the one and only child

As my friends embark on having babies, and some now moving on to baby #2, it's been interesting to hear them explain their desire to have a second. I totally connect with wanting to build a family—personally, I'd love to end up with a houseful of kids and chaos. But there's often a nuance of fear in the conversation too...the fear of having an only child.

Even though I don't have siblings, I get that having a brother or sister is nine-times-out-of-ten the shit. You have an automatic best friend, a playmate, an unbreakable bond, shared memories. That's a blessing that, correct, I can't truly understand. So I get it if someone is sad that their kid might not know that kind of a relationship, and that I can't actually "get" that at all. 

But the funny thing is, I have only one time felt at a disadvantage for being an only child, and that's when my dad died and I had to pick up the pieces alone. But even in that impossible time, I still recognized that being an only child made the process simpler; it meant no fighting over tough decisions and stupid material items that shouldn't belong to us anyway...I just had to decide what choices I could live with making, and then make them. 

Other than that, I think being an only child has worked out really nicely. And not just because I got whatever I wanted (I didn't). Or because I got all of my parents attention (I did, and trust me, that's a bad thing too). But when I had to play alone, it meant that my imagination just got extra ramped up...I mean, have you ever gotten to be the shopper AND the checkout person in the same game?! When I wanted to play with someone else, I made friends...and they were playmates I got to choose all for myself. Which meant that over time, I've cherry-picked a freaking fantastic lineup of people I can't live without, people that feel as close to me as sisters, people that I fiercely cherish. Being an only child also meant that I fell in love with animals, because they were the extra "people" that filled our home. It meant that I behaved, because there was no older brother to buy me leniency with his screw-ups first, and there was no younger brother to distract my mom when it was time to pick a punishment. It was how I learned to love writing, because nothing passes the time like a good ole journaling session. For the same reason, it was how I learned to really, really love a huge variety of music. It was why I turned into an extrovert. It was how I became me.  

So I don't know. I certainly want multiple kids, but that's more because I personally love being around a group of people and to live with a group sounds like a dream! I'm actually a little scared to witness sibling relationships...what if they grow up to become strangers? What if they hurt each other, or hate each other? I guess the fear is there on either side. But don't be too sad for your kid if they end up being an only child. The beauty of it is...we never know the difference :)

code talk

I kept hearing a lot of "buzz" about QR codes so today I finally decided to read up on them. Aside from seeing them on boarding passes, I didn't really realize they were making it to the mainstream. If you haven't seen them, they're like new and improved bar codes that you read with a phone app, and retailers are using them to include a lot more information on products than space allows for. I learned today is that these little guys are awesome, and they're probably going to transform the way people quickly share information. (You know how I know? Because Asians are all over it.)

Some examples:

Wine label linking to more information about the vintner and production

Quick link to a test-drive request

And the creepy ones: temporary tattoos that link to a Facebook
profile (above) and contain a V-card (below)

And you can really quickly code one yourself too.

Crazy right?! I can't even imagine all the uses that people will come up for these Pacman-looking squares, but I can believe they're going to rock our world.

excuuuuuse you

So I did some freelance work for the January issue of a magazine here called Rare, and in the process I got to interview one of my favorite people in Austin, Fayruz, who is a partner at a nonprofit consulting firm. I talked to her when I first moved here about general career advice and the consulting industry in Austin, and I instantly loved her - she's full of all sorts of fascinating info.

During our interview, she got off on a tangent (this is when the best stuff comes out) and told me about how dairy farms are under pressure to reduce their carbon emissions. But, it's not due to general manufacturing plant issues. No - the real environmental sinners are the cows, sheep, etc. It turns out that 1/4 of the methane released into the atmosphere every year comes from them. 

FROM THEIR BELCHES.

Look it up, holmes.

colored waters

I feel like I'm always learning some little interesting tidbits about life from random people, so I'm going to try to post these tidbits. Maybe you won't think they're as interesting. But I'm so intrigued by people's life experiences that it seems a shame not to share. This is also why I should be the next Oprah, just saying. (I'm also going to try out this tagging thing. This general category will be "chitchat").

Tidbit from today:

There is a new guy upstairs whose office I have to walk through on the way to the kitchen. Awkward. Kind of makes it even more awkward to not say something, even if it's "Hi, sorry for barging into your doorless office. Oh and I'm going to make coffee so have fun smelling that all day." So anyway, today I learned that he had been in the Navy, which led to a series of questions about water. How fun am I to talk to. But, he said two interesting things. 1) There are photoluminescent waters out there that made the water glow in the wake of the ship, either electric green or electric blue. 2) The Black Sea is actually a really dark purple. 

Cool huh?