing, and she decided to teach dance, I was to teach stunting, and we hired another girl to teach cheers. At first I was really excited about it -- what could be a cooler job than to teach stunting? I spent hours designing stunts and pyramids that were appropriate for each age group. But the parents totally ruined it for me.

For the youngest age group I had planned these cute little pyramids that didn't involve anyone even really taking more than one foot off the ground. Some of the parents refused to let their children participate in something so dangerous. What? So, your kid can't be trusted to stand on one leg? Not even with a spotter? Does she have vertigo? Is she retarded?

My whole day was like that. The parents were rude, condescending, and completely bent on controlling every little thing. The kids were miserable because they weren't allowed to do anything. It convinced me that I would never be able to handle a job as a full-time cheerleading coach. I hate the parents.

A few of my friends are teachers. There is a job I would never want to have. What do teachers do? They teach kids the skills they're going to need in order to be successful in life. Without them, no one would ever learn to read, write, add, or subtract. They do the single most important job in the world. And yet parents are constantly bugging them that their kid shouldn't have gotten an F on that composition, despite the fact that the composition consisted of the words "Fuck you" 100 times. Somehow the teacher should be at fault for that.

There's a fine line between involvement and smothering craziness when it comes to kids. Yes, I believe that parents should be involved in what their kids are doing, but I also believe that sometimes too much a good thing is just, well, too much.

I don't want to use the term "mollycoddling" here, but if the shoe fits...

---

People get so wrapped up in their own little worlds that they forget people might be observing. Specifically, I mean the bus. And I am a practiced observer of bus behavior, so by "people" I mean me. And this morning I was watching.

The bus was not very crowded. There was a 16 year old boy sitting in the seat in front of me. Kind of cute in that young, still able to develop into a hottie kind of way. But then he started actually popping his zits. You could tell that he was doing it in an unconscious way, and that he probably does it in the middle of class, in clubs, on the street, and in restaurants. Totally clueless. I wanted to hit him in the back of the head and alert him to the fact that his pus is not welcome in my personal space. Instead, I kept loudly clearing my throat. The rest of the people on the bus probably think I have tuberculosis or something.

Of course, that would mean they would be able to hear my throat-clearing over the din of the clan in the back of the bus. There is a man and his childern [who, incidentally, may have been raised by wolves] who take the bus every morning at 7:45 am. I try to catch the earlier bus so my head doesn't explode. This is a typical snatch of conversation:

father: [yelling] Devilchild#1, get your foot off Devilchild#2. I see your foot moving Devilchild#1. Stop it! Stop moving your foot! If you don't stop moving your foot, the next foot you're going to see is my foot kicking you in the ass!

[Devilchild#3 and Devilchild#4 start to scream at the top of their lungs for no apparent reason and continue to scream until they get off the bus.]

father: [screaming over the wailing of Devilchildren #3 and #4] Devilchild#2, get away from the bell! Stop touching the bell! It's just a bell! It just makes a noise! You don't get points or kill anything, it just makes a sound! All these people have to go to work and you're stopping the bus at every stop! Stop touching the bell! Stop touching the bell! Sit down and stop touching the bell!

Devilchild#1: [wailing] I wanna ring the bell! It' s my turn to ring the bell! My turn! I wanna ring the bell! Daaaaaaaad, I wanna ring the bell!

Devilchild#2 [screeching] No, it's my turn to the ring the bell! I wanna ring the bell! Get away, stop touching me, stop touching the bell -- I wanna ring the bell! Daaaaad!

father: [shouting hoarsely] Get away from the bell! Stop touching the bell! It's just a bell! It just makes a noise! You don't get points or kill anything, it just makes a sound! All these people have to go to work and you're stopping the bus at every stop! Stop touching the bell! Stop touching the bell! Sit down and stop touching the bell! Arrrrrgh!

This is usually underway by the time I get on the bus and it continues for 15 minutes until they get off the bus. At that point I generally want to stand up and drop kick each and every one of them off the fucking bus. The kids are between the ages of 4 and 6, so they're the perfect size for drop kicking. The father is bigger than I am, which might present a problem...but I think, in my morning rage, I could take him.

Is it possible to have annoying children rage? You know, sort of like road rage or air rage? If it's possible, I think I have it.

I know children are a necessary evil in the world. Without children there would never be any adults, and then it would end up being a very geriatric world indeed. And we'd never get to retire [not that any of us are ever going to retire with the crap that our current President would like to do to social security]. The truth of the matter is that I don't mind children if they are well-behaved. But most of the kids I come in contact with are crazy wildebeasts. Realizing that even the most well-behaved kid has a tantrum every once in a while, I think it should be considered child abuse to allow your kid to act like an ass in public. Put the kid in a behavioral modification instititution and sterilize the parents.

You can see why I would make the worst parent in the world: I have little to no patience for stupidity. So far, I've only come up with one good reason to have children -- the extra deduction one can take on income taxes. I see no other real benefit. So I guess it's a good thing I never want to have children.

I respect people who have kids, and the kids are really nice and know how to act in public. I wish we could clone those kinds of parents. People get all bent out of shape when I say I don't want kids -- they take it as a personal attack on their choices. Just because I don't like kids doesn't mean I don't think it's a valid choice for others to have them.

I just don't think I could change a vile poopy daiper without puking all over myself.

---

When I was in college I had a job at a cheesy jewelry store called Crown Jewel. Most malls have one -- sometimes they're called Piercing Pagodas. Usually they sell costume jewelry, a few gold chains, gold charms, that type of thing.

And they pierce ears.

I loved working at the Crown Jewel because I got to the wield the piercing gun with an iron fist. It was depressing on days when no one came in for an ear piercing.

Maybe it spoke to my inner dominatrix. Perhaps I was really meant to be Mistress Nicole, Queen of Ye Olde English Chambers. A good friend of mine, Kathleen, earns her living as a dominatrix in Philly. She's been trying to talk me into it for years.

My favorite victims customers were guys. They'd come in, all macho, wanting to get an ear pierced. The first problem arose when deciding which ear to get pierced. I don't know if this was an issue where you live, but at one time if a boy had the wrong ear pierced it meant something. Just to be a total bitch, I'd tell them it was the wrong ear that should be pierced, and they always listened to me.

And it was always the same. I'd have this guy sitting in the official piercing chair, wipe his ear down, put a purple marker dot on his ear, and then shoot the earring through his lobe. And then the pierced boy would hold back tears as he left the store.

I have mixed feelings about piercing babies. On one hand, I really don't like children. On the other hand, the sound of babies crying makes my skin crawl. We had two guns so two of us could pierce simultaneously. We'd do the countdown, pierce, and then run for cover.

I admit freely that getting your ears pierced hurts. But it isn't the piercing that hurts -- it's the sound of the gun in your ear combined with the alcohol getting into the hole in your ear.

One day I had to pierce my half-sister's ears. She was 7, I think. She wouldn't let me pierce her second ear. I had to bring the gun home with me one night and pierce it when she was sleeping. She wasn't sleeping for long. I don't think she spoke to me for weeks.

Ah, memories.

---

I have a running total of about a million things about why I don't want to have children/why I'd be a horrible mother/why having children is a bad idea for me. I can now add one more to the list.

For the last two days I've been sharing a computer in a database training class with Brooke, my coworker who is in her first trimester. Everything was fine until about an hour ago. It was then that she turned into a total bitch and accused me of thinking her brain is inferior to mine.

If I had done something to provoke such an attack, I'd be fine with it. Really I would, because I can admit when I'm being an asshole. But apparently all I did to cause her to go off the deep end was move the mouse too fast for her tastes.

I hate to blame it on being hormonal because that seems like such a stupid excuse, but under normal circumstances Brooke is hilarious and fun to be around. Now I'm afraid to so much as look at her in case she decides I'm doing something else horrible.

She is already not speaking to someone else in our department because of some stupid comment, and I fear I am next. I think I'll just keep my hands out of her cage.

---

My grandparents and Craig's parents have been pestering us about having kids. Craig and I do not want to have children, so we've been trying to come up with creative ways to make them back off.

Craig's mother is especially pushy. Apparently she's been saving space on her wall o' grandchildren for a portrait of our little bundle of joy. I usually offer to have a professional photograph taken of our cat, Sassy.

And then I have to listen to a diatribe about how I'll change my mind about having kids, and kids are wonderful, and blah blah blah. I just flat out don't want children -- I don't really like being around them and cleaning up puke and shit doesn't really sound like a good time to me. The motherly instincts just skipped right over me. I think all babies pretty much look like Yoda. And I'm 30 years old...I don't think I'm going to suddenly wake up one day and think I would make a great mother.

So I think we've come up with some new and interesting ideas on how to make aggressive grandchild wanters to shut up!

Idea 1 - Introduce them to a photograph of Muthoka from Kenya. $15 per month to sponsor a kid from Kenya is much cheaper than the billions of dollars is takes to support a child of my own, and I don't have to change any daipers or pretend to be interested in Barney. The bonus: Muthoka is not white, which would totally piss off my grandfather.

Idea 2 - I'll bring Nathan, my adopted ex-con, to dinner next Thanksgiving. And than I'll hand over the much-coveted portrait: Nathan's mug shot.

Idea 3 - Maybe we could adopt some snot-nosed little punk named Snake from the local orphanage. I'll show up at Craig's parents house and say, "Well, we're joining the Peace Corps and will be gone for the next year. Can you watch your new grandson?" Sears portraits will never be the same.

---

I read Turning on the Girls last night. I couldn't help myself! And I really liked it alot -- it was hilarious in spots. I've always wondered what would happen if women took over the world, and I now I know one scenario. And the porn! Heeeeeeeeeeeee! A highly recommended read to all and sundry.

It's been really hot all week, which always puts me in mind of my least favorite summer job. That would be working at Sesame Place. You know I'm not a fan of children, right?

So how does someone who dislikes children get a job working with children? Well, the pay is good. And I wasn't actively working with kids -- I was working in Group Sales. So I had to deal with their parents, which is almost worse. I can forgive a kid for being stupid and inconsiderate because maybe they just haven't learned anything yet. But when an adult throws a hissy fit because his or her coupon expired three years ago and I refuse to honor it, well....it isn't nearly as forgiveable.

At face value the job sucked simply in terms of uniform. The polo shirts were bright yellow, the shorts were kelly green, and the belts were super red. Oh, and did I mention the fabulous kelly green satin jackets? Right off the bat, it's just a bad situation.

Oh, and then there were the morning calisthenics we were required to perform in front of the entry point...you know, to show the salivating kids and parents waiting to get in that we were just rarin' to go, ready to serve. It's always fun to do 50 jumping jacks in a polyester uniform when it's 110 degrees with 80,000% humidity.

I felt relatively lucky -- I rarely worked inside the park. I was almost always in a booth just outside the entrance. Inside the park was like hell on earth. Parents fighting with each other, fighting with the characters, fighting with their kids, fighting with the food service people. It's almost an exact replica of Dante's Inferno, with each ride being a different level of hell. The pee-infested waters of the Rambling River, the vomit inducing Vapor Trail, the constant scene of drowning that is the Teeny Tiny Tidal Wave....all are reserved for a different brand of sinner, and I was sort of the gatekeeper.

That summer may just have sealed the deal for me in terms of my rabid dislike of children. And I'm convinced that the park is some sort of evil joke -- last year some parent actually physically attacked one of the characters. How sick is that?

---

K, from so she says, left me an interesting note about yesterday's post. She says, "if you choose to marry, have kids and spend your days caring for and educating those kids, you've got to be insane, Baptist, or very, very weak. bullshit. the fight was for choice, not big business employment opportunities. when people ask me "what are you doing now that you arent in college anymore?" i never know how to answer them."

K is right, of course. Being a stay at home mom, or a homemaker, or whatever you want to call it is looked down on because the job doesn't pay -- you don't get insurance benefits or a 401K or sick days with that. My sister in law used to be a career banker. When she had kids she stopped working so she could stay at home with them. I don't think any less of her because she chose to put her career on hold in order to raise her children.

Any type of career, whether it is climbing the corporate ladder or homeschooling your children or whatever -- it should be conscious choice. And that's my main problem -- women in many communities don't have a choice in it. It's just tradition -- they will get married, pop out a couple of kids, and tend to her husband's every whim and desire with no thoughts of what she wants. If I had stayed in the town where I grew up, I'm sure that would have happened to me on some level: I definitely would have gotten married right out of high school, by now I'd have about 5 kids, and I'd likely be doing the whole "doting wife and mother" thing while also working a crappy factory job.

I will fully admit that I'm way too selfish to have children. I want my time to be my own. That's one of the myriad reasons why I never thought I'd get married...I don't want to have to answer to anyone. But Craig feels the same way, and we both need a lot of time to ourselves. It works out really well, and we both seem to be on the same schedule.

There are three automatic responses to my "I don't want to have children" declaration. One is, "You'll change your mind. You'd probably make a wonderful mother, and your biological clock will start ticking and you'll have one." The second is, "You think you're so superior because you don't want to have kids...you think you're so much better than me because I have kids and you don't." The last is, "You're a horrible person -- who doesn't love children?"

The simple fact is I am uncomfortable around children. My brother and I grew up in the absolute middle of no where. I never had other kids around to play with, so I never got used to be around other kids until I started school. As an adult I never spent a tremendous amount of time around kids. I honestly don't believe that I am equipped with the requisite amount of patience needed to have children.

Nothing sets my teeth on edge more than hearing a baby wail. Changing diapers? No thanks. Spit...vomit....snot? Not in a million years. Really....I can't think of better ways to spend my time.

There are millions of families out there having kids. Millions of women who want to have children. Why should it matter if I don't want to be included?

I will admit to two other reasons for not wanting to have children. With everything that's going on in the world, the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon, the tensions in the Middle East, and everything else, I'd feel guilty for bringing a life into this world. And lastly, my own upbringing was plagued by bad parenting....what if I turn into my worst nightmare?

Luckily my mother doesn't seem to be in any great hurry for a grandkid. She could care less. Craig's mother, on the other hand, bugs us constantly. I'm not sure why...Craig's two brothers have provided plenty of continuity for the family genes. Between the two of them they had 6 grandchildren for her. We offered to get a portrait taken of our dear cat Sassy to put on her wall of grandchild photos....I don't think she was amused.