Tonight there erupted a scene of immense chaos. My nephew is deeply invested (and has been his whole life) in a stuffed frog named Froggy. Anyway, after sleeping a while tonight he wakes up and wants Froggy and Froggy is momentarily missing and much crying and screaming and shrieking ensues. Meanwhile I am trying to poop in the bathroom and Posey gets distressed and starts barking and barking and barking with her squeaky girl dog voice and I am yelling at her trying to get her to be quiet but she won’t listen to me through the door and so I open the door to try and get her to come in and be quiet but she won’t and she just runs past barking and barking and my nephew is still screaming and his dad is yelling at everyone to be quiet and mom’s dog Neville is barking and I’m yelling. And FINALLY I am done with the toilet and I go shut Posey up and Froggy is found! Peace is restored to the land!

Oh man.

The funny thing is meanwhile I am having these little fanciful thoughts of MAYBE having children after swearing I never ever would. Of course I have had an ablation so I have no endometrial lining and can’t carry children. BUT I do have eggs so I was wondering if I could get my eggs retrieved and fertilized and implanted in someone else’s uterus (a partner? I guess so but I don’t even have one of those!). I thought it would be like penguins, when the mother passes the egg to the father. So I did some Googling and it turns out egg retrieval, freezing, and test tube babymaking runs into thousands and thousands of dollars. That almost made me regret my ablation. But lets be real, even if I still could house a fetus in my uterus I am utterly terrified and horrified by the idea of giving birth, so it’s just as well that option is gone.

No, I don’t want to give birth, I just want to like, have this totally sweet little baby to raise WITH SOMEONE ELSE. And of course it would be better than everyone else’s children because I would raise it right. But ALSO I don’t have someone else, which puts another kink in my plans. Because I’ve seen my mom trying to raise two children as a single parent and it was hard! And she had SKY! Which made it even more harsh. And of course me all undiagnosed my whole childhood and having major suicidal depressive episodes brought on by shithead children/peers bullying me at school AND genes skewed for bipolar disorder. UGH!

And that’s kinda the thing complicating passing my actual genes on is I KNOW the kid would have some mental health issues and I would feel really guilty if I had made someone else whose brain also made them want to die for no real good reason. Little Lemminghead Child. And that’s basically what I told my gynaecologist when we decided on me getting an ablation because my periods bled so damned much it looked like a murder scene in my bed every month.

BUT there are other options, like I could find some other woman who wants to bear and raise children with me and have a kid that way. Or adoption. Or fostering. Or stealing a baby. Just kidding on that last one, I wouldn’t!

So anyway, this whole fanciful baby daydream has been a complete surprise, and I still need to find a partner before I feel comfortable doing that.

ALSO I have started seriously contemplating doing a PhD. Is serious the right word? I don’t want to apply this January, I’m not ready for next fall. But maybe within the next three or four years. Which means I need to keep my student loan in good standing by making minimum payments. ALSO I would have to find a way to fund my PhD. ALSO it’s a lot of work. And I had no life during my Masters. BUT I also lived in a basement apartment during my whole Masters, which was brutal. Maybe having access to things like sunlight would improve my outcomes in a doctoral program.

I used to want to do the History of Consciousness program at University of California Santa Cruz. But I recently checked it out and basically I would need half a million dollars to do it. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have immediate access to that kind of money.

There are some programs I might like in Toronto. York has a media studies PhD, and there’s the Communications and Culture program with York and Ryerson that has a PhD. But really I don’t know. I think I need to think a bit more before making the leap.

So those are the two surprising things that I have been thinking about. I guess I have been thinking about other things too, like current crusholas and career stuff, but that’s not as potentially life changing as getting into a PhD program and having a baby. ALTHOUGH probably having a partner would make the first two things more conceivable than doing them on my own.

I did a tarot reading for the year ahead and I’m supposed to get into a relationship. So that’s promising. But aside from that it’s more of the same, starts out with lots of career stuff and ends with a Fall full of poverty and uncertainty. What else is new?

I’m applying for teaching jobs, I got turned down for one at OCAD but this time they actually cared enough to send an email saying I wasn’t getting an interview. So that’s good? Better than last time when they just didn’t say anything. I’m getting a more robust application together for ANOTHER teaching job so I hope that pans out. Really I just want one sessional gig so that I can start building up teaching experience and hopefully be more ready to apply for tenure track positions. There were some tenure track positions coming up at University of California at Riverside, which I have actually been to in the past to show my videos, and I would have been good, EXCEPT I didn’t feel ready enough to apply anyway. Because I think I do need some sessional classes under my belt before even trying to get tenure track jobs.

So, children and Phud. Both of which potentially cost thousands and thousands of dollars. I won $120 on a fifty cent bet at the casino the other day. Maybe it’s the start of some wealthy luck.

I really do want a partner before doing all of this tho. My psychic said I would be one of those people who finds someone to be with for the rest of my life. That is terribly appealing. I’m tired of all the hook ups I have had in my youth where I felt so disposable. UGH! I know I could be a good partner to someone. I just don’t know who.

There was a lesbian waitress tonight who was clearly into me. But she lives in Saskatoon, and I live in Toronto. It was over even before she brought my coconut chicken curry.