no boys allowed in the room!!!!

Cher was so freakin hot in Mask. I loved that movie when i was a kid.
Now I want a giant spiral perm.

I loved that movie so much.

I didn't use the phone that much as a teen! I knew that teens "did" that and I wanted to want to, because I was supposed to do that, but I just didn't have those kinds of friendships iirc. I had some friends but I think we, like, DID stuff, like go on church trips and bike rides and swim, but I don't remember hanging out for hours talking. I think I had books and my mom for that and friends were more like a social minefield that was sometimes also mean to me.

I can't remember the details of a lot of my childhood tbh.

(If my friends were mean to me, I was also unthinkingly critical and cutting to them, probably--I was not a kind young person.)

I definitely in high school told someone it was admirable that she didn't care about fashion--I thought she was frumpy and out of style but we were also v religious (her even more than me, she married a minister and moved to Mexico) so that kind of denial was encouraged. Anyway, she got mad obv because she HADN'T renounced fashion at all and I was insulting her. That kind of thing.

Terrible word + picture meme on fb the other day alerted me to the existence of this quote, which made me think of Lechera for various reasons actually:

“I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me too. Well, I hope that if you are out there and read this and know that, yes, it's true I'm here, and I'm just as strange as you.”
― Frida Kahlo

that stuff about your youth is heavy.
i have mixed feelings about that quotation

this whole convo about friends has made me unpleasantly maudlin, like in a mournful way.

It doesn't feel heavy! But it also feels like it happened to another person. :) I don't feel like I became "me" until I was in my mid-20s or so.

Sorry about the quote btw, it was just a thought.

The funny thing about the woman who posted the Kahlo quote to my feed is that she's a total norm imo, but maybe she's not so normal in the Midwest, and even norms can be freaks on the inside.

Hm. My friends also weren't what you'd call rebellious and were mostly extremely "nice" girls. I, otoh, wanted to break things and fuck things up but was too controlled and wasn't accepted by any actual "bad" kids so I stuffed it down inside, I guess. I was pretty normal too on the outside.

Oh god I must be a terrible person, because that quote was on Tumblr with a bunch of Kahlo paintings above it, and I totally reblogged it, mostly because the paintings were awesome, but also because I liked the quote. But really, I guess what else are these image memes for but to prove what an awful person you are to the world.

http://captainawkward.com/2014/04/11/563-i-have-a-hard-enough-time-making-friends-for-myself-how-do-i-navigate-the-special-hell-that-is-arranging-playdates-for-my-children/

This specifically about making mom friends (something I'm not personally that interested in doing bc I feel like I can't devote enough time to my core group of beloved friends (hi LL I miss u boo <3)) but also contains great advice about making friends in general when you feel like a weirdo.

I liked the quote too! To the extent that I was being negative about it, it was in line with the ilx joek thread about picture memes, most of which are let's be honest, pretty bad (and also frequently wrongly attributed). I wouldn't have remembered or repeated it if it hadn't resonated for me!

I talked to my Mum on the phone for about an hour this morning, which kinda helped a little. It's good that we are both old enough now that we can kind of talk woman to woman, about our crushes and ridiculous things like that (and trying to stay off politics, because we agree too much and just start shouting, and off gender issues, because we disagree and also start shouting). And she natters on about Harrison Ford for a bit, and I natter on about my current crush's odd lack of eyebrows and she laughs and says "oh, now that sounds familiar, no wonder you have a crush on him". And then she started teasing me that she was going to go and see his band, because they are playing in Vermont, near where she lives! But then the phone starts crackling, and a reminder of how very very far away she lives, and how shit international lines are.

She told me to do some gardening, which kinda helped. But not really.

Also have any of you heard the This American Life ep where a woman (Starlee Klein iirc) makes tapes of her own oral history for a new friend? It's her solution to the problem of new friends not knowing your history/secrets.

oh don't be sorry! i just have mixed feelings about it, they're not strong, just mixed!
no one is a terrible person*

*there are some exceptions

branwell your mom sounds like a gem

hi carl <3 ;) <3
you are in good company as the many friends of lechera who also have infants have schooled me on what to expect. my problem lies in the fact that everyone i usually turn to is in the same situation -- newborns.

OMG how awkward. Like, imagine if someone gave you a tape of their oral history. It would be like a mixtape that was too personal to listen to, but too awkward not to, and wow, if someone ever made one of those for me, I think I would back away slowly and go to great lengths to never, ever meet that person again. x-post now

or little babies, like <2
the ones whose kids are getting a little older are starting to come back around though
maybe i should start making phone dates with them

i think i made it partially through that ep and had to stop because it was too much and her voice (sorry)

Wait, LL, are you parenting (or about to be parenting), or are you trying to deal with a social circle of friends who are all now parenting?

I just seem to have accepted that parenting is a cliff off which my friends disappear. And sometimes they reappear after 16 years when their progeny are able to drive themselves, but mostly they don't. It has got to the point when, even if I just hear that a new friend is "trying for a baby" then I start distancing myself now, because it's easier to do it before you've established an intimacy which will have to be broken, than go through the disappointment of when they fall off the baby cliff. I also recognise this is probably counterproductive, but it's just hard, bitter experience. I know this makes me a terrible person.

I am with you Branwell Bell on the whole tape thing. I would not be comfortable with that in the least. Also LL don't one of our mutual friends have a story about SK in which she comes off as a huge jerk? That always colors my feelings about her work.

trying to deal with a social circle of friends who are all now parenting?
^^ my closest personal circle primarily at this moment + everyone else who is already medium-lost
this is not something i desire for myself, i just miss them like super bad.

i think kelz had a story? right?

For me it's not just the existence of my baby but also being really tired all the time and being the kind of person who needs a fair amount of me time/quiet time. I'm going to bed at 9:00 every night and on weekends trying to keep my house my descending into utter chaos and maybe reading a little.

Also it's tough to spend more than a couple hours away from the baby without getting into the logistics of breast pumping and milk storage. That will ease up in the coming months when she starts eating some food food.

Gotcha, LL. It is an odd phenomenon to go through. Someone once described it as being like when suddenly all of your friends sprout this new, incredibly time-consuming hobby and you can kind of learn to deal with it, and even enjoy watching them enjoying their hobby, but you're never going to be sharing that hobby, and the sadness of feeling that they would really rather be hanging out with other people who share that hobby, too.

Maybe I should join a nunnery, but I guess all the women in nunneries share a weird hobby in that they're into this god thing, which, again, I can watch people enjoying, but not participate in, so I guess that's out.

BUT what has been lovely for us and kept us from feeling too isolated is having people over (also I welcome people inviting themselves over since apparently time dilation is a side effect of reproducing and I will think "I miss my pals I should invite them over" and then two months have passed) and also afternoons out at baby friendly bars/restaurants.

Basically without being too sappy I love my friends and would be super sad if I fell off a parenting cliff. I actually don't feel like I want to just hang out with people who have kids at all. Hell's bells I don't even like reading parenting message boards outside of the occasional need to reassure myself that bright orange poop is a common experience and nothing to call the doctor about.

xp yeah Kelzzzzz had the story but I wasn't totally sure it was SK nor can I remember what the details were.

I just remember that SK was a jerk to my friend and therefore I view all of her work product with skepticism.

One more thing well two more:

I think with friends who have kids if you want to keep them in your life it requires a little more outreach on your part, at least at first. That CA post says to invite people to a thing twice and if they refuse, hang back and see if they reciprocate. I think with new parents you have to give them more chances before waiting for the reciprocal attempt at contact but then if your friends rebuff your invites, you can say "Yeah okay they want to hang out with people who have kids and not me." But being a new parent can be isolating and I don't think anybody should assume that it comes with a desire to have all new friends. You just have to put in the extra work for a bit both with reaching out and maybe being the one who comes to them.

Other thing: I like talking on the phone! Jesse and I talk on the phone a lot and it's easy because there's no pressure to make it an event and if I get busy or just get tired of talking I can say so and we hang up. Anyway LL I will talk with you on the phone bc I get tired of typing, too.

I say "you" up there but I'm not talking to anybody specifically just a general you.

i love you too carl and that is why i keep on holding on -- you'll come back around eventually!

You just have to put in the extra work for a bit both with reaching out and maybe being the one who comes to them.
see, i totally know all that already -- esp this
i've been told over and over, and i understand. my problem is that 1) this is very tiring to do with all of my best friends at the same time and there's a 2) but it's totally selfish.

Also I just remembered something
It's spraaaaaang breaaaaaaaaaak

I'll flash you my boobs later in celebration.

lollllllll @ recording a history of your life for a new friend. holy shit. and hey, here are all the poems I wrote in university, the links to the Sinister archives, and my Blogger blog from 2002. No one deserves that pain and awkwardness.

That article/letter-response about making friends is sort of good as an overall thing, not necessarily even just for parents, though it's kind of common sense (that i don't always follow, haha, unfounded fears/shyness are hard to shake...). I remain amazed at how social my brothers and I are considering that my parents tend towards being anti-social/socially-weird (like, my dad is a nice, handsome guy but an introvert and the only person he's hung out with for the past 20+ years is his gf. and my mom is still scarred from an ostracizing childhood, though at least her teaching work and living in a hippie small town of weirdos keeps her more social now). That said, my friends are pretty much all weirdos and artist types and thankfully a handful of them have recently had babies or will be having babies (and my bf just found out his half-sister is pregnant too! and she doesn't live all that far away).

Maybe i'm just going to throw low-key early-evening or weekend-afternoon parties at home or in the park and invite friends over and buy some chips and cookies and beer/wine. (And I'm still going to go to shows, dammit, they make baby noise-blocking ear protectors for a reason.) At some point it would be rad to bring this baby to NYC to meet "the gang". I know all kinds of people who have travelled with their young babies; I am not afraid.

Most of my friends back home have children, but 1. I enjoy hanging out with most children, and maybe especially now that I'm pretty sure I've missed the window to have my own 2. I don't really care whether we go anywhere as long as we talk, I am happy to be the one who goes to them. But I've been away 5 years now, and I see them in intense bursts twice a year. I miss everyone, my friends' kids as well as the friends themselves, and I don't really have a grasp of how things would feel if I was living in the UK.

I remember one of the threads I posted on very early in my ilx "tenure" was about friends with kids and being sad and terrified that they would not want to hang with me anymore, and nabisco said, "actually, your friends with babies will really want to spend time with you because you are a nice change from the baby and dealing with baby stuff." (i am paraphrasing) -- but I had a tax appointment with a friend (not a particularly close one) and her fiancee who had just had a baby about a year ago, and they seemed really happy to be hanging out in their kitchen eating adult food and drinking adult beverages and talking about adult non-parent things and gave me an open invitation to come over for dinner soon. ... So, four years later, nabisco proved otm.

thing is, I often would prefer to hang out with the parent/s sans kiddo. I'm not sure how most parents interpret "I'd love to see you! Let's get together in the next two weeks." I think a lot may interpret that as "I'd love to see you and your children" when in fact that is not what I mean.

I mean to be fair one of my friends with twin toddlers always responds "OH HELL YES hang on let me check the sitter availability" so y'know we don't have to do that dance.

Add to this the frustration of women who will not leave their children home alone with the father of said children

everyone i went to highschool with has babies, EXCEPT my core group of friends (only one has kids, and she had her first one at 20).

and the 3 closest friends i've made since then don't have kids either!

i would like to talk about choosing not to have kids and the way people sometimes treat people for that choice

my soon-to-be husband's brothers treat us like we are second class citizens with no schedules and no lives because we don't have kids and never plan to. they plan things without consulting him, because hey, we can do whatever whenever, right?! they also constantly make lightly pressuring jokes about how we should really have kids ALL the time, and how our lives will be pointless otherwise, etc. it is so infuriating! for a million reasons it is infuriating, not least of which that they even don't know if we are capable of reproducing biologically and it therefore may be a sore subject, because they have never asked, not that I would tell them, NOT THAT IT IS THEIR BUSINESS AT ALL.

it's very weird for me, because i have 3 siblings - 2 of us have kids, 2 of us don't and don't plan to, no one cares and we're all equal. like, it's never even come up.

reproducing biologically? that was a dumb way to say that. having a baby come out of my body is what i am talking about. i AM capable of doing this (afaik), just to be clear. but i have often been tempted to snap "i can't have kids actually, thanks for constantly bringing it up," jsut to confer the proper amount of shame on them for their behavior. however, they should be ashamed for not respecting people's autonomy and personal choices, not for imaginary reasons.

I several friends who don't want children and they get this shit all the time and it's awful and I hate hearing about it.

Oh the other hand I do want children and I get a lot of "what are you waiting for?" "time is running out, you better get started" comments which are super infuriating too for similar reasons. How do they know why I haven't yet? What if I was having fertility issues or something? Last year when my co-woker told me my ovaries were shriveling up I later thought that I should have said, "Actually, I've been trying for 5 years so thanks for that" but at the time I was too shocked to say much of anything.

Whooey roxy you are talking about my situation (only minus the siblings).

The idiots who are making things uncomfortable for roxy, LL and ENBB are idiots. But I've maybe also been that idiot. I never said anything, but I've been annoyed at the withholding of info that's none of my business.

There's this couple who were once close friends of mine, but have a tendency to get outraged very easily. They're in their early 40s now. They talked vehemently in their early 30s about how horrified they were that people ever asked them about their plans for having kids, and how it was none of anyone's business. That's fundamentally true. But at some point, not discussing the situation even with their very closest friends just got weird, because they themselves made such a fuss about being asked by less-close friends. The guy clearly adored, and still adores, children in general. The woman is more equivocal, though she gets on with kids just fine. They moved into an enormous house a few years ago, just the two of them, and said they wanted 'more room'. Either they've decided not to have kids, in which case their closest friends would have shrugged and moved on, or they can't, which would be sad if they wanted them but something they could have trusted their close friends not to make a big deal of. Or they haven't decided yet, in which case what on earth was all the fuss about? Instead, there was this 'how dare they ask!!!!' drama that just drew attention to the whole issue.

Not your situation, though, since none of you are into drama as far as I can tell! And I felt bad wanting to know, because even behaving as they did, of course they still had a perfect right to keep shtum.

mr veg and I have chosen not to have kids...i am thankful no-one has given us a hard time. i think mum is kinda confused like 'oh they will eventually just not now' sort of thing, but if I was still living in my hometown i know it would TOTALLY be a thing.

my best friend back home told her sister she wasnt having kids & her sister legit started bawling right there in front of her, as if my friend's vagina had just committed suicide or some shit. wtf.
ppl are so insensitive about it, it pisses me off. why should HER CHOICE reduce her sister to tears. you should say oh ok cool. fin.

Oh man I used to get so IA about the child-free thing (the term "childless" still irks), but I guess I have mellowed out. Also once you get old enough/have been coupled (especially married) long enough without breeding, ppl stop asking. By far, far, far the majority of women in the world have been pregnant/have borne children. Some of us haven't. It is a special little club. Welcome :)

UnBabby Club

i think i've been exceptionally lucky to have never really dealt with this - for all my parents' faults, asking me about when/if i'm having kids, let alone expecting me to have them, is just never a thing they would think to do. and jordan's parents... well, his mum basically told me that having children is overrated!!! and like i said, none of my close friends have children. in fact, the only person i can recently remember asking me about kids was one of the women i work with - but she's middle-aged and from the philippines and catholic so it's different.

the sibling thread is an interesting tie-in with this subject; to be harshly honest, i worry about what will happen to us when we're old and don't have kids bc we don't have close family out here, AND if we did have a kid i'd want to stick with one bc that's all i could handle BUT then i don't want that one kid stuck looking after us. so.

i think some ppl are just ignorant. they think it's 'normal' to have a family so they don't see it as inappropriate to ask about yours. but it's easy for me to not feel that bothered by it bc i don't have to deal with it, and also bc there isn't anything going on behind the scenes like fertility issues or anything.

Sibling thread?

I dunno. This stuff is just complicated. People ask inappropriate questions they don't realise are inappropriate because it's just ~the next step~ on the presumed ~couple ladder~ and easy default conversation when you don't know what else to talk about. I know I've done it myself, when younger, even as I've grown into a situation which is, well, complicated. I feel like people have the right to Not Talk About It, but also, people have the right to ask - but having the right to ask means having the right to ask, politely and respectfully, once, and then shut the fuck up and be satisfied with whatever answer is given.

I was thinking about this, because I was thinking about friends who have fallen off the Parenting Cliff.

I got very irritated at a former friend I was once very close to, who had always been kind of entitled and selfish, and that was just part of the deal of hanging out with her, because she had a million other good qualities that made up for it. Now, I know that this is the equivalent of saying that I eat babies and worship Hitler or whatever, but: I do not like small children. I am extremely uncomfortable with babies and small children. Part of this is the fact that I did not grow up around babies, didn't have an extended family with babies. And part of this is complicated stuff I will get into later. Suffice it to say, I do not like babies. I do not want to hold anyone's baby, or be made responsible for anyone's baby. And this friend turned up at an event where I was DJ-ing, demanded that I look after her baby (not even because she wanted to spend time with me, but because she wanted to spend time with another friend!) and laid heavy guilt on me until she literally dropped the child in my lap, against my will. I don't know how to look after a baby, I was given no guidance as to what to do, even how to hold it, the child sensed my discomfort because children are not stupid, and immediately rolled off my lap and onto the floor, with a wail and accusations of "you dropped my baby!" No, you thrust your child onto an unwilling party who warned you in advance they were uncomfortable with the task. Next time someone says "I'd rather not hold your baby" just don't stick your baby on them.

And there's a part of me that wants to say: if you are a parent, please just *accept* that there are some people who do not like babies, or are uncomfortable with babies, and as much as you adore your little diddums, it is not your duty to get that person *over* their fear, or expect your child to be somehow magically excepted from that person's discomfort, because hey, your child is so adorable, who won't like your child? Hitler, that's who. That's like going up to the person who has told you that they have a severe phobia of dogs and telling them "oh, but my dog is ~friendly~!!!" and letting that dog run up to them, jump up on their lap and lick their face. You will never see that person again if you disrespect their boundaries so thoroughly. DON'T BE THAT PARENT.

But, you know "not liking children" is complicated. Yes, it's because I'm a shrivelled up old prune who hates fun and hates life and really really hates noise and disorder and bad smells and rock'n'roll and apple pie. Or something. But it's also because my child-free status is complicated. I desperately wanted children when I was younger. I was forced to terminate an unplanned but wanted pregnancy at 30 because of health issues, and I gave up for adoption the child I fathered (in every sense of the word except providing the sperm) when I was 17. This stuff is shitty and painful to even just type on a messageboard thread, where I don't have to show anyone that I'm wiping away tears as I type it. It's easier to just say "I don't want to be around children because I fucking hate babies and yes, I do worship Satan, too" than to talk about how painful and complicated my feelings about ~babies~ are.

I do realise that friends who have children are not making their lifestyle choices *at* me. But it's also the sense, when people say "oh, you just have to make more effort" with friends who have had children. Yes, I have to make a huge amount of effort (when I don't *have* a lot of emotional wherewithal to start with) to place myself in a situation that I may find painful and emotionally raw. Oh, let me think about that. You know what, it's probably better for both of us if we let this friendship quietly slip away.

Family stuff got easier after my brother had a child, that took the pressure off me. But now my brother is divorced, and he and my Mum are estranged, and even the One Golden Grandchild has become a complicated situation, and guess who my Mum always wants to talk to about how *complicated* that situation is? I am a bad daughter. I give her about 5 minutes of Talking About The Grandchild while I go "uh-huh" vaguely because clearly she needs to talk about it, and then I change the subject because oh hey this is an unhappy and fraught subject on so many levels.

I thought I'd feel better after typing all that shit out, but really, I don't. It doesn't ever get any easier talking about this stuff.

People don't have children for all kinds of reasons, some through choice and some not through choice, and all of those reasons should be respected, and people who don't respect those reasons are the *real* baby-eating Satan-Hitlers. I feel bad for leaving this emotional vomit all over the thread now. My apologies to anyone I've made uncomfortable with this post.

tl;dr - sometimes it's even *more* complicated than "fertility issues" and people are still assholes about it