I am. Getting clucky that is. Feeling my childlessness more and more at times when I let my mind sit still. I never wanted to have a child and turned down a proposal from a lover because I knew he wanted a family and I didn't. But that was before someone threw the switch in the womb room or whatever happened to change me into a romper suit browsing kind of person. Now I'm worried that I'll start viewing every bloke as a potential father, rather than as a possible lover and friend. And that men will sniff that on me. And then there's the horrible thought my longing for a child could (I was going to type conceivably here but it would be too punnish) drive me into the wrong person's arms. It's all too hard. I do hope this is just temporary.

Good Luck!

this is a sore subject to bring up, i may have to stay away from this one

BONG!! BONG!! BONG!! BONG!! (cat's biological clock) i hear crack will take your mind off it.

cat, i sympathize with you. dave won't even let me get another puppy. of course, i could just do it, but i hate to admit that he has a point and besides i couldn't deal with the two week silent treatment. at any rate, it's a very strong impulse. don't worry about your inability to override the emotions with logic, it's perfectly normal. one of my older sisters is going through the same thing right now.

we already have a dog, 3 cats, 3 goldfish and a kid in a 980 sq. foot house with a muddy back yard. it's hellish enough right now.

pave the backyard. see? simple solution.

pave the whole damn world.

But she's a very beautiful and wonderful kid,come on Dave,deep down your decent.

you're right i like the dark one with the cheese. hell, i like the blurry one with the pokemon stocking cap, too.

I love it!See? Deep down,way deep,real down,Dave is just a hunka burning love.

she's too cute she told me a couple days ago that she wasn't beautiful because her face wasn't oval-shaped. where the hell did that come from?!

Marie Claire magazine.

Not only is she beautiful,she's all girl,no matter how beautiful a woman is, she can always find fault with herself.

j, i'm on yahoo. mouthbreether

Cat... think of the sleepless nights, your career, vomiting children, childhood diseases, toilet training, childrens birthday parties, napies, stress, the stream of vomit over your left shoulder for the next two years, screaming, crying little balls of yelling who dont know words yet and cant tell you whats wrong..... does that help?

Cat how old are you? 'cause i really must make sure to die before i reach that baby-wanting age. eeeeewwwwww i guess i'd better start smoking more.

Dave I tried to look you up on yahoo,but couldn't find you,I can never find Czarina either.On yahoo I'm janny917_85224,on msn I'm janny917,and that yahoo phone thing,my number is 1-800-699-2466 480-820-5787,but I don't know if it really works.

gotta go w/ wisper on this one. i hear a lot of women talk about the whole "biological clock" thing. the biological clock is ticking...gotta squirt out a few kids. i don't get it. there is no clock. there are just hormones. & the intellect & will to subdue them. looking at a little red-faced, yowling drool factory in stinking diapers has never made me want to run out & have one of my own. it's always made me thank my lucky stars that i don't have to actually deal w/ the damn screeching thing. a LOT of people who have kids have told me that i was smart to avoid having them. as one man w/ a five-year-old brat recently told me, "just get a puppy, instead. they're cleaner and far more respectful."

wisper, you and crimson are silly about that. i could have predicted those responses verbatim.

hey, just giving my .02. i reserve the right to be a predicatable dullard. i wasn't going to respond, but i just couldn't help myself. so much for willpower. anyway, my point of view may be silly...but i think it's sillier still to consider giving up one's freedom for the sake of getting all gushy over some slimy baby. wiping junior's ass just doesn't seem like a fair trade-off to me for one's personal liberty. then again, i'm just kind of funny that way. it's just my opinion. no biggie. want kids? have a dozen or so. just don't ask me to babysit, because i'd probably just as soon drop-kick them. additional thought...remember that when a woman spawns a baby w/ a man she's in a relationship with (as opposed to mr. random sperm donor) & the relationship dies (always an excellent chance of that happening, right?) she will be forever STUCK w/ the dumb bastard, by way of having whelped his child. it's heartbreaking, all the women i know who are stuck w/ abusive clods because they felt that they just had to have a baby. it's scary as hell & painful to watch. creeps can still torment women who dumped them fifteen years ago just because she's tied to him by way of a child. i've seen it happen time & time again. it's like signing up for your own personal stalker for life. it works in reverse, too. i know a couple of guys who are yoked to the world's dumbest bitches because they spawned kids w/ them. instead of just being able to breeze out the door forever on the day of the divorce, they have to keep coming back again & again for the sake of the kiddies. it never ends. anyway, i'm just adamant about this stuff because it seems that it's always the romantic, gushy, illogical point of view that gets expressed, while the opposite point of view gets silenced for being "hateful". i'm just speaking up for the other side, that's all. devil's advocate & all that. you know i'll do it every damn time. so my viewpoints may be predictable, but i also feel it's still an alternative point of view that needs to be expressed. honestly, i don't personally know any local people who've had kids that are happy about it. matter of fact, they're all fucking miserable & they're pretty open about the fact. pilate's the sole exception. he loves his kid dearly. there's probably still something to be said for adoption.

you seem to live in a pit of poverty, and general unhappiness, perhaps that explains the predictable pessimism. i think thats a shame that you can't see the beauty in life, in reproducing life, because your vision is filled with extreme case scenarios, blunt exagerrations of reality. see i think using words and phrases like "slimy", "giving-up freedom", "gushy", "juniors ass", and "personal liberty" are just as illogical as the converse of which you speak against. they are sensationalist. you don't give up freedom when you rear a child. you just make another committment, one that can be extremely rewarding and powerful. there is an inherent beauty to child rearing...for the right reasons of course. we are animals, we are designed to reproduce. this cannot be denied. im sorry your world lends to such bleak outlooks.

She has a point about ex-husbands still fucking with you after being dumped 15 years ago,my ex,hounded me for years,I only pray I outlive him,so I can pee on his grave.

Nice J. Instead of "i Spit on your Grave", "I Pee On YOur Grave".

i could go a couple of miles down the road on any day of the week & look at the REALLY poor kids roaming out in the freezing cold in their diapers, w/ bruises on their legs. i often see public examples of blatant child abuse. as much as i dislike being around kids, i don't think this is funny. if people would just THINK before having kids, the world would be a much better place. i feel that i'm being fairly rational when i point out the downside of having kids. the world isn't made of sunshine & light. it never was. yet there are people who want to stick their heads in the sand & pretend that everything's all nice & sweet, like a damn 1950s TV sitcom or something. an inherent beauty to child-rearing? my god, what could that possibly entail? all right, let's say that i popped out a kid. the ONLY advantage i can see to it is that i'd attempt to raise the most blatantly intelligent child i possibly could. i'd enjoy being up at the school giving the administration hell every time some teacher tried to fill my kid full of right-wing propaganda. i'd raise my kid to be a bomb-hurling junior anarchist--& to the chagrin of the entire community, i'd support him all the fucking way. i'd skip the teletubbies & start him off on nietzsche, instead. i'd just try to make sure that the kid was both blindingly intelligent & independent as hell. i would want to raise somebody w/ a social conscience who could make a difference in the world, & start doing so at a rather young age. intelligence, competence, excellence. that's what i'd strive for. but then, i'm daydreaming. the kid would likely sit around munching soggy peanut butter & jelly sandwiches & making dopey baby-talk about cartoons, just like every other kid on the block. my words were fairly realistic, i thought. kids ARE slimy. parents DO give up their freedom. you WILL be wiping junior's ass. and your personal liberty? forget about it. it was gone within ten seconds of the kid emerging from the womb. i used to live in a crowded tenement. the mormon lady downstairs often told me she didn't want kids, but had to have them for the sake of religion. she especially hated one of her sons. she beat the fuck out of him every day, screaming loudly into his ear that she hated him. it was horrifying. nobody should have to grow up like that. again, if only the parents had thought about it rationally before spawning. know what i mean?

peeing on his grave? cool. my husband always said that if his evil stepfather died, he'd make a pilgrimage to go shit on his grave. we just found out that he died. guess where we're going?

yeah but that point really has nothing to do with the point of child-rearing. It CAN be a side effect...it CAN happen. but how many consider the possibility of getting hit by a freight train or driving off a cliff when buying a car. besides, i believe NO WOMAN is stuck with any man, at any time, at any place. child or no child. The only thing that would prevent a woman from leaving an abusive relation is fear, irrationality and ignorance. Im not saying abused are to be blamed for not leaving, its very understandable, but its no excuse.

if only i had a nickel for every time i heard a woman say "i'd leave him, but there are the KIDS to consider..." my mother left me high & dry when i was a kid, but she's a rare case. most mothers will NOT leave their children. they'll definitely stay tied to an abusive man after having had his children. i know it defies logic, but i've seen it happen time & time again. it's happened to so many people i know that it's not even funny. look at all the women of our parents' & grandparents' generation who stayed in crappy marriages "for the sake of the children". having kids DOES tie a woman to a man, it really does. i'm not saying that it makes sense, but it's just a pattern i've seen far too many times. it's really scary to watch. it's hard to run away from a man who's got partial custody of your kids. he has your address. he can & will track you down. it's legalized stalking by any other name. & as i've suggested, it works in reverse, too. a woman can do the same thing to a man. my stepmother stayed for many years w/ a man who repeatedly raped, tortured & beat her. she stayed for the sole reason that she'd already had a houseful of kids by him. she wasn't going to leave her children behind. anyway, i'm outta here, at least for a little while. i'll catch up on this conversation later.

referring to J above that is. Id like to refer to dave an agatha on the beauty of child rearing. Im not saying its no difficult and extremely tough at times. But if you can't see the beauty, the rewards, the human nature of child rearing, then fuck it. its just an extremely pessimistic view crimson. again the worst case scenarios. if i wasnt convinced arkansas is the ass end of the country, i am now. of course the world isnt made of sunshine and lollipops, but whats the point of life if you are constantly reminding, pointing out, making light of the worst case scenarios. do you find comfort in the bleak and negative? im not doubting what you see around you. but you have to realize things can and are better than that. i point to a shining example right here in sorabjination...dave an agatha. probably no better off finacially than some of the folks who live around you crimson, relatively speaking, yet they have enough love between them to raise a beautiful, intelligent happy little girl. You can learn so much about dave and agatha by looking at the little one. how can you look at the pictures of their child and not see the beauty. the beauty of their labors, their efforts...physical manifestation of their love, how can you not see that? and furthermore how can you say thats not beauty? sure im romanticizing this all, but not without foundation...there is no 50's head in the sand sitcom crip crap about it as cliche and generic as that statement sounds in the manner you use it. there IS beauty in childrearing when the chips fall in the right place. if you simply view it as a diaper changing, gooey peanut butter filled, pain in your ass, well then so be it...but it doesnt have to be that way...and as i said, im sorry you don't have the ability in you to see the beauty of that....thought i have no children, im confident when i do, it will be one the greatest decisions in my life. Rather than knocking the concept of child rearing, perhaps you should analyze the actual reasons the men and women in your worst case scenarios are in the crappy shape they are in. child rearing is innocent, the things adults do with it are not.

i was going to say that i really agree w/ your final sentence. on second thought, i'm not sure that i do...not fully, anyway. nothing, but NOTHING is innocent. however, i think i know what you're saying & agree in general principle. many adults do seem to have a special knack for turning child-rearing into a bizarre & painful ordeal. i have a lot of beauty in my life. just a hell of a lot of joy. i am a very happy person. none of that happiness involves kids. my sense of internal bliss & beauty has nothing to do w/ looking at children, speaking to them, or hanging around them in any way. my joy comes from within. i don't have to have an exterior thing (i.e., a child) to augment it. the happiness is already there inside me, just waiting to be tapped. if somebody's sense of joy comes from raising a kid, well, best of luck to them. i can't even imagine it. but i suppose i've got to concede that somebody must getting a real kick out of it, or breeding wouldn't be the olympic sport that it presently seems to be. the closest i can get to the whole mothering gig is the weird feeling i get when i deal w/ teenagers. when i help them turn against the status quo & evolve into blissfully subversive monsters, i feel that i've done society a little favor (if only by spiralling it toward its own inevitable downfall). i've taken in wayward goth kids & will probably do it again before it's all over. let other people deal w/ the little ones. i don't even like to look at them. but the bigger ones? well, they can be fun at moments. let other people run themselves ragged chasing around a two-year-old. i'll take a sixteen-year-old satanist any day. & plus, i can always take the 16-year-old's virginity, which i can't do w/ a toddler, so there's yet another plus. & now, i'm really outta here. 23 skiddoo.

raising kids is a crapshoot. it's as much a coin toss as it is intentional. you can't really plan how you'll do it because you have to adapt to the child as much as mold it. saying you'll give it nietzche instead of teletubbies is a nice thought but the reality is that they probably won't have it. also, usually the more natural intelligence the kid has, the more it'll try to confound all of your efforts. they like something one minute and hate it the next. your job as a parent is to figure out where it's ok to say bullshit and where you should support their desires, and be consistent about it. i end up saying bullshit a lot. at least it seems that way. "clean your room" "my arms are tired" "bullshit, clean your room" "it's boring" "tough, clean your room" i don't know where i'm going with this. it's a messy thing. hard, but not too hard. when i walk in after a day of slaving over a hot spreadsheet, having cleo run up and give me a big hug is pretty fucking cool. i just hope she always likes me this much. i dread the day she actually realizes that i'm not so special and pretty messed up. until then, it's the best thing going.

i hear you about the crapshoot thing. that in itself is one of the major reasons why i opted not to have kids. my desire to have an intellectual, free-thinking child (& if i had one at all, that's exactly what i'd want) is indeed a crapshoot. chances are, i'd end up spawning a vapid gum-chomping dimwit who'd get knocked up at 13. this guy i know raised his kid to be intelligent & open-minded. the kid grew up to become a bible-thumping white supremacist & now lives in a compound w/ some kind of militia. you never do know. one of the most loving mothers i ever met had a kid who grew up to be a major arsonist & is doing serious jail time. on the other hand, pilate's got a kid who had the worst parents in the world & the boy came out sweet as can be. i feel strongly about the kid issue, but i do understand that there are a handful of people who actually do care about how they raise their children. you sound like you're doing the best job you can & for that, you've got my congrats. any dealings i have w/ kids tends to be after their parents have already fucked them up. i deal w/ them as teenagers or young adults, after their parents have done a real job on them. i'm no teenager, but i still feel every inch of their teenage rage. by that point in their lives, i figure that their parents have defaulted due to their own sheer incompetence. if a parent can't give their child a basic sense of self-worth, then someone else will. they'll be lucky if it's someone like me. it could be someone like charles manson.

Patrick: you have kids? right. Here's the problem, from my pov: people like Crimson (that is to say: smart) don't have kids. people like (insert your local trailertrash family's name) do. Dumb people have kids. Intelligent people have less. If you look at the statistics, even from blatantly stereotypical points of view, it's true. The more formal education someone has, the less kids they have, national-average-wise. This probably means that we will always be overpopulated, and there will always be more morons.

fuck you, bitch. what are you doing on monday?

Tom, Aren't we all glad our parents did not have that point of view?

No. I willingly submit that, simply by existing within this framework, I am causing harm. Do I want to die? nope. Most of the time, I don't even feel guilty about it. Most of the time. It's some form of cognitive dissonance, I guess, which allows my burden of guilt to slip between the cracks in my head so I can get on with my biologically driven need to live. But people DO need to stop having children. I'm considering voluntary sterilization; I've been told that they won't do it now, even if I could afford it. I'm "too young." Right. I don't know if there is a way to get sterilized, as a male, without paying for surgery. There certainly should be. Just another way that being poor (which, ***VERY ROUGHLY***, equates to being poorly educated) makes it easier to have kids. yes, I know that the above is not valid, nor sound, nor logical as far as arguments go. tough noogie. that wasn't the point.

i'm telling you, what we need is child licensing. It's easy: dump vast amounts of male and female sterility drugs in the water supply, and to concive, you need an antidote shot from a doctor. No licence, no shot...instant population control. Some people don't bother getting their car licenses renewed, imagine how many will opt out of spawning just to avoid paperwork? See how hard it is to adopt a kid? It should be just as hard to bake one up yourself. Put a stop to this 14 year olds with 2 kids bullshit. Modern birth control methods only work when people are responsible. People aren't. Don't ask me what the requierments should be, as i have yet to figure that out, but as soon as i figure it out...... sweeeeet. All i can think of right now is that both partners will have to take mandatory parenting classes for 9 months. sweeeeet..... ------- [please refrain from pointing out the fact that this would no doubt turn into a Nazi-esq government breeding regime. I know that. It saddens me. But a girl can dream]

Hoo, boy....I don't even know where to start, here. First off, dumb, inbred wastes of skin who regularly squirt out kids as doomed as they are are NOT indigenous to Arkansas, I'm sorry. I spent most of my life in New England....morons there are just as plentiful and just as eager to squirt out kids and fuck their heads up. I could hand you a thousand ugly scenarios of breeding disasters....all culled from real life. The thing about those "Worst Case Scenarios" is they're very often real, and in some cases the Norm. And that's not being Sensationalistic----it's just having your eyes open. I don't have kids. I've got no pressing plans to. Generally my opinion is, if you have any goals or ambitions in life, better hold off on the Reproduction....

er. What's WHO doing on Monday, Dave? sitting at home. Alone and unloved by Trace. *sniffle*. Getting up at 4pm and going to bed at 8am, or vice versa, if the trend (started the 20th) continues. Damn. unemployment is getting to me.

Well I don't want any kids now,been there,did it,but I am getting Alecia,and Amee will have spawn in Feb.,Ilove little kids,before they turn on you and get hormones.

well, we were toying with the idea of inviting you along on our miserable little holiday adventure to seattle. if that sounds bearable, maybe we could work something out. if not, don't sweat it. i understand completely.

male sterility w/o surgery: stuff a coupl'a lobsters down your pants. or at least according to the edge (weekdays in the oregonian living section).

our holidays are NOT miserable, dammit. stop that, dave.

You're stupid if you have kids? I guess that makes you stupid then, Tom. I admire people who are able and willing to raise children to be happy people. I think that there is a serious population problem, of course, and I'm glad to see that people recognize this and are seeking solutions. I hope that everyone who has a kid now teaches them about the population problem--that the world is just too damn small to hold us all. But all the same, I admire people like Agatha and Dave, who had a child and are raising here, and Pilate, who adopted--I don't think that Agatha and Dave are stupid for having a wonderful little girl, I think that they are loving people. And maybe Cleo will do something to make the world a better place for other people. No, people who have children aren't stupid. Sometimes they don't think things through all the way, but they aren't stupid.

I'm sorry, Isolde. Didn't mean to make my point that confusable. What I meant was that on the whole (and I stressed, several times, that it was only a generalization, albeit a true one) that people with less education are more likely to have children. There are plenty of surveys/tests/whatevers to back this up. The more years a given person has spent in school, the less likely they are to have children. I certainly did not mean to imply that having kids is a dumb thing to do. Having children is necessary to the survival of the species. however, having LOTS of kids IS a hallmark of "being lower class." I agree that much of the time, having children is not thought through all the way; in my particular case, it may or may not have been "smart," depending on whether you are okay with abortion, and lets not go there again. The conception was certainly NOT smart. Again, willingly submitted to the court of Isolde. I, also, admire Dave and Agatha and Cleo. My whine was mostly about the "dumb, inbred wastes of skin who regularly squirt out kids as doomed as they are," (thanks, Pug), and how sad it is that people like that are doing most of the populating, while lovely, intelligent and admirable, have fewer children, because those exact same wonderful qualities that I'd like to see reproduced give the parents (sometimes) a social conscience which keeps them from spawning too often. That rant was in NO WAY a pot shot at people I like who have kids. Kids rock. just wish there weren't so many of 'em.

Dave and Agatha: wow. That's incredibly sweet of you. I'm stuck in Portland, though, even if it weren't probably too late for me to take you up on it. I chose to apply the very last of my funds to getting to a New Years bash in San Francisco, which is why I'm not back in CA with the approximations of friends and family. I'm really only moaning for the hell of it; and because I really wanted to go hang out with Trace; be in the midwest, meet conservatives, see some cows, check out the corn. That sorta stuff. Wow again. I'm touched. You should see this. I'm all red and fuzzy feeling, and I haven't even made it to the liquore store yet. which I'd better do soon, or not at all. I'd love to stop by and visit some other time, though. Do you three ever make it down here? right-o, true believers. Hope you all have a wonderful-happy-shiny Christmas morning, full of good cheer, loved ones, R&R. Okay. So, really: I hope you don't get headaches from your kid(s)/siblings/parents getting up at 5 in the morning to inspect the gifts, that you don't spill anything on that new sweater he/she/it bought you, that you kept the receipt, in case he/she/it doesn't like it, that warm fuzziness abounds, and that I can find a cup of coffee SOMEWHERE tomorrow morning. Didn't think so.

You should definately visit those guys. They rock. Merry Christmas y'all.

This is my reasoning for not wanting kids: I'm letting people who rock like Agatha have them for me. The reality is that one needs to have sexual intercourse to have kids, so that's a big big reason why I don't have any nor am likely to have any within the next five-ten yaars as I can see (sorry mom! sorry dad!). The right lady could probably convince me to spawn. Not that such exists. Another reason: Every single one of my friends who has a kid or kids is currently separated by divorce and custody laws from them and the pain I see them suffer is quite effective in discouraging me from wanting kids.

well, you missed out big time. we're having so much fun i can hardly stand it. we pretty much never go to portland. i go to vancouver once a month but i'm only there for about a ½ hour. i'm renewing my offer of a free persian cat to whomever wants him. he's totally weird looking and only occasionally barfs and shits on your stuff.