A-ha

I have figured something out.
I really want to be The Weird Aunt. My favorite aunt is awesome and cool and has tons of dogs so her house shakes if you make a sound they associate with food. Her husband, my uncle, is The Coolest Uncle Ever (he makes models for movies! OMG!). They were always the people I could count on to hang with me and make snide remarks about the rest of the family at gatherings. Vacations with them were awesome because they had cool books we didn’t have and knew all kinds of things about stuff my parents didn’t even talk about.

That is the role I want in the family. I want to be The Weird Aunt and corrupt the minds of my neices and nephews. I have absolutely no interest in reproducing whatsoever (one of the things my Weird Aunt and I constantly joke about is how much we hate little kids) but think it would be kinda cool to warp the minds of little neices and nephews.
The problem with this is that I am an only child. Goddamn it. So everyone wants me to have kids and I don’t want to at all. Sure, they can be cool sometimes. Sure, I have a soft spot in my heart for big family get-togethers with lots of aunts and uncles and kids playing with their cousins. But I was around some very young (read: not quite able to speak yet) kids recently and they made me nuts. I can only amuse myself by making faces at them for so long and then the fact that they scream and squeal and cry and run around terrorizing the cats ceases to be cute and becomes crazy-making. Seriously. I cannot imagine living with one of those in the house, let along more than one (I am a firm believer that one should have at least two kids if one is going to have kids).
So what is a would-be aunt supposed to do? Sure, I could be The Weird Aunt to my friends’ kids when they have them, I guess that would work, but it’s not the same. I could move back east where all my cousins are and be The Weird Aunt to their kids, which would work except for the little tidbits that all my friends and networking connections are here and I hate the weather back there.
Maybe some of my cousins from back east who are going to have kids could move out here. That would rule. Come on, guys, you know you want to. California has great weather and I am so set to be The Weird Aunt for your kids. Every kid should have a Weird Aunt growing up.