Post-Friday five.

I've been reading this book, Maybe Baby, that I got when I renewed my Salon membership a while back. It was borne (pun intended) out of a letter to the editor of Salon asking for more articles about people who choose not to have children, and it's broken into three sections: No Way, Maybe, and Yes Please.

There are many, many reasons I currently have no desire to have kids, including but not limited to selfishness, wanting to move to Hermitville USA, barely remembering to feed the cat, barely tolerating said cat who WON'T SHUT UP EVER, flashbacks from babysitting Satan's offspring as a teenager, I'm only 32 freakin' years old already, and my mom's warning: "Don't have kids."

Notwithstanding the foregoing*, I bring you five reasons I might actually want to have kids someday, in no particular order:

• Stories about kids I don't know, including this one about the Squiggle.
• Stories about my oldest friend's kid, including the one about the soft plush frog I sent him for his second birthday that he loved so much that he dragged it around muttering "ribbit ribbit ribbit" under his breath for days.
  
• More stories about kids I don't know, like this one about Leta. If I ever become a mom, I will emulate Heather in almost every single way.
  
• Stories about my local friends' kids, many of which involve pirate-related photos or tales.**
  
• And more stories about kids I don't know, like this one about Nora (scroll down to THIS WEEK'S NORA section).

So, I'm not saying Yes Please but I'm also not saying No Way.

This is a big step for me.

A big, scary step.

________________
* I've been reading a lot of lawyer gobbledygook lately. This is one phrase I really Just. Don't. Get. Why not just say, "but anyway..." or "despite everything I just said..." or "with the following exception..." Silly, pretentious lawyers. {To my lawyer friend: notwithstanding the foregoing... To everyone else: silly, pretentious lawyers.}

** The youngsters might not appreciate this place as much as I did last night, but it's definitely worth checking out the first Friday of each month. Free rum for wearing pirate gear? GAAAAR.