I've been trying to decide which of two subjects to blog about today as god knows I'm too long winded to do a two-in-one blog without writing a novel. Okay, I'll review books tomorrow (YA fantasy must-reads for the fall season). This is a really long one people.

Kids, children, runts, ragamuffins, the decision to have them keeps popping up in conversations I'm having these days. Now I'm aware that I'm probably going to offend people because as soon as anyone speaks their mind they're going to offend people who are not of their mind, but I shall keep this as inoffensive as possible as I'm really just trying to figure shit out about this myself.

Why does this keeps coming up? my age? or perhaps the fact that my best friend owns a pug and I just found out she dresses him in a red silk kimono (his name is Mr. Myagi) and the issue of childlessness just popped into my head :)

The Bridget Jones division of singles vs marrieds is starting to get more pronounced as I get older. But it's not just that, it's a division between women who want kids and those who don't as well. I don't really want this division to be there, but it is. And hey, the decision of whether or not to have kids is a symbol of your priorities and it's going to create a division between those who have chosen a different set of priorities. Let's just try and keep this a peaceable division and not like the Mex/US border. The right to choose our priorities is wonderful and I respect whatever anyone chooses.

I have never wanted kids. And that would be such an easy blanket statement if there weren't some weird little nuances to it. I like kids, and my comfort levels around them have increased largely after having worked in the kids books section for awhile, but to have my own gives me the wiggins. But weirdly I have told every guy I've been with at the very beginning that if I get pregnant, I don't expect him to do anything about it, but I'm keeping the baby. This is because, though I am 100% pro choice, I know that having an abortion is just not for me. Perhaps I've always had some sort Morag and Pique fantasy (The Diviners) about raising a child on my own, who knows? I have completely and utterly supported my friends who have had abortions though, this feeling of mine for myself and because of my beliefs which I wouldn't dare impose on anyone else for this kind of decision.

So mentally, I have prepared myself that a child might pop into my future, either by accident or because I'm a changeable girl and might want one eventually. But you see, all evidence to the contrary I'm pretty self-aware, and I know that I have trouble consistently giving priority to anything other than myself and my own peace of mind. Perhaps it's my ethnic background, but I consider having kids to be the most important thing you can do and to do it half-assed is just...offensive. Especially having worked in a retail environment with children and their parents, I hate bad parents - qualify bad with neglectful. We all fuck up our kids to some degree, but I would never want to be the kind of parent who doesn't take parenting as the most important part of their lives. And to take the responsibility of having a child seriously is to put their well-being above your own pretty much 24/7.

Holy crap! I can't do that!

Having to take my partners into consideration when making a decision pisses me off enough, I can't imagine the added intrusion (for lack of a better word) of a child into that mix as well.

But there is more to this kid thing than just wanting or not wanting.

Say some guy actually convinces me that having kids is an okay idea. That my life should be completely turned inside out and changed forever. I would want to adopt. I'm going to compare this to a pet thing, because they are the closest thing I've had to children. I would never get an animal from a pet store or a breeder because there are already enough unwanted pets at the SPCA that need a home. Now the desire to have your own kid is far different from the pretty selfish desire to want an animal but only if it's pure-bred (The whole domestic animal pisses me off not only because of the pure-bred thing. As humans we are selfish enough to over-populate with our species and then city planners don't try and encroach as little as possible into the world, but instead create urban sprawl like the sick-ass south end of the city in which I live. We are also selfish enough to not take responsibility for our animals and their breeding, and so there are all these unwanted baby animals being born and then we contribute to that buy not buying from the SPCA/other humane societies - sorry, I'll stop now)

The desire for a child that comes from your body is not a selfish one, it is the most life-altering experience you can have and I don't find it strange at all that people would want this. The experience is, to pull out a 70's term, heavy. But, for some reason, it's not a desire I have, so why not try and take on one of the unwanted children in the world? I have no problems thinking of something that didn't come from my body as mine. Maybe it's partly being first generation Canadian, I don't have much actual family here so I had to create my own and so it feels only right that I continue in this "not-genetically related but still my family" vein. It's very easy for me to start thinking of something I care about as mine, as being part of me.

However, if adoption is really something I decide to want, it's something I should decide soon because man is that ever a long and arduous process. Plus, as if they would give a kid to a girl who has to eat rice and lentils for months on end because she can't afford to pay rent?

So really, don't want to have a kid and no organization in the world would give me a kid, so problem solved and I really didn't have to do all this writing about it. Life is so simple sometimes.

Back to my much less odiferous but kitty-less apartment. NYC was lovely, the first vacation I've had in ages and hey, no funerals or hospital visits so perhaps my curse is lifted!

I learned much about belly dance in all my workshops with Ariellah and Sarah Johanssen Locke (her dancing reminded me a lot of Renata's), and the saw a fabulous performance with many astounding alternative belly dance groups (like Shakra) called Night of 1000 Goddesses. The production of Hamlet that Pickle was in was one of the best I'd seen (thank god I didn't have to lie my ass off about how good it was) and, in all honesty, Pickle was the best Polonius I've ever seen (typecast as he was :). I was taken to see Circus Contraption and it was just exactly what I needed after the lack of busking in my life left such a hole. I'm starting accordion lessons (with the accordion left to me by my nonno) and I believe it will be the circus life for me someday soon.

And now a warning:
The workshop I had with Ariellah was so amazing, she's not just a great dancer, but a great instructor. However, I decided to also buy the Gothic Belly Dance DVD as it's only available on ebay right now and she had it with her. Ariellah's performances and those of two other dancers are superb on this DVD, but the rest are so laughably bad that it's beyond description. Now I knew there might be some badness when they called the movement Raqs Gothique on the back of the case. It was like Gothic for pre-teens, the filming was terrible: there's a dancer, now there's a gargoyle, now there's the dancer again, now there's a wolf. Near the end of the DVD there is, and I shit you not, an actual soft porn video with women dripping wax on eachother and using chains and NOT DANCING WHATSOEVER!

Anyway, I am reluctant to put this warning up as if any of the less-good dancers see it, they will not want to be friends with me but I feel the need to speak my mind about this. The idea of Gothic Belly Dance appeals to me, and I'm grateful to those experimenting with it so that the rest of us can find out what works and what really doesn't.

I'm off to NYC for a bit, so there will be no blogging for awhile. I wish you all a lovely week. Thank you for all the sympathetic emails and comments.

Coming home to an apartment without Katie is excrutiating, but now that I'm more in the world again, the world seems to be giving me gifts again. Had a new friend force me to get all dolled up, get quite stoned, and go see Phantom of the Opera. Don't knock it until you've tried it people, getting stoned and going to see Weber might just beat out long walks on the beach for best date idea.

I put Katie down this morning. Of all the miserable things that have happened since last September, this has been the worst. I can only say good things about the people at Edmonton Holistic Veterinary clinic - they have been amazing throughout Katie's entire illness and the whole place was in one big sob session this morning as everyone insisted on being present to see Katie through this. My vet was bawling her eyes out with me. It was incredible.

The past two years have been the worst years of my life. I have not dealt with it well. As with all my good pets and, I was able to show Katie every part of me, something I am not able to do with people. But she had see more dark places in me than my other pets have. She never crowded me, she never ran away, she never judged, she just curled up into all my places, dark and light, and purred. I will be forever grateful to her for that.

I made the right decision, but it was still a decision to stop fighting for her, which will always feel like a betrayal. You see, the thing I learned most from this dear old crabby cat was to fight. No matter what, just keep fighting. She fought so hard and was so brave throughout her illness, and she didn't disappoint in the end. They had her on enough sedative to trank a large dog, and she still snarled and snapped when they tried to administer the lethal part. I think the vets thought this was harder on me, but I laughed and was glad she was a bitch right to the very end.

And so, to steal copy almost directly from my parents' friends at Hotel Hayman as they put down their cat with the same disease:

Right to the end her personality was far larger than her tiny fragile frame.

On Tuesday September 12, 2006, rather than break her trust, I helped her find the door into her everlasting summer.

And she's my friend of all friends
She's still here when everyone's gone
She doesn't have to say a thing
We'll just keep laughing all night long
All night long

If I can just hold on tonight
I know that nothing, nothing survives
Nothing survives.

- I am Displaced by Azure Ray

The following was just one of the many amusing paragraphs in a spam email we got at work today with the subject line "collusion parka." What followed in said parka email was some stock info and then what I can only assume is some very odd medical erotica.

A gentleman always obeyed the rules and said the correct things and made life easier for a lady. I wish he'd bring in more hospital supplies and less hoop skirts and lace. How closely women clutch the very chains that bind them!

Sometimes life is just too funny.

Thanks to the Pixie-Geeks who again let me hang with them. A finer, more non-judgmental group of people I have yet to meet in life. Rollerskating was a blast, though I am suffering today in extreme soreness.

Catch me and mine dancing on Breakfast TV with Bridget Ryan on CityTV tomorrow morning at the ungodly hours of 7:00-9:00am.

I may still have pillow creases on my face at that hour, but hopefully all the tribal markings will cover them up.

You Are 24 Years Old

20-29: You are a twentysomething at heart. You feel excited about what's to come... love, work, and new experiences.

What Age Do You Act?

Woo Hoo! I'm in the correct age grouping. Who knew?

The other day I was having tea with Comic Boy and he said something that kinda dropped my jaw:

"I don't think you're a flake."

Now Comic Boy comes from the hippiest of hippy parents and so he knows whereof he speaks, but I still think he's wrong. He explained that a flake is someone who crumbles under pressure, a person who, at the first sign of pressure will just disintigrate. This is a good description. Now he doesn't think this is me because I take on all this belly dance work and extra-curricular activities so obviously I can handle pressure. I've been thinking about this a lot recently and he's right that I can handle pressure, but only pressure that comes from me. As soon as the outside world puts pressure on me, as soon as I feel like the choice has been taken away and I have to do something, I run screaming for the hills. Belly dancing is by choice, no one is paying me to organize shit and if they were, I probably wouldn't like it as much because there would be outside pressure - someone is paying me, therefore I have a responsibility to do things.

I am the perfect volunteer, if some sugar daddy could just come along and fund my life, I would stay busy and active volunteering for a myriad of different things and rocking the world with my ability to handle pressure. But as soon as work is required of me, I'm outta there.

I am trying to fix this. I am honestly trying. I've figured that the only way is to just focus on why I want to do something and not think about outside pressures. Which I figure is a pretty decent way of managing things, because really if there is no reason why I want to do something, then why am I doing it? And this last statement isn't as selfish as it sounds, I often want to help people and do things for others, so this isn't about me doing things that are only self-serving. Plus focusing on why I am doing something keeps me more present, more aware of my feelings, intentions and motivations and those of the people around me. Which is good because I've been pretty stupidly distant from all that for awhile.

Anyhoo, I take it as a good sign that I'm the correct maturity range for my age :)
God I love quizzes.

One of my old compatriots in linguistic whoring is touring the world right now with his super cool girlfriend - their travelblog is now a link.

It's so lovely to see all the pics of different places and the fun times. Travelling is just the funnest thing ever. I'm so happy for them.

Wait no, actually, I am seething with jealousy.

Can't stop myself...Need to get on plane...must travel...oh wait, I'll be in New York in two weeks, I guess I can wait until then.