not looking for monogamy

Yeah, the monitor. You remember, right? The one I got from the very generous (and highly fertile) wife of a friend of an ex-girlfriend? That one. It's a Clear Blue Easy.

I got it on cd 5 and set it on cd 6, but you can only back-set it 5 days, so it reads one day off for this cycle. That is, today is really cd 7 but it thinks it's cd 6. Am I evil for confusing it like this? I figure it is not going to be my One And Only, you know. I've got the opk's, the thermometer, my fingers for CM and CP (that's cervical mucous and cervical position, for those of you not in the know), so the monitor and I will never be monogamous. Hence my willingness to play fast and loose with old Clear Blue.

And yes, I know that, according to the Book o' Rules that came with the monitor, one is not ever supposed to use somebody else's monitor. Because of Teh Germs (oh, the things I would have missed if I was one of those with huge fears of Teh Germs). And, more sensibly, because cycle information from the previous owner (user?) is stored and so the poor machine will think that you, the current owner (user?), and she, the previous owner (user?), are one and the same and it's tiny machine brain will explode. Or at least give not as accurate information. But I figure that's not such a big deal because, a) see above about my polyamourous approach to tracking my cycle, and b) the previous owner (user?) only used it for one cycle before she got pg. Thoughts?

Now, was that the post you thought you'd get when you read the title?

4:30

It used to be, back in the day here in Starr Hill, that things *happened* at 4:30: children and parents came and went from the house, the cats began to whine for dinner, I'd hit the point where I'd think I couldn't make it through another minute of the day. Back in the day, it was rough, you know. But into all that, damn near invariably, there'd be a knock at the door and my dear, dear friend from next door would stroll in. "What up, cat?" he'd say to the cats, and he'd chat up whatever combination of children where still here and when they left, he'd listen while I cried about how I "hate this...." (by which I meant everything, back in the day), and he'd scan the paper and he'd just be there. And I would make it. Through the new job and the crappy assistant and the children and parents who wanted me all the fucking time and the sad, sad break-up.

I could tell you how he also took care of my house when I was gone, and showed Sophie how to play frisbee in the street. How we'd sit on the porch with the paper and talk about girls or just say nothing. How we picked plums from the tree by the school on our way the the theater and how that was the best season those plums ever had. But even if I told you all those things in the tiny and precious detail that they deserve, I would not even scratch the surface of the wonder that is this man.

They're not made any better than this one.

Today, I was napping on the couch, and Sophie was hogging the internets and it got to be 4:30 and when I opened the front door to the knock that woke me up, there he was, same as ever - boy-huge shoes and falling-down pants, speaking to the cats and hugging Sophie.

He could not have been as happy to see me as I was to see him.

top secret sneak preview

(That's TSSP to you, Sianey.)

This is top secret. I'm not sure why.

weekend randomness and a mess of capitals

After year - years, I tell you, oh internets - of encouragement by me, Sophie is reading the comics. And reading the Mini Pages and doing all the puzzles therein. Out loud. It's about damn time. All that printed entertainment had been going to waste all those years.

Lord. Now she is telling me all the jokes from it. Maybe this is not such a great development. And she says she loves Family Circus. *sigh* How do I go about improving her taste in comics?

As this is my last weekend of freedom/slackerdom, I have filled it with lots of naps, visiting, and some small amount of travel. I go back to work tomorrow and we set up and have meetings for a week, and the the children come after Labor Day.

There was music in Lynchburg yesterday afternoon and I rode down with some friends and had a throughly enjoyable trip. We only saw the last bit of music, missing several other great people but to make up for that I scored (I hope) a fertility monitor. The whole reason for the trip was to attend the official opening of the coffee shop some friends just bought. So. The wife of the man they bought it from was there with her (4th?) tiny, tiny baby. And one of the owners of the coffee shop (who happens to be an ex from long, long ago) was holding said tiny baby, and knows all about my continued attempts at conception, and passed me the baby. Realizing the mother didn't know who the hell I was I felt some explanation was in order and I told her how I'd been ttc for a while now and she warmed right up to the subject and wanted to know if I had tried using a fertility monitor. Then she offered me hers, plus the 50 sticks she's still got to go with it. Then, after I'm done with it, I am to pass it on to my ex, who is thinking of having another baby shortly. Now I just need to coordinate picking it up. And thank her profusely.

In other productive news, I also cleaned out the gutters at school, after being put in pseudo-charge of playground workday after my boss left. This meant I was up on a ladder, with lots of parents asking me what to do while we all melted in the million degree heat.

I made a new friend out of an old acquaintance, and through her met a very nice femme-y gay girl who lives not 5 blocks from me. This is great because yay! New friends! Especially those who will sit on the porch and drink whiskey into the night. While I'd rather be knocked up and avoiding Teh Whiskey, it was nice to have my Last Weekend of Summer include whiskey on the porch, which is The Summer Activity To End All Summer Activities.

check it

Woo and hoo! You and all your friends can now buy the most fabulous children's clothes *ever* from Treehouse Togs at their new place on Etsy.

As a highly trained Montessori teacher, I fully endorse these clothes. They will not only boost your child's self-esteem with their amazing cuteness, but also aid in the development of Self Care Skillz because they are designed so children can dress themselves. Additionally, your child's innate sense of aesthetics will blossom just by seeing these beautiful garments in his or her closet. (Only one of those comments is actually legit, I'll leave it to you to figure out which one.)

Aren't you so 'cited?

dinner

There's a long-ass, but so, so, so great, post over at An Accident of Hope about local food. I love some local food (actually I love all things local; it's the result of working at an independent bookstore when The Devil, I mean, B*rns and N*ble, came to town), but it's a slippery slope, man. Once you start noticing what you're eating that's local, it's great: you get to chat with the folks who grew it or made it, there's not petroleum stains on your food, the tomatoes are all the better for living though a winter without them, blah, blah, blah. You know all the arguments, I'm sure. But then you realize you're counting! What's local on my plate today?! And you strive for more - this cheese is from Fredericksburg, but this one, *this* one is from northern Albemarle! Hooray! And then one day you wake up and you see your roommate has bought some grapes. In Virginia? In early June? When there are more strawberries and blueberries and raspberries (from the back yard, no less) than you can shake a stick at? Ack! And they are on a piece of green styrofoam, and shrink-wrapped! And your head explodes.
Meanwhile, here's tonight's dinner. Yes, you know I'm counting. Can't help it.

• black eyed peas, from the market, shelled on the porch
• tomatoes from the farm, beefsteak and flame
• cucumbers from the farm (also in the pitcher of water back there - Best Drink Of The Summer™)
• zucchini bread from one of my home visit families, local zucchini from their CSA, not sure of the origin of the flour, certainly the sugar wasn't local- but damn, that's some good zucchini bread
  
• local beer, used to be brewed just a couple blocks west, but now it's in Crozet, I hear
• salt, not local, but delicious
• balsamic, also not local, also delicious
• butter, not local (yes, I have some guilt over not making my own butter)
• lemon in the background, not local *sigh*
• mass o' peppers in the background, from the farm, destiny unknown - I don't like plain peppers that much; I wish they were spicy, but they are not

friday

Sophie fell asleep upside down in the chair after reading this afternoon. It was like relay napping - first me, then her. It is so fucking hot here that there is nothing else to do but lay around under the fan and nap and read. The humidity has made her hair very curly, which she hates, but I (secretly) love.

This morning was The Morning Of The Home Visit Marathon - 5 visits in 3 and 1/2 hours. Greenbriar to Belmont to Ivy to Ruckersville to Barboursville. And then back to Starr Hill in time for lunch with Jen at the Diner before picking Sophie up. Whew. It was like a whirlwind tour of the county. It's pretty here - it really, really is. The sun came out after a week of hiding and so it was suddenly again true Virginia in August - hot like you don't want to move and so hazy and humid you can hardly see the sky, let alone the mountains. But, lord, it is pretty.

Last night, in the midst of the sangria (oh god, so good...), I was talking with the girl I had dinner with about the land here. See, she just moved back to Virginia and she said something about wanting to write more and thinking that would be easier, somehow, at home. Even the sky looks different here, she said. (She was far more eloquent in the way she put it, but I was not taking notes - sadly.) I started running on about something I'd read in one of Montessori's books about how physicians in her day - say, 100 years ago - would send really sick folks back to the land where they were born. It was supposed to be healing, or something, because a person would have a connection with that land, having been exposed to it in infancy. Now, old Maria used this to help justify her ideas about oh-so-carefully constructing an infant's environment, because that's one of the first and best tools that babies use to create themselves, but it hit me like a ton of bricks that summer I was doing my Montessori training. I was away from home, from my bed and my house and my world, for the longest I'd ever been and I realized, I missed the land - flat out missed it. I do appreciate how pretty or breathtaking it might be somewhere else, but there is something else entirely about how it looks here, where I'm from (although, I wasn't born here, just raised here). There's a palpable sense of relief for me, flying home from somewhere, when I see that first bit of the mountains out by the airport, an almost painful feeling like falling in love when I cross the Blue Ridge at Afton and see the valley spread out, looking like it will never end, like it goes on and on until it gets to the Pacific a whole continent away.

So, even though I drove to hell and back, even though it was hot and humid in the car like a motherfucking sponge, it sure was pretty. Pretty like the end of summer, which it is, and stuck in my mind, helping me to create myself, still, like Maria said.

not

Hmmm..... no more ambiguity. My period started this morning. Interestingly, I seem to have cycled through all the more intense emotions about this failed attempt already, and so I am surprisingly ok.

So let's move on. On to the fact that Sophie is done with her homework and hogging the phone - her looming adolescence is..... looming.

I've been home-visiting all this week, to get my new children ready for the start of school, and that is always a treat. Home visits are such a nice way to introduce myself to the children - even my grandmother is impressed by them.

And now, I am off to a dinner involving lots of sangria with a new friend, courtesy of Evren. The new friend, I mean - Evren bears no responsibility for the sangria.

my best girl

Sophie, my pretend child, is back from her extended trip out west (where she got to see Kater, lucky both of them). She's been gone for over 2 weeks and it was like to kill me. As was not seeing her mama.

You see, Sophie is my girl. I've been keeping her since she was 3 - almost 9 years now - and the connection I have with her and her mother is one of the most amazing ones in my life. Sophie tried to teach me to ride a bike and her mama found my donor for me, because as she says, she's going to get me pregnant or die trying. They are my family. (An addition, not a replacement - my blood family is great, too.)

And, as public schools start again tomorrow, we are back in the swing of things. I'll pick her up from the usual place at the back of her school, under the tree, *after* the buses have pulled out (it's clusterfuck with the buses there), and we'll come home. She'll sit in the chair by the stove to do her homework and I'll wish she'd use the table, and she'll interrupt herself to get a drink of water from the tiny glasses I put on a low shelf for her years ago when she was little.

Or maybe we'll go to the coffee shop for coffee and ice cream instead.

now for some more ambiguity

And my temp is back up again.
But I overslept and so took it an hour later than usual
But no positive test to go with it.
Lord.

and i'm out

As in out of the baby game this cycle, not as in coming out as gay. Although that's also true, it's old news.
What I mean is, my temp dropped this morning, and will, I'm sure, continue to fall, and so I must not be pregnant. And so we commence the weeping and the gnashing of teeth phase.

To distract you while I do that, here are the journal-y bits I wrote for myself a year ago, un-edited except for name removals. It turned out to only be a journal of two days plus a lot of flash-backs. Too bad I don't know how to do some flashy thing to indicate that a flash-back is coming - you'll just have to imagine The Flash.

Friday, August 18th, 2006
The neighbor's kid, the ones I don't know, is yelling behind me and I am still not pregnant. That's really no surprise, since Fed Ex lost the last sperm shipment. Lost it. Yeah. B and I had a nice moment via IM imagining the guy who runs the sperm bank out looking for it - "Here sperm! Heeeerrrreee spermy sperm!" But to to avail. Fucking Fed Ex. I knew they were run by Republicans but I didn't think they'd intentionally undermine my baby plans.

I've begun to think I should be keeping track fo this whole mess - for The Baby, you know. "Here honey, read this," I'll say when questions come up. It will be a nice variation on the birds and bees talk, no? A nice story about the million times (well, 5 as of now) the Fed Ex man came by and the fights with the combination lock that I had no idea how to use (oh, the things I didn't learn at my tiny and trusting high school) and the interminably long 2 week waits for my period.

It's been over a year now, since I went in to see my nurse-practitioner for an exam to fill out all the crazy paper work the sperm bank wanted. Over a year since my roommate and I sat in the kitchen while she studied and I began reading profiles of donors for the final cull and neighbor L showed up and took over because I was tearing my hair out. Almost exactly a year since my boss ran out to the front of the school to take a picture of the Fed Ex man before he drove away because it was phase-in week at school and I couldn't leave my classroom. And still, I am not pregnant.

This is the time line:
July 2005 - decide to use spermbank, download forms, get exam and such so they can be filled out by J, my nurse-practitioner, who told me that I have a "well placed cervix." Thanks. She was very supportive, reminding me that they can do IUI right there if I want to go that route. My boss donated a bunch of postage to the cause, throwing a couple extra stamps on the envelope with the forms because she wants to make sure it gets there. Oh, and some time early in the month, I tell my folks, who are beside themselves with excitement. S brought me prenatal vitamins from work at Whole Foods, after consulting with one of the "Whole Body" (lord) people about which ones I should take. The things are so fucking big, I feel like just taking them should knock me up. It doesn't. Because I still had to pick a donor - ugh.

Really, it is hard, still, for me to care too much about this. Or, rather, once I start to care, or to look very closely, then I get freaked out by things like one of the donors saying he is a Republican (and gay? wtf?). And really, so much of genetics is a crap shot, so much of it is so intertwined with environment that I really feel like knowing things about a donor gives a false sense of control. I mean, I'm not going to be parenting with the guy; I'll be the one controlling the kid's environment (not to an alarming degree, I hope). Knowing that donor # 50-bazillion's great aunt was a smoker who didn't like the color purple really doesn't mean anything.

So yeah, but then I started to look at the profiles (which cost money, so I only got a few) and got all worked up about Republicans and people saying that kids *have* to go to college. Then neighbor L from next door showed up, all in a snit over having spent the evening shopping for a wedding dress and wanting a beer. And she took the computer from me and she and my roommate laughed their way through the profiles and tell me the 2 they think are best and then it was done - #35 - my new and virtual boyfriend.

Then it was -
August 2005 - in which I talked to Leland (my new best friend) at the spermbank and got excited and K gave me her unused OPK because she had started doing IVF. And I continued with my prenatals- wow, boosted iron levels did wonders for my work ethic. Meanwhile, school was getting ready to start, but really, that just seemed like a distraction.

September 2005 - it turned out that I was going to ovulate sometime that first week of school - the craziest time of the year for a toddler class. All the parents are there, phasing their children in and they are all a little nervous and really, a box of dry ice and sperm showing up in the middle of that seemed -well - not so good. So my boss was going to meet the truck and sign for it and keep "Dad" as she liked to call it, in her office. She was also armed with a camera to document the occasion. But the Fed Ex guy came to the front door of the school and so one of the new assistants got the package and brought it in my classroom to me and I asked her to take it to the office, at which point my boss ran outside, yelling for the Fed Ex guy to wait, and then took his picture. She said he was surprised. Huh.

**********
Saturday, August 19th, 2006
Tonight the neighbors I do know are having guest. Their kid, who I find endlessly amusing, is doing his best to entertain himself while everybody hangs out on the porch and in the yard. I think there was another kid there earlier, but since I was inside, I'm really not sure. He talks a million miles a minute and is still young enough to have that slightly breathless quality to his speech, like talking is really hard work, but - god damn - there is just so much to say. They are listening to Sam Cooke.
So where was I....?
oh yeah -

September 2005
When I left school early, at noon, leaving B to clean everything up - thank you, B (really, there's no way to know what a huge job it is to clean up a toddler class after the first day of school unless you've done it) - to go home to try to knock myself up. I took the computer to bed with me, for music, and thawed the tiny vials in my armpit, just like the book said. My roommate took the afternoon off work to keep me company and we ate leftover fried chicken and played half a game of cards before C and L came over to shower me with her already pregnant vibes. They were up here being refugees from Katrina. It was all so - - boring. I felt nothing; it was kind of messy and then I had to get up to go get S from her school.

Then there was nothing. Just the 2 weeks of waiting, which was weird and drawn out and I thought every twinge and headache meant something. And I was fucking fried with school starting, but of course I thought that was An Early Sign. I was terribly moody for the last few days of this and sat at the kitchen table and cried about missing Z for the first time in weeks. My roommate came home and said we should get out of the house and when I went to pee before we left I found my period had started. I think we went somewhere and I had a drink. But, really, I don't remember. Which bring us to

October, 2005
In which I get screwed by Fed Ex (not for the last time) and their fucking blue laws.
So Fed Ex does not deliver or ship on Sundays. Now, normally, I am all in favor of a day of rest. I like rest. I am lazy and I think there should be more rest. But, Fed Ex's old-school-Protestant-no-work-on-Sunday shit is not so cool. What it meant, for me, was that I missed inseminating that cycle. I needed sperm on Monday, I thought, and I missed the window of time to order it for a Saturday delivery. So nothing in October. Nothing. But lots of drinking. And then it was

November 2005
I'd thought I might not do a hit in November, because it put the due date really close the the start of school. But then I said fuck it and did it anyway. My roommate had begun the process of moving to Scottsville with her new girlfriend at this point, and so I kept my own-self company. After I managed to get the fucking lock open. I'd had the sperm shipped in liquid nitrogen, because I thought it might be needed on a Monday and so it would have to be kept cold for longer than the 48 hours allowed by dry ice (see above about Fed Ex and their god damned blue laws). So the container this all comes in is not nearly as innocuous looking as the nice little cardboard box surrounding the styrofoam cooler holding the dry ice. This shit is big. It looks like a small R2D2 like robot and has a combination lock holding it shut.

Now, I don't know combination locks. I never had to open one more than 2 times, and I think that was when I was 10. We had no locks on our lockers at my high school. We had lots of trust and respect instead. Combination lock skills may be the one thing I did not learn in high school. So I fought with the lock on the robot container by myself for a while. Then I called J, because everyone else I know is usually asleep after 11 and because she is helpful like that. But she was not answering her phone. So I turned to the internet, with the thought of learning to crack a lock (because that's easier than learning to open one the regular way?) and then I wised up and emailed Leland at the sperm bank. He sent me a very clear and informative email and I was all set - access to the goods and a new skill. Woo and Hoo.

Well, that one didn't work either, clearly, or else I'd be sitting on the porch with a 3 week old baby, lamenting the start of school, instead of sitting out here with the computer lamenting the start of school. I don't really remember the wait with that round. Oh, except my period was a day late - just enough extra hours to make me hope a little bit.

Then I quit for a while. Quit the prenatals and quit charting (stupid, I know) and tried not to focus on it. Heh. I've been trying to work with the school year calendar from the beginning (I know, again, stupid) because it just works well: deliver in late spring or early summer, take the summer off from camp, go back to work at the start of the next year. Maybe I have some control issues. But really, I can't not work and since I cannot take off a whole year (who'd pay the mortgage?), I am unwilling to be away from my class at that tender beginning of the year phase. So conceiving in December, or even January of February was not part of the plan. So I waited. Some more. I drank hot toddies with my annual holiday guest, A, tried to make nice with Z and was sad her and did not go to LA. I figured I'd try again in March.

The picked over, cleaned up and pared down (as in minus most of the history) version is over at the IVP - source of all knowledge and refuge for the downtrodden - where I explain how and why I chose my new donor. Since you can read it there, I won't bore you with it here.

Reading over this, I am once again overwhelmed and delighted by just how happy and excited and helpful my friends are with all this shit. Thanks, y'all.

But really, enough about me.

what it's really all about

So I am trying to knock myself up. That's the deal, the all-consuming, sadly-not-yet-ending, why-is-it-not-my-turn-now deal.

Somewhere, hidden in the deep recesses of my hard drive, is a journal sort of thing I tried to pull together last summer about ttc. I will try and find it and dump it here in all it's sniveling, wallowing glory.

For the moment, though, I got a negative test this morning and so I feel like I am out of the game this cycle. My temp is still up and there's no blood yet, but really, I thinks it's done. Poo, as the kids say. Or, jesus motherfucking christ, as I say.

This was the last, truly the last, of the "good" months, the ones that work well with the school year, and buy me a little bit more time off than just summer break. After this month, it will really be a full two years since I started this - with the box of frozen sperm being delivered to school when my classroom was full of brand-new parents phasing-in their children, with my ever patient boss running outside to take a picture of the fed-ex guy because it was such a momentous occasion, with my naive attitude of "this will be a snap" and the eventual crash and burn at the end of the two week wait.

Two years and there is very little to show for it: no baby, just a full, extra serving of empathy for folks who want babies and don't yet have them and new, larger serving of bitterness. Oh, and the desire to write more, which is good, I guess.

clearly, I would jump off that bridge if every one else did

It would just take me a long time to decide to do it.

Every other lesbian aiming for a baby has a blog, and lord, I've been stalking them all. As if I had no life of my own, which it is beginning to seem like I don't. So here I am, standing on the edge of the cool crowd, wondering if any of them will notice. A wallflower. Similar, I'd say, to a middle school dance - except my middle school didn't have dances.

Clearly, I want to be part of the in-crowd.

But also, Becca has lapped me with her 3 blogs. And so really, I am just trying to keep up with her.

so late to the party

I've caved. I bow to the land of blogging.
Here we are.