Yeah, no…

So far my favorite part of #TakeYourChildtoWorkDay are the notifications from all my child-free coworkers who are also opting to work from home.

A conversation starter…for a conversation I don’t want to have.

I feel like my well-rested face and disposable income convey this well enough, and yet I DO love me a shiny trinket…

(I should clarify that none of the parents I know personally look tired.)

My kids would be bad, but they’d be perfectly good at it.

Dispatches From the Department of Why I Don’t Have Children:

I almost never iron my clothes, so I don’t own an ironing board. This morning my shirt was a bit wrinkled…possibly because I keep clean clothes in a pile on the other side of my bed where a man should be, because I am too lazy to hang them up.

So I ironed the shirt using the living room carpet as an ironing board.

I was wearing underwear and my deodorant shirt — a beer-branded fitted tee I wear while doing my hair and makeup so any rogue deodorant marks get on THAT shirt rather than the shirt I wear to work.

I was also running late for work, and listening to a song about S&M at full volume.

Do they have a Kidz Bop “S&M?” I guess I could compromise. FOR THE CHILDREN.

Congrats, OkCupid Guy: You made a woman cry. RESULT!

FIRST message from a man on OkCupid: “If you change your mind about the kid thing let me know. You do seem like a riot! :D”

*deep breath* A few things…

1. Thanks a bunch for that cheery kick in the uterus. Much appreciated.

2. So your sole criterion for a baby mama is that she’s…funny? That’s outstanding, I can’t wait to see how your kid turns out.

3. Kids are the only thing you’d need me to change my mind about? So no worries that your profile says you “want to settle down with someone who’s in it for the long haul!” but my profile says, “I’m not looking for a relationship, just casual dating.” I want to know how you arrived at the decision to message me implying I should consider becoming broodmare to a total stranger — show your work. Or do you mean we’d default to “long haul” once I accepted my role as your cum dumpster?

4. ‘Cause surely YOU’RE gonna be the guy to change my deep-seated commitment and trust issues quickly enough to plant your seed before my last, shriveled egg fades to black? Sure, let me change my not-at-all carefully considered decision about growing a PERSON in my body, raising him/her for 18+ years, shaping them into a decent human being, getting them to school by Ass Early a.m., going into MORE debt for their basic needs and education and…Artisanal Self-Actualization camp or whatever the fuck, all so I can…what, exactly? Spend my life forever tethered to a 46-year-old fuckstick in Morgantown, PA, who’s grasping at wombs as he stares down the barrel of his spawn-less mortality? Drive 90 minutes and pay Turnpike tolls so you can jam your half-flaccid cock into me and hope one of your sleepy, disoriented sperm has enough energy to sashay its way into my Danger Zone? PASS.

*exhale*

We’ll just ignore the fact that reading the message, and writing this post, legitimately upset me, and now I have to go hide in the ladies’ room until I can Irish down this ridiculous rush of emotion brought on by some aging dickhead in the boonies.

P.S. There’s nothing wrong with 46, and I know that, science-ly, y’all could knock me up just fine. I just went with impotence because I’m an ass and it’s an easy target.

In which Amazon offers unnecessary support to my vacant uterus.

Normally the Internet is one of my favorite things, but sometimes it can be kind of an asshole.

Like when I ask Amazon to send me a book about being child-free because it’s written by a comedian I’m currently obsessed with (Jen Kirkman — ladies, go watch her Netflix special. Gentlemen, sorry, no guarantees). So I’m mostly reading it because it’s a book by a funny woman — I’d read whatever book she wrote, but this one happens to be about not having kids.

But then Amazon’s all, “Oh, hey! I see you like books about being a Barreness. HERE ARE 600 MORE books about it!”

I’m good, Amazon, really. I don’t need THAT much support. Thanks, though.

(My personal favorite was when I bought the clutter book, and Amazon was like, “Would you like us to send you a shit-ton of other books about clutter?” YOU’RE NOT HELPING, AMAZON!)

A much more fun manifestation of “maternal instinct.”

I may not want to have children, but seriously, if I find a guy sexy and then I see him snuggling a baby or playing trains with a kid, all sensitive and nurturing-like? I’m going to fuck that guy senseless at the first available opportunity, preferably the minute we get home to my child-free apartment. We won’t even make it to the bedroom — we’ll have to do it in the entryway (which…entryway…heh), because that is your privilege when you don’t have kids.

Good LORD. I thought I was dead inside, but that tingle in my barren baby garden begs to differ. Begs. Pleads, even. UNF.

Sweet, kid-free silence

Sent to me by a proud mama:

To be fair, if I could be guaranteed a kid as great as hers, I’d drive down to the Navy yard right now and offer my unused womb to the first seaman who’d come aboard my battleship.

But as it stands, being around my friends’ children brings me a joy rivaled only by returning home to the sweet, child-free silence of my apartment.