With my busy schedule it’s managed to take me almost a month to read through the book Complete Without Kids: An Insider’s Guide to Childfree Living by Ellen L. Walker, Ph.D., but I’ve finally managed to and I’m entirely in love with it – here’s why! (Psst! I’m giving away a copy at the bottom of the page!)

For those of you who, like myself, find themselves childfree out of choice this book is a much needed affirmation that what you’ve dedicated your life to – work, a significant other, supporting your parents and/or other family members, or just the plain old want to not be someone’s keeper – doesn’t necessarily make you a greedy, spoiled child who refuses to do what ‘everyone does’ and go to ‘the next step’ aka have a family.

I love children, I do, and that’s why I never want to have any. My reasons are:

001. No child should have me as a parent. Children need love, patience and attention – two things I can’t give them and one I would smother them with. I don’t have time for children, not even a little time for myself most of the time. My life is non-stop work and I’d be depriving them of the one thing they needed the most – their mother.

002. No child should have to starve. Make no mistake, working 14-16 hour days only proves that you have a job – it doesn’t make you rich. It doesn’t even signify ambition when you have no choice. I book, I network, data entry, customer support, troubleshooting, haggling, paperwork, take care of two grown people who need constant care (because they seem to think they’re children, not because they’re invalid). When that’s all done I’m exhausted!

Then I spend my off hours barn raising websites, writing ebooks and maintaining blogs, when I have the time. All of that and I barely make ends meet – how would I support a child? I couldn’t! To purposely have a child when I’m broke would be selfish and irresponsible of me, and not at all fair to the child.

003. I’m not normal enough. Another thing that children need is normality and stability. Stability I can provide, to an extent, but normality? Not in a billion years. Let’s pretend that I started to dress the way my community sees fit rather than like it’s 1939, or that I started talking like a mother instead of like Jay Derris from the Jay and Silent Bob films.

Let’s take away my weird obsessions – bento boxes, Halloween, Disneyland, Hunter S. Thompson, The Might Boosh, Jack Kerouac, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Shia LaBeouf‘s jeans – let’s pretend, for a moment, that I only had happy, G rated thoughts and speech. I’m still an Odinist. Now, I don’t have any shame over that – in fact I love it, I’m proud of it and loud about it. But a child needs to be normal, especially during their school years – trust me, I know this.

If you wrote out a fortune cookie fortune for each time I took crap for saying soda instead of pop, and cursing instead of cussing, you could fill a football stadium with it. In fact, the crap I took just for being a Jew was terrifying – so much that it would make me a decent writer, but not a very happy person. I’d never want my child to go through anything like that because their mom raised them to be a freak. I don’t even have children, and I can feel the sharp pangs of guilt for every time some other kid calls them a name because of me – never, ever, will I have children. I already love them too much.

There are all sorts of reasons for not having children, those are just my main ones. And Complete Without Kids, while not naming off my reasons specifically, did manage to go through many reasons I’ve had to deal with plus quite a few I didn’t realize existed from not being able to have children to being too afraid of losing control of your precious life and livelihood.

It also examines the pressure many feel from their families, friends and society to have children after a certain age or stage in their relationship, as if it’s something that you just do at some point, regardless of your personal needs and wants. Living life as a closeted Heathen and outward Latter Day Saint (Mormon), I remember the emphasis on marriage, home, family and children and the pushing from a very young age to become a Homemaker.

After I turned 16 a race started – the other girls my age all seemed to immediately shift towards finding the right guy, trying to get married by 18. I remember two girls, cousins, who were my age and 7 months older than me, actually racing to the isle (both snagged Missionaries, the highest of the high you can get in a prospective husband) then, once married (both at 18), racing to have their first child. I remember their mothers bragging about it, “Oh Jill’s just gotten her teaching job, they’ve moved to Ogden!”, “Really? Michaela’s just taken an internship at a newspaper – in Salt Lake City.”, “Oh… well.. Jill’s expecting.”, “She is!? …Congratulations….”

All I could think of, and sometimes even now when I look back, is that they’ve wasted their lives in a stupid race to be the most ‘family’ they can manage in the shortest amount of time. Last I heard of the girls, almost two years ago, they were racing their sons in soccer. Both boys will be amazing Missionaries some day, I’m sure.

I’m in love with this book, and only have to dock half a star due to some confusing bits about 2/3rds of the way in, but it gets 4.5 stars out of a possible 5 from me – I hope you read it whether or not you have children. If you do have kids, maybe you’ll understand those of us who choose not to a little better.

Now to the fun part!

Complete Without Kids Giveaway!

Pretty simple giveaway rules:

1. Write a blog post telling me why you want to read Complete Without Kids and link it back to this post.

2. Follow @RiotDollie on Twitter. (optional, but I’d appreciate it!)

3. Comment below with the link to your blog post – please make sure to include the full, direct link!

One winner will be randomly chosen using Random.org on September 25, 2011 – good luck!

This review is a book I was sent as a member of Business2Blogger for the purposes of an honest product review. All of the opinions are my own.

Posted by Faith on at 7:30 pm

Very cool freebie from Repro Goddess, a great batch of coupon codes for a free blockbuster rental!

Codes Good thru 8/26/11:
99BRAB3, 85JEAH2, 43SGJC5, 67PPLA6, 96PBCG3, 56TTDR2
Codes Good thru 8/29/11:
27PGAR6, 48KRVF2
Codes Good thru 8/31/11:
GORACETRAC
Limit one per card. Hot List movies excluded. Find a Blockbuster Express location near you.

Just a flyby, but hope you enjoy!

Tagged with: Blockbuster rental codes • Coupon Codes • Free rental codes

Posted by Faith on at 12:18 pm

I’ve been droning on and on about this for months, annoying all of my friends who aren’t in what Josh calls “The Same Line of Faith” as we are, about the upcoming Ghost Month or Seventh Moon, which isn’t so upcoming anymore.

Last night was the festival for Wodenshund, a festival I did not get to attend, but we did feed our hungry ghosts to ease their suffering and appease them the way we always do. Our incense in the doorway, the rice, noodles and spirit money in red paper envelopes burning in a ceramic bowl on the porch while Laota is sleeping. The fear of sundown, the flicker of tiny white candles in red lotus lanterns – it’s an odd way to live, I suppose.

But we are tempting fate. Due to idiots beyond our control, we live in the only private home on a crossroads shared with a mini mart, a bank and a cemetery on two sides. Weird things happen out here. People will randomly just walk out of the cemetery in the middle of the night and head down the highway. There are odd noises, strange weather, golden lights that appear in the cemetery just after sundown but disappear if you get too close. Even tail lights and car engine sounds, but we assume that’s just local kids blowing off steam.

It still scares me, I still burn the money and make the food for them in hopes that they stay out there and we can live without crossing paths. Which doesn’t always work out, but I’ll save those stories for Halloween.

Tagged with: Ghost Festival • Ghost Month • Hungry Ghost Festival • Hungry Ghost Month • Hungry Ghosts • Seventh Moon

Posted by Faith on at 6:50 am

I don’t know if you’ve ever lived in Missouri, or visited, but if you have I hope to the Gods that you didn’t have your own car with you.

My mom just had to junk a 15 year old white Chevy Lumina because she had it parked out of a garage and it hails golfballs here like it’s going out of style. The weather just keeps getting worse and worse, and it can’t ever just be horrible heat swells, either, it has to be some psychotic tornado picnic weather thrown in for good measure.

If you live here, or have been keeping an eye on the Doppler for the last few years you may have noticed the erratic way the weather changes – we have short term droughts then get flooded for two weeks, then it’s crazy T-storms that have been producing destructive hail.

So mom’s Lumina’s windshield had hail marks that looked like bullet holes (didn’t go all the way through, though) and a wide crack across the glass from steering wheel to passenger side to door almost. Unfortunately it would cost more to fix it than just to junk it and get a new used car out here because we don’t have services that actually do their job rather than cost you an arm and a leg. I was checking out an auto glass Phoenix website and, if we had lived in Arizona we would have easily been able to keep the Lumina without too much issue. What’s routine repair to them is is un-fixable to our locals, who don’t even offer windshield repair.

They provide same-day service and make sure their work is all finished by an insured, bonded professional which isn’t something you see too often out here in the boonies. Heck, they even allow you to get a free quote online.

I realize it’s a lot of damage, but we didn’t even have the option of replacing the windshield without driving to Kansas City! Is it too much to ask that *something* in Missouri work like it’s supposed to?

Tagged with: Auto Repair • Missouri Weather • Windshield Repair

Posted by Faith on at 8:23 pm