Jared & Kids = Danger

I had two major run-ins with children over the past month. My attitude towards kids is that they're cute in small doses. If there was a rental service that offered them, we'd probably be regular customers. But kids aren't for me. This is going to sound horrible, but I've lost too many friends to kids. It's not that they start breeding and can't hang out because they're off being responsible, it's that they're too busy being miserable. I'm aware that raising a kid (or seven if you're a good Catholic) is a "rewarding, full-time job", but it's one that I don't have the time to spare. I mean, do people honestly sit down and think, "Hey, you know what honey? I've got the next 18+ years free, why don't we have a kid?" :sigh: All my friends who have had kids had them by accident, the by-product (or hazard) of enjoying sex too much. My friend, let's call him M., unfortunately has super-sperm, impregnating his wife though layers and layers of birth-control that was supposedly 99.99999999% effective. Way to beat the odds. Gah. Point is I'm too much of a kid and our household has seen the changes that are involved when kids are brought into the picture. Anywhoooooo:

I have a nephew. While I was on vacation I got to be a guest as his 2nd Birthday. The terrible two's: What they say is true. Hellions, all of them. It was a pretty interesting party, where I got to meet parents of other two-year-olds and gaze into that dead, defeated look that clung around their eyes. Poor, poor breeders. My nephew Julien got a number of interesting toys (a karaoke play-along electric guitar being the coolest); of which the whole "rocking horse" scene was my favorite. Apparently it's a custom to give a two-year-old a rocking horse. Little Julien got three. One was a normal brown horse. This gift was followed by a positively terrifying electronic rocking horse that had blinking eyes, fully moving head and mouth, and a swinging tail. Need I mention it scared the crap out of several of the kids as well as a few of the adults? The best rocking horse was the last, though: The girliest Unicorn rocking horse you've ever seen. Pink hair, silvery ribbons....this thing was more gay than a leather bar. Which made it awesome. Despite all this excitement, I got bored.

I ended up taking a felt-tip marker and drawing on balloons to alleviate the boredom. While this did keep my diseased brain occupied, to do so apparently made me the equivalent of the "birthday clown," as kids wanted customized balloons. I got 4 requests for yellow Spongebob SquarePants balloons, but I still got to doodle a few for myself. Here's a few of them, if you're curious:

My other run-in with kids was last weekend. B____ (the language school that's decided I'm a terrible teacher and hadn't asked me back for over a year) called us up and asked if we'd be willing to teach an English Summer Camp for the weekend. As in, could we be prepared in 24 hours to watch over about 10 kids for about 48 hours straight? Of course we said yes, because if someone's going to give you 500 euros (Euros are kicking the dollars butt right now, so that's like $700 or something) you're going to be willing to give up your weekend. I ended up doing about 60 paintings for the kids, because drawing horses and monkeys keeps them distracted and not destroying things. After a weekend surrounded by kids and being a babysitter for 48 hours, I'm done with kids for a while. The best part about the whole deal was most of the kids didn't speak English so I could get away with joking about beating them with a coathanger. Joking of course. You can't teach kids and NOT be scared of a lawsuit. Luckily no one was hurt and everything worked out. I even got a piece of "tribute art" from one of the kids. Of course, I took and hid it before the parents showed up. Can you guess why?

Little girls draw pictures of me with a uni-brow, blood dripping from my mouth, with the word HELP next to it. Apparently, I give kids nightmares, and drank their blood last weekend.

Woo. Hoo.

:sigh: