To share or not to share?

I have spent a full 24 hours deliberating how honest I really want to be with this blog… in other words, how much dirty laundry is it appropriate to put out there into the e-world? And since I am quasi anonymous here, I am going to go ahead and share. Otherwise, where’s the fun, right?

I just finished the book “Eat, Pray, Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert. It’s pretty cute actually. One of my favorite lines in it is when she equates the decision to have a baby to deciding to get a tattoo on your face. You have to really know you want it. Having co-raised some very young siblings, that sounds about right to me.

This seems as good a time as any to reintroduce my Russian/American/British friend “P” (previously introduced in yesterday’s entry). She will quickly become known for brilliantly simple answers to some of life’s most difficult questions (at least in my life). When asked if she and her hunky hubby were planning to have kids soon she repeated the quizzical head tilt from yesterday’s story and said “a baby? Where would I put it?”

On the other side of the spectrum is a lawyer friend of mine who used to refer to children as something along the lines of “screaming disgusting unnecessary appendages” who is now a glowing, floating on air, radiant eight months pregnant.

So what happens when you decide that yes you want the face tattoo, you save up your money, come up with the design, and go to the ink parlor all excited and ready to go… and the damn tattoo artist refuses you? Or the ink just won’t go into your skin, or whatever metaphor you want to come up with? What happens then?

I’ll tell you what happens if you’re an overly theatrical, hypo-emotional Russian/American/Israeli. You summon all the ancestral Russian tragedy, Jewish victimhood, American sensitivity, and Israeli anger and throw yourself Anna Karenina style on the train tracks of fate in a full-on hissy fit. This fit lasts about a year (because when you are a Russian/American/Israeli, if Drama asks you to tango, you do your stretches, fill up your water bottle and put on those dancing shoes, because you are in it for the long haul!)… At the end of the year you get up, brush yourself off and go see your friendly neighborhood fertility specialist. Only if you live in Jerusalem, you have to wait a month for that appointment. To be continued.