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Location: Work.
Listening: "Faithfully Dangerous" by Over The Rhine.

I'm currently compiling a procedures document for our new contractor, Dee (whom I am training to take the reins when I leave PAS in two weeks) and musing over my first cup of coffee of the day. Thursday has begun, grey, chilly, and slightly off-kilter. I didn't see any birds this morning, and I blame Piscis. Somewhere, no doubt, she is leering.

It occurs to me, reading Yaga's latest that his family makes me seriously consider breeding. They have a marked tendency toward giving birth to children who are intelligent, aesthetically pleasing, and largely well-behaved. They also have very good taste in naming said children. I contemplate the next generation of his family and parenthood almost seems an attractive endeavor.

Of course, then, I recall that pregnancy and childbirth are intrinsically involved in that concept.

While I don't necessarily find anything too disturbing about either concept (except for that "you have a living creature inside of you that will occasionally attempt to put its foot through your stomach and you will be able to see this happening" part--I've been known to get light-headed dealing with that part), I've never found either to be particularly appealing. Pregnant women, on the whole, tend to scare me, largely because I have never thought that announcing "I dilated two more centimeters this morning!" is appropriate outside of a doctor's office. I have never understood why almost every pregnant woman I've ever known has automatically assumed that I was interested in hearing the details of her amniocentesis or discussing that strange discharge she'd been having. God Bless It, people--this is not my business, nor do I want it to be. Apparently, though, this is abnormal (or so I've been told by female coworkers who flock to hear the latest news on exactly how much of her breakfast a pregnant comrade couldn't hold down that morning). My feelings toward issues of motherhood have always been, at best, less than starry-eyed and, at worst, deeply cynical. I've never been one of those people who gushes over babies. I don't believe that every baby is cute (frankly, I've seen some incredibly unattractive babies--I've never vocalized this to the babies' parents, of course, but have also never complimented the appearance of a child I've found to be profoundly "not cute"). I actually tend to hold with an ex of mine, who insists that all babies look like Churchill. I also don't believe that every baby is a "miracle" (a miracle is water into wine at Cana, folks, not basic biology to perpetuate the genetic code--if the latter was the case, rats would deserve canonization and then some). Lastly, much like I don't believe that "every woman deserves to wear white on her wedding day" (white being a symbol of virginity and, well, if you aren't one, then why...would...you...wear...it...and don't even get me started on the implications of the word "deserves" in that saying), I don't believe that every woman, couple, etc. "deserves" to have a child. I actually firmly believe that there are many people who should simply never consider parenting (several of them having already given birth to some of my closest friends) for one reason or fifty. This spirals into my somewhat controversial stance on the subjects of fertility drugs, in vitro fertilization, artificial insemination, the bizarre reverence our culture displays toward multiple births, and cloning--which are topics for another time. For now, I'll just say that there are numerous children being raised by people who shouldn't be allowed to shape the futures of sea monkies, let alone human beings, and the foster care system is consistently overloaded because everyone seems to want a puppy and not a dog.

But I digress.

So Yaga's nieces and nephew are all very cool in numerous ways, and I actually envy him them sometimes. Being the youngest of three, he's put up with a lot of trauma that I, as the elder of two, never had to deal with--however, one of the perks is his getting to take advantage of being the fun, younger uncle without having his family look to him to begin the trend. Not that my family is, necessarily--my mother informed me last year that she had resigned herself to my never having children. "Which is just as well", she said, "since people who don't want children are inherently selfish and end up raising serial killers anyway. We certainly don't need any more of those running around." She considers this to be a very supportive and open-minded approach to the situation...yeah.

So while my parents aren't breathing down my neck to have a child, I am aware that I'll have to wait at least four or five more years for my brother (23, unmarried, still in college) to start a family--which means that I will have to wait four or five more years for potential minions. *sigh* In the meantime, I've had to content myself with playing faery godmother long-distance to my cousin Christi's daughter, Isabel. Word reached me earlier this year that Isabel, who turned three this past January, is widely regarded by my mother's family as being the next "eccentric one" in the line. As tradition goes on my mother's side, there is one person born in every generation who is naturally garrulous, highly precocious, and generally regarded with a mixture of amusement and concern. My native great-grandmother began the trend, followed by my surgeon grandfather, my linguist aunt, me, and now, apparently, Isabel. "God help us all", my mother said, after the child greeted guests at her parents' Christmas open house, tried to collect coats, and then wandered off to play quietly. "She's just like you were at that age." Christi, the former sorority girl whose wedding I recounted in an earlier entry, expressed confusion at what to do with such a child. Having been that child myself (and having been raised by my mother), I decided to try to take Isabel under my wing and began by sending her collector's editions of Little Women and Anne of Green Gables, my two favorite childhood books, for Christmas and her birthday. I'm thinking my next step will be to send her an elaborate tea set that I found at Sur La Table (I've heard that she's more fond of tea than of Barbie) as well as a copy of T.S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (which is, of course, the gateway to The Wasteland) or perhaps Beatrix Potter (books and stuffed animals, if I can manage to find them). Considering that Christi's mother, the aforementioned linguist aunt, was a very positive influence on me when I was younger, I figure that there's almost karma in trying to be the same type of influence for Isabel.

So with Christina, A.J., Carly, Emma, and Zoe on Yaga's side and Isabel on mine, we should be kept fairly busy on the pseudo-parenting level for years to come.

Excellent.