I'm baaaack!!!

Hello!!

Hopefully you all had a wonderful holiday - full of delicious food and low on the family drama. I only got yelled at once throughout my week home, so I say that Thanksgiving was quite the success!

So, a topic came up once again this past week: children. More specifically, the discussion came up about why I don't want children. Don't get me wrong, kids are cute and I've got nothing against them. I just don't want my own. In light of what appears to be confusion, I figured today is as good as any to finally set the record straight. Here's why I don't want kids.

- You don't get take-backs. The second you hit fetus status... the rest of your life has been permanently changed. There is no other single decision that has this much impact on your future. Jobs can change, tattoos can be covered or removed, you can always go back to school or clean up your act, but children are FOR-E-VER.

- Conversely, your screw-ups are no longer just your screw-ups. Being an idiot is no longer an option once you're a parent. Sure, real parents do it all the time... but those people are widely considered to be selfish wastes of life that deserve their children taken away... so my statement stands.

- Babies grow INSIDE YOU!!!! How am I not supposed to feel like I've been abducted and forced to carry alien spawn?? Pregnancy is creep-tastic.

- Spontaneity becomes having yams instead of baked potatoes. Okay, that's extreme, but I'm still holding onto my dream of living all over the world and being able to drop everything at a moment's notice.

- Let's face it... I'm selfish. I'm #1 in my book, and if I can't be #1... I at least like a fair exchange. Friendships, relationships, etc. all allow for a certain give and take. Having been a daughter for 23 years, I feel that I have enough authority to state that the parent-child relationship, however, is extremely lopsided. In that case, I'm fairly certain that I would hold some level of resentment against my children, and no child deserves to have their parent resent them.

- The idea of breast feeding is deeply disturbing to me. 

- The world is going south. I find society frustrating today, and don't see it getting any better in the future. When the future brings up images of Idiocracy  and Wall-E, who in the heck would want to bring a child into it??

- Plastic surgery is expensive. If some creature is going to ruin my body... I'd like to have it fixed.

- I'm a size 9 1/2 shoe... after having a baby... I'd probably be a size 10 1/2, and no one will carry my shoe size.

- Raising a kid costs a ton! I just used a baby cost calculator... and my baby will cost me at least $426,000 to raise. AT LEAST! (Knowing my hypothetical children... it will be over a million.) Perhaps I should just take that money and save it, so that I can live in an elite retirement home. It's actually a better bet for making sure I'm taken care of when I get older.

- Cort plans on having kids. They should be more than adequate for me to get my kid "fix" whenever I'm feeling maternal. 

- I just don't want kids. Okay? Leave me alone.

Now, all that said... I'm pretty sure I'll change my mind when I hit thirty. All 30-year-old women seem to have some sort of hormonal shift that causes them to go ape-shit for babies. I can only hope that I will be strong enough to fight it. (Or that a caring friend will shove me down the stairs if I try and have a baby.)

Love,
Katie