Careful what you ask

We went to see our nice fertility doctor this week for our introductory consult, a sort of 'let's actually meet face-to-face before I try to get you knocked up' visit. It went just swell. Our doctor is a very impressive, very friendly guy with two kids of his own and degrees from Harvard and Yale, not that I care about that kind of thing. He asked all the requisite, 'Have you ever had this awful thing? Or this one? Or this one?' questions, and I was able to happily report that, ears aside, I'm healthy as a horse, and also nearly as big as one.

Just for kicks, he likes to do an ultrasound at these kinds of get-to-know-you appointments. It's a chance to see if there's anything obvious in the pipes that might make getting pregnant hard. It's also, I discovered, a good introduction for the potential patient into what it will be like to be the patient: Apparently there's going to be a lot of prodding and poking, and I'm going to need to get used to being mostly naked around a lot of different people. Fun, fun, fun.

For the record, my lady parts seem just fine, although there was one thing he noticed . . .

Nice Doc: "There's an ovary. And there's your uterus."
Judybat: "And what's that big white splotch down there?"
Nice Doc: "Um, that's stool."
Judybat, to me: "Wow. So do you feel like you have to go?"


So there you go. I'm not even pregnant, and my body is already not my own. Intimacy is a wonderful thing.

Intermission

We've had a busy month here at shesaid/shesaid, so I'm taking a break from the emotional roller coaster before returning you to our regularly scheduled family saga.

Let's all take a deep, cleansing breath and maybe get a snack. While you're waiting for the next installment, please enjoy the following presentation, brought to you by The Boy for your listening pleasure.

Mother . . . in law

Since he first began babbling at us round about 13 months, TheBoy has called me 'Mommy." Today, a judge made that official.

Yes, I passed my criminal records check -- or at least, nothing too bad made it across the country -- and today a nice family court judge made my adoption of the kid official.

Truth be told, it felt anticlimactic. (That's becoming a theme, thankfully in most cases.) Having a piece of paper that says I love and seem reasonably fit to care for TheBoy changes absolutely nothing about my feelings toward him, though it does give us legal protection should his doctor, his school or some other official offshoot of The Man ever give us grief.

The entire process took five minutes, most of which we spent introducing ourselves to Her Honor and trying to get TheBoy to stop hiding his face into my shoulder so we could take a picture. The judge signed the paper, and that was that. Junior didn't really know what was going on, although he did enjoy waving around the envelope containing the adoption certificate as we walked from the courthouse to breakfast.

At the restaurant, my dear, sweet, well-behaved son spilled an entire glass of apple juice on me. As our friend Anne quickly noted, it was appropriate: First, we had an adoption. Then we had a baptism.

The whole hog

Of all the things I've done in my life, perhaps my greatest shame is the way I handled -- or rather, didn't handle -- coming out to my father. Rather than get caught up in the nasty details, let's just say that I didn't tell him I was gay and in a long-term marriage-kinda-thingy until Judybat was six months pregnant. Can you say "conflict averse?"

My father, a born again Baptist from the deepest part of the Deep South, handled the whole thing with grace, gentility and humor. My stepmother, the kindest human being on the planet, embraced TheBoy immediately as her grandson. And then, of course, as if to repay their generosity with as much pain as possible, we picked up and left Raleigh, essentially their backyard, taking the kid with us.

They have, of course, been great. They came out in March and oohed and ahhed appropriately. They came back last week, for five days of quality time with TheBoy. Who can complain about houseguests who get up early with the kid so we can sleep in, do the dishes and laundry, pay for meals and make us gin and tonics every afternoon at 5 on the dot? Plus, my dad put in the hammock we got as a wedding gift so many years ago. (Memo to potential visitors who are wavering on whether to make that looooong flight across the country: The backyard is now perfect.)

On the one hand, I am incredibly grateful for the relationship we have now. On the other hand, I'm incredibly embarrassed and sorry that it took so long. Someday, I'll stop being a coward.

Here they are leaving town for points east, the picture of Southern gentility and decorum. How could I ever have doubted that these people were open-minded?





TheBoy's inheritance: If it ain't Harley, it's crap.

AnnaRay says it's kismet.

I called our sperm bank of choice today to order the goods for our next trip down baby lane. I was feeling good about our choice of donor, because he's smart and healthy and athletic and artistic. Also, AR is the one getting pregnant this time, and this donor seems to be a lot like me in many ways both physical and mental.

The nice woman on the phone at the bank told me I had to fill out some paper work before I could order the sperm. I told her I hoped they wouldn't run out of vials from this donor while I was getting all the forms together, and she said they had a bunch from him. That made sense, I told her, because this guy is kind of short, and so I figured not very much in demand. She said the blue-eyed blonds go first, then the dark-haired ones with brown eyes kind of linger, and the blacks go last. Everyone wants the blonds, she said, and then they're surprised when their kid comes out with dark hair. That's funny, I told her, because I ordered dark-haired sperm the last time and was surprised that our kid came out with light-colored hair. Oh, she said, and asked if I knew the donor number so she could check and see if there were any more of his vials available.

I gave her the number, but I told her that when our son was three months old and we realized he was the best kid ever, I called the bank to see if we could get more of his donor's sperm for the next go around, and they told me they were all out. I was kind of disappointed at the time, but figured it was just as well, since when it came time for AR to get pregnant we'd probably want a donor who looked more like me.

Actually, said the woman on the phone, we have three of his vials left.

It turns out that when a donor retires from the program, the bank sets aside a certain number of his vials into their "sibling bank," because sometimes women decide years after they've had their first kid that they want another with the same donor. Only a woman who has had a child from a particular donor has access to that donor's sperm once it's in the sibling bank.

AnnaRay said, buy that sperm! Buy it now!

I'm ashamed to admit that I had reservations. I guess I'm a little more vain than I thought, because I was looking forward to having a kid who might look something like me. We chose tall, pale, straight-haired sperm when I was the one getting pregnant, because AR is tall and pale and has straight hair. Clearly we chose wisely, because so many people have said The Boy looks like her. I love that! But I felt a little left out at the thought of having two tall waspy-looking kids and no little curly-haired Jewish ones.

Fortunately, I got over that pretty quickly and got pretty psyched that The Boy's little brother or sister will also be his biological half sibling.

But wait! There are more complications.

The bank will only sell the donor sperm in the sibling bank to me, because I already gave birth to a child using the same donor sperm. But the bank will only ship the sperm to our fertility clinic of choice once we fax them an authorization form from my doctor saying the sperm is for my use only. (That was part of the paperwork I mentioned earlier.) The problem is, I don't have a doctor at the clinic, because I am not the patient. AR is the patient, and the sperm is for her use, not mine.

It seems like a lot of ridiculous beaurocratic semantics, but apparently they have good reason for making it this painfully complicated. As another woman at the bank told me, sometimes couples break up, and then they end up having a custody battle over little vials of frozen sperm. She said they've actually had lawyers come in and try to seize the vials. It's annoying when the stupidity of others makes my life more difficult.

The good news is, there's a way around this morass that will enable us to get the sperm we want for the uterus we want to plant it in. The solution involves some more forms and an extra $200, but I think it's worth it.

Well that was . . .

Oddly anticlimatic. My mother came to town this weekend with her new squeeze, otherwise known as Blog Fodder, otherwise known as The Once and Future Stepfather. And it was just fine.

Actually, it was better than fine. We went to eat, and we admired TheBoy, and we talked -- without getting into the gory details -- about how my mother is making this massive life transition and settling in now that she's traded sunny South Florida for scenic-if-chilly Canada. (She's in far northern Washington, but it's close enough to be Canada, except without that pesky universal health care.) BF/TOFS seemed a bit nervous, which is understandable, but handled himself with just the right amount of grace and good humor.

This is where the ability to compartamentalize your worlds, which I don't seem to have, would come in handy. Because my mother is happy. Undeniable, disgustingly so. And not just because of the massive new collection of very large and very hard rocks on her left hand. It's kind of sweet, as long as I keep the flip side of this -- the pain I feel for my stepfather, etc. -- in its own little box.

Being an adult is very, very hard, but apparently not as stressful as I feared. Although I did have this awful, awfully vivid dream the other night in which my mother died. For the record: I was reaaallly upset.

The death of No Cat

Let it not be said that I do not know my own failings. I predicted that one sad day we would once again lose The Boy's beloved No Cat, and alas, that day has arrived.

We did our best to stave off the inevitable. Like the night AnnaRay went searching for her in the 'hood with a flashlight after we foolishly allowed The Boy to bring her to a block party. A group of kids were safe guarding No Cat that night, but no one was watching out for her this time.

I found her outside the dog door. The hounds had torn a hole in her head and pulled out most of her stuffing. Little white beanies were everywhere. Oh, the humanity.

AnnaRay, upon hearing the news of No Cat's demise, immediately ordered three new ones online. We will not be caught again without a back-up. But I'm not sure we should give The Boy a replacement when they arrive this week. So far, we've been able to distract him when he asks for No Cat, (Look what Mommy has for you! A new Matchbox car!) so perhaps he will have forgotten her and we can move on, rather than reintroduce something so dear to him that we are clearly too inept to protect.

Your people are my people

It's nice to be the one with the sane family for a change. The craziest thing happening with my people these days is my grandfather refusing to die even though his 99-year-old body has said enough already. (Looks like he might be going home without ventilator - you go, Grandpa.)

My people tend to rant and rave while AnnaRay's go politely about their business. It turns out, however, that beneath the surface, they're just as screwed up as we are.

Watching her family slog through this latest upheaval makes me feel like a royal watching from a hill while the soldiers fight it out on the battleground below. I can see everything up here, and they can barely see what's in front of their faces for all the smoke. I don't mean to sound haughty, but I'm finally reaping some benefit from growing up amidst flagrant neurosis: it's so familiar I know exactly how to deal with it.

A bunch of years ago, AR and I went through a rough patch. We were fighting a lot and nearly broke up because that was what AR thought couples do when they fight a lot. I guess that comes from being a child of divorce(s). Fortunately, I come from a family where fighting is what we do. Breaking up never enters the picture.

AR's mom wants everybody to be alright with everything RIGHT NOW. I told her everything will be all right, but it's going to take time. She says she doesn't have time. I worry that maybe she has a brain tumor and we've got to deal with that on top of everything else, but she starts talking about Thanksgiving and Christmas. She fears bad feelings and awkwardness will tear her family apart. I say, what's a family get together without bad feelings and awkwardness?

My sister once threatened me with a knife. My father tends to fly into fits and say horrid and hurtful things that he doesn't even remember the next day. My mother tells me that when I was in high school, I would visibly cringe if she tried to touch me. We can be horrible to each other, but that doesn't mean we won't be home for the holidays.

Here's the thing: family relationships are messy. We did not chose to be with these people; they just pop up in our gene pool and there's nothing to do about it but swim alongside them.

Vroom, vroom!

It's Attack of the Mid-Life Crises month here in the little green house on NE 21st Avenue.

This weekend, my mother comes to town to make sure that I still love her despite the recent upheaval in our family. (Note to our readers in Bellingham, Washington: I do. But that doesn't mean I'm not going to give you a hard time about it.) And hard on her heels comes the other half of my genetic pool: My motorcycle-riding, God-fearing, Tobacco Road-living father.

Actually, part of my father arrived yesterday. His Harley. It's big and blue and mean-looking (except for the Yuppie silver coffee mug in the cup holder) and makes the same noise our old gas-powered lawn mower used to make whenever I ran over a large stick, except 10 times louder. I cannot believe my father allowed someone -- a nice man with a semi -- to take it across the country without him. (I also cannot believe my stepmother has agreed to ride all the way back to North Carolina on it.)

This man is serious about his bike. Very, very serious. Daddy called last night to make sure it had arrived and greeted Judybat with the something like the following: "I hear you have my two favorite things there with you." I'm pretty sure one of those was TheBoy, and I'm pretty sure one of those is not me.

And yes, I call my father "Daddy." It's the Southerner in me.

'smore, please

A shocking thing happened when we were camping this weekend. AnnaRay said, "I'm enjoying this," and she meant it. Then in the car on the way home she said, "That was fun. We should do it again."

A little background: AnnaRay does not enjoy sleeping on the ground. She does not enjoy pooping in the woods, and she doesn't even like eating outside. She does not like bugs; she is afraid of the dark. and, in general, discomfort of any kind makes her really really cranky.

To her credit, AR has on more than one occassion shacked up with me for a few days and nights at one national park or another in my beloved 2-person, 3-season North Face Firefly tent (couldn't find a link to it because it's 10 years old.) She does this because she loves me, but she complains about the trip from the time we arrive at the campground until we get the pictures back months later, (remember back when we took pictures on film?!) at which point she says, "Hey, that was fun. We should do it again."

I think it says a lot about the joys of parenting that AnnaRay enjoyed our latest trip. I'm certain it was The Boy's infectious pleasure and excitment over building a fire and sleeping in a tent with his mommies (and blankie and No Cat) that won the day. Although, now that I think of it, it could have been the 'smores.

Lessons learned in the woods

We took TheBoy camping this weekend in the hopes of acclimating him to life outdoors and teaching him some important lessons about the world. Here's what he learned:

- It rains a lot in Oregon. Even in July.
- When it rains, it gets kind of cold. Even in July.
- Food cooked outdoors tastes better, especially when served with challah and cheese.
- Wet wood is hard to light.
- Earthworms are disgusting. And fascinating.
- There is nothing in nature meaner than a teenaged girl.
- The ground is a hard, hard place to sleep.
- Sleeping next to your mommies on the ground in the tent is fun, especially if your diaper stinks.
- A stinky diaper in a small tent will make you no friends.
- Judybat steals the covers.
- AnnaRay is afraid of the dark and will stay awake desperately needing to pee rather than make the simple five-minute walk through the woods to the bathroom by herself.
- If your mommy sleeps with the blanket over her head to keep out the morning light, one sure way to wake her up is to bang your head into hers as hard as possible without drawing blood.
- Baby salmon are small.
- Adult salmon are BIG.
- Salmon will attempt to swim upstream, even if upstream means over a 4-foot-high fence or into a 3-foot-high metal pipe.
- It's really tough being a salmon.
- If you splash in too many puddles, your socks AND shoes get soaking wet, and you have to wait in the car in your sandals while mommies pack the car.
- If your mommies neglect to take a diaper change on a hike and leave you in your dirty one, you will get one nasty rash.
- If you stand directly behind your mommy while she's taking things out of the car and she doesn't see you, she will accidentally hit you in the face with the car door. The car door will draw blood.
- If you pick up dirt and put it in your mouth and don't like the taste, mommy will clean your tongue off with the sleeve of her shirt.

That's love, baby.

Maximum insescurity

Does anybody else see the futility in raising the terror alerts after the London bombings? It seems to me like tying the knot tighter once the cat's already out of the bag. Don't you think the terrorists would lie low for awhile, or at least move on to a new target we haven't thought to secure yet? Can't you see them watching CNN somewhere, slapping their backs and laughing at us scrambling in the aftermath like someone ducking after being shot in the head.

Let's face it: terrorists act, and all we can do is react. Like Superman. The super villans hatch their plans and all he can do is show up. Except we're not so super, so we don't always get there in time. If the stock market is any indication, we seem to be comfortable with this state of insecurity. Or maybe all the violence on t.v has innured us to it. Seen one burning twisted wreckage of an insurgent attack, seen them all.

I'm not saying we should let our guard down, but I think we're watching the door while the bad guys come in through the window. I think we had a decent chance of delivering a not-quite-deadly-but-certainly-crippling blow to terrorism back in 2001, when our victimhood endeared us to the rest of the world. If we had finished what we started in Afghanistan and sealed the borders we might have kept many of those head Al Qaida honchos from getting away. And if we had stopped there, retaining the world's sympathy as a wronged country striking back in self defense, the world might be a little less hospitable place for terrorists. Instead, we ran off Chicken-Little-like to Iraq, providing them will all the American-aggressors-killing-Muslim-civilians footage they need to rally the troops and making them a shiny new training ground for the new recruits.

I know jack about foreign policy, so please correct me if I'm wrong. Seriously, can someone tell me how the war in Iraq has made us safer as our fearless leader promised? I'll donate a dollar to the Republican party for every reasonable argument.

All in the family

I always thought it was Pregnizone.

Anyway, if I were a superstitious person, I might think there was something to the fact that both AnnaRay and I have mutinous immune systems. But even though when I make or pick or buy things I have to do it in even numbers or sometimes in multiples of three, I am not superstitious. Not really.

Anyway, the point is, I am of the mind that there are no meaningful coincidences, no such thing as good luck or bad luck, and everything is pretty much random. The universe fires at will. I do not know if this is true; I just believe it, making me the parishoner of an odd little faith. Let's call it chaos.

Everyone's got to believe in something.

Anyway, since this world seems to me to have no inherent meaning, I am left to impose my own meaning on things, like why AnnaRay's immune system attacks her hearing and mine attacks my brain. There is a certain Twilight Zone irony that AnnaRay, whose idea of a peaceful and happy place is the bottom of a pool, has an ailment that could potentially isolate her from the rest of the world. I don't know what to make of my condition though. My real question right now is whether that pool was kidney shaped or Olympic size.

Could you repeat that? Part 2

My ear doc called today to tell me one final test result came back from the round of blood-letting I underwent last month as part of the march toward a hearing aid. (He had to send this test "back East," where they have all that fancy modern big city technology. Life on the Lewis & Clark trail is hard, I tell you!)

Turns out the test came back positive for some sort of autoimmune problem. In other words, my body could be mistakenly attacking my ears in the hopes of getting rid of a virus or unwanted guest and, in a neat, unexpected, "Sixth Sense" sort of twist, ruining my hearing in the process.

Nothing I've found on this topic -- Autoimmune Inner Ear Disease is apparently one possibility, and the stuff I've read on the Internet is really too dense and sort of depressing for me to link to it -- seems promising in terms of long-term solutions. But my doctor is going to put me on Prednisone, and we're going to check my hearing again in a few weeks to see if there have been any noticable improvements.

The good news: Still no syphilis!

The bad news: This is the same thing Rush had.

Judy goes up the river

Judy Miller went to jail today for refusing to reveal her source in the Valerie Plame debacle. On the one hand, I admire the way she's sticking to her principles. (We spit on Time! Cowards. My vote: One of Karl Rove's minions.)

On the other hand, I'm hoping Judy uses this quiet time to do some long, hard thinking about the war in Iraq and her role in getting us there. Perhaps she'll find some WMDs in her cell. Perhaps we'll find that Ahmad Chalabi was her source on this too. Let's hope not.

It's only going to get worse

We have a problem. Being good parents, we're trying TheBoy out this summer in a Spanish immersion preschool program. It's not exactly mentally taxing -- he goes, he paints, he plays with clay, he runs around outside, he listens to stories, he eats his healthy snack, he comes home.

But he doesn't want to go. And he makes that clear. "Noschoolnoschoolnoschool," is a common response to the idea. "Sad. Cry. Miss Ima," is another. The teachers say he has a few minutes of pouting/crying/whining when he first gets there. Then he goes about his day. Yet it seems that he's learning to associate school with being unhappy.

The rational part of my brain says that this is perfectly normal, that he needs to learn how to go off on his own without this mommies. (Better he cry a little now, for example, than decide to spend the rest of his life living with us.)

At the same time, it's absolutely heartbreaking to see his little brain adjust to the idea that we're taking him and leaving him there, no matter what he says. I think of the tiny little guy in that not-really big classroom, staring wide-eyed in confusion as everyone around him speaks a language he doesn't understand.

Are we scarring him?

God Bless America

We just had friends in town who are moving to Canada. I've traveled a lot and found much to love about other countries, but I've never wanted to live anywhere but here. As we talked about Canada's universal health care, paid maternity leave, gay marriage and low crime rate, I started to wonder why.

So as sit here listening to the pop, crackle and boom of illegal fireworks going off in various quadrants of my neighborhood, I've decided to make a list of the things I love about the good old U.S. of A.

- The land.
From the sandy beaches of the Atlantic to the brazen peaks of the Rockies and the jagged coast of the Pacific, not to mention the redwood forests and amber waves of grain, this is beautiful country. I've never been so awed as when I first saw the impossibly beautiful moonscape of the Canyonlands in Utah, and I've never seen anything more comforting than the Hudson from the green, green hills of the river valley. I'm sorry we had to kill all those Native Americans, oppress them and drive them from their land, but I sure am grateful I've been able to visit these places and call them home.

- The government.
In spite of the fact that the current administration makes me want to run for the northern border, I think we've got a pretty good thing going here. The founding fathers set us up with some solid institutions and pretty effective checks and balances, and something's got to be said for bloodless regime changes every four to eight years.

- The melting pot.
I love that I can walk down a street in New York City and hear eight different languages in two blocks. I love the fact that burritos and bagels and hot dogs and pizza are all considered american cuisine, that chinese restaurants are ubiquitous and that you can now get Indian food at the mall. I love it that no matter where I live I learn something new from people I meet who moved here from countries I've never heard of.

There are lots of other things, like breakfast any time, bobby headed dolls, Thomas Edison, the blues and jazz and motown and swing, the Empire State Building, the muppets and yes, in spite of everything, Star Wars, but it's late and I'm sleepy and tomorow is another day for me to worry about who is going to replace Sandra Day O'Connor.

You bastard!

Inspired by the craptasticness that was Revenge of the Sith, we just finished making our way back through the original three Star Wars movies. (Would those be the Star Wars? The Star Warsi? The Star Warses?)

Having seen Return of the Jedi when it came out in remastered form a few years ago, we were prepared for the little bits of Lucas ego/technological obsessiveness added here and there -- the all new and completely unnecessary dance scene in Jabba's palace, the added Banthas on the sand dunes of Tatooine, the actually much better ending featuring scenes from cities across the galaxy, rather than the Ewok yub-yub song that still gets in my head and won't leave without substantial aid from alcohol or bad radio pop.

But have you seen the movie on DVD? Because there's been one last little tinker. Remember the scene at the very end, when Luke is looking out into the night and he sees Yoda and Ben, and then his father appears next to them? Well, in the new-and-improved theatrical release a few years ago, Yoda and Ben are joined by the same actor who plays Darth sans mask. But in the additionally screwed with DVD version?

The hack formerly known as George Lucas stuck in Hayden Freaking Christensen.

It wasn't enough that he had to make three really lousy movies with wooden acting, hilariously bad dialogue and plots that were for the most part impossible to follow without some sort of Excel spreadsheet cast of characters and their political affiliation. (Hey, I've got an idea: Let's write some movies that are as complicated as Dune, and nowhere near as interesting!) Now, thanks to the latest Lucasfilm technology, he can infect the three true originals with the stink of the "originals." Just when I'd gotten over the notion that Darth Vader was actually a whiny kid who can't act and that Luke and Leia came out of Natalie Portman, whose character died because -- cough, cough -- "she'd lost the will to live." Thanks A LOT, George.

I'm going off in search of the SouthPark episode where the boys try to break into the Lucas ranch to save Lucas and Spielberg from themselves. Kenny dies along the way, of course, but he goes serving the greater good. So it's OK in the end. Unlike this. Blech. Now I wish the Emperor had won.