Why I can’t have kids: in a convenient list format!

Anyone who has ever spoken with me for longer than 30 minutes knows of the frightened lurch I display when they start talking about children. Including babies. Oh, especially babies. The problem with facebook at my age (other than the fact that it consumes my life) is that almost 20% of the posts now are of people congratulating themselves on their pregnancies and adorable newborns, uploading daily photos of their bundles of joy or their increasing maternal girth. It’s not that I hate babies or that I was traumatized as a child with crying infants surrounding me in a wall of death. I just don’t know what to do around them. I’ll read encyclopedias to them and talk to them about politics, and their blank stares and mild cooing are not all too different from the typical adult reaction. But playing with them, entertaining them, making sure they are emotionally and physically involved and growing…no. We don’t mix in a socially standardized manner. One can only look at my mother and see where I got this trait from. Our next door neighbors brought their cute little one year old daughter out to the backyard while my mother was outside. Being the friendly neighbor she remarks upon the adorableness factor of their female spawn and smiles at the child. Who immediately begins to cry and scream hysterically. Hilarious. But not pretty. So I decided to find out why exactly I should never partake in procreation.

1. They poop all the time. Enough said.

2. They can’t wipe said poop. My cousin is a great example of this disability. We visited her family when she was about 5 or 6 years old. At some point in the day she went upstairs to do her thing while the rest of us mingled nonchalantly in the living room without noticing. All of a sudden my calm and peaceful morning is interrupted by a loud shriek of “MOM I’M DONE POOPING” wailing above us. Fortunately we were in a family setting so the mention of poop wasn’t as jarring as the realization in my eight year old mind that kids can’t wipe themselves. It was shocking, disturbing, and tainted my image of my entire family for years to come.

3. They don’t blink. I only recently learned this from having a staring contest with a toddler at church. After an agonizing minute it dawned upon me that soul suckers naturally don’t need to blink; it gets in the way of the very act of soul sucking.

4. They destroy everything in their path. No document is dry, no safety cup is safe enough, and paper towels are suddenly more valuable than gold. Young children are never far from their own personal trail of dirt, slobber, food, and virgin tears.

5. They understand revenge. Raising a dog is simple. Command, obey, treat. Command, fail, try again (times nx), succeed. For children: command, fail, try again, child tries to grab your nose in retribution and stuffs gummy bears up it. The same child usually grabs onto hair and somehow gets their mouth all over it, laughing at you with a dark glint in its eye.

6. They will automatically be born into the self-entitled generation. It’s bad enough hearing people my own age say that it’s not fair that the world isn’t helping them become successful. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have children gripe about what they “deserve” as well. So I don’t give you a cell phone on your 6th birthday, get over it and go play in the dirt.

There’s a reason I’m a dog/cat/hamster/bunny/non-human-creature person. I do this for the well being of society.

 

Unbalanced

My top front teeth are uneven. Lefty is slightly longer than Righty, and rubs it in her face whenever they have time. “Oh look at me, I can bite this carrot faster than you can, KUDO POINTS FOR ME, FOOL!” Righty is a very patient tooth and doesn’t really say anything. Lefty gets tired of making fun of Righty, so she starts grinding on the front teeth right beneath her. Problem is, the front teeth on the bottom are uneven too, and bottom Lefty is a little longer than bottom Righty. The Righty’s get along fine, but the two Leftys’ personalities stick out as much as they do so they’re always fighting and rubbing against each other in spite. I think bottom Lefty got tired of being picked on by the bigger top Lefty, so for the past decade or so my jaw shifts to my right when I open my mouth, giving bottom Lefty access to the passive and mild mannered top Righty. The dentist says this is what caused the tooth immediately next to top Righty to start sticking out on her own and making my smile all the more awkward. Understandably this new attack has caused the rest of my teeth some anxiety, and when I close my mouth the teeth don’t all line up the way they’re supposed to so we had to get some filed down a couple years ago.

There’s been a devastating civil war rampaging on within my own mouth ever since these little permanent buggers popped their way out into the world. My baby teeth didn’t have such temperaments, why did these new guys have to ruin everything. Two little Lefty incisors have brought chaos and suffering to the 30 other teeth in my previously happy mouth, so much to the point that my bottom wisdom teeth have refused to completely emerge and now hide themselves behind my gums. My mouth ain’t big enough for all of ’em, so now all my teeth are uncomfortably scrunched up together and listening to the front Lefty’s fight with each other.

I know there’s a moral in here about bullying and infighting and such, but I can’t seem to think of any over the sound of mutiny.

Oh yeah?! Well, I'll floss YOU!

 

Enjoy the breeze

Remember that one scene from Jet Li’s “Fearless” (霍元甲) where he’s working on the rice paddy for the first time? All of  a sudden a gentle breeze flows through and everyone literally stops working to stand up and enjoy it. He gives the “you guys are all tools” look and continues haphazardly planting rice. Lo and behold the moral of the story becomes clear when later the kind blind girl has to redo his entire line because of his rush to finish. Even with all that rushing, in the end he was still embarrassed and dead last.

And what does that even mean, really? Being last, being first. He gets his rice planted slower than others, big deal. They all had to do the same amount of work, all had to plant the same amount of rice, all have to harvest later and eat their shared amount. What exactly was Huo Yuanjia striving for when he rushed to plant everything quickly? Bragging rights? I guess I could see if the point of it was to have the most leisure time at the very end, but even then it fails because obviously the other farmers were content with plenty of leisure standing in the relaxing draft and really didn’t lose all that much compared to him. Plus he got outdone by a blind girl anyway, eat it.

As I’m sitting here worrying about not having a job right this moment and the whole course of my ENTIRE future, I’m wondering the same thing. What’s at the end of the rice patty? Do I sit back in an armchair and drink chocolate milk in the shade while I watch other people planting? Sounds pretty dull, actually. It’s not like flying through a tornado at the end will make up for a lifetime’s worth of missed breezes.

I guess this is my “stop and smell the roses” moment. Except I really don’t like the smell of roses. Guess I’ll stick with the wind.

 

Attempt #2

Success!

Or at least some mild version of success that is farther away from failure than was the last attempt. My hair color, after a combined two hours of bleaching and one hour of coloring, has been transformed into a mesh of happy cotton candy-esque pinks, blues, and greens. Of course the blues sort of mix into the greens and the pink isn’t nearly as bright as it was advertised and the green is probably going to fade to yellow very very soon…

But! It is still a success! I got stares from the masses, laughs from the relatives, and a camera trigger happy friend that took literally hundreds of shots of this messy masterpiece. Of course I can’t post those pictures because they are limited to donors only (Like myself, my friends are cheap. This was the only way to get through to them) and honestly I haven’t even seen all of them yet, so it might be a good thing to withhold from viewing. I did of course receive more donations for the fundraiser, which was the main reason my hair had to die this month. Ohh I was this close to making a witty pun there. Ah, opportunity lost. Regret. Sorrow. Acceptance. Rejuvenation. And who says I couldn’t be a good psychiatrist…

I should probably be shamelessly advertising the fundraiser right now. So here we go!

Clink the link: http://www.mustache4cash.org/teams/show/129

And donate to our cause~! ^_^ Make my brittle-cotton-candy-hair-potentially-lost-employment-due-to-unprofessional-image worth the while.

In other news today, I nearly died of a sugar overload from Applebee’s maple butter… blondie… thing. Ridiculously sweet, ridiculously awesome, and just.. ridiculous.

In the eternal words of Stewie: "This is so good it HAS to be fattening"... although I guess that was obvious.

 

Internet induced hypochondria

Medical students’ syndrome, or Medical students’ disease, is the situation a medical student finds him/herself in when they are studying a disease and come to the conclusion that they are suffering that exact illness. Usually symptoms listed in textbooks and case studies are so broad and vague (I mean really, name “rash” as a symptom and you’ll have 100 different illnesses) that medical students read them like horoscopes; it all somehow relates to them. Except instead of thinking that their true love will run into them on this day, they’ve suddenly contracted a rare and deadly form of oral syphilis.

Once again thanks to modern technology and the layman’s skyrocketing internet usage, medical students are no longer the only ones susceptible to this broad spectrum of fear. Just Google any bodily function of yours and you are bound to stumble across some rare and exotic disease that matches your situation to the dot. Remember that grape you ate last week? Unfortunately 1 in 2,000,000 people suffer from a rare allergic reaction to grapes that makes them tired in the morning, hate work, get angry during traffic, and have poorly timed bowel movements. Oh my God that’s me! I knew it wasn’t really my fault when I stapled my coworker’s sweater together!

Even worse are the online quizzes (why in the world is that z doubled) that will tell you what illness you have based on the answers you give. How often do you feel lethargic? Honestly, how many times do you burp a day? In what direction do you get headaches? After what seems to be an hour of nothing but filling in digital bubbles you come to a professional, and completely reliable discovery about your failing health. I myself have learned from the powers that be on the internet that not only do I have chronic daily headache syndrome, I am manic depressive, have type I diabetes, and most likely harbor a parasitic worm in my brain that is surrounding a benign tumor caused by eating non-organic foods. All this discovered on my quest to find out why I have moderate headaches. Maybe I’m looking in the wrong place?

But the internet, in all its wisdom and truth, has shown me yet another option to the source of my headaches. I, in the prime of my youth, am now maturing into my super powers. Most likely a form of telekinesis or telepathy, which will then help me to save the world. Long story short, I will be reborn!

 

Nope. It was the oral syphilis.

 

 

Domestication

Women today are a breed apart from our 1920’s predecessors. We wear business suits. We drive cars. We slap our spouses and (usually) don’t expect  to be beaten in return with the power of the double standard. We are CHANGE, I tell you, and we shan’t be cooped up in the kitchen and laundry rooms any longer!

Or at least this is what the modern woman would like to say for herself. Somehow “being an independent woman” has subtly transformed into “being the woman that doesn’t know how to make food or use a laundry machine”. Since when was being domesticated a bad thing? Men nowadays are learning to cook for themselves (if anything, out of necessity), so why should women stop? I personally enjoy cooking (read:baking). Cleaning up after cooking is a different story, but the actual preparation and creation of food is enjoyable. Am I being a traitor to the feminist movement?

What happened to the feminist movement anyway. First we burn bras, then we make them push up and lacy for men to ogle at. Are we practicing our right to objectify ourselves instead of letting some man do it? We fight for the right to vote, then the majority of America doesn’t vote anyway. Are we practicing our right to avoid voting? I’m all up for feminism, hurrah. “Bitch make me a sandwich” is not acceptable unless your female canine is somehow magically capable of creating a BLT. Expecting a working woman to come home and whip up a three course meal for her poor, tired husband isn’t realistic. But completely going against the “norm” and expecting the man to do all the things a woman used to be responsible for just doesn’t quite say “equality” to me.

Why can’t we share? Sharing is caring you know. A woman can cook and the man can do dishes, or vice versa. One person picks up the kids from daycare, the other drops them off. I’ll do laundry, you vacuum the house. No reason to put social stigmas, or anti-stigmas, on either person because of historical aggravation or body parts. I will bake a cake in an apron and do laundry if I damn well please, but no man will tell me to do it and no woman will tell me not to.

Makes me wonder what the next step of ultra feminism is.

Um.... no.

 

Potty rights

Humans are fickle creatures of habit. The routes we walk, the lunch schedule we keep, the direction in which we brush our teeth, the choice of making our beds or tossing our covers on the floor. Anything we can package and sequentialize, we do, and we do it without thinking. Everyday quite literally becomes everyday, and each single aspect that we can control and make into a pattern is just that. A pattern. No wonder there are so many cases of stalking in the world, we’re practically holding out our daily routines like high schoolers jabbering about their class schedules. Whenever something goes “wrong” and pushes us off our habitual pattern, there’s that nagging sense of uneasiness that lingers in the pit of our stomach. Even if the event doesn’t negatively affect our lives, it’s still a change that we didn’t ask for, and dammit all we will not stand for it.

Such as bathroom stalls. Do you ever work/live in a place with shared restrooms for so long that eventually you unconsciously pick a stall that you like “best”? Not only best, but it has become mine. For some odd reason or another we choose that one particular toilet, and should it be left unflushed or have a broken door or, God forbid, preoccupied, we run into a momentary mental wall. On the outside, we just blink and simply choose the next available stall.

In our minds however, we’re going through a torrent of emotion and irrational thinking. “What? What?! It’s taken? How could it be taken? Why would someone take it? It’s never taken! What am I supposed to do?! Man I knew I should have held it for a little longer. This has never happened before, should I do something? Kick the door open? Wait for them to finish?  Scream fire? Sacrifice a small she-goat? What am I- oh, right.” And then we hang our heads and hope that no one else noticed the second of madness glazing over our eyes as we dejectedly shuffle onto the next best toilet.

Or is it just me?

 

Golden toilet! I call dibs!

 

 

Attempt #1

For the month of October I’ve decided to participate in the fundraiser Mustache4Cash/Color4Kids, a month long event that has men growing out mustaches and women coloring their hair in order to receive monetary donations. These funds go to non-profit agencies in Colorado that support at-risk youth by giving scholarships, mentoring, tutoring, college prep programs, and just general support to fight the statistics and continue through higher education. For such a cause, I reached out to friends and family to see what it would take for them to donate. Given my rather cynical/bland personality, they all thought it would be amazingly hilarious for me to dye my hair with hot pink. Ask and ye shall receive.

I have taken them up for their word, and just this evening attempted to add streaks of hot pink, bright blue, and neon green to my round head. My natural hair being dark brown/black, it was obvious that I needed to bleach my hair a bit before adding these colors. After getting assistance from a helpful friend for over 2 hours (dear God it’s as much time I spend on my hair per month), we have come to the conclusion that my Asian hair is as stubborn as… well, Asian hair. Know any Asian women? There it is, in hair form.

Even after bleaching said hair for over an hour, instead of the desired “lemon yellow” it turned more into a “honey wheat toast” shade. The cheap grainy kind. Obviously, the attempted experiment to gain a hot pink was unsuccessful. Fortunately I have more than enough dye to try again this Saturday, at which point I will bleach my hair until it is lemony happy, or die trying.

No, literally, I think my hair will die at this rate. I’m usually proud of how healthy (if not messy) my hair is, and running your hands through bleached hair is akin to stroking sandpaper. Feeling that be a part of you is disturbing and bothersome to say the least. Ah well, all for a good cause I suppose. I will update on my hair status after another session this Saturday. Wish me luck ^_^

 

Speeding into adulthood

Wondrous news! I have officially been accepted into the world of the adults. I even have official looking documents to prove it. What do these documents say, you ask?

They tell of how many mph I was over the speed limit.

That’s right, I have driven my way into the adult world of speeding tickets.

For the first time in my life.

Twice this week.

Many people assumed I would be angry or bitter or shocked at the new additions to my “record”, but I actually accept them like I would accept a removed cousin with a birth deformity. Anyone will attest to the… recklessness of my driving style both on and off the highway. I don’t mean reckless as in “have no idea what’s going on outside my car” reckless, but more of the “I know exactly where the other cars are around me and therefore I speed around them” type. And oh do I speed. This latest ticket catches me going 15mph above the speed limit, which is actually a pretty good day for me. I’m not an aggressive driver. I don’t tail people, I don’t slam on my breaks, I don’t swerve in and out of lanes every chance, hell I don’t even have any road rage. Ever. I just like getting places, faster.

One of the tickets was from a picture taken by a camera mounted van in the middle of the night, so no point deductions and a minor fee. The other was just this morning, as I was pulled over for the first time ever by a young police officer (whose name I unfortunately forgot to ask for). We made small talk, I gave him my ID, he listened to the electronic music in my car, and he kindly reminded me that the speed limit signs are there for a reason. All in all, a pleasant conversation, except for the fact that it ended in me receiving said ticket. He politely told me that he was indeed there to catch people who were speeding, and noted that I was indeed speeding. To this I had no argument, so I simply smiled and nodded.

Rather than be embittered by this recent phenomenon, I am only mildly surprised that I have gone this long without getting a speeding ticket. I’ve never even been pulled over until this morning, and it was the quite the surreal experience. I must note however that the only reason I received this speeding ticket is because the officer was riding a motorcycle. In all my years of driving I have become very adept at “scoping out cops”, and this skill has kept me off their radar for years, until now. Because of some motorcycle. Apparently I need to update my mental radar to keep an eye out for biker cops, along with the mounted cameras and police car dummies and under cover vehicles. How in the world are we supposed to drive in these conditions?

 

Down with the cows

Meat. Glorious meat. While I give my kudos and hurrahs to the vegetarians of the world for their healthy and idealistic lifestyles (even if they do tend to rub it in our omnivorous faces…) I must give a shout out to our animal friends as well. Without their daily sacrifice, life as we know it would be a little blander and happy meals would no longer be happy. Yes, it is our four legged and feathered friends that add that extra oomph to our lives in the developed nations, and the extra few inches to our waists. But do you know what else they do?

They are destroying the world as we know it.

In accordance to the environmentally friendly fashions of today, we as a society are becoming more aware of our “carbon footprint” and the evils of industrialization. Never in our history have we seen so much justified finger wagging at the auto and oil industries, blaming them with our righteous fury of greenhouse gases and global warming. “What of the polar bears?” we cry. Our children may never see a polar bear again. Oh, would someone please think of the children?!

Recently we have heard news of higher required mileage in our vehicles, something along the lines of 60 mpg for 2017 models. Great, stick it to the man, show those car companies who’s boss. Historically speaking, the auto industry, and pretty much any other industry, have shown great success in keeping up with our expectations of them. At least the legal ones. And this new restriction, if it passes, will no doubt bring forth a new generation of enviro-friendlier automobiles. This is of course assuming that consumer pressures won’t be strong enough by that time to enforce it.

But what we fail to realize, or more likely, turn a blind eye on, is the fact that it is livestock that is most to blame for global greenhouse gas emissions. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization, along with a number of other groups, have found that livestock are producing a ridiculous amount of greenhouse gases that surpasses those of vehicular output.  Not even taking into consideration the vast amounts of water and land and the near half of our global agriculture that go into raising these disease stricken, cholesterol laden animals, their effect on our global temperatures alone should be something of a red flag to the developed and international community. It’s a well known fact that the wealthier a country is, the more likely they are to consume higher amounts of meat. Vegetarians rejoice, for you have one more statistic to add to your arsenal of moral superiority. More meat = more animals, more animals = more methane emissions (23x worse than C02), more emissions = very very bad.

Ol’ Bessy is out to get us all, one well executed fart at a time.

Just look at the hideous little monster.... it reeks of devil-spawn