Peanut Shell

That's Salty's baby bump! It moves and wiggles!


I'm helping put on her baby shower tomorrow and hopefully everything will go off without a hitch! It's become much more of a big deal than I ever thought it would be, but I guess that's good. I have some mixed feelings about it though.

It's wonderful that my sister gets big, beautiful parties for her life choices (like wedding showers and baby showers and stuff). Really, it's wonderful. I would throw parties for Salty three times a month just because she's the best sister ever. But sometimes I feel like I get the shaft because my life choices involved turning tail and running away from the man I was about to marry. I don't ever want to have children. I take on New York City instead of staying close to home. God forbid I should start dating another woman...I'd lose any inkling of hope for parties and stuff.

Auntie R (Aunt J's wife, for all intents and purposes) was really touched that I introduced her to people with the moniker of "Aunt R--" but why wouldn't I? Aren't all my uncles' wives my aunts? Aren't all my Aunts' husbands my uncles?

It made me think about my life choices. I know these things are better for me. I know they are my choices. But I can't help feel like it isn't fair that our culture would have encouraged me to get married to JH instead of leaving him. It would have encouraged me to have his children even though I don't want to procreate. That culture is the reason I stayed with him as long as I did. I thought I had to try...I thought that making a home and a family was going to make me happy.

God, I was such an idiot.

I've been incredibly busy at work. All my other spare time of late has been wrapped up trying to move, which is at least a part-time job. I live an eight hours' drive away, for heaven's sake! I have great excuses for not putting much effort into this baby shower, but I still feel like I've been dragging my feet on it because I feel a little offended by the whole cultural-encouragement-of-marriage-and-family thing.

I regret it. I do. It's not fair to Salty or to Mom--both of whom put in a ton of work on this party--and somehow I'm still going to get a lot of the credit. And two not-fairs don't make an are-fair. Or something.


Wow, that does not make much sense. But hey, at least I wrote a real post about something really real! And at least I wrote it not a week after it happened!