Day 14/365: Friday Five on a Sunday

[nanila]

1. What is something amazing that has happened in the last five years? Is it cheating to say "the births of my children"? I never thought I'd have children. I didn't believe I'd ever achieve sufficiently balanced emotional or financial states to consider it. I also don't like making irrevocable decisions. It certainly took me a long time to come round to the idea, so I guess I was pretty fortunate that I was physically still able to, once it seemed like a desirable prospect. Now that they're here, I don't wish to imagine life without them as that is a prospect too painful to contemplate.
   
   
2. What is something you would love to happen in the next five years? I'd like to get an extension on the house (requires chutzpah), and travel more with the children (two trips already paid for this year; three more trips in the planning stages over the next two years).
   
   
3. Do you make "life plans" or do you live spontaneously? Ha. I used to live a lot more spontaneously. I'm pretty regimented now.
   
   
4. Do you think about what you might do when you retire? You mean assuming the current generation of retirees doesn't drain the pension pot so dry that my generation has to work until we die? Well. I'd quite like to do a lot of walking, painting, and photography. I'd like to write my memoirs. I don't care whether or not anyone wants to read them. I just really enjoy organising information, and I have a wealth of information about my personal history (see: 16 years of blogging).
   
   
5. Is your lifestyle similar to your parents, grandparents, or something utterly different? Totally different from both sets of grandparents. My Filipino grandparents were extravagant, gregarious, and generous. My white grandparents were Depression-era frugal, extremely reserved, and survivalist. I'd say my lifestyle is not so dissimilar to my parents now. But they moved house constantly (and probably unnecessarily) when I was a child. This, I think, made me determined not to do so once I had children. I moved house a good deal before that.

Comments

[pbristow]

"What is something amazing that has happened in the last five years? Is it cheating to say "the births of my children"? I never thought I'd have children. I didn't believe I'd ever achieve sufficiently balanced emotional or financial states to consider it. I also don't like making irrevocable decisions. It certainly took me a long time to come round to the idea, so I guess I was pretty fortunate that I was physically still able to, once it seemed like a desirable prospect. Now that they're here, I don't wish to imagine life without them as that is a prospect too painful to contemplate."


I think that this one of the bravest and most perfectly constructed paragraphs about human experience ever written/(Pro Tip: I'm slightly biassed. Also a wee bit pissed.)


I started out baffled by children, then intrigued by them, then desiring them (as a means of carrying on everything that I valued about myself), and then - in shocked realisation of the actual implications of their birth and growth upon the lives of their parents, *AND THEN* the potential impact on overall human population and the consequences for the planet upon which all human (or other) children (that we know of) will have to live - utterly swearing off ever being responsible for the generation of any such "surplus humans".

Plus, there's my "Family Motto": "No child of mine should ever have to carry *my* genes!" =:o}

[nanila]

I'm reasonably healthy now but goodness knows what I've saddled Humuhumu and Keiki with. If you're reading this at some future date, kids: my apologies.

[ljravengirl]

Love this. And you and I could "retire" together- -we want to do the same things, including travel. As if I will ever retire.

[nanila]

Aw, thank you. Yes, that sounds fabulous - if unlikely.