five reasons the world is happy i don't have kids

i fail to see the problem

i'm consistently surprised that people keep asking me if/ when i'm planning on having children. me planning to have children strikes me as an idea equivalent to planting explosives around a nuclear power plant to see what happens. here's why:


1. i'm incredibly self-centred. have you read this blog? i talk about virtually nothing but myself and there's a reason for that. with a very few exceptions, i don't really even think of other people as human. not a great start as far as maternal instincts go.

2. the cats really dictate most things in my life. anyone seeking refuge from nightmares in the middle of the night will have to negotiate with them for space on the bed. they get to kiss me as often as they like, which means that the immune systems of anyone who comes near me had better be state of the art. no excuses for being young and developing.

OH THERE'S MORE...



3. i'm really forgetful. i mean, i really loved my iphone 3gs and used it constantly. i couldn't shut up about how much i loved the phone. but i had a few drinks with dom and nat one night and dropped it in the back of a cab, thinking i was putting it back in my purse. and that's what i do when things that are useful to me. imagine where i'd leave a kid.


4. i already let the cats drink, because i think it's hilarious. and i can't even get the cats drunk. can you imagine the kind of things i'd get up to if i were given a small human with no natural tolerance for alcohol? i can. i imagine it often. and that's not a good thing for anybody.


5. i have really bad insomnia. that might work out fine in the first few months when the baby and i could scream at each other at all hours of the night, quickly driving dom into either voluntary deafness or insanity, but i think that it might get problematic when mummy thinks it would be awesome to watch movies at two in the morning on a school night.


there are lots more reasons, but i think that this is really a solid base for my argument that i should never, ever be encouraged to propagate. now go about your day and be happy that you will never have to deal with my drug-addled, cat saliva-coated, sleep-deprived spawn.

well chances are one of them will come out ok

Kerry Cohen on her autistic son Ezra

Kerry Cohen in "Sustenance" at Literary Mama - she has a memoir, Seeing Ezra, forthcoming in 2011 on the topic from Seal Press:

Ezra has pica, which is a childhood disorder characterized by compulsive and persistent cravings for nonfood items, such as mud, paper, and dirt. The word "pica" comes from the Latin word for magpie, a bird known for its indiscriminate appetite. Twenty-five to 30 percent of children have pica, and it is most common among those with developmental disabilities like autism, which Ezra has. Ezra expresses his autism in two primary ways: he struggles with language, especially conversation, and he doesn't eat.

There are all sorts of theories as to why children might crave things that are not food. One is that the craving grows from nutritional deficiency. Another is that it comes as a distorted response to neglect or abuse. When the child has autism, though, there is no obvious reason for the behavior. It is a neurological hiccup, a disturbance in the brain's reward circuitry. Our drive to eat is generated through the hypothalamus, which contains the pituitary gland and is located in the middle of the base of the brain. But if there is confusion among the neural pathways, or damage near the lateral hypothalamus, the organism will experience aversion to sources of sustenance.

All these words are so inadequate. Sometimes words seem utterly foreign to me, as I imagine they do for Ezra. These terms and concepts - pica, hypothalamus, autism - don't explain to me why my child won't engage in this basic survival instinct of eating food.