Because no child in a swimming pool should go un-terrorized.

This is not my frighteningly realistic crocodile-shaped floatation device.

New toy! New toy! Find an adoptable dog who looks like you. (Warning: this website plays sound. Awesome sound.)

Mind you, you’ll have to travel to New Zealand to adopt it, and I guess there will be some kind of quarantine issue when you bring it home. But the point is, freaky dog twin!

Although my dog does not look that much like my twin, I’m sad to say. I could only get a 60% match. However, it is making me realize it’s time to have bangs again. That’s the point of this website, right?

Note: It’s possible the site won’t work right now. I think The Hairpin pulled a BoingBoing by linking to it.

I feel like I’ve been spearheading an attack on parenthood lately, though most of it is happening in my own mind. And I know it’s ridiculous. Almost all reasons for becoming a parent seem insufficient to me right now, but I am sure the day will come when I, too, will want to be a parent for some apparently insufficient reason. Just as I used to think it was ridiculous to write vague or impossible wedding vows (“I will always love you”? Really? How on earth can you promise that?) and then when the time came to write my own, I found I was promising all manner of vague and impossible things just to make the ceremony a bit longer.

We humans jump face-first into major life decisions; we don’t know why. Why enter into a (theoretically and idealistically, if not legally or actually) unbreakable monogamous contract for your lifetime? Why go into major debt to buy a house when renting makes more financial sense in the Bay Area? And why create a whole new person who will be absolutely reliant on you for several years when there are plenty of low-maintenance people already running around?

There are no good reasons. People do these things because they’re the things people do, and most of my grumbling is an attempt to stave off the nearly inevitable day when I sigh and admit that I probably do want to do the next irrational thing. And when asked why, I’ll say it’s because I want someone to take care of me when I’m old, or because I want a mini-me, or because all my friends are doing it. When the real reason is that people are people, and so am I.

Friend: I guess I mostly want to have kids so that I have someone to take care of me when I’m old.

Me: Though actually you could just save the money you would have spent on your kids, and use it to hire a full-time live-in caretaker for yourself when you’re old. Plus take some trips.

Friend: Ha! No way. I would never have enough money for a live-in caretaker.

Me: Ah, but you would, you see, if you saved every penny you would have spent on the kids you didn’t have.

Friend: Caretakers are really expensive.

Me: Kids are even more expensive.

Friend: Yeah, but they’ll take care of you when you’re old.

Me: …Sigh.

Yesterday I found myself reading about birth control on Kaiser’s website. (Kaiser is my medical provider.) I’m getting tired of the rigorous schedule required to make the pill work — did you know that when they say take your pill at the same time every day, they really, really mean it? Being off by even an hour drastically increases your chances of getting pregnant. The more you know, eh? — and was browsing around to see if anyone had invented something really awesome since the last time I looked into contraception. (Spoiler alert: they haven’t.)

Anyway, it was while reading up on Kaiser’s various birth control methods that I discovered this little gem:

“If an unplanned pregnancy would seriously impact your plans for the future, choose a birth control method that is highly effective. Or if you have a stable relationship and income and plan to have children in the future anyway, you may feel comfortable using a less reliable method. ”

And now I am annoyed.

I really hate the assumption — and I’ve encountered it elsewhere — that if you’re married and you probably want kids someday, then getting pregnant right now shouldn’t be such a big deal. As if an unplanned pregnancy wouldn’t be a huge, life-altering deal in any life, anywhere, ever.

Let me break it down for you like a crumbly cracker: You ever wake up in the morning excited because you’re planning to go to happy hour somewhere after work? You lie there in bed and you can just imagine how great it will be to have that half-priced margarita, right?

Okay, but it’s six in the morning. Do you want that margarita right now?

Granted, for me it’s more like eleven in the morning. Okay, maybe one in the afternoon. The point is, I’m not ready for that part of my day to start. So yeah, I’m going to need a reliable form of birth control, because all women everywhere should get to pick when (if ever) in their lives they swell up like a balloon and then lose 18+ years to the demands of someone else. And yeah, if my birth control breaks down, I’m going to get the morning-after pill. And yes, friends, if all these options somehow fail me, I will have an abortion. And it won’t be easy or ideal. But it won’t be wrong, either.

Being a wife doesn’t automatically mean you have to be a mother. Being a mother doesn’t automatically mean you have to be a mother again. And I won’t let anyone, including my own bloody doctors, bully me into thinking it does.