RIP Zack Kitty

Our poor old Zack kitty passed away tonight. He was almost 20 years old. He will be missed.

I'm not a baby machine...

I guess I'm at that age where I am expected to start nesting and having babies. I'm entering my third year of marriage, I'm turning 33 in a few months and I am at the average age that women are having babies these days. Why am I even thinking about these things? Well, because my email and junk mail are telling me to. It turns out that all of those websites you look at while you are wedding planning save your info and right around 3 years after you are married they start to nail you with baby making stuff. I've been getting a barrage of emails about joining "New Mommy Groups" and "What to do to get ready for baby" and I've been getting things in the mail for nursery catalogs and diaper services. I want to call every one of their customer service numbers and inform them that my 'baby' is almost thirteen years old, my childbearing days are long behind me and to go pester someone else.
Is that all we are to the marketers of the world? Are married women between 29-34 just babymakers as far as they are concerned? Don't they understand if I had more kids now I would literally be raising kids for my entire adult life?
Don't get me wrong, I love raising my daughter, it is the best thing I have ever done and I could not be happier with how great she is turning out. I'm a natural when it comes to parenting. But I would like to, at the very least, try and see if I can excel at anything else as much as I have at being a parent.
I would love to go back to school in a couple of years, maybe go into medicine like I always dreamed. Or maybe travel around the world a few hundred times and finally finish that book? Or maybe just work at a cafe and take life day by day meeting new and interesting people, or maybe finally make that movie I've got rolling around in my mind's eye.... The possibilities are endless and I am entering the prime of my life!
Raising children is a huge responsibility and should never be taken lightly. Just because I am really great at it doesn't mean I want to have a bunch of children I can't afford. To me, that would be terribly irresponsible.

Being a parent has been an amazing adventure, but I don't want that to be my only adventure. I've only got this one life, I need to make the most of it.