I could take a crap without an audience!

I’ve been relatively brain dead recently. My still lingering 3 week old cold and Mother Nature’s desire to completely piss me off with snow and freezing temperatures has pretty much rendered my brain to a big pile of mush. So in order to gain some sort of inspiration for posting this week I asked my BFF for some ideas. She came up with quite a few but the most intriguing one was: “write about what you would be doing if you didn’t have kids.”

Now my first reaction to that thought was soaring excitement (yeah go ahead and hand me the shitty mother of the year award.) I mean think about it. No breaking up screaming matches between 2 toddlers, no more poopy diapers, no more whining, no more exhaustion, no more dreading the thought of leaving the house by myself with 2 kids in tow, no more countless hours of putting other people’s needs above my own.

Then I began to seriously think about what I would do with all my time. If we didn’t have kids, Matt would have no need to work the night shift. We’d have our evenings together, basking in the glow of all the extra cash we’d have lying around. We could decoupage the coffee table in $5 bills. We could eat out 3 or 4 days a week, we could "GASP" go to a movie, hell we could do almost anything on the spur of the moment. We could have sex without barricading the bedroom door!

I could pursue my writing to an even larger extent. Who knows, maybe I’d get some articles published, my first novel written – JK Rowling would have nothing on me! Perhaps I would have the freedom to pursue another career that actually made me happy. Maybe we’d be able to afford a bigger house and furniture to fill it with that didn’t come from a garage sale or a dead relative.

But here’s the problem. I wouldn’t be happy. I’d be miserable. Because the only thing I’d be doing is what I was doing before we had kids – wishing for kids. Once I knew I was ready to be a Mom that was my only goal and now that I am, while I still fantasize about the freedom of being without them for a day or so, I’d be miserable and aimless without them.

Why would I want a larger house without children to put in it? What would I write without the inspiration those 2 little people give me? Before I had kids I had no idea what I wanted to do. They’ve helped me prioritize my life. Helped me to see what is truly valuable to me. If I do nothing else in my lifetime, at least on my deathbed I can say that I improved the world just one tiny bit by bringing two fabulous, intelligent and loving creatures into it.