Photo, Uh, Tuesday: Lo's Stuff (with Sperm Washing News)

I'm a teacher, and this is the load I carry to school. I never stopped carrying a backpack, but went straight from student to teacher. My current powder blue one has many secret pockets, which is necessary because I've also never taken to carrying a purse. I do have a "weekend purse" so I don't always show up shlepping the backpack (but I would if I thought I could get away with it).

The tote bag was a free gift at a Liberty game (yes, I have paid my lesbian dues!) and I do not always bring it, just the days (like today) when I have extra materials.

I included the shiny binder in the pic because it's, well, shiny. That was my new school year treat from CVS.

NOTE: In other news, while making copies in the school office today I received a call from the lab and had to duck into the stairwell to discuss the washing of sperm. As Cali accurately reported, it is okay to wash sperm multiple times. You might lose a few in the process, but motility will only be increased. Phew. (As the lab guy asked me somewhat indignantly, "You think I would do something to make you not pregnant?" Well. I should hope not.)

The Fat Lady's Warming Up...

Co's temp dipped today. Now we really have to decide who to order up from the bank...Scroll down to weigh in.

Oh, well. At least now I can say I've seen, you know, semen.

Donor Roulette

We are trying desperately to narrow ourselves down to one donor. (The fat lady hasn't sung yet. Co is due to get her period this weekend. It's been a long cycle, due to delayed ovulation....if I didn't know so much about charting, I'd be all excited that she hasn't gotten her period yet, but alas, I know it's nothing notable.)

So here are the two finalists:

Funny Guy: He is half Jewish, half Irish & something else. This makes him a mixture of both of our ethnicities (and since we'd try to use the same donor to get me knocked up down the line, that's attractive). He is into Asian philosophy (as am I) and just seems like a generally nice person (the sperm bank faculty recommended him as being intelligent with a sense of humor). He's a researcher in molecular pharmacology. And, as indicated by his nickname, his whimsical sense of humor shone through in his profile. A drawback: there is some alcoholism in his family (maternal grandmother) and that makes Co uncomfortable because of genes on her side. We've negged lots of donors as soon as we saw any family history of substance abuse, but we got really into this guy somehow before we noticed it, so now she (and I) are torn.

Nerdy Science Guy: He is neither of our ethnicities. He's a genetic researcher, and a self-described science nerd (we both find that charming). He was also recommended by our lovely sperm brokers as a genuinely nice person, intelligent with a sense of humor. He has a son, who he writes about very affectionately. He's artistic as well as brainy.

So, I am begging for any advice or ass-vice. I didn't think the ethnicity stuff mattered to me, and we aren't at all concerned about looks. Our initial first choice donor (Corgi Guy) did not share either of our ethnicities and I would have happily gone with him. But somehow, faced with these two choices, it seems to matter a little bit.

Help...

Our Weekend of Sperm

So, after much advice from my friend J, who is a health professional, as well as our friendly neighborhood nurses on blogger, we came up with a strategy about the hepatitis issue. We asked KD about a variety of risk factors, and we were reassured by his answers, so we decided to go ahead with insemination.

This weekend Co was likely to ovulate, and we had to go up to Boston for a wedding -- fortunately it was KD's younger brother's wedding! On Saturday Co's temp dipped, so when we got into Boston, we did the deed. We got the spike on Sunday, and we insemmed again this morning (Monday) (the wedding was on Sunday and our KD best man was a bit busy!).

All went smoothly, as far as I can tell. We had great advice from dear blogger friends, as well as our trusty books, about how to take care of business. We even got a free oral syringe from Walgreens!

KD and his wife were both incredibly generous and even eager to help us out with timing. There was a bit of cloak-and-dagger to it all, since we were around ALL of our (and KD's) family, and we don't intend to share our plan until later on (if it even works). Co and I were staying in a hotel room *right next to my mom*, but fortunately she was out during both of our insems. THAT would have been quite an experience. Though we did get to exchange the mysterious Macy's bag with the cup in front of his grandmother. Hoo boy.

Sneaking around with sperm also made it much easier to be around my eight-month pregnant belly-rubbing little sister.

Oh, and by the way, the wedding was lovely too. My cousin's new bride (who has essentially been in the family for six years) is a great person.

So, here we go....since Co's luteal phase is usually exactly 14 days, we are officially in our first Two Week Wait. AAAAAAAAAH!

Photo Friday: Show Me Your Politics

This first photo is of my friend's daughter at the big Pride March on Washington in April 2000. A group of us: Whimsy, SandraMort, and a bunch of other folks went down in a big van (SandraMort's I believe) and stayed overnight in one hotel room. It was great fun. And little E showed her early proclivities for queer rights! (That's me holding her. I'm wearing my shirt that says "gay maidl" in both English and Yiddish. "Maidl" means "girl.")



This second photo brings the theme right home...


It was taken a few years ago (1999) at the ten-year reunion of World Peace Camp. The folks on the steps of the dining hall are the members of the orchestra for our camp musical, called, what else, Peace Child. (We named our little band No Respect, and wrote a parody of "Imagine" about suffering in the orchestra pit.) Yes, I really went to World Peace Camp when I was 14. What more is there to say, really.

Help! An Interactive Post

So....we will not be able to get hepatitis test results on KD by this weekend.

Here is what we know: he is clean for HIV and STDs and he is monogamous (with his wife). There is no reason to think that he has hepatitis; he looked it up online and has been told by doctor friends that he would know if he'd had it.

But, we don't know.

Also, he is a smoker (of tobacco).

In addition to the obvious health risk, state law here forbids insemination to women with hepatitis.

There's a temptation to go ahead, since it seems awfully unlikely that he has hepatitis, and his sperm is, well, fresh. But would that be a very foolish risk to take?? Should we wait 'til October and just go frozen all the way?

Please advise.... (I know it's a decision we have to make for ourselves, but we're both wondering what the Internets have to say, especially health professionals...)

Photo Friday: Music, music, music!

These pictures are from a yearly folk festival that I (Lo) have been attending since I was nine years old. First with my parents, then with my friends (fostermama and fostermommy, Whimsy and Jest, and some other blogless folk), now with Co and our friends. Of course I dream of someday bringing my own children to this event...

This is Pete Seeger with his banjo. He's the organizer of the festival, and an icon to many. I grew up with his music.









This is Holly Near. I love Holly Near, which suggests that I was born just a bit too late...in my defense, my (straight) mom listened to Holly Near while I was growing up and my sister and I went to many Holly Near concerts with our family.



Finally, here are people sitting beneath a willow tree, enjoying outdoor music. Bliss.

In Other News...Our Anniversary!

Today is our first anniversary! We had a beautiful wedding (as hinted by the pictures here). It makes me smile to remember it. Tonight we will drink a bottle of wine we saved from our jaunt to the Shore right after the wedding, and see how the top of the cake held up after being in our freezer for a year. (Co can't wait to get the freezer space back.)





One whole year of being married to my beautiful, brave, intelligent, funny, sweet Co. Just the first of many... And hopefully, we'll be soon be adding to our little family.

Last Minute Photo Friday: Our Rack

So here it is...our rack. I love Photo Friday now that we have a digital camera!!



It's actually an expandable plastic shelf, the only possible way to properly store and display all the spices Co needs for her delicious dishes. At one point the spices were alphabetized (Lo's doing), but I haven't kept it up.

In the spirit of the theme, here's a gratuitious picture:




Though clearly it suffered on the trip home (which I'm sad about it), this was my favorite souvenir from our trip. Co tried to convince me initially that it was meant to be a shell. Um, what do you all think?

Happy Birthday Co!

It's my girl's birthday! And isn't she a cutie??

Happy, happy birthday sweetheart. I am grateful every day that you came into my life.

Lots of love from Lo and Maggie Mae...

Photo Friday: Where I Blog

Now that I have a laptop, I aim for the most comfortable spots in the house. Sometimes, I admit it, I blog in bed. But I am most likely to be found here:



I sit where Maggie is sitting in this photo. The tray on the coffee table doubles as a computer desk.

Photo Friday: Lo Climbs A Mountain

Here is my Photo Friday story:



The trail begins...



These white blazes continue all through the Appalachian Trail. Follow the one on the left...



...to the top of the mountain!!

Here's a gratuitous shot of mountain laurel from the trail (I know, we're limited to three, so I won't submit this one officially, but it's so pretty):

Paws are Crossed

Maggie O wants everyone to know that her paws are crossed for everyone in the fertility sweepstakes. (Especially Marci, Sacha and anyone else still hoping for pregnancy this cycle.)

Photo Friday: The Cutest Rainbow of All

Here is our double-rainbow dachshund. The rainbow collar is her everyday attire. (I -- Lo -- searched far and wide for it and bought it at a big march in D.C. She has a skinny little neck.) The Family Dog T-shirt, though adorable, is a less common piece of attire for the simple reason that she hates clothing. We've decked her out in it more than once for the local Pride parade though. Oh, those evil mommies.

(Click the link above for more pix of Maggie in her rainbow-wear. Thanks, J!)

Speaking of the local Pride parade.....here's a rainbow picture from there, as well.



If you click on this link, you will see the proud leader of our municipality with a rainbow flag. Yeah. Whatever. Maggie is much cuter.

Embarrassing Question

Ok....how do you post photo sets from flickr, so that they appear both as links to the photo set, and images on their own accord?

Everyone else is doing it, and I've tried that whole "trial and error" thing.

Your reward for helping, of course, is the Lo & Co photo collection..... ;-)

My First Crush

At left: the glow of young love.

This post is inspired by my recent viewing of Little Manhattan. (People who have never had a love affair with New York City may find this movie less charming than I did, but still pretty damn charming. I mean, it's about fifth graders in love, and it's realistic. What's not to be adorable.)

Anyway, my first crush is something I have spent my entire life not talking about, so here's to breaking THAT silence:

I was in the 4th grade, and she was in the 5th. She played the lead in the school play. My best friend and I played recorder along with the music teacher's piano. During those long hours in the school auditorium, I fell madly, passionately in love. But I was nine years old and I had no idea that I was in love. I knew that I wanted to know her full name and where she lived (one neighborhood over from me, I learned, and I did find her in the phone book, but of course I never called her). I knew that all of a sudden the sappy love songs on the radio spoke to me (I mooned over Billy Joel's "For the Longest Time" a lot). I dreamed about her, and made lists in my diary of the details. In fact, my diary entries from that year offer descriptions of my daily sightings. In short, I thought about her all the time. When she touched me -- when our hands brushed, when one day she put her head on my shoulder and moaned about memorizing her lines -- my whole body felt like it was on fire. I told my best friend that I REALLY REALLY REALLY wanted to be friends with her. That was the best I could do to understand what was happening.

Later in the year we did another play, at the local afterschool program where all the neighborhood children headed after school. I played Tweedledum to her Alice. I had a pillow shoved up my shirt and I lived for every minute of it.

At the end of that year, since was she was a Fifth Grader, she would move on to the local junior high, while I would stay in elementary school. I was tense about this development, but found solace in the knowledge that after just one more year I would join her there. As it turned out that was not to be, because my family moved to another city the summer after fourth grade. I mourned this girl for months after the move. I insisted on buying the same brand and color of sneakers she'd had, I named a LOGO computer program after her, I moped and longed and yearned. I didn't know why, exactly, I just missed her more than anything else about home (and I missed home a lot).

The story about me, in my family, is that I am a "late bloomer," and I wasn't interested in relationships because I was too busy with other affairs. Well, it turns out I wasn't late at all. I just didn't know what was happening. I was pretty early...the girls I knew weren't really into boys until at least fifth grade, and even then, the interest had a lightness, an airiness, a putting-on that does not at all remind me of my passionate fourth grade crush. Fifth grade was when kids "went out" with each other without actually speaking or touching. As it turns out, I had pretty intense physical yearnings as a nine-year-old. I was interested, all right.

It's just that I was 22 before I had the sense to realize what I was feeling. Now THAT is where I was a late bloomer.

Photo Friday: My Great-Grandfather's Hometown

This post is late because we were at my tenth college reunion...that, however, is another post (soon).



I took this picture outside the train station in Vienna, 12 years ago. It is definitely right up there with the weirdest things I have ever seen anywhere. It appears to be a statue of a pig. A naked pig, with big muscles, wearing a large tie, a hat, glasses, and white gloves. And, of course, pink shoes. The purpose or symbolism of such a statue, however, entirely eludes me.

I'm cheating, of course, because Vienna is by no stretch of the imagination my hometown. I've been there once. As indicated by the title, however, Vienna was my great-grandfather's* hometown.

This week's theme got me thinking about that concept of "hometown." It wasn't really necessary thinking, since the assignment was clear enough: take a picture of something weird where you live. But that word "hometown" always gets me. Where I live now is one of three places I could call "hometown," and whenever I am asked where I am "from," where is my "hometown," I wonder which city counts as my hometown, if there is one place that is The Answer. The place where I was born? The town where I went to high school? Or the middle city that imprinted upon me so deeply that I have chosen it as my adult home?

I'm hardly the the only person on earth not to hail from a single place -- three cities is even a rather short list, in comparison to many people I know including my mother -- but coming from a single "hometown" is a quality I envy. All three of my cities have had their influence on this person I am. I can't say I'm sorry to have lived the life that created this self I inhabit. But the grass is always greener...


*And even with this claim, I'm still cheating. My great-grandfather always called Vienna his hometown, but it wasn't. He hailed from a small village (shtetl) that was at different times in Austro-Hungary, Germany, and Poland. (Now it's in the Ukraine.) He did live in Vienna for several years while he did his apprenticeship with a furrier, and from Vienna he immigrated to the U.S. Here in the States he met my great-grandmother (a true city girl from Budapest). They courted, married, raised children and then grandchildren, and finally died in the same Big City that is one of my hometowns...the one I have chosen for my adult life. My heart is here in the city of my ancestors (but also, my heart is in another Big City, where the ancestors on the other side chose to settle). I did feel an unexpected tug of familiarity when I visited Vienna, a city I'd never seen before but that somehow still lived underneath my skin. Place matters so much, often in unexpected ways... (just one of the reasons it makes me angry when people suggest to me blithely that if I'm not satisfied with the rights I have where I currently live, then I should move...)

Make My Family Legal

This post is in honor of Blogging for LGBT Families Day.

Yesterday there was discussion, in a court, about granting same-sex marriage in the city where I live.

Since I began to realize (at the tender age of nine) that I was probably a lesbian, I took it for granted that I would never have the same rights or privileges as the other members of my immediate family. The domestic partnership I have is, frankly, more than I ever dreamed I would have. The privilege of adopting my own child is, in fact, more than I ever dreamed I would have.

It never occurred to me that in my lifetime I might be able to live where I want to live and have a family just like any other family. I have always known, grimly, that I would live a cobbled-together extra-legal existence and grit my teeth and smile when relatives have two weddings when "well you know, this one is the *legal* ceremony."

I was raised by two parents who lived through, believed in, and were a part of the civil rights movement of the 1950s/1960s. I sang the songs, I walked the talk, I dreamed the dreams. I knew from a very early age that Rosa Parks wasn't just tired, she was part of a movement, she was sitting down to change the world.

But like the children I now teach, I also grew up thinking that civil rights was something that happened in the past, something that great people (including my mommy and daddy) had taken care of so that the children (me and my sister) could grow up in a world without hate, or at least *with* fair laws.

Of course, I got older, and I realized that the fight for civil rights is not over, and the road towards true tolerance and diversity and the ability to all live together and appreciate each other....it's a long one.

As a Jew, I have a constantly evolving awareness of my own role in the dynamic equilibrium that is American cultural/racial/ethnic politics. I watch cultural/ethnic/racial/class diversity play itself out on the subway every day. I have long understood that as a (white) American Jew, my role (as my parents before me) would be as an ally, working to end the oppression of others.

But as it turns out, I am a member of a group that does not have the full spectrum of civil rights in the U.S.A. I am not sorry that I am "married" to the woman that I love, but I do not feel that I chose to love her any more than I chose to be born a female, or a Jew. And I find myself uncomfortable and even somewhat ashamed to be in a group (gay people) that is denied so much in this country. That surprises me because I do not think that any other group with civil rights problems should feel shame -- if anything, the lawmakers in this country should feel shame for not moving faster towards justice -- but there it is.

So the possibility of marriage in my city -- and in another pending case that could be decided any day, marriage on the statewide level in the next-door state where I work -- seems both like something I should have had long ago, and more than I should even hope for.

I may be mistaken about this, but as I understand the law based on marriages in Massachusetts, being married would mean that my wife and I would not have to adopt each other's biological children; we would be automatically included as a second parent on a birth certificate. The thought of that simple privilege actually brings tears to my eyes.

Here I sit, frustratedly checking the Internet daily (even hourly) for news that will make my family legal...and yet even that is a kind of hope.

Here's to all our families, the love that creates them, and the legal rights we need to keep them safe.

Blogging for LGBT Families

Photo Friday: Grace

This photo is the view I see each day when I leave my building. I live in a city -- a very urban city -- and I crave the urban, I resonate to the urban, I panic when I am too far from all-night diners and bodegas. Even so, I appreciate this: my park across the street, trees waving gently each morning, a moment of green grace and peace each morning before I tumble into the frantic pace of a teaching day.


The grace in this photo is, again, the park....in my city, few people have back yards and front yards, so we all soak up our Memorial Day sun together. Barbecues and bike-riding and dogs wading in the lake, baseball games and couples cuddling and a man practicing the most graceful of martial arts moves while a little girl rides her pink bike past and three toddlers throw a football at each other. Our grace is each other, and these willow trees overseeing it all.


P.S. This week's participation in Photo Friday...as well as a more multimedia blog...brought to you by our new digital camera!!!! Yes, it finally happened!! A Canon PowerShot has joined the FamilyO.

Guest Star KD

So, now I'm back to the plans for OUR family, instead of reacting hysterically to the dysfunctional one I came from...

We have decided to use my cousin as a KD. The catch, as I explained earlier, is that he lives not on the North American continent, but on the African continent. (In the novel [Lifetime movie?] that is my life, it makes perfect sense that there would be a perfect KD, and he would live that far away. I'm a reader and a writer, so I tend to think in narrative, and this is a great plot twist. EXCEPT NOT IN REAL LIFE, DAMN IT.)

However, he will be in the country for a month or more later this summer. Which means we get one (maybe two) tries, and if it doesn't work, we get back on the phone with the Sperm Bank of California. We're going to register with them and have our consultation soon. Of course we are hopeful that we can get our one "shot" to work, but we are both way too pessimistic/realistic, in general, to count on it. We'll have the frozen treats lined up.

We are going to surround that ovulation with so much baby juice, Co's poor little eggie won't know what hit it. Any advice for maximizing this opportunity is welcome. (Such as, it is considered best to inseminate every day or every other day? Do you need to give it a day to, well, build back up?)

Co is already getting excited about peeing on sticks. My, how the blog world has inspired us.

It also seems like Cousin KD comes back to the States/Canada more than I would have thought, so there might be some other opportunities? We're definitely going to have to play this by ear...