I've got the fever

I've been married less than a year and the baby questions have been rolling in. I'm not a baby person, but what I really wish is that I could pop out a 7-year-old boy and immediately take him to T-ball games and recline on the sidelines on a spring night with a shandy. He'd be our automatic best bud.

Oh, it doesn't work like that? Okay, I'll wait a little longer then.

But you know what makes me question having one at all? Mommy blogs. Some are humorous and connect mothers in their struggles and even I enjoy reading them. But I'm talking about the articles cropping up with this air of superiority that grinds my f*cking gears. 

I also can't help but think of all the women who physically can't have children but desperately want them. How must they feel reading this backhanded insult: "Thank you for standing by me through my self-absorbed years while you wiped butts and scrubbed vomit and soothed screaming babies...while I obsessed over totally meaningless things." Life without children is meaningless, remember.

When/if I do have kids, I hope I'm not pitting moms against non-moms over who is more "tired." I hope I'm not saying contemptuously, "You just don't get it." I hope I'm not saying, "You just wait till it's you" with a vindictive grin. (What's creepy is when people ask me over and over when I'm having kids when they don't seem very happy themselves. It's like they're waiting for me to be miserable too.) 

One of my best friends, Anna, just had a baby. There wasn't much fanfare; no slew of photos immediately after the birth or since. But in real life, she's beaming, she's happy, and at the same time she's struggling with the newness of everything, getting her bearings. Her house is a revolving door, everyone's coming over to show how much they love her and the new baby. She has a baby book on the coffee table called "Chill Parenting" or something like that. It's so Anna. And she is who I strive to be like, along with all my other mom friends who are doing their thing, being awesome moms. In real life.

In the meantime I'm spending my time fawning over houses. I've got the fever! House fever, that is. We have people living in our trash. Can you blame me?