I Can Barely Take Care of Myself Jen Kirkman (best books for students to read txt) 📖

the meaning of life is to love—whether you love a child or a string of skinny-jeans-wearing bass-player boys. One of my favorite quotes about the meaning of life is from American contemporary spiritual leader Ram Dass: “We’re all just walking each other home.” I’d never have known he said this if I weren’t scrolling through Twitter, but whatever, it still counts as spiritual reading.

Even though I don’t have a maternal instinct, I often fantasize about helping some of these celebrity babies that I read about in Us Weekly’s “Toddlers—They’re Just Like Us” section.

Me: “Hey, I’m worried about you.”

Celebrity Baby: “Who are you?”

Me: “Oh, just a nosy person who keeps reading about you and your family in the tabloids.”

Celebrity Baby: “I’m in a magazine? People can see my picture and know what I look like? What if someone decides to kidnap me? I’ll be so easy to find!”

Me: “I know. I don’t know if your parents have the best judgment. They’re kind of using you to prove to the world that they’re not complete narcissists. Not that the definition of ‘narcissist’ is ‘childfree.’ It actually just means an inability to feel empathy. Lots of childfree people are still quite empathetic, usually not toward children but . . . I feel bad for stuffed animals in stores that no one buys. That counts as selfless.”

Celebrity Baby: “My parents seem nice, although I still don’t get why I’m white and my mom is Mexican.”

Me: “Oh, no, honey. That’s not your mom. That’s your nanny.”

Celebrity Baby: “Oh. Where’s my mom?”

Me: “She’s off filming a movie in Vancouver for a few months.”

Celebrity Baby: “But I thought her life had meaning when I was born and that movies weren’t that important. So why is she making more?”

Me: “Well, it is her job.”

Celebrity Baby: “But she has dozens of millions in the bank and owns four estates all over the world. I didn’t think she had to work.”

Me: “Look, I told you they have judgment problems. Your parents seem to think that birthing you or paying their surrogate to birth you because they were too busy not wanting to get fat has transformed them into good people who suddenly understand the meaning of life and now care about things outside of themselves.”

Celebrity Baby: “But do I count as something outside of themselves? I mean, technically I am an extension of them. Who wouldn’t want a cute miniversion of herself and her hot actor husband?”

Me: “You seem pretty smart for your age.”

Celebrity Baby: “Yeah, well, I have to be pretty smart for my age, don’t I? I just found out that my parents didn’t have a basic moral code until I was born. They sound pretty fucking stupid if you ask me. Besides, why aren’t my parents filming movies in Los Angeles? One of our greatest exports, Hollywood, is being outsourced to Canada. This is why our economy is in the shitter.”

Next in my trashy-magazine-a-thon, I happened upon this quote from Sarah Jessica Parker:

As a working mother high heels don’t really fit into my life anymore—but in a totally wonderful way. I would much rather think about my son than myself.

Have these moms ever heard of yoga? Meditation? Volunteering for the elderly or the homeless? Taking care of a relative? There are lots of ways to not think about yourself and when you’ve truly mastered not thinking about yourself, you don’t even have the urge to tell everyone that you are not thinking about yourself!

You know who does a lot of good deeds and doesn’t have kids and totally understands what’s important in life? George Clooney. Unlike me, he doesn’t give a fuck what you think about the fact that he’s not “selfless” enough to father a kid. He’s not writing a book defending his position. He’s having sex with a cocktail waitress and then saving Darfur. Both are noble positions.

I read in Marie Claire that George said, “Even one kid running around my villa makes me nervous, so I’m definitely not a candidate for father of the year! If I need to surround myself with children and feel like I have this big extended family, I can always call Brad and Angie and ask them to stay with me, just to remind me why I’m so happy without.”

Booyah! Not only does George not have kids—he wants to gently remind you that he’s friends with Brad and Angie and lives in a villa in Italy. Try to tell me with a straight face that changing diapers is preferable to drinking wine on Lake Como.

So-called journalists constantly ask him, “But, George, don’t you want to be a father?” He recently answered no for the millionth time and also said that he has no plans to dye his hair and that he’s going to embrace the gray instead. I want to embrace who I am just like Clooney. (Except I’m dyeing my gray hair every six weeks. Fuck that. Women still haven’t mastered that “distinguished gray” thing—we end up looking like vegan Wiccans.)

My old friend Tammy shook my bottle of silver-sparkle nail polish and asked, “Big plans this weekend?”

“No, actually. I’m just going to relax.” I tried to concentrate on reading a tabloid. I did want to find out how Nicole Richie went from party girl to business owner.

Not one to let her clients read anything without interruption, Tammy said, “Your husband and kids out of town?” I mean, technically, yes, my husband and kids were out of town. My husband was in another town called Ex-Husband-Ville and my kids were in a town many galaxies away called “Nonexistent Limbo.” I wanted to give Tammy the benefit of the doubt and assume that she didn’t remember that I was the woman she once shamed for not having children—but I saw the look in her eye. She was jabbing at me and not just with her sanitized nail clippers. She knew there was no husband or kids because I looked well rested and didn’t have food stains on my shirt. My old instinct kicked