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...

Competitive Childbearing, Again

So, I have found out that my sister is planning to name her child for the same relative that we are planning to name for. (This is somewhat dependent on the gender of Co's and my children, whether we end up really doing it.)

It is okay, in Jewish families, for more than one child to be named for an ancestor. It happens.

In this case, my sister wasn't sure if she even wanted to name for this relative (you know, if someone had a lot of faults, do you want to name for them? stuff like that). Last we spoke about naming for relatives, she said she wouldn't do it.

Co and I innocently expressed our opinion that it is okay to name for this relative, and why we feel that way.

And now, apparently she has changed her mind.

I know I can do it too. But she will have done it first. This was something I wanted to do for my Daddy. But now I can't, and it's my own fault for being honest and telling her our thoughts.

Is my rage/desire to curl up in a ball and disappear completely unreasonable??

I really don't know.

In Praise of Nurses

At least two of the women on my "blogroll" are nurses. So, I thought I would share info about a book about nurses written by my Aunt Bernice. (She is not really my aunt in the biological sense. She is, in fact, not technically biologically related to me. But we here in Queer Family Blogland know how that is.)

The book is called From Silence to Voice: What Nurses Know and Must Communicate to the Public.

(I haven't read all of it yet, I admit, but I do own a copy!)

Lo's Interview Q's, plus Interview Take 2

Okay, three people have agreed to be interviewed by my cutting-edge, biting, journalistic mind. So Charlotte, Deana, and Eryn, here are your questions. I'm looking forward to reading your answers!

Charlotte:
1) I/we all know you're a mom, and a chef. What other hobbies/pasttimes are dear to your heart?
2) What would you say is the best part of being a mom for you? The hardest?
3) Of your various ethnicities, is there one you identify with more than another?
4) What drew you to being a therapist?
5) Do you love where you live? If you could live anywhere else in the world, would you? (And where would it be?)



Deana:
1) What is your favorite thing about your recent move to N.Y.C.? (You can list a few if necessary. :-)
2) What's the best thing about your new job? What's the worst thing about your new job?
3) What would be your dream job?
4) How would you describe the role of religion in your life?
5) What's your favorite book & why?


Eryn:
1) Have you always known you wanted to have a child(ren)? Explain...
2) Cape Cod & Western Mass....compare & contrast.
3) What's your favorite candy?
4) How did you and Amy meet?
5) What do you enjoy about working with college students? (or, what do you find frustrating about it. Or both.)



----------------------
Being the interview slut that I am, I agreed to be interviewed by Sarah. Here are my responses to her questions.

1) If you could live in any another country (other than your own), where would you live and why?

Canada. Because I am fluent in English and adore French (though I wouldn't say I'm fluent); because Stephen Harper notwithstanding it's to some degree a socialist country and that's more my speed; because when I'm there, I feel like I'm in one country among many (as opposed to the USA hubris of being The Only Country That Matters). And, I admit it, Coffee Crunch. I would repatriate over Coffee Crunch.


2) What would your dream job be? Why?
My dream job would be to teach middle school in a K--8 setting to a sincerely diverse (in terms of race, ethnicity, class, ability) group of children. And where I have the opportunity to design my own curriculum. That is more or less what I do now. However, this is all pending the feelings & actions of New Boss. We'll see. I may need to find a new dream job.


3) If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? Please Explain.
I am way, way, way , way too emotional. I would turn it off.

4) What would you ultimate vacation be? Why?
Hmmm. The beach would be involved. I *love* the ocean -- getting right into the waves. I also love being with Co and Maggie, at the ocean. And I love cooking fresh local food. So, I guess renting a house near a beach. I have other ambitions, like going to Europe...but to be honest, the ocean and my family is really what I dream about.

5) If you could travel back in time to see any event in real life, what would it be and why?
That is a tough question. I have often wished I was alive during the American civil rights movement in the late '50s -- '60s. I would have wanted to be a part of that. I'm not exactly sure what I would have done but I wish I had been around to do something.

Thanks Sarah!

Interview with Lo

So, this is a meme from Art-Sweet (who credits HD).

The meme works like this:
* Leave me a comment saying “interview me.” The first five commenters will be the participants.
* I will respond by asking you five questions.
* You will update your blog/site with the answers to the questions.
* You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
* When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

And now, my questions, as posed by Art-Sweet herself:

1. If you could ask George Bush one question, which he would be required to answer honestly, what would it be?
In exactly which ways are your policies (particularly educational ones) hypocritical and self-serving?

2. How did you meet Co? Was it love at first sight?
I met Co at a cafe. It's a cafe in the city where we live that has books of personal ads....sort of like Internet dating but not quite!!! I went to the cafe with my friend W. and we both made pages for the books, and looked through the ads. I "requested" a number of people, including Co. The people at the cafe called me back a few days later to say that Co had agreed to meet me. Of course, the cafe arranges for you to have a date at the cafe. So we did. And it turned out that her best friend J. from college was my best friend from graduate school. Weird.
I wouldn't say "love at first sight," I would say "deep interest" at first sight.

3. If you could relive one year of your life, what year would it be - and why?
I think it might be seventh grade. That was a very hard year for some reasons....but a wonderful year for others. I really felt like I was a part of my school community, my home life wasn't too terrible. I could feel my little wings starting to spread. I remember that fondly.

4. Do you also hope to bio-mom at some point?
Yes, I do. Our plan (the best-laid plans of mice and men....) is for Co to have Baby 1.0 and me to have Baby 2.0. And the brilliant logic behind this plan? She's 1 year older. I think that's a fine enough reason.

5. What do you like about seventh graders?
I like in them what I liked in myself in 7th grade...all that potential. All that becoming. The experimenting with identity, the wondering, the soul-searching, and the glimmering beginnings of abstract thought. I find it a very exciting age to enage intellectually because it's really the beginning of kids being able to engage intellectually!
And, also, they're funny. I have a pretty 7th grade sense of humor. Not all the time, but enough so that we amuse each other.


So if you'd like to be interviewed, comment on this post and I will oblige with five questions for the first five people.

Family Drama (Lo's Lifetime Movie)

**Please scroll down to read about sperm! I really want any and all input about our options.

I need to pick out a Mother's Day gift this weekend, and that's not so easy.

My mother and my sister are not speaking to me right now. (So for immediate family, that leaves my dad, who is divorced from my mom, and is speaking to me. But he is very New England male [not to stereotype, some New England males are very warm, but it's a type], a distant character.)

My mother and sister both say I am manipulative and abusive and they can't take my negativity any more. I have discussed with my therapist, of course. I will be as honest here as I was with her. Here's what I have done: after initially expressing joy that my sister was pregnant, I shared my concerns with my mother and with my father (they both share my concerns, which are largely financial, and were not upset with me for expressing them). I did not tell my sister how I felt. I finally told her (I think twice) that it's hard for me when she goes on and on about her pregnancy and her anxieties about circumcision, because Co and I are in a place where we can't even *try* to get pregnant right now (since we're in the midst of looking for a donor/saving the $ for popsicles/going to doctors).

One of the times I asked her to be a little more respectful, a) we had just (the day before maybe?) found out that our original PKD was a no-go, and b) she was buggine me about my opinions on circumcision. Male circumcision is a hot button issue for me, as some people who read this blog know, and something I really, really, really, really don't like to talk about. I am not circumcised. I do not have any brothers. My father, since we are a Jewish family, is (I have been told) circumcised. And that is all I will say on the matter.

My sister and my mother both feel that my telling my sister my honest feelings was (as stated above) hostile, manipulative, and abusive. So right now they have chosen to distance themselves from my painful presence. I've been told this verbally as well as through email.

I do not WANT to be ANY of the adjectives listed above, and have done a lot of thinking about whether I did something that was, in fact, unfair and hurtful. I guess I don't think I have, so it's painful to me that my honesty has both of them so upset (I did try to express my feelings kindly and gently, I really don't want to hurt anyone; I can be a passionate person, no doubt about it, but I have not yelled at my sister; I admit that I yell at my mom sometimes, but mostly I just cry around her).

I've been clearly warned by both mother and sister that if I do not choose to "behave" myself (I don't know what that would mean, I put it in quotes because it's a word they both use), I may not get to have a relationship with my niece or nephew.

OF COURSE I want a relationship with my niece/nephew. OF COURSE this freaks me out. However, one thing my mom and sister don't understand is that as a lesbian with an alternative definition of family, there are already children in the world who I fully consider my nieces and nephews. So while it is certainly momentous to become a biological aunt, this is not the first time I have eagerly anticipated the arrival of a child to whom I will feel that kind of connection. I will not list names here....but Z. and N. and E. and R. and D. and A. are all my nieces & nephews in my heart. I don't mean to discount the importance of my sister's child, I really don't, but I'm hoping people in the community I'm writing for will understand what I mean.

So this weekend I need to pick something to send for Mother's Day, because it really would be hostile not to send her something (as I always have) just because she is kind of ignoring me right now. And that's not going to be an enjoyable task. I also have to pick a birthday present for my brother-in-law (sister's husband) for the same reason. And I am going to enjoy that task even less. Oh, the joy.

Plus I'm sick (no it's not allergies, though here in the Northeast the pollen is laying waste to much of the population), which is not improving my outlook on anything right now.