Sorry for the lack of posts this month, but I was invited to start volunteering in another, more political capacity with PP and jumped at the opportunity. I've had to attend frequent meetings over the past few weeks that have left little time for much else other than quick Facebook updates.

The pro-choice monster inside me has been awakened and now will not seem to rest.

I'm writing because even though I've been super busy, I'm sitting here marveling at my own contentment...smug bastard that I apparently am.

It all started when my mom called to talk to me about throwing a party for my 30th birthday this summer. I'm traveling back East to spend the milestone with family and my mom is INSISTENT upon having a party for me.

We got to talking about where I am at this point in my life and she made a remark about how happy and satisfied I seem with life, and how shocked she is that I'm not panicking in the face of the big 3-0.

I had nothing cynical or sarcastic to respond with either, which never happens! It was only a few short years ago that I broke down crying to her over the phone on my 26th birthday because I felt OLD.

*Don't judge me, I had just moved 2000 miles away from my family and I was emotionally fragile!*

But now? I'm actually feeling pretty alright about entering my 30's.

As much as I usually roll my eyes at shiny, happy, smiling people, I feel like I may be becoming one and I honestly think I owe it all to childfreedom.

This is not to discount any of the other good things in my life.

I'm not by any means independently wealthy but I make well above the median household income and experienced a $19k increase in salary after switching jobs in 2008. I have goooood stock options and a fab job at a totally liberal, FUN company. I work with (mostly) very engaging, intelligent people whose company I genuinely enjoy. I have fun opting into and out of dating at any random point in time. I spend a lot of time with friends. I've found fulfilling volunteer work and social activism to engage in. I've been able to travel and have pretty extensive plans for future travel. I have little debt and very few obligations in general.

But take away my childfreedom and each of those things is automatically less enjoyable or even impossible.

With children comes debt so I could kiss my fairly debt free lifestyle goodbye. The salary increase wouldn't mean as much with kids around to eat into it.

Children are time stealers so goodbye fun outings with friends, goodbye to all the time I spend volunteering. ( Oh and I've noticed almost ALL of the other people I volunteer with are also childless!)

Children are sucky travel companions so that would be out the window for sure. No more hooking up with Caribbean hotties on the beach with a baby in it's sand filled diaper sitting nearby looking all helpless and neglected!

Really though, nearly every aspect of what I enjoy about my life would be severely diminished if I had a kid.

It should be no wonder why I'm so happy and "satisfied" with life as my mother put it.

I've gotten to the stage where I'm so thrilled and grateful to be childfree that even aging doesn't bug me that much anymore!

Part of it must be this surge of so many people I know having kids...?

In the last year alone, four women in my life have become mothers. I've been privy to all the drama on Facebook and I have seen their lives change in totally unenviable ways. The end result of all this? Me being happier in my own life.

Crazy!

Maybe I had my logic wrong in a previous post when I felt it wasn't worth being friends with people in the process of having kids. Perhaps surrounding myself with people who are having kids is actually a good thing. It gives me the much needed reality check that yes my life is actually pretty fucking spectacular in comparison to the alternative.

Watching them have kids only makes me that much happier not to have any of my own!

Schadenfreude is often seen as something we should be ashamed of, but I think it can actually really be effective in making us all a lot more grateful and cognizant of how good we have it.

*Sigh*

I'll never fully comprehend WHY mothers come barging into the CF blogosphere asserting their non-sensical, opposing viewpoints into conversations where they won't be welcomed, but alas, this is evidently a typical day in the life of an internet mommy troll.

Funny how WE never troll THEIR blogs on a daily basis waiting to disagree with something they've written, but with us it's sadly commonplace to see this.

Yesterday, a commenter named "HawkMom", who identified as a SAHM, talked about "going to a shelter" or trying "to get an apartment or hotel room and/or collect on welfare and WIC for a few weeks or a few months" if her husband were to leave her.

In the next sentence she talked about how "being dependent on my husband for income isn't as scary as it may seem" and I immediately got flashbacks/PTSD from all the empty-ended utterances of my naive BFF.

My response to "HawkMom" wasn't oozing with the warm and fuzzies she thought her retarded ass comment deserved, so she got pissed off because "peeple on teh interwebs iz mean" and sent me this hee-larious email that I couldn't NOT share with my beloved readers.

It does include my translation of the text so enjoy!

*Oh and yeah her email address is included on purpose. Let this be a lesson, angry moms of the universe. Don't send me a scathing rebuke/admonishment cause it becomes my property in it's entirety once you do and I WILL publish it in order to get maximum satisfaction from making fun of how lame you are.*

from: hawkmom60@gmail.com
to: Childfree Chick
date: Sat, Jan 9, 2010 at 10:04 PM
subject: Agree to Disagree

"Childfree Chick,

"You seem like a very angry person."

(Translation- "You cut me down to size with all the facts you presented about the risks of a SAHM lifestyle and I don't have a strong counter argument other than to call you 'angry' you Meanie McAngryPants!")

"I've been respectful and civil to you, but your responses have been nothing but rude rantings. I didn't lecture you. I've only asked you why you insist on being so rude to a complete stranger, especially a neutral one."

(Translation- When you present facts on YOUR PERSONAL BLOG, that make my choices seem foolish, it's mean AND YOU'RE JUST A BIG MEANIE with all of your fancy facts and knowledge! Why can't you just nicely pat me on the top of my head for my uber-dependent lifestyle? Oh and note how I refer to myself as "neutral" even though that's a blatant fallacy cause I'm defending a lifestyle I currently live.)

"I find it odd that you find nothing wrong with calling me a delusional hypocrite, while I'm not allowed to point out the hypocrisy in your vitriol towards any woman who doesn't share your views or lifestyle. It's hard to take your argument seriously, when you angrily cut down any opposing view."

(Translation- You're ummm...an angry meanie! And ummm....a hypocrite for reasons I can't explain cause they don't exist. Meanie.)

"You can disagree with me without attacking my very existence, but you choose to do just that. I frequent another CF woman's blog and comment and I've never had any problems. I don't know what your deal is, but good luck with it. I had no issues with you at all until this little exchange, and I don't do internet arguing so I'll unsub your blog there will be no more comments from me."

Best,

HawkMom

(Translation- You critiqued my existence/way of life and since your opinion of me and said existence is so valuable, I'm terribly upset. I can't validate or defend my own lifestyle choices and reading about how my decisions could come back to bite me in my ass makes me feel worse about myself. I don't do internet arguing but when a blogger engages in a vigorous debate with me ON THEIR PERSONAL BLOG and it doesn't end the way I want it to, I will send them chastising emails threatening never to come back to a blog I'm not the target or intended audience of anyway.)

Honey, last I checked, no one has the power to "attack your existence" unless you give it to them.

Thank you for the unnecessary email correspondence and for caring so much about my opinion of your life.

It's nice to know I'm that influential.

Whiny, Insecure SAHM, party of one, your table is ready!

Well, it looks as if the woman formerly known as my BFF has been kidnapped by aliens and replaced with a suddenly naive, wannabe Stepford wife.

I have to know if anyone else has experienced this but first let me tell the story.

After this incident, we had a private conversation about her newfound desire to be a stay at home mother and wife.

When she started off the conversation with "my ideals have just changed a lot and part of me wishes we could go back to the 50's where women stayed home and men worked", I knew I was entering an alternate fucking universe.

The 50's?????

What the shit?

When women couldn't get credit cards or property in their own name? When husbands had free reign to fuck outside the marriage and women "looked the other way cause that's what men did"? When men were "allowed" to smack their wives around with virtually no fear of negative consequences? When the women who DID work were subjected to rampant sexual harassment and had no protection or reprieve? When women had to grit their teeth to stay in bad marriages because there were no widespread alimony, child support, or community property laws?

And this is off topic- but the same fifties where my ass would have been getting sprayed with a water hose and then lynched by white people?



THAT IS THE FIFTIES SHE WANTS TO GO BACK TO?

Who IS this person????

She proceeded to tell me that she was "ruffled" by what I had said about women and economic dependency on men and said "you know, I just can't think that way. I just can't think that something would happen to my husband or to my marriage."

Wow really? They've only been together since the summer of 2008 and have only been married for 6 months. Their marriage was predicated on her pregnancy as far as I could see, since he proposed after learning of it and they quickly married two months before the kid was born. This isn't exactly a rock solid union with years of history behind it.

And I happen to like this guy, but still WTF do you mean you "can't think about it"?

That scared the bejesus out of me when she said that.

You see...her SAHM friends don't "think about that stuff". They raise their families and they make "sacrifices" for their kids and "don't plan for catastrophe". She agrees with this philosophy thinks it's "negative" to talk the way I do about making contingency plans.

Amazing isn't it?

Apparently being proactive instead of reactive is "negative" to SAHM's and their disciples.

Let me see if I can get on-board with this magical logic...

Why strap your kid into a car seat when you go places? That's planning for catastrophe! Why have health insurance in case you get sick? Or car insurance in case you get into an accident? Why draw up a will in case you die? That all falls under the pesky "planning for catastrophe umbrella, doesn't it?

Pffft, we don't think about that stuff!!!

How'd I do?

The woman formerly known as my BFF wasn't amused with this comparison. Probably cause there isn't any valid, sensical counter-argument to it. Sometimes you have to "think negatively" in order to protect YOURSELF.

Ugh, who the fuck is this person and where is my BFF?

Apparently she made hubby sit down with her so they could try to figure out a way for her to stay home but their current financial situation requires her to get a job and STAT- because they are barely making the mortgage (which was news to me- more on that in a sec), and they are "broke" according to her.

Her husband is so stressed out, he had his first genital herpes outbreak in 8 years (before you ask, yes, she knew he had it when she started dating him). Also, after she quit her job to stay home during her high risk pregnancy, he started having erectile dysfunction because of mounting pressures. He has been the sole income since May and according to her, he is stressed ALL THE TIME.

Hmph, who the hell wouldn't be?

They bought their house a year ago and now may have to try to sell it and move to an old house that he owns and rents out in what she describes as a "bad neighborhood".

Um, kinda hard to sell a house when you're upside down on it- which in this economy, most people are. Also, you're on the brink of having to raise you baby in the ghetto of Oakland and you are STILL trying to figure out how to not get a job?

There's all of this going on and she has become SO pre-occupied with stay at home motherhood and wonders how she can further "sacrifice" to make this happen!

What the fuckitty fuck.

Recently she posted something on FB talking about how down she was. Do you know what our mutual SAHM friend posted back?

"Just tell yourself it's all worth it."

It was sad to read that for some reason. This friend of ours also quit her job to stay home after having a second baby this summer and is also barely making the mortgage every month (the reason I know this is because she posts about it regularly).

I always have to fight the urge to type a comment in all caps telling her to "GET A FUCKING JOB!"

Then I remembered that Facebook has a hide function to save me from myself.

Thank GAWD.

But this is the life these people live.

"Just tell yourself it's all worth it" is helpful advice in their world. Can you imagine living a life where you have to struggle daily to "tell yourself it's all worth it", when you know it's lies???

UGH! These people sit on a throne of LIES I tell you!

My advice to empower yourself rather than delude yourself? It's "negative".

I don't even know who this is anymore but after our last conversation a month ago, we haven't spoken. I need time away from her and her newly shitastic logic.

Maybe permanent time away.

Her life is in a downward spiral, HER MINDSET is in a downward spiral and there is just nothing I can do about it. She, like her friends, can't even be bothered to THINK about something bad happening.

She wants what she wants.

And I think the dynamic of our friendship has been slowly changing anyway.

As of late I've made a group of new friends (mostly without kids) and we spend a lot of time socializing and going out together. Whenever I post pictures of us doing things as a group on FB, I think she feels alienated.

Our lives have unfolded in such drastically different ways. When we met, we worked together and had nearly identical lives. We hated our job and our bitchy boss. We were underpaid and overworked. We loved our cats. We loved the same cheesy 80's music. The same bad reality shows. We did everything we could to support and help one another. We made each other laugh endlessly. We were like one person.

But then she moved away for a man and I got a new job paying what I'll admit is a very generous salary. I instantly loved the people and what I do. At the time I started, she was miserable at her job and I think she was really envious. Happy for me, but envious. When I took my first self sponsored exotic vacation last year, she admitted she was jealous. Last month I started planning for a September trip to the Canary Islands and didn't want to even tell her about it. I hated feeling that way. Like I couldn't share more good things happening in my life with her since hers is such a suckfest.

The world that we once shared seemed so limited. So constricted. We bonded over that.

Well, the world has now become expansive for me, but only more constricted for her. I think we both feel it and I don't believe our friendship will survive at this point.

This is really the first time I've had a very close friend get married, have a baby, and totally transform into a different person. That's why I write about it regularly I guess. Just flabbergasted and needing to vent.

In any case, I think I'll try to avoid this as best as I can in the future. It's really draining.

Have any of you experienced this? One day you're friends with a fun, seemingly independent person and then she has a baby, loses a brain, wants to revert back to the racist, sexist 1950's, never work a paying job again, and live a life of full on dependency?

Tell me it's not just me.