Truthily

I don't know if it's the sudden deluge of family time I've had lately, or the fact that I'm rapidly sliding towards my dreaded late-twenties, but I've been thinking a lot about kids.

I don't like them. This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, really. I've said it before. Unless I'm related to them, I do not care for children. They're loud, they smell wierd, excrete unspeakable things, you can't even try to reason with them, they hardly do what they're told, and they have trains of thought that are just mind-boggling. They're completely foreign to me, and always have been. But it seems like everywhere I turn, they're popping out left right and center.

There hasn't necessarily been a lot of pressure to have one from the family, which is nice, but it also means that whatever pressure is there exists more in my head than anything. Really, brain? You're really going to add this to the seemingly endless list of 'To-dos' plodding around up there? Where exactly should 'Kids' be listed? Before or after 'Buying a bedroom set that A) matches and B) isn't made of compressed woodchips'? Before or after 'Plump up the savings account for a house we'll never get a mortgage for'? Before or after 'Drop that last 10 20 30 pounds so I'll stop feeling like a beached landwhale every time I leave the apartment'? Is it really a good idea to bring an entirely separate entity that would completely depend on my deplorable parenting skills?

Then there's the other side. There's a large community of 'Mommy bloggers' out there who document the everyday trials and joys of having children. I'll admit to having read them, and while it shows the (sometimes very) bad with the good, part of my brain just keeps saying 'Well, if it were you it'd be different. It wouldn't be hard at all'. That part of my brain is about to get lobotomized with a grapefruit spoon, if I'm going to be truthy here. It's the part that starts showing me pictures of the perfect house where somehow, we've managed to work it so I can be a stay-at-home mom to perfectly behaved children that have nevertheless inhereted my vocabulary and my husband's tongue, who get straight A's and are popular without being Popular (there's a difference there, y'know.) That just couldn't happen. Or wouldn't.

I don't know what's right or not. Is it selfish to not want to hop on the baby wagon? Is it selfish to want to wait until we could give them everything they deserve?

Loss

It was raining when I was 13, much like it is today. It was the kind of rain where yeah, it messed up our hair and made walking to the bus station dismal but we were so glad it wasn't snow we didn't care. The first thing that would ring odd with me (later though; always later) was that the vice-principal came to our usual lunch table and asked us all our names. He told us it was for a survey.

After lunch they took our grade down to the library. We thought ti was to kick off our month-long research project on Australia. A filmstrip or something like that. The principal was there and I remember he was either crying or trying not to cry. He told us after a few minutes what had happened; that my best friend and our classmate was gone. I don't remember what else he said because I don't think I heard it. I don't remember a lot of the rest of the day, except calling my mom at work and almost not being able to tell her, getting a ride home, and trying to distract myself by looking over the program from the play I'd gone with my mom to see the night before. I wanted to watch the news but my dad turned it off and said he didn't think I'd really want to see what they were showing. He was probably right. I tried to eat dinner, just rice, but couldn't get past the first bite. To this day I can't put into words what was in my head that day, or for many days after except the fact that I wanted to call her and tell her everything that'd happened. I remembered her phone number all the way through high school. I remember the sound of her voice. I just wish I could remember the last thing she said to me.

A few weeks back my dad and I were discussing the possibility of needing a funeral home for a family member. It was premature, as it turns out, but he said thinking about it was bringing back what happened to her very clearly. I wanted to tell him it never went away.

Eloquence

This past Sunday I was watching Ghost Adventures on the Travel Channel not because I hold any particular belief in the paranormal, but because the three 'investigators' are so completely ridiculous I can't believe they ever figured out how to put their pants on in the morning, much less get their own cable show. Each episode can be summed up thusly:

[Scene]

The setting: some totally rad-awesome place where Something Bad may have happened anywhere from the dawn of time up to last year. Usually an abandoned warehouse, extra-dusty, an abandoned sanitarium/hospital, a mid-renovation hotel, or a bar. Our 3 Dudes arrive and set up camp.

Dude 1: DUDE. Bro.

Dude 2: Brah?

Dude 3: Like, dude.

Dude 1: Dude. Duuuuuuuudebrah. Look at me yell at ghosts. [note: The last line will come out as 'Bro dude dude $(#% brah']

Dudes 2&3: Brooooo.

Dustbunny: Rah.

Dudes 1-3: WAAAAUUUUGGGGH DUDE BRO BRO DUDE BRAH $%! BRAAAH DUUUDE!!!! [They run in terror to either a like-minded paranormal investigation team or a priest. The like-minded paranormal investigation team will inevitably tell them at the the drafts, dust bunnies, and their own shadows are like, totally for sure ghosts. Dude. The priest will sigh and tell them to go back to Bakersfield and see if they can get their jobs at Pac Sun back.]

Dude 1: Bro. Dude.

[SCENE]

Sad as it is, it's still better than American Idol or Kate Gosselin's dancing. Combined.

Acrobatics

One of the first things my husband and I did after we returned from our honeymoon (our first joint purchase, for future note) was to buy a bookcase for our living room. He loves putting things together; I love pretending our living room is about to be showcased in Better Homes & Gardens, so what better way to spend a Saturday than to go down to Target as moony-eyed newleyweds and make a our third joint purchase: A 7-foot-tall espresso-colored pressed fiberboard bookshelf that would look entirely too large in our living room? It seemed like a great idea, until we got it into the parking lot and to our second joint purchase: my husband's car. Chalk it up to the naivete of youth or just poor foresight, but cramming this 7-foot-tall espresso-colored pressed fiberboard bookshelf into a Mazda 3 with two full-grown adults was going to prove to be something of a Tetris championship of spacial management. We did it though. We popped open the trunk, laid down the back seat, wiggled the yet-to-be-assembled bookshelf in, and scooted the passenger seat up until we could close aforementioned trunk.

The only problem with this was that there was an occupant in the passenger seat: me. I am not short, nor am I particularly flexible, but I was determined to have this too-large bookshelf in our living room by noon, so help me God. By the time all was said and done, all the doors closed (mostly), the trunk closed (mostly), and I got to spend the mercifully short 8-10 mile drive home with my face mashed against the windshield hoping that we didn't run into any state troopers because if I'd have tried to put on my seatbelt I would've strangled myself. Of course, if we'd been hit nothing in that car would've moved. At all.

My point in saying all this is this: we're revamping our efforts to swap out some older, worn hand-me-down furniture and we still don't have a car capable of transporting it. I drive a Corolla that so far, knock on wood, has not tried to kill me by random acceleration. My husband's still got his Mazda. All I can hear right now is my parents telling me that we should really get a car that we can transport stuff in so there's really no need to say 'I told you so!' Mom and/or Dad. My car is recently paid off and I'm trying to think ahead as to what I'd like to replace it with Someday. Someday, by the way, gets a capital S because we've got a lot hedging on it. We're going to get a house Someday, we're going to have kids Someday, I'm going to remember that I don't like raddishes before I eat one Someday, but I digress. What's good out there in terms of a mid-sized car or smaller SUV? I don't need a Land Rover or tank (although that would certainly take the headache out of my commute), just something I can Someday put a headboard and new dresser in.

Airing out

I love order. I love organizing, cleaning, putting piles of things away, and right angles. Hardcore love on the right angles. From looking around my home right now, though, it'd be hard to see that. There are dishes on the counter, in the sink, the kitchen floor needs to be swept, and I won't even begin to describe the chaos that is the fridge, pantry, or state of our bedding. It's ok though, because what I love most about order, organizing, and cleaning is blitzing our house (apartment, really. But I call it a house sometimes. Freudian slip.). There's something about going rather haywire on a mess that eases tension and makes me feel copacetic.


If I had a therapist they would probably say I like to do that because it's something I have complete control over. I can't control the state of my job. I can't control the traffic on my commute into the city, or the fact that I have not and will not get a raise at work. I can't control the economy, or the weather (yet), or other peoples' minds (again, yet). So I clean.

And it makes things a little easier.