the injectors draft revisions to a 1970s sex ed book for kids

I've had these pictures of this old book that k's parents used to explain sexual intercourse and offspring creation to her back in the seventies. It happily reinforces heterosexual romance, sex and hetero reproduction.

about 8 months ago we were putting the finishing touches on willa's room (which she only uses on occasion, but will use more as she gets older). Some of the finishing touches included making her a kid's library. Her shelf of books is full up of books from both her pack-rat, hoarder mamas (yes, numerous books from our own childhoods) and gracious gifts from friends. She is well-stocked to say the least, but our special gifts of 1970s and 1980s kids' books knowledge is an excellent addition. It puts her collection over-the-top.


some of her many books piled on the floor...

I mean who can brag about having the following how to talk to your children about sex book in their own personal kids library.

Of course, I will have to guerrilla plant the queer version of things into this text before my daughter ever gets her hands (or eyes for that matter) on the book. Here are some feeble editing attempts thus far:

prayers working...for realz...

to those of you who know us in person, please do not take offense to the fact that you may have not heard this directly from us first. this is blog world and a large part of the reason i ever started this blog was to blabber incessantly about this trying to get pregnant that has consumed portions of our lives for the last three years.

i've laid off on the posting about trying, cause it was all starting to drive me a bit mad. i was getting brittle.

and brutal to my own heart. putting effort into something without any results, well, it can get old and tiresome after a bit.

Anyhow, k has been taking femara the last two cycles. it is an estrogen blocker and it makes her eggs develop in a more identifiable way or some shit like that. so the first month did not work.

it just made k strange and emotional.

this month she went in for the ultra sound to detect eggs on day 10 of her cycle instead of day 14. she was almost ready, so then on day 12 she went back and there were some eggs about ready to fall. so she had the trigger shot and we opted out of an iui this month and did a home injection the next evening.

anyhow, then last thursday she peed on a stick and it said, not pregnant. and we were like we knew it...

...it just is not ever gonna happen. the doctor at the clinic acted like it was a for sure thing because of the super positive response to the femara. and we were like ha, she does not know this journey we've been on.

Anyhow, on tuesday k was spotting; on wednesday she called the repro clinic to ask if she should start the femara when she started full on flowing at day three or when she count day three from the spotting day. and then k was like maybe i should check a pregnancy test again just in case and the nurse was like ya do so.

so, k did. and it said pregnant and we were both like no fu.cking way.
we were in total disbelief. then the repro clinic said go for a blood draw, so she did and later that afternoon it said she was pregnant, too.

And so my kk is pregnant. for the very first time in her life, she is pregnant.

I am keeping hope in check cause we know the whole fiasco with me and my pregnancy. she is ultra early on. and she could easily miscarry, so hope is in my back pocket. it gets sat on daily and ground into my ass. simultaneously, i am trying to stay optimistic and send the little spot that is growing inside her lots of good energy.

cause really i am not sure i can go through the whole losing it again thing...argh.
pins and needles, pins and needles, pins and needles for another 8 weeks.

argh.

and good.

last month when the femara did not work, I prayed so hard for my kk to get pregnant. I prayed to that which i do not know, i prayed to that which i think i know, i prayed to the tops of the branches of trees and the sun in the cool spring air; i prayed with cawing of the crows and the soft rush of river water. i prayed that she, my love--my sweet beloved--could have this one thing she wanted so deeply.

and maybe this prayer was heard in the rambling of the rest of our days. maybe it was heard on the tight teeny molecular structure of wind and rain. maybe just maybe, we will be parents 9 months from now.

praying for stickage and all good things.

to a longer day--to not knowing what tomorrow has in store

time ticks away. the days fall flat or robust or somewhere in between like a deflating sausage casing. night is long. and now it is getting brighter. or at least the seasons teach us and promise us that after today the days will get longer and light will be our helpmate, our sustenance, our teacher, our guide.

This time has been heavy for k and me. Always it is. Always the months of October, November, and December hold the traces of people who have passed on from us. k's mom was born in october she faded through november; she became vapor like in december; she vanished in January. all of this happened years ago, but still her fingerprints leave smudges over the lead glass windows of our house and the liquid surfaces of our eyeballs.

I could go on and on about the dead ones and the dead almost ones (like what happened last year at this time to my body and then came out all bloody and lifeless in the toilet) but i'll spare us all the memory traveling and reexamining of emotions and emptiness left on the concave ridge of kk's collarbone and i will tune in to where we are now.

we are waiting for the days to get longer. we are learning that chickens do not appreciate the wet piles of snow accumulating all over the yard. we are thankful to still have this deep love, like a tunnel to the other side of the world that seems to go on and on forever, between us. we are happy with one another's softness--the soft parts of our skins, the pillow world of cheek and the bone hard security of shoulder.

we spend time together as though time might soon slip away from us and fall out of line with the tale that seasons have told for so many winters and summers and springs and autumns. like it might just end, be gone, flit away in the particles of dust shining in the sun shards coming through the window of a dark, deep basement.

we wonder what it will be like to be old and childless. we wonder what it will be like to be old and parents. we wonder if we will even make it to old, or if cement or bumper or disease will have its way with us before the silver and white coat our skulls. we wonder a lot about the future and work. and we think about where we want to be in this world and how we want to be in it. we think too much.

on this solstice--this night that is long in the veil of dark, navy sky creased by the shy light of a sliver of moon--we tried again to make something of a life in kk. who knows what tomorrow holds, but for now we will cheer the promise of a longer day and taste the star shaped snowflakes of december on our tongues.

again, maybe try

slurred words bouncing down the chilly November sidewalk. drunk or high, who knows this time. someone out there in the autumn air is loopy and full of something that makes the person not quite of this world. and here I sit thinking about the pain in my gum and whether or not we should shoot sperm into k after her period this month.

yep, same old question.

my mind feels soggy -- limp, stale, wet bread waiting to make its way to the chickens’ run.

speaking of the chickens, I miss being with them throughout the day. i make it home sweaty and almost breathless as dark is settling in and the chickens are locked up in their nice little run and it is too dark to let them graze the yard.

we have two escape artists and one has already spent the night in those sinister urban woods behind our house. so, I am missing them and pook, our dear little whippet. the bees have gone to bed for the winter. or at least they have slowed their furious wings to a fanning ball to keep themselves warm up inside their hive.

but I miss them too.

bones are busting through my back gum. this is shard number three; I’ve been to the oral surgeon twice. once to be told that the bone had already erupted; next to have a small bone plucked from my gum. now, bone number three is shimmying its way to freedom and I am in dull, achy pain.

and so that old question about whether or not to try to get pregnant again is back. on November 25th it will have been one year since k put some jiz inside me and I got pregnant, miraculously, instantly (the first time that bleachy, catalpa liquid ever touched the deep red of my female parts and probably the last time).

so, k has had a one year break. and maybe, just maybe, we will give it another whirl. and maybe, just maybe, we won’t.

in the meantime I intend, via copious amounts of wine or painkillers, to join the land of the loopy, slurring street strangers and cover the pain of this erupting bone.

"Good morning Brother"

This week at a local sandwichy/soup/coffee shop called Beezy's, a lovely spirit hollered a greeting to me as I walked in the door. "Good morning brother!" He did a quick double take and then, "I mean good morning sister!"

I said a friendly good morning and chuckled to myself in the back of my throat. He was very sweet and kept shouting out to every person that entered the joint, "good morning brother or good morning sister."

I like that; I like an honest, loud morning greeting.

And, I like getting mistaken for a boy (when the right person mistakes me and doesn't get all weird and shaky after the perfectly legitimate blunder).

So, how can I make this a blog entry about trying to conceive and pregnancy/non-pregnancy? Well, I really cannot.

Here's the deal--for the most part I probably won't be writing all that much about getting knocked up or not getting knocked up or infertility or deadness falling out of my uterus for the next little while. It may pop up in my blunt observations about my life and my girl's life and the amazing people that dart in and out of both of our lives, but we are DONE with all of it for the next many months.

Frankly, I am tired of thinking about possibly raising children or not raising children or so on and so forth. Like I said in a post a bit ago, having kids will not define me and not having them will not define me either. What defines me are the choices I make every day in the ways I interact with this superbly fucked up and beautiful world.

I hope you all will still like to read this blog.

Whatever the case, I will still like writing it.

I plan on calling it the same thing because while I may be taking a break from injecting male ejaculation into the soft precious parts of kk, I am still injecting the thoughts of my mind and the compassion I can scrounge up out of my soul and the strategies that surface in my organizing heart to the work I do and the loving I try my hardest to be good at.

So, back to the kind man who shouted out a gender confused or not-so-confused greeting to me. That sort of loving spirit makes my heart sing and twitch and be glad to be alive. It is the small things that are covering me in a kind of grace at this time in my life--The river rising along the bike path; the bird songs that are growing louder in the brush and woods (blackbirds, cardinals, blue jays, robins, and the honking geese soaring overhead); the sun hovering on the horizon for more and more minutes; kk joking around with me and shoving her tongue down my throat (oh the stories);a bartender who was so happy and kind to all of her customers amidst the chaos of a super busy night;a mom of a man dying in prison who called me her angel; sharing pizza with a friend; being guided by a friend to shake and jump like a deer after falling off my bike.

Yes, the small things; the kind words, the beautiful animals of Michigan, the river that I love so much I had it tattooed on my arm, and the kind, generous and understanding people in my life--these are the things that I like to reflect on right now.

These are my injection reflections.

Amazing + Absurd = the lives of kk and the injector

Um, ya.

So, remember how we slung some seed up me a few weeks back?
And do you remember how it was the first time I had ever done such a thing?
And do you remember how long we have been trying to get my kk pregnant?

I will synopsify the attempts to get kk pregnant here:
18 months of trying (may 07-nov 08)
20 months total since the start of the whole endeavor
80 inseminations
4 visits to reproduction clinic
3 months on clomid (devil, devil, devil drug)

And then the one time on a whim when kk thought me fertile and our donor and kk decided to play a game of brief back and forth, snarky emails throughout the day--planning in sinister and loving cahoots the injection of me.

Come that night, two days before thanksgiving 2008, my love shot me up with this potential life giving fluid. She did it so gracefully and passionately my heart sprung a leak of everlasting love.

Well nearly three weeks since that fateful night, I have peed on 3 pregnancy sticks—two on Monday the 8th of December (almost 6 hours apart) and one on Friday the 12th of December after missing my period by two and a half days and all of them have shouted the positive PREGNANT.

Now on Monday evening, you should have seen me in clear and intense shock; stunned to a sit down on my ass stupor. Well you can see it below in the action photo sequence that kk took of me.

Anyhow, I tested a day and half before my period was due and got the positives. I did not start my period, and this morning (six days later) no period and moving into what seems to be my fifth week of pregnancy.

And still I am in a state of disbelief, but I am so in tune with my body that I do notice the distinct changes; abdominal pulling, gassy belly, super sleepy, bits of nausea and then me wiggling and turning and staying wide awake for hours on end when I should be sleeping. Though the last two nights, I have slept deep and fully and had crazy vivid dreams.

So, there you have it. I am carrying a little seed critter. After all of this trying and hoping and being let down and trying again and hoping some more and hitting our heads against so many elusive and hard walls, we tried this one time with me, and bang it worked. Like my mama asked, “N, do you think this is a miracle?” In some way, it is; it really, really is. I mean one time—the one time that semen has ever entered my body and presto.

At this time, I am pregnant. And kk and I are hoping with all of the hope we can muster from the deep steamy, stinking parts of our guts and the bloody, pumping parts of our hearts that this wee critter sticks and stays with us and chooses to be part of our lives.

p.s. I was hesitant about putting this up here cause I know how very early along I am, but I am trying to live each moment of this newness in joy and deep inquisitiveness.

p.s. kk is very thrilled and happy about all of this and together we will work through the sadness connected to the months and months and nearly two years of the trying without implantation that she has been through. Also, she will become a frequent guest poster here at injection reflections since she seems to be the more capable injector of the two of us:)











We went Christmas tree shopping for the first time in our nearly 9 year relationship right after we got the first positive. We were in crazy moods; happy and stunned.

will i catch a pregnancy

We just arrived home from kk's dad's house. We watched jaws 2 with him and ate cupcakes for his 62nd birthday. our drive home was very, very slickery. Winter is here in good old Michigan. It is about 30 degrees and icy.


Icy drive home

On our way out to her pop's, I noticed that all the strip clubs on Michigan avenue were thumping--packed out parking lots--and this was at 5:30 on a Monday evening. It is strange that the economy is down real, real bad here in the previously motor ruled--now motor dying state and still horny men are spending cash on liquor and titty views. Oh, I guess it really is not all that strange. When you are down and out, what's better than some booze and boobs?

Anyhow, this post is not supposed to be about ladies' parts or a dying economy or automobiles. It really is supposed to be all about me and what's been up in our super busy, but then all quiet lives.

We had turkey day here at our queer pad again. I deep cleaned the house for many days. Then I cooked a hell of a lot. Then our family and friends arrived. Then we ate a lot of the food that was cooked. Then everybody left. Then K and I slept for hours and hours each night that we had left of our vacation/weekend. Then we did nothing at all. Then I chopped a huge chunk of skin out of my left index finger and it bled for 1.5 hours and hurt like hell for about 13 hours and is still swollen [in the last two months or so, I have wounded my hands by either slicing or burning multiple times; universe what message are you sending me?]. Then kk yelled at me to be more careful with knives. Then we relaxed.


me relaxing in the small dose of sun we have had in the last many, many weeks

Monday we went back to work.

Today, I am waiting patiently to see if the mother of all miracles is taking place inside my body. yes, my body. yes, many days back we shot some living fluid up into my body. It was done on a whim. I think nothing will come of it. Kk thought I was ripe so we injected me with some semen (but I pretended it was something else like special lubricant or something, because I have never had sperm in my body before--not ever).

See,I woke up and said, "I think I have fertile mucus." Then we went to work. Then kk called me at work and said, "baby, I think we should try on you tonight." Then potential bio-dad said cool. So, come nighttime, we did it.

I keep pretending I am a queer virgin mary (or a 17 year old girl who can get pregnant from leg crawling sperms) and this one time this special dose of jiz (god breathed into me through the saint like fingers of my loving kk and the plastic cavity of a syringe--yes like the kind you feed medicine to cats with--) will get me prego.

A shot in the dark for fucking real, and kind of fun all at once.

p.s. more to come soon about what's up with kk's repro office experience and our thoughts regarding the use of my womb for potentially carrying a wee critter into the world of the living.

my thumb tip is dangling and hope is dried up...

i am having a hell of a week.

and now when i thought i would write an update here on this public blathersphere, i can barely type.

see, i sliced off (well actually it is a flap of 1/4 inch skin) part of my thumb tip this morning. the best thing about slicing my thumb, besides kk taking great care of it, was it made me forget about my headache.

on a heavier note--clomid sucks. kk took it this cycle and then failed to ever get an LH surge. she has always surged, usually for 12 hours and now she takes this drug and does not surge at all...

i am over this.

we are both at the end of our ropes and will most likely take a break from all things pregnancy related. we did inject a few times based on the days that k typically ovulates, but i have no hope. it has been dried up or washed down the drain or strung up on the wall like miserable christmas lights.

that's it.

update over...

my girl is so hot and fast!

today k and i rode home from work in 90 degree heat; it was steamy.
so, we were riding along--kind of slow cause my knee is still all fucky, but not too slow by any means--and this macho dude on his bicycle zooms past us on the grass on the right of the path we were riding on. He totally startled me and the move was straight up rude (bike rules are like car rules pass on the left).

His move made me think that he was showing off his speediness and being a semi-asshole.

Now, my kk can ride fast. she can ride like the wind. she is determined and persistent and fucking hot as hell on her new surly long haul trucker with its bar end shifters. Have i ever reflected here about how sexy i think women are when driving stick shift cars? well, i have the same reaction to women and bar end shifters--there is a loveliness in the arms of women as they reach from the top of the handle bars to the ends and the little motion it takes to shift.

so, i whispered over to kk, "go pass that guy. you can ride way faster than he can. go blow his overly zealous shared path passing ass for a whirl. seriously, go ahead; i'll catch up with ya later."

she smiled and busted a hot and beautiful move. she picked up speed; blew past him on the left, after calling out "on your left." and then she was gone and the right hand passer was left in the dust of my hotty.

I found her later at the end of the path. she was waiting for me all sweaty and gorgeous with a smirk on her summer face.

she is also extra hot cause she started the clomid and it makes her sweat. her period is done and over. she has one clomid left and then we wait for the great egg drop followed by another do it at home with injector injecting sperm sloshing party.

but back to my baby on a bicycle; she is really so strong and sexy. her calves are like carved marble rocks--elegant and shapely and when she pedals fast and hard like she did today, well she makes me kind of pant in my pants...

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...

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.

iui #2 continued

Scene 12
I did eventually wake up after going to bed...and then kk told me i could not just end it like i ended it. I had yet to include the most important parts.

So the saga continues...for one more scene at least.

Scene 13
kk is up in the stirrups. her orangy colored hair compliments the light brown sheets and her brown collar shirt marvelously. Her sun soaked skin is almost like caramel in this setting.

All the ladies are in the room--the midwife S, M the apprentice, and K the apprentice and yours truly (but I am something not-quite-lady like). I hold kk's hand and the three woman stand around her spread eagle legs.

S preps the speculum and slides it into kk, but kk winces so M runs and gets a smaller one (this is strange cause kk is usually wide enough for various objects, but those plastic speculums suck ass and pinch vaginal walls). When she is all propped, S slides the long thingy up to her cervix then through the first hole and then tries to push on into the uterus, but alas kk is blocked (she may have already dropped the egg).

S pulls it back out and kk puts her legs up on S's shoulders and she tried again, but no go. So I just press the thingy and shoot it in her cervix and so is life...

The end of iui #1

p.s. you are all real sweet with your comments and good lucks and such--thank you

iui #1

oh.oh.oh.
oh, how I wish so bad that I had my camera today to document our first midwife iui. It was quite a ride, and now, you who dare to read on, will have to hear all about it.

Scene 1
Morning
kk pees on stick--positive
the injector says, "I told you you should have peed on it last night cause I know it was positive then too."
kk, "I would have to go and get more of this these wasteful sticks."
the injector, "wah, wah, wah."

Scene 2
Injector riding by self to work.
The injector out loud while riding, "today will be hectic. kk will get them all scheduled: donor, midwife, me and kk. does it matter? not really, cause I think we are late. too bad that sucks. we are always too late or too early, or maybe kk's stuff is all dried up? or maybe we are not supposed to have kids? or maybe the world is straight up overpopulated and this is a sign? This trying and trying and no go is some kind of sign. well, there is always my womb. Oh, but then i would have to go without riding my bicycle for a few months...wah wah wah..."

Scene 3
Injector arrives at work with frozen toes
It is unseasonably cold in Michigan and I wore my sandals cause it was supposed to rain all day and I did not want wet runners. Did it rain? of course not.
VM from kk, "Be to S's by 10:45." Talk to kk in live person format. "kk you need to be to her place by 10:45 we have to be there by 11." Note: This means donor has less than one hour to get from ann arbor to ypsilanti; whack his lovely junk; kk get from ann arbor to his place and claim his lovely junk and then kk get back to ann arbor--the center of town on a market day (that's the farmer's market)--NO PARKING for people who drive cars.

Scene 4
Injector on phone with a parent of a client. It is not a good conversation. I will not go into it here because some readers may not understand the complexities connected to my sarcasm, but I am on the phone way too long and furious by the end of the conversation.
Injector leaves work AT 10:45 due to dumb person and simultaneously fuming about the difficulties some people have to go through to get pregnant and the ease that other people (dumb asses in particular) encounter.
Injector arrives by bike at midwife's office at 10:53 and locks bike to a pole. walks into waiting room. good feeling. hostility connected to earlier conversation eradicated.
kk is nowhere to be found.
Injector drinks lots of water.
kk, "I just got the sperm five minutes ago. I am on washtenaw. I will be five more minutes. Come outside and grab the jar from me so S can start the washing process."

the injector, "yes mam."

Scene 5
11 minutes later kk arrives in car on corner with sperm. Injector runs out and claims the jiz wrapped in a large gray smart wool sock. Injector stuffs aforementioned jar in pocket and dodges traffic while crossing back to office/clinic.

Scene 6
Waiting for kk to park while S preps the protein fluid and sperm and vile and all that jazz connected to this process. Injector told to hold jar close and not tip it so that the sperms can swim into the protein fluid and be washed of the stuff that comes off in the cervical canal.

Scene 7
kk arrives and she is beautiful beyond beautiful.

Scene 8
holding sperm for a long time while missing meeting for work. Happier holding sperm than meeting for work.

Scene 9
realize not enough protein fluid in vile. Restart process of holding sperm filled vile with more protein fluid added. During waiting time talk with midwife S and her two very sweet and kind apprentices about many things. Finally, conversation turns to the dangers (actually risks but danger lights went off in my head) of iui. Did you all know a person receiving sperm into uterus can go into anaphylactic shock? Bet ya did not know and now I do and boy did it freak me out and make me say glad it is not me cause I would make myself into a frenzy thinking about the ways in which my body could really truly physically reject sperm and simultaneously kill me.

Scene 10
It is washed and K gets in the stirrups and then S tries to get it through to her uterus but her cervix has already shut and so...

yes. big let down. it is just injected high up into her cervix.

Scene 11
I have to go to bed

just so you know...

kk started her period again.

i am tired.

i do not feel like writing. it is not just cause she started her period.

these days are complicated and full of strife and joy.

i am tired.

no more something is wrong with my body

I have been a bad blogger these last few weeks. Mostly, I have been too busy to think. Also, when these words came out of my kk's mouth, i got furious with this whole process, "N, I used to think my body was good and worked right and well, and I hate that this is making me think that something is wrong with my body. I hate thinking that my body is not working right. If we were not trying this, then I would not think these thoughts."

All because her temperature is all over the place.

I've come to hate that little purple thermometer. I think it is a joke.


My kk's body is just fucking fine. And to all of you out there trying, your bodies are fine too.

While I want to create a kid with my girl and I want it real bad, I do not want to get hung up in this thinking that something is wrong with kk's body.
Now, if she had breast cancer or ovarian cancer or some kind of growth in her kidney then something would be amiss and potentially life-threatening and we would work to make it not so amiss.

But, because we have decided to participate in the over-population of the american human landscape does not then make my baby's body all fucked up cause it is not happening asap. Her inability to get pregnant right now is not life-threatening. it is not an illness.

K an i are lucky to even have the time to mull over such decisions and find people who are willing to give up time in their lives to provide us with the jiz that we need to potentially make this happen. I am happy that we cannot just fuck and procreate. I think all people everywhere should have to ponder and plan before bringing a life into this world. I want to focus on the healthiness of our bodies. If we were not trying this pregnancy thing,k would never have jumped to thinking her reproductive system was unhealthy or fucked up or what ever. So, no more of this something is wrong...
I simply will not have it.

The birds are singing the rivers are rising

The last few days I have been going on huge walks around this town I love, Ypsilanti. I am a regular walker but during the winter when there is snow on the ground the sidewalks can be dangerous, cause there are a lot of absent landlords in this town and their tenants do not seem to know how to lift a shovel. So the sidewalks get slickery and my long walks get reduced to running Pookah in the park and walking her around a few streets rather than many.



On Sunday K and Pookah and I walked and walked. We walked down to the Huron River and through the park and through frog island and over the railroad tracks and down one of the oldest streets in Ypsilanti and back around through all of it. It was delightful to be out in the cold air—yes it is still colder than warm—taking in that faint smell of spring on the air.



Even though we got blasted with another 8 to 10 inches of snow on Friday night, the daffodils and crocuses have begun their sturdy ascents toward the light. And the smell of greenness and new life is faintly fusing to the atmosphere.

In these moments of surrounding our heads and hearts with the coming of the growing season, we have also been doing another kind of planting. Sunday night we slung some more sperm (3.5 ccs—which wowed my socks off) into my kk’s sweet spot. We will inject again tonight.

Our hope is resting on the life that is shaking off the thawing soil and breaking through for a gasp of light and the birds who are returning and opening their voices to the day—chirping us through the mornings and singing sleepy tunes in early evening.

May more life come with the rising rushing rivers and the longer days.

May life mix through the fluids of the bodies involved in this life making process.

May it work this time around.

February Injections

a snow kiss on lake huron


We’ve been injecting like mad since Sunday night. KK thinks she only really has one toilet paper wipe of fertile mucus, and she believes that wipe happened on Saturday while we were up in Cheboygan Memorial Hospital.

But we know the surge happened yesterday morning and was still continuing this morning. We injected Sunday night, Monday night, and Tuesday morning. This may seem like overkill, but we want one of the thousands to stick.

Bio-dad seems to have virile loads every time. He is still averaging 3CCs on a regular basis. This morning was almost 2CCs and that was after a full 3CCs 12 hours earlier.

So, in spite of the pancreatic cancer diagnosis that grandma c received yesterday—yes it is for sure cancer—we came home from up north and tried, tried yet again to get pregnant. We need a little life giving energy amidst the illness happening around us.

Update on Grandma C: she was doing quite well on Sunday morning after a rough Saturday of vomit and nausea. She was able to eat some ice cream and heftier soup for lunch before we left. She will most likely be released from the hospital in the next few days and then she will need to see a cancer doctor to talk about what’s up with treatment/end-of-life decisions…

Update on Northern MI in winter: lots of snow, lots of snowmobiles, lots of frozen water, lots of fishing shanties on bodies of frozen water, and for us this past weekend lots of sun (which was a glorious gift).

standing on snow shoes on lake huron












fishing in winter on burt lake

















snowmobile parked next to our car in hospital parking lot

the lunar eclipse and the suckiness called cancer

I wanted to wake this morning to a red stain on the sky—a remembrance of the lunar eclipse that graced this universe last night.

But there was only sunshine which is color enough when I think about the dark days of this winter and its seemingly never ending grip on the land and the people living here.

We stood outside in freezing cold temperatures and took in the shadow of this planet spreading browns and reds over the surface of the moon. As we stood there looking up into a perfectly clear night sky, I could not help but think about kk’s grandma C and the reality that she will not be here the next time a lunar eclipse unfolds in December 2010.

On Tuesday, K’s grandma went into the hospital cause her stomach was in serious pain. On Wednesday the doctors determined it was her gall bladder, so they operated. Her gall bladder had spewed out stones into her abdominal cavity, so the surgeon poked around and happened upon a huge mass in her pancreas. He took a biopsy of it, but let the family know that it is most likely cancer, and no matter what it is, it is inoperable.

So, once again cancer comes a calling kk’s family. Her dad is so sad and pissed. His immediate family consists/ed of two kids, a wife, a brother, and a mama. His wife gets cancer and dies; his brother gets cancer and dies; his ma gets cancer and then will die. She is old, but does it have to be fucking cancer? A family can only take so much of the disease. Why not a heart attack or a car wreck?

Kk is so sad cause she wanted to have a child that her grandma actually got to hold… Maybe just maybe by some miracle (I only believe in them about 1% of the time) that can still happen. But tumors on pancreases don’t make for long life spans, able bodies, or holding.

We are heading up to Cheboygan, MI tomorrow morning to hang with kk’s dad, brother, aunt, and grandma c. Mostly, we are going for her dad, at this point, cause grandma c is all doped up and out of it and her dad needs us.

At least the lunar eclipse was like a divine intervention last night. It loomed above us--a red shadow creeping slowly across the brightness of the earth’s moon; a beauteous reminder of our ant-like size amidst a vast and sprawling universe; a reminder of my thankfulness for life and being able to get mad at diseases and death and still being able to come back to the acceptance of this cycle of life we are bound to.

(We are trying to make it back by Sunday morning to inject some sperms, but with the stress of impending death of dear loved one hanging over our hearts, perhaps we should not even try this time around…)