Kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiids

Two people have asked me (in just the last three days) if I'm going to have children.  Granted, one was a man from Yemen and one was a nurse, but WTF, mates?  For the latter, I'd gone in for a non-baby prescription refill and a problem with my toenail.  Babies? What?

Having children is something I've thought of. A lot.  I've read lots of books. I read blogs.  I talk to people my age and older who are parents.  I'm not shying away from the subject.  J and I talked about having kids before we decided to get married, and one of the things that attracted me to him was that he would make a really good father*.

My doctor asked me if I was thinking about having kids, and I told her I had an IUD that was good for another three years.  She said, "Well that could be taken out today!" And I replied, "BUT IT'S GOOD FOR FIVE YEARS AND THAT'S WHY I HAD IT PAINFULLY THRUST INTO MY UTERUS."  Ok, I did not all-caps at her, but I was flustered. I gave her my reasons why it's not something I personally wanted to do yet, reasoned arguments about pursuing my interests, spending time with my spouse and keeping my body mine.**  Her response and tone made me gag a little:

"Well, that's just the educated person talking".

Let me remind readers that I work on a college campus and this was the campus clinic.  She went on to say that most parents never crack a book about it and do just fine.  I couldn't shake the feeling that she was on the "Just jump in!" bandwagon.  Regardless of my want for children? Our financial readiness? Lady, love doesn't keep anyone alive. Especially in this economy.  I usually really like this APN, but she sounded judgy and I kept expecting her to say, "You'll change your mind!" which is incredibly rude.  How do you know my mind better than me?  Or worse, what if I change my mind after I have a baby?  No one ever tells a woman who wants kids that she'll regret it one day, that she'll change her mind or that she's selfish. These are common slurs tossed at childfree women.  To pull a comment from Where are the child-free role-molels?"

When I was growing up people kept saying "you'll change your mind". I wonder how many folks ever tell reproduction-inspired young women that they might someday "change their minds".

When I was younger, I never said things like, "I will never have kids", because I realized that I was still turning into the woman I'd become.  Almost 30, I'm pretty sure I'm almost a finished entity. And I'm slowly becoming more interested in spending the rest of my life with J and only J.  If that's what we decide to do, you can bet that I'll be berated but no one will probably question his decision.

No Kidding: On being childfree and really liking kids
A typical dose of judgment in which I wonder if this person is really trying to convince herself.
Why is it selfish to be child-free?
A whole series parodying that selfish "bitch" who chose not to have children!
That really depressing NYTimes article about unhappy parents (does not apply to everyone but gives me pause)
9 Reasons to Have/13 to not

None of what I'm saying is to judge anyone for having kids.  I wish I had a drive to do it, and maybe I will later.  But if I don't, I'd like to live my life happily without anyone telling me what I'm missing.  I already get that from meat-eaters.  All. The. Time.  This subject has just been so front-and-center for me lately.  All my lady-blogs are blowing up with it, people I know, friend's parents. The only person who hasn't really bugged me is my mom***.

*I was shelving books in the Parenting & Childbirth section of my library at the time, so it's not as weird as it sounds.
**I am not saying a pregnant woman or mother does not have bodily autonomy. I am frightened of mother mortality and icky American birth practices/attitudes.
***Who was put on a 5-year grandbaby moratorium the day of my wedding. She has kept her promise.

Sad day

I tried to get a good head start back to work. We made a soup from our new raw cookbook, but it made my stomach feel bad, and I got to bed late and couldn't sleep well (J. came to bed at god knows what time, and woke me up as usual).  Still, I got up, ate breakfast and got to work my usual 10 minutes early.  It only took about 30 minutes for my boss to be genuinely mean to me.  I guess since I'm writing a blog post you can tell that kind of behavior doesn't inspire me to be my most productive.

This semester's goals are to make a handbook for my job, so the next person doesn't have to waste time muddling through the little dumb details that slowed me down.  My boss knows I'm making a handbook, and of course didn't tell me she thought it was a good job.  I have a very spare handbook that I started with, that she recently told me wasn't even updated before I started all these years ago.  Awesome!  Other goals are to further clean up old files and take a good look at our training materials.  Things get outdated so fast.

My boss starting the year with anger and impatience reminded me that my imminent escape is really tenuous right now.  We still don't know if J's advisor has written any letters, or why exactly he's been held up.  I'm trying to push my anger into sadness, because I'm gonna have a pity party anyway and my sad is more responsible than my angry.  I haven't really gotten down about J's rejections, but if he doesn't get a job because of things he couldn't help that weren't his fault, I'll have trouble redirecting my anger.  I know that my anger can't do anything but makes things worse, so this is hard.  I can't imagine what it's like for him, since he is so much more emotionally reserved than me.   I wonder if he needs a hobby that has nothing to do with his work to give him some added joy/success right now.  I think Osmos is the only thing he'll geek out on right now:

New Year's like a Phoenix

I'd like to think I came through the threshold of 2011 like a phoenix, on fire and ready to be reborn, but really I just had the worst hangover of my life (4 drinks! I am serious!) and didn't manage to form complete sentences until 6pm the next day.  On the 31st, I decided that I'd eat more raw food and end the year with a completely raw meal (spring rolls and sun dried tomato brazil nut "cheese") but on the 1st I had a fried cheese melt from Denny's dipped in ranch.  Nothing on earth was going to get me to eat cheese with a Z.  I needed fried.

Other than the horrendous pain and lost time, New Year's was super fun.  I got to wear a cool outfit, go to several parties and hang out with lots of friends.  J. got a little grouchy (he's not as much about parties) but by the end of the night everyone went to bed happy. (How they woke up is another story).

We did end the year with some bad news on the job-search front.  J. sent in an application to Colorado over a month ago, and also got work back from a possible job in Ohio around the same time.  Has his advisor written/sent his rec letters yet? No.  J. tried emailing him several times, stuck around his office trying to catch him, but to no result.  J. was pretty disconsolate a few days ago and thought that this apparent disregard for him getting a job was going to cost him the Colorado one.  It's not his fault, but it makes him look bad.  The deadline for the Colorado application has already passed, so it's not a point in his favor if his is incomplete.

He had to send an email to the Ohio job to see if they had all his letters (since his advisor wouldn't even answer an email about whether he had sent it).  The answer was no, and J. tried to be as diplomatic as he could without saying outright his advisor was practically M.I.A.  He tried to get in touch some more, tried to convince himself that it was just the end of the semester/holiday time and things were going slow, but eventually we tried to convince each other that something horrible had happened and that's why there was no letter.  J. got an email a few days ago from the Ohio researcher asking about the letter, and he forwarded that to his advisor.  Guess who finally replied!  Seems there was some vague emergency, and he is now "working on it".

It's making me very nervous, and I can't imagine what's happening in J's head right now.  He's working as hard as he can, and is asking for the bare minimum.  There's nothing I can do really, and that's frustrating.

Also annoying: people asking me where I want to go.  It's a nicety, I know, but do they not understand the concept that I am not the engineer of this move? I don't want to get back into the negative rut of saying, "It doesn't matter where I want to go," but that's the truth, isn't it? Stop asking me!!

Unspecific Saturday

I wish I could write about the specifics of my incredibly productive Saturday, but that'd be writing my full name.  Let's just say it was the good kind of cooking (fun stuff) and the good kind of cleaning (re-arranging, pitching).  Sadly, the week did not end with any letters written, so I was a little more irked than usual when the husband piddled on the internet this morning.  I tried to prod him out the door and got the usual, "But I want to spend this time with you!"  I told him he was spending time with his RSS feed, and to scoot.  Luckily, he's been gone for hours, I've gotten lots done, and we have definite plans tonight with no end-time.

I got really sad one day last week, trying to get a friend to do something with me, but everyone was busy.  I get sad about this sometimes and have to remind myself that adult life just doesn't include as much free time.  But what really got me a little choked up was how hard it would be to find someone to do things with when I knew nobody.  I know everyone here, I know where everything is.  I get huge satisfaction in being a sometimes-maven and always knowing where someone can get anything.  I'm a connector.  I will lose all of that soon.  Meaning, if I'm not careful, I could lose my identity.

Too melodramatic?

Foot in Mouth Disease

[Rant warning-- sometimes these things need to come out]


You don't have time? Then why are you hanging out with me?  File this under graduate student marital difficulties.  Maybe I'm over-reacting, but when we're out having a good time, don't start jawing about how you should have come home sooner on the car ride back.  It makes me feel like 1) you didn't want to go in the first place (remember it was your idea, though), 2) I'm the reason you're not getting enough work done, 3) you don't have the gumption to speak up for your own time line and feel it's easier to make it seem like my fault.

It isn't.

I was under the impression that I was making a lot of choices that benefit my spouse and his future career, and that he could figure his own schedule out.  If he doesn't have time to go out, a date, come home for dinner, go grocery shopping, he should say something before instead of after the fact.  It's even worse when we were having a really good time out, and that retro-actively ruins it all. I have been planning my life around this person and he won't take responsibility for his daily schedule? Really?

This is something that has happened before.  Maybe you've gotten this impression from my blog, but I don't keep things bottled up and speak up if someone is doing me wrong.  I don't let things explode.  Since we've had this discussion before, I wish he would just realize that responding to me in a hurt voice when I'm speaking my mind at a normal inside-voice level makes me feel like some kind of monster. A monster who is working a job she hates and has her life pretty much on hold so he can pursue his dreams.  I am so scary!

I'd rather he just spend much less time with me, and save up the time he REALLY has to spend doing it in earnest, not worrying the whole time how he's going to catch up. Because that doesn't really count as being there.  Even worse, after these fights* he has to hang around the house until he feels like things are better between us, which makes me insane because the argument started because he needed to get to work. GET OUT OF THE HOUSE THEN.  I know he doesn't want to leave with bad feelings between us, but it makes me nuts!

So, I hope he gets a lot accomplished today, because my Sunday is ruined.

*Luckily, and I realize how lucky I am every day, these are the only things we fight about,  other than some tiffs over cleaning.  He has never raised his voice at me.  Once he looked angry at me, and that made me so sad.

Truth bombs away!

On the London Relocation blog (which I didn't check out initially thinking it was just ads for flats) there's another great post about the need for a new name for trailing spouses, and about the resentment that happens in that strange, topsy-turvy world:

Tackling the first issue is primarily psychological—mind over matter, as they say.  It’s not to say that your concerns aren’t legitimate and you shouldn’t assert your viewpoints to ensure your side is understood and that your spouse will similarly make concessions to maintain the balance of power in the relationship.  However, it’s also imperative to recognize when maybe your side is understood and your spouse will and does make concessions, in which case the problem may rest largely in your mind, so requires a shift in outlook.

I put this in big because it's really important. Now, there probably are horrid power imbalances in some relationships, but if you've got a good one now, you can probably have a good one when things get crazy.  In my case, this is true. I've got a feminist husband. He's worth like, 20,000 heads of cattle. And 10 Cadillacs. But do I get some resentment brewing my head about this? Oh, hell yeah. Luckily I spotted it before it was too late.  Thank you blog, ye olde time-suck and navel-gazing cure-all.