number 100-rage at the re

How terribly appropriate that my one-hundredth post on this lovely blog will be all about the very thing that brought me to the land of web-bio-blather--trying to get my girlfriend (oh and she is so much more than a girl that is a friend) pregnant.

I cannot begin to explain the fury and sadness that erupted in my heart at the doctor's office this morning. But i can describe this uncontrollable swelling of tears that merged onto the edges of my eyes in front of a resident. I got this zippy electric pulse in my cheek bones that I could not shake and then the tears mounted the little pink precipice of the tender flesh that lines my eye sockets and i blinked 100 times to try to keep them in, but to no avail.

I do not like the reproductive specialist we go to. It is not because he is a bad guy or anything like that. It is because U of M medical is a teaching network and we keep having to be asked a million questions by different residents/doctors/students before we see the "specialist". Before it did not bother me all too much, but today, oh today, it struck a nerve and let me tell you why.

The resident who came in and slammed us with all of the questions laid out the steps we need to go through now that the multitude of test results are back. The steps included:
1. we try Clomid (big surprise there)
2. if and when Clomid does not work we move onto IUI with the fresh sperm (this is where the fury set in)
3. If IUI does not work move onto more drugs/FHS shenanigans.
4. Finally, when all else fails they would suggest In Vitro.

Okay, so we had to inform aforementioned resident that because k is not sexually intimate with potential bio-dad we cannot use his fresh sperm for an IUI. Now why--why did I have to use my breath on informing someone at this professional establishment this already painful-to-me knowledge? the head doc had already explained it to us for the second time back at the very first visit--apology all wrapped up in the explanation. And now we were informing the resident about our ass-backwards health code...

Anyhow, I got pissed as you can probably tell. But what I am really pissed about is this--instead of hanging his head and telling us how sorry he is that he cannot perform a fresh (washed of course) semen IUI in his office, why can't he offer up the notion that maybe he would be willing to organize some RE folks to work to get the ass-backwards health code changed so that same-sex couples have as much decision making power as straight people to put what semen they choose into their bodies?

He did tell us that he thinks we should have our known donor start the freezing/quarantine process now so that in case step 1 (Clomid and progesterone and DIY at home with the graciously donated fresh sperm ) does not work after a few months we will be ahead of the game--the quarantine process takes 6 months--and ready to move on to step two (that is step two for queer people which makes that fresh sperm frozen sperm).

At this time we will just stick with the drugs and the fresh jiz. I am too livid about once again being told what i (or my lover) can and/or cannot do with our bodies to start investigating what the extra money slam of freezing and quarantining the sperm of potential bio-dad would cause to our already depleted bank account.

Fuck the government...essentially they are once again giving straight people a financial break. The implications of their flawed health code do more than simply demoralize me as a gay woman; they also place an unfair financial burden on me--it would be much, much cheaper to use fresh sperm for the in office IUI.

But, fuck me too. how can I even begin to bitch about the cost when I have health insurance and so many people in this country do not? So, there it is bringing my rage full circle right back to my owning blathering heart.

Oh, and just so those of you who are not familiar with Michigan politics/legal shit know, we feel that it would severely jeopardize our already precariously constructed legal documents to try to pretend that K is sexually intimate with potential bio-dad. See, if we ever do get pregnant (that is kk ever does have a kid), I will have NO-ZILCH-NONE-AT-FUCKING-ALL rights to the kid here in MI. We do not have second-parent adoption; we have a constitutional amendment voted on by the MI public that bans gay-marriage for all time; we have an extremely conservative court system.

Basically, k and I have drafted up some legal documents that when push comes to shove could mean nothing at all.

If kk had a kid and then left this planet for the spirit world and then her dad or brother wanted to go after the kid, well they could and I might lose. Or if kk does have a kid and we end up in some conservative county in this state--that i keep loving for many reasons--and the kid gets hurt and k is not with us and i take the kid to the hospital they could be like, "you need to take a seat in the waiting room. (essentially, you don't matter--you queer fuck.)"

And now, I will end this ramble. but not without first pointing out that all of the rant above is deeply connected to desiring recognition and rights from an already extensively flawed system--i do not like the institution of marriage or the "rights" that have been built into it, and I have serious issues with the representative "democratic" government in this country. I believe a system based on representation will always keep many, many people and groups of people on the fringes, invisible and oppressed. So, my rant in its entirety is me wanting just for a minute to be part of the status quo and that in and of itself makes me sad...

roll with it

the view from the top of the resort!

our time up north is winding down. we will come home for our staycation tomorrow, and i will not go back to work until september 2--YES!

the vacation has been beautiful. it also all flew by way too quickly.

we've taken in so much sunshine and water and green living things and human beings.

it has also been a strange and bewildering time.

the first sunday we were here k's ex-girlfriend, A, arrived at the cabins with her 60 something aunt. they stayed in our cabin with us for four nights and then moved on over to cabin 11 after k's aunt A left-- aunt A was here for four days of our vacation and k's ex was here for 6 days.

(now, you all might be asking what was k's ex girlfriend doing hanging with you on your vaction? well, her mama died just a few weeks ago and she had come home from new orleans to michigan to be with her ma as she passed on and then she needed to get away from the mayhem of the aftermath of her passing, so she came up north and we happened to be up here when she was coming up.)

we were a motley crew of people wandering around the very northern tip of the lower peninsula and the southern end of the upper peninsula. two very butch dykes=ex and me. one super hot femme dyke=kk. one 87 year old woman with a walker and chemo running through her veins and chronically out her ass. one nearly 60 year old woman with her wits entirely about her and one 62 year old woman with her wits on the fritz.

The six of us hung out in st. ignace at the casino one afternoon. then the five of us, this is minus grandma c who needs to sleep a lot due to aforementioned chemo and diarrhea, hung out in one way, shape, or form the other evenings.

we drank beer together; we drank whiskey together; we played pool together; we talked late into the night together; we swam and hung in the sun together; we hung with the family p who was all up north at the same time as us together. what an elixir we all made.

we smeared northern michigan with quite a bit of queerness. it was all a bit tiring, but also fun. we even ended up at clyde's, the only business in carp lake, mi besides a mini-post office and a general store, one evening with k's dad and this fellow that lives in the trailer that k's other grandma used to live in. i know, entirely too much information, and why would you even care about any of this cause it has absolutely nothing to do with k trying to get pregnant or me bending down near her private parts and slinging jizz up on in, but it all does have to do with our incredibly complicated and yet so simple lives.



inside clyde's.

I mean the setting and props for our vacation were perfect--blue skies, luscious, deep bodies of water everywhere, plenty of fresh fish to nibble on, sunshine, blue skies, warm weather, water on skin, tiny bedroom with soft bed for sexual activity, forests--and then the characters for the vacation just kept growing in number and complexity.

i cannot do justice in writing about the weirdness that seemed almost totally normal to me over the last ten days, but i guess it is indicative of the ways in which our lives are hammered out in order to build us into these constantly changing beings. we suck up the circumstances of everyday and churn out as much beauty, meaning, and love as we can. sometimes we get cranky and fight and yell and behave badly. other times we just sit and take it all in--by all i mean whatever gets slung at us be it injuries, good times, old loves, old friends, family, moral dilemmas, justice, injustice, and all of the stuff of living and dying.

my learning this vacation has been all about gaining a better understanding of how to roll with it; whatever the it might be.

a perfectly beautiful uterus and other stuff...

me in four square costume
another crazy ass week is biting the dust. we've been busy little reproducers. a visit to the re happened last friday and k got her female organs prodded and picture snapped.

the doctor said all her soft, fleshy baby-making stuff (uterus, tubes, cervix, etc) are just perfectly beautiful.

we breathed a heavy sigh of relief with an anguished question of really? oh damn? connected to the relief sigh. mostly, we wanted to know why the fuck she has not gotten knocked up yet if everything is so perfectly beautiful.

this doctor was different than the other doctor cause other doctor was on vacay, but we think that k may need to go on clomid just to get her hormones in a perfectly succinct dance.

we've still been trying this time around. for what it is worth...?

My left knee ballooned up last thursday and is still swollen and it has me very pissed cause i've refrained from riding my bicycle for a few days and that makes me antsy and angry. see, i was on a roll--up until balloon knee--I had been putting 100 or more miles a week on the new bicycle. at 12 weeks old she had 1205 miles on her and now it is all at a stand still. my knees do this shit about twice a year and i am tired of it cause i am only 32...what will happen when i am 60?

last friday evening i participated in a four square tournament. i played on team rocket. we did not win, but we had the best costumes and did win a trophy named jan for our attire.
team rocket

Our good friend KG was in town all week and we had plenty of fun and good times.

and saturday we leave for vacation. carp lake here we come. we will be staying at k's dad's all seasons resort. This is my eighth summer going up there for vacay--it is kind of crazy how time flies.

where are your children?

Our friend dropped over last night with her young son. he went up stairs to go to the bathroom and came back wondering where we kept our children.

We informed him that we did not have any but we are working on it and he said we really should get some children.

oh, if only he knew...

in the meantime, i have had a killer week planning and executing a teach-in/rally for other women's children who were killed by the abusive prison system here in MI (a young man with bi-polar disorder died two years ago in a prison here n MI after being strapped down to a cement slab in a segregation cell for four days in extreme heat. and other people have also died or suffered tremendous hardship in segregation cells here in MI's prisons. this young man's mother wanted to hold up tim's memory on the 2 year anniversary of his death, so we held a rally at the capitol.) this rally ended up going well, but working with loved ones of people in prison leaves my heart all exposed and dented and ultimately it makes me really think about the unique trials and tribulations that families face when mental illness, "crime", violence, and/or poverty enter the spheres of people's realities.

and while i can do nothing to control my own or any other person's tomorrow, i do sometimes get into the domain of thinking long and hard about all of the fuckedupness of this world and, once again, venture down the path of why, why, why bring new life into this place. and i know i have ranted and raved about it here, but i know stories that you would tremble to hear about. i have heard directly from people about the torture they have experienced once in prison and i also know people who have done horrific things to people before going to prison. and the cycle of violence does not just touch my small corner of the world. some people's children are living through war everyday. imagine wondering every morning if you or your kid might get blown to bits or hit by a stray bullet today.

that i can in my own little privileged world even strive to create new life and have the calmness to reflect on if i should or not, is indicative of the disparities among all humans and it makes me not want to do anything but work to stop the madness.

so where are our children...all in all, my children are already with me. they are the people i work with everyday. they are my neighbors and my family (blood and created). they are the reason i work to try to make this world a better place...

suck nuts

not that I like to.
but I am sad—oh yes—once again.
because—you guessed it—k started bleeding Wednesday, yet again.

I’ve sort of lost count now but I think this is 13 times with no success.

so. suck.

she got her blood drawn friday for all the hormone testing.
we dropped a cup to potential bio dad for the sperm testing.
and Friday k will go get the ultra sound, etc.

I am also mad, not just sad, that I ever got in the business of wanting a kid.

cause it is getting too fucking complicated and I am tired of it.

i really did not have my hopes up this time i am convinced that something is up with kk's insides or that something has gone amiss with bio dad's fluids, but it is all a bit emotionally exhausting and for some reason i seem to take it worse than my lovely. i mean i have even started seriously contemplating what it would be like for me to be pregnant for 9 months and how i would need to learn to pack my fears in a tight little bag and banish them to the place beyond the atmosphere. this contemplating is strange territory for me and very premature, but these visions of a pregnant me are haunting my head and they are weird indeed!