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What? Like Parenting Is Hard?

Sometimes I cook dinner for my neighbor and her kid.

They come over because I crave the company and she doesn’t like to cook.

Whenever someone brings a child to my house, I realize just how not kid friendly it is.  I mean, it’s not like I have sharp metal furniture and crystal vases and nude portraits of Ron Jeremy hanging around, but I don’t have any designated “kid” stuff, either.  The closest I come is maybe a Pixar DVD or two, a copy of The Goonies (which really isn’t all that kid friendly at all when you think about it — but then, nothing involving Corey Feldman ever is), and… um… that’s about it.  Even my dogs aren’t really kid-friendly, since every time they see one they feel the need to knock it to the ground, immobilize it, then sterilize it via intense licking before letting it roam freely around their abode.

This usually doesn’t go over well.

When it comes to snacks, unless kids like goat cheese or prosciutto or Castelvetrano olives or a dry cabernet, they’re pretty much SOL.

Most of my friends are already aware of the situation at my house, so they come well prepared with toys and snacks and binkies and bibs.  But even the most prepared parents usually don’t think of the things most of us take for granted, like glasses.  All of my glasses are — you guessed it — glass.  So the last time I watched my neighbor’s daughter, I gave her milk shooters from a plastic JELL-O shot cup.

Hey.  Aside from those and the oversized red and blue party flip cups, I got nothin’.

I’m pretty sure that at 2 years of age, they’re not dexterous enough to handle my stemware.  And even I have a hard time lifting my chunky “Wal-Mart special” juice glasses.

This doesn’t happen at MY house. (source)

And I think, as I watch the little girl shoot her 4th milk, straight up, like a champ, that part of the reason I don’t really want one is because they need so much stuff.

As a self-professed minimalist with neurotic hoarding urges to constantly overcome, the very idea that I would need to purchase special glassless glasses and sippy cup lids and find somewhere to keep them and that’s just the tip of the iceberg, my friends, because did you know that kids need clothing and diapers and cribs and car seats and even special little spoons and plastic plates and omg you can’t put that tupperware in the microwave because the toxins will KILL your baby and I realize that in the end, I know I would require a JELL-O shot glass of my very own just to deal with it all.

I would be that parent who barely buys anything.  Who says, You know what?  Junior only really needs 3 toys at this age because he has the attention span of a gnat, and if I only give him one at a time and rotate them every half hour or so, it will be like he’s getting a brand new toy every time.  And that’s when the other parents would look at me with judgement and my child with pity and I’d go to jail for boob-punching the first woman who tells me I’m cheap.

Because I am cheap, but that’s not the point.

The point is that I just don’t want all that crap.

It stresses me out.

And if crap stresses me out, then that’s just one more check in the ever-growing column of reasons I shouldn’t be a parent.

Because, from what I hear, parents deal with a lot of crap — both figuratively, and literally.

And to be honest, I’d rather just have fun with their kids while they’re here, and simply throw the JELL-O shot cups away when they leave.

Vicarious parenting is so easy.

It Turns Out Mucus Plugs Are More Important than Surge Protectors When It Comes to Safeguarding Your Office Equipment.

Call me crazy, but I have the sneaking suspicion that someone leaked amniotic fluids on my office chair.

Why do I think someone leaked amniotic fluids on my office chair?

It could be because I’m a woman with a surprisingly astute feminine intuition about maternity related body juices.

But probably not.  You all know how I feel about babies.

Or it could be because, through years of diligently studying the field detective tactics of one Horatio Cain and his partner, Eric Who-Cares-What-My-Last-Name-Is-Have-You-Seen-My-Ass-In-Magic-Mike? on CSI Miami, I’ve honed my forensic skills to a startling level of hyper sensitivity.

H and Eric

But probably not.  Most of the time, I have the awareness level of a sloth toked out of its mind while drooling over Johnny in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Read the rest of this gem…

Why Baby Mamas Should Love Me and How I Came This Close To My Million Dollar Idea.

The interesting thing about my house, I’ve realized, is that while no children actually live here (except those of the crazy, mangy mutt and the 29-to-30-something-I-don’t-wanna-grow-up varieties), it’s shockingly child-friendly.

I mean, okay.  Kids have to stay out of my office.  Period.  There are dangerous things like books on shelves and a fancy new computer and god forbid anyone but me spills red wine on my spankin’ white desks, and yes, there’s a good chance if you bring your kid here, he might accidentally find himself with a sippy cupful of wine or I mean grape juice with a splash of wine, and that’s only if he’s being a pain in the ass.

And that’s what we’d call a Sippy-cup ‘Tini.

Not that I would ever do that.

Ever.

But sometimes when I see a screaming kid at the grocery store, I’d think of how much easier Mom’s life would be if she carried a flask.  For many reasons.

Don’t look at me like that.

In the early 1900’s, we used to give kids cocaine for toothaches.  And really, I’m not sure why we don’t anymore, because they’d all probably be a lot more fun and grow up to epitomize groundbreaking music genres and write thought-invoking lyrics and die before their time.

Wait, maybe that was heroine.  Which actually used to be sold as a cough suppressant.

And probably not such a good thing.

Except the music.  You can’t really argue that Come As You Are wasn’t a good thing.  A very good thing.

Right, Martha?

Anyway.  As I was saying, as long as the mangy mutts are locked in one bedroom and the office door remains closed and the so-called “grown-up” inhabitants of the casa refrain from giving alcohol to minors, what’s left is approximately 1,300 square feet of veritable playground for the age-impaired.  Well, maybe 1,200 square feet.  Because I’m pretty sure kids shouldn’t play in bathrooms.  Or the fireplace hearth.  So let’s make it an even 1,197 square feet of pure fun.  Which, I think, would more than suffice.

Most of the flooring in that remaining square footage is laminate, which, despite its solid-state appearance, is actually quite kid-friendly cushy as well.  Many a child has stumbled across its slick surface, been told to “brush it off,” and survived to play another day.

Also, it’s quite easy to clean.  Which was exceptionally put to the test this past weekend when my friend’s crazy adorable baby went all Exorcist on us and projectile-vomited everywhere.  Which was awesome and scary all at the same time.  And it made me really, really happy we chose laminate as our primary walking/vomiting surface.  (**Update: I spoke with my friend. She knows I love her. AND her baby. Like… I would throw myself in front of a biscuit-tube throwing Sponge Bob for that baby. So no, she knows I was not speaking ill of her baby while writing those last sentences. Her baby was ill, but I was not speaking ill. Got it? Thank you.)

So.  While situations in which friends with babies are hanging out with friends without babies usually leads to apologies from the friends with babies and feelings of inadequacy from the friends without babies, I want all of my friends with babies to know that it’s okay to take them to my house.  And that, while I’m not positive I want any of my own, I don’t want you to feel weird about exposing yours to me and my childless home.  Because I have laminate.  And microfiber.  And sippy-cup ‘tinis if you’re feeling especially distraught.

For you, not your kid.

Which is why I should be your favorite childless person.

But you’ll have to provide the sippy cups, because I don’t have those, for obvious reasons.  Although maybe I should, because I’ve been known to spill a lovely glass of red all over my new rug, and — oh, wow.  Are you thinking what I’m thinking?  Sippy-cup wine glasses.  For grown-ups who aren’t quite grown up.  They’re sippy-cups with stems, people.  Don’t steal that.  It’s MINE.

Anyway.  I think what I’ve been trying to say is that I’d like to bridge this gap that inevitably forms when some friends from a group choose to have kids and others stubbornly remain child-free.  Just because kids don’t get me doesn’t mean we can’t hang.  And while I might try to talk to them about politics or religion or why Desperate Housewives is so insanely idiotic yet I still watch it, I think this is a good thing when it comes to expanding young minds.  I might ask them about the books they’re reading and then tell them about the books I’m reading, and then after I’ve bored them into a zombie-like stupor, all of us “grown-ups” can pour ourselves some sippy-tinis and call this a parenting job well-done.

It’s like I was made for this sort of thing.

Plus, I know the human head weighs 8 pounds.  Yep.  I’ve watched Jerry Maguire.  I know how this works.

P.S. I’m too late.

P.P.S. If anyone wants to buy me one of these if I ever find myself on the “with-child” side of the family spectrum, I can’t say I wouldn’t love it: