sample platter of my summer

This summer has been beautiful. Work has been hard. trying to get pregnant has been tiring and interesting. friends have been abundant. the garden and yard have filled up many of my hours with joy. eating good, locally grown food has been delicious. Below is a taste of some of it.


today we took off work with a and r and went to the lake. this is the lake where we swam and floated and ate good food for hours and hours. there are no houses only woods and green herons and blue herons and fish and hawks and trees and cat tails.


t makes beautiful, delicious salads. r and t shared this one with us last week.


a cone flower from our garden.


more flowers from our garden.


delicious beets from t and r's garden and the farmers' market.



me after a long day's work in the yard.


beans and fennel growing in my garden.

You’re the meaning in my life; you’re the inspiration

Chicago easy listening...

Was piped at just the right level into the ear of the receptionist and therefore the ears of all waiting in the drab/way too bright clinic waiting room for me to think how annoying it would be to listen to a lite muzak/lite rock mix all day long and still simultaneously smile and sing along.

Yesterday, was our first visit to the reproductive endocrinologist. It was a sullen adventure. One full of sitting on our asses waiting for k’s name to be called and for yours truly to step in an awkward, pretending I do not quite have tits, stride behind her to the “room” for consultation.

We waited patiently as the bad radio station bleated out tune after tune of sentimental, hetero love songs.

The receptionist lady and the other clinicy people were sweet as jello based pie and as we waited among the slews of straight folks trying to get their babies on, our friend, another lesbian, walked through the door and set my heart at ease, just cause she was there and that made three girls in the room who like to have lovely sex with other girls rather than the boring old cock devotion that was way over-represented in this repro clinic.

It took an hour and 15 minutes to be called back to the room.
Then it took some more minutes for the resident to come into the room with a boy medical student trailing her. The resident said to k, “we are going to ask some questions and go over some stuff with you and then dr. r will come on in and provide the consult. Is that okay with you?’

Apparently, this was the wrong question to ask kk cause she did not answer and I chimed in with a “that’s fine.”

See k was in an enormously bad mood. She still is. She is tired of heterosexism and heterosexist laws and rules and regulations. The questionnaire she filled out for these people was totally void of questions regarding queer people’s sex lives or practices or anything at all about gayness. I wrote a snarky comment on the back of the sheet and I am sure all the doctors and students and residents got a chuckle.

So, k got extra peeved when the U of M poke and prod and learn crew showed up for the repro consult. I was not too concerned; the resident was really quite kind and the boy medical student was entertaining to watch cause he was squirmy and nervous and probably a bit fascinated with the butch/femme duo before him.

They asked questions and listened to k’s heart together. Yes, she had two stethoscopes on her body at once. Then they left and k was testy with me and mad and drained.

Then the doctor came in and he was very nice and smart and k was impressed with him. He told us again about the fresh sperm dilemma imbedded in our MI health code. But he framed it like this: “If you are sexually intimate with the person providing sperm then we can use fresh (washed) sperm to do an IUI, otherwise it is simply illegal for us to do it.” Then he went on and on about how it would be much simpler for all involved if we used a sperm bank with frozen sperm so we would not have to worry about any of this or otherwise we would have to freeze our donor’s sperm for six months and make sure it was a okay for us to use and then do an IUI at his clinic.

Of course, all of this is premature. We do not know what’s up with k’s insides, so that is the next step. K will have her uterus and tubes looked at—they will shoot some saline up her and do an ultra sound; she will get some more blood tests to make sure she has good hormone production and we will get the sperm tested to make sure it is swimming forward.

The doctor said he really does not think it is low progesterone; he looked at the reading from last month and said it is borderline low but not too low…

We like the fresh sperm do it ourselves method best. And really I refuse to get locked up in the big business of reproduction unless we absolutely have to. Our insurance only covers so much and we are far from wealthy people. We will attempt some messing with hormones and cleaning out of tubes etc. if needed. And then…I really do not know what.

government--keep your hands off our bodies and families...

wednesday we tried another iui. once again, the midwife could not get the tube through k's cervix into the uterus.
maybe k has a special fold. hmm...

whatever the case, we head out to the repro doc next week and we are unable to tell him about the twist in k's cervix because it is illegal in MI to do iuis unless you are using frozen sperm or the donor is planning to father the child you are trying to create.

so, the health code in MI is set up to prevent stds--i get the reasoning--but queer girls get the shaft in the process, cause the legislature never thought about the ramifications their governing of other people's bodies might have on queer people. cause really, for the most part, they could give two shits and probably, for the most part, many of them would rather only straight, missionary like married nuclear families exist.

if ever, there is movement into even a more retrograde, ass-backwards state of lawfulness in this MI of mine that i love with too much fervor for reasons that have nothing to do with politics or the economy, k and i will need to pack up our lives and head to the border by the river=canada.

mi keeps coming up with terrible constitutional amendments-1. banning affirmative action 2. banning gay marriage forever and with it banning partnership benefits for gay folks who work for any publicly funded (that means taxpayer impacted) institutions. this all happened in the last four years.

while i am critical of the institution of marriage for multiple reasons (the number one reason, why should people get special treatment just because they love each other and choose to be sexual companions over two people who live together and are single but don't fuck? I mean if there was a campaign to ensure the same kinds of rights and breaks that come with marriage for all people in this country-not just partnered people-i would be more convinced to jump on board), i do want to know that the kid k and i end up creating will not be stripped away from one of us due to the non-existence of laws that might protect our rights to guardianship.

all in all, there are just so many layers of shit to wade through for queer folks (and many other groups of people) because so many lawmakers are either not expert enough at looking at the ramifications of their lawmaking, deliberately make laws that oppress whole groups of people, or make laws without really thinking about how those laws impact their whole constituency (of course this is much more complicated, but this is my blog and i can give the short reasoning if i feel like it).

i guess after hundreds of years of the enactment of draconian and shortsighted laws, we still have not learned our lessons or come up with a better way to live together in society...

but i really think there are too many people hell-bent on otherizing whole groups of people and scrambling for little bits of power here and there. i know i should not get my panties in such a bunch about a simple little clause in the health code that makes it illegal to shoot fresh sperm directly into the uterus, but frankly if government is so worried about the spread of stds shouldn't they create laws that stop strangers from going home together and fucking...oh maybe that is on the horizon--no fucking for straights. shouldn't we station cops at bars and have them hound the boys and girls sniffing each other out for sex? oh, wait gay folks have already been subjected to this kind of monitoring...and still are.

once again, so many laws and codes and rules and pages of bureaucratic reasoning make little sense and harm people more than help. we will keep on doing whatever we need to get knocked up and believe you me no government entity is going to tell me or k what we can or cannot do with our bodies.

bug juice and human juice

this morning i got up and watered the garden. i found some brown metallic bugs mating and eating big jagged holes in my zinnias, so i caught some of the sticky legged critters and squished them and mixed them up in the watering can and drenched the hole riddled plants with the deadness.

then i went pee and washed the sticky bug residue from my hands, only to find the jam jar with last night's sperm spendings soaking with the syringe in the bathroom sink. I thought about bug guts mixing with the little bits of sperm and water and reflected on how lucky i am to have such diverse and cycle-of-life connected fluids all around me.

after much deliberation and debate, we have decided to do it ourselves again this month even though k cannot get in to see the repro doctor until next week.

We were going to skip the next couple of months and wait on the results of all of the testing that i am sure he will order, but then well what the hell? we might as well keep kk's parts use to all that male sticky stuff.

i am not very hopeful that this do it ourselves while kk has low progesterone again will work, but there is something to keeping the patterns of our lives fluid and together. so, this effort is that--an effort in not-giving-up and staying with it and charging along as though a miracle might happen and realizing that waking up every morning and feeling the humid air of summer creep over my skin and the gooey gush of plant eating bugs spilling over my fingers and experiencing the presence of the night sky falling around me every late evening and the bats circling through the dusky sky and the buzz of summer creatures saturating the heavy air--realizing that all of this is miracle enough.

too many days; too much writing; but oh so much fun

i will not moan.
i will not groan.
the days have been beautiful. full of life and sun and friends and family and goodness and things growing.

i've been evaluating and evaluating my life. and soon i will have to start to take some action on what i want to do with the rest of my living when it comes to work.

but in the meantime, this weekend was good in spite of that unending feeling of sadness that seems to have wedged itself in my gut and heart for sometime to come.

so, on friday i rode in the ypsilanti fourth of july parade with a group of twenty bike ypsi folks. we came out in our neverending unusualness--families, avid cyclists, man with a hand-pedaled bicycle, punk rock kids and punk rock elders, and me in my 4th of july pants.



i am not patriotic--far from it--but red white and blue make good striped pants and i rode with my one less car banner taped to my bicycle and others had great messages about stopping dependence on oil for transportation and stopping the war connected to that dependence; it was all beautiful and simultaneously subversive in its own local way!



then we headed to my aunt m and uncle e's for a party with our friends t-motion and mandark and remus. we drank piss water beer and ate yummy food and i got to see my cousin c and her man j and their chitlins. then we all headed to my sister's and hung out and kk, remus, t-motion, and mandark all drank a lot of mojitos and some of them swam and i shot the shit out with my dad and watched huey lewis and the news play music in front of the white house on some pbs fourth of july special. then some of us crashed at my sis's and t-motion and mandark crashed at my parents and listened to my parents tell crazy ass stories about me.

the next day, saturday, we went home. of course.

i mowed the lawn and did yard work.

then we went to kensington metro park with t and r and rode our bikes into island lake state park. we had a delightful picnic--basil, caper pasta; garlicky fava beans; goat cheese, gouda, and munster with crackers; corn on the cob; watermelon; fake oreos; blueberries, and wine. we talked, laughed and rode a good 16 miles through meadows and shadey wooded areas. then i stripped under a towel and put on some old shorts and jumped in a lake and swam and kk joined me and we tuckered ourselves out. it was a calm and good day; a day with people who love me and k for all of who we are and with our flaws included, a day that helped me dig out a little from this ever-creeping sadness.

on sunday, we slept till 10:00--yes 10:00. i woke and went directly to the back yard and weeded and weeded and weeded and weeded. i like to weed. i weed when i am waiting. i weed when i need peace. i love that weeding is always needed. i do love it.

then we went on a good, long sunday bike ride with 12 other folks who came out for our weekly bike ypsi rides.

then we had a spontaneous (kind of) bbq with t and r and tc and j. again, we ate delicious food. vegan pesto pasta, veggie and fake sausage and veggie and shrimp shish kabobs, bbq sauce quorn roll ups (salad and cilantro with grilled quorn naked patties and bbq sauce), black bean dip and tortilla chips, and rhubarb sauce/fresh strawberry drenched angel food cake with vanilla ice cream for dessert. we drank beer, sangria and mojitos (i only drank the beer) and talked and enjoyed dusk.

monday, i did not work. my 5 year old nephew, m, spent the day with me and we had a blast. i picked him up at a storage unit in plymouth (his dad was there for his new job) at 9:30a.m. and he stayed with me until 8:30. a long and lovely day. this was his birthday present (his birthday was in may). we drove to ann arbor and i ate breakfast; he had half a cookie and took the other half over to kk at her work.
we then walked to the comic book store where i proceeded to buy him a demon figurine (i did not know that spawn = satan's fallen. m and his family are believers/christians. but the figurine is super cool). Then we had an almost pee accident, but we ran like olympic sprinters through the streets of ann arbor. and we made it.

then we took kk over to the bike shop to drop off her bicycle so that it gets new brake pads and a tune up. we got m a new helmet (his ma asked me to) and then we ate some sushi (m wanted it).

then we dropped k back at work and micah and i went cheese tasting. the whole point of our day together was centered around this cheese. the plan was (and unfolded as planned) to make macaroni and cheese together and then his mom and dad and brother and sister and kk would all be at my house for dinner! M loves cheese and he picked a lovely, grassy montgomery cheddar and a mild but earthy chantal for the mac and cheese.

we came home and made the cheesy noodle goopiness. M shredded like a mad shredder and he whisked the cheesy sauce with amazing gentleness. then, we took pookah the whippet for a walk. micah discovered the ball launcher, and, after pookah tired, he continued to sling the ball very far and run to boy-fetch it.



we clipped kale from both of my gardens and made it home before a thunderstorm. while it stormed, we sat in our "new" art room (k and i have been rearranging our former male-rental space--we used to rent our back room out and two men at two different times were our only renters--into an art room. we had to smudge it profusely to get the strange ass energy that had landed there out) we drew large veggie mania signs (the name of our dinner service for the evening).

then kk came home all wet from the storm. shortly after her arrival, M's family arrived and we baked the mac and cheese and steamed all of the kale and then we ate and ate.

we listened to music and micah's little sister,a, danced to the banjo picking, foot stomping tunes and micah's big brother,j, listened with an ear intent on figuring out what instrument he wants to dedicate his time to.

kk and ayla

there was more but i am now breathless and ready for bed.

teary eyes

I am trying to figure out if the persistent tears-at-the-edge-of-my-eyes feeling is from work, other parts of my life, the fact that k is spotting once again, or a mixture of the list.

It is gorgeous out. the sun is bellowing brightness like a sky trumpet and summer is full with sound and sight and scent. And here i am wallowing in a weepiness that refuses to let up.

last night i cried for two hours straight. today tears just keep leaking out of my eyes. and i can't think quite right and i am supposed to be writing for work and it is not going so well.

we did find out k has low progesterone, so maybe that is why nothing is sticking. at this point, well, at this point...i just have stopped thinking anything much is really going to happen.

i really cannot attribute this overwhelming sadness to another failed attempt at getting pregnant because i have been in a good place with it all...I know all emotions come to pass and new ones creep in, but this damn teary eyed blurriness is just fucking relentless.

maybe my body got whacked out when i fell down some stairs on sunday night and bruised my ass and arm.

who knows.

who knows.

who knows.