Random thoughts and peanut butter cups

So... I'm thinking to myself a few minutes ago, after working 13 hours and coming home to crawl to the kitchen and fend for some dinner of sorts, that I sadly don't even have the energy to take care of my pets properly. Litter box scooping is required. Four footed creatures need food and likely a water bowl top-off.

The dogs haven't been walked in two weeks, and even then, it was only the second walk in SIX MONTHS.

So while I'm swallowing the mental list of what needs to be done for the pets, the house, and getting ready for the day tomorrow, the recurrent thought strikes again: How will I ever have children? Am I not meant to? The possibility can't be ignored.

In other news, there is an opened bag of miniature Reese's peanut butter cups in my pantry. You know, the smaller ones wrapped in foil?

I want one. Or sixteen. My God do I want some freakin chocolate. Peanut butter optional, but preferred.

I have not lost a single pound. Not one. And here it is day four. Almost done with day four. If I do this for another ten days and don't look any sexier? I will have serious wrath to cast somewhere. Maybe I'll find that Dr. Agatston guy and send him before and after pictures and ask for some explanation of how they look the SAME despite days filled with spinach and tomatoes and eggs and lean meat and string cheese and the various other substitutes for peanut butter cups. Dammit.

So has anyone seen the exchange between Ann Coulter and Elizabeth Edwards? Interesting. What I think of either is irrelevant. Ann Coulter really made an ass of herself.

I hope they find that little girl Madeleine they've been searching for. www.findmadeleine.com if anyone wants to keep up on it.

Speaking of looking for missing people, that Bobby Cutts character should get the death penalty if he's proven guilty. I'm just sayin.

Which leads me to another thing I've been thinking about since yesterday. I will avoid too long a rant, because I really don't have a whole lot of time to be on here tonight, but in my blog surfing travels yesterday, I came across a blog for "men's rights." Which, on its own, sounds perfectly acceptable. But then I read a little deeper into it. Good Christ. It was all about men not having to be "forced" into parenthood. (What what what?)

My response to that is simple. Men, unless you are FORCED into sexual intercourse and ejaculation, you aren't FORCED into parenthood. And something tells me that the folks authoring this and other websites of this purpose are not rape victims.

But seriously, wanting to be fair, I thought about this. First, let's take the gender roles and all things related out of the mix. What are potential results for having sex? And, are all of them revokeable or reverseable except resultant children? I went through the list: AIDS, herpes, various STD's, rug burns, guilt, jail time, a social figurative scarlet letter, etc.

Every single potential unwanted outcome of sex either has to be dealt with to reverse, or is permanent. And even what can be reversed cannot be erased from having existed.

Then I moved on to the gender issue. The list beyond children - did it apply to both genders equally? I found it did not quite exactly. Certain things, such as HPV, are extremely prevalent to the tune of an estimated 25% of women in some areas, and while men can contract it, they typically aren't at huge risk for cancer resulting from it. Women are.

Anything else? Oh - yeah. The whole guilt thing? And scarlet letter thing? Arguably a bigger female problem than a male problem. Based on societal norms and influences.

So... I'm thinkin, that if sex results in a child, the woman participant cannot truly erase from time, memory, and experience that she at least was pregnant at one point. She is thus forced into parenthood. It is a state of being. If I walk out in the rain and get rained on, I am wet. I have no time machine to go back and buy an umbrella. If I have sex and get impregnated, I am with child. There is no time machine to go back and buy protection or grow any lacking common sense. What's done is done. For at least a time, the woman participant is a parent. Whether she should be able to end that state of being prior to the birth is an argument for some other day. But she is a parent.

How is the male participant not a parent, for at least that time? I think he is. He can't simply escape it. A child was created with DNA that half is sourced from him.

I don't think the argument that a man is "forced" into parenthood has any credibility.

Now, to look at parenthood after the birth as a separate thought... This I found interesting to ponder and dissect.

If a baby is created and subsequently born, the mother cannot avoid the state of parenthood. Even in an extreme case where she is the only named parent on the birth certificate, she is a parent of a live human who will inhabit the earth. How then are we to expect that a man should somehow have this power?

Last, let's zone in on responsibility. The only forced responsibility, in some cases, is financial support for the child.

I'm thinkin that all the other potential outcomes stand to cost money too. Let's go back. Jail time? Between attorney fees, court fees, restitution, lost wages, etc. etc., it might just be cheaper to have ended up paying someone child support. Medical treatment for undesired outcomes? Same deal. Come to think of it, it all costs money in one way or another.

I'm just not seeing any logic to this claim to "men's rights" in the context given.

Here's where I see men's rights in this realm... They have the right to choose when, where, how, why, and with whom they will have sex provided the partner chooses the same. They have a right to choose whether or not protection is used, provided the partner agrees. (And don't even tell me men might be "lied to" about birth control. Men still have the right to choose whether to believe a woman who says she's on it and has taken it correctly for at least the minimum required time. More rights for men cropping up here all the time.)

And thus, they have a right to choose to avoid parenthood. All the way up to the moment they choose otherwise. And then? It's irreversable. Just like I have a choice to walk outside into the rain. But once I choose to? I've been rained on. And there are no time machines.

I still want a damn peanut butter cup.