What, You think I'm inseminating my cat?

I did something very exciting earlier this week. I called the sperm bank and asked them to take two vials of sperms out of our storage container and FEDEX them to our house. Due to my cycle this month, it has to be a Saturday delivery, which is more expensive, but you do what you have to do.

It was the next day before I realized that they are shipping us sperm and thawing instructions, but we are responsible for getting the syringes. Em and I met after work and went to a pharmacy nearby in Manhattan. No luck. They had 10ml or 5ml syringes, which don't work for us. We need a 1ml needleless oral syringe. I really didn't think this would be difficult to get at a pharmacy. So we pushed on. We took the train home and went to the local Walgreen. They too only had 10ml and 5ml syringes.

We pushed on to the RiteAid a few blocks down the street. And there is where the story becomes much more entertaining than previously. I walked up to the pharmacy counter and asked if they carried 1ml needleless oral syringes. The woman at the counter thought for a moment and then asked, "Why do you need it?" I wasn't expecting the question, so it took me a moment to reply, "For a home insemination." I tried to pitch my voice towards her so the three people waiting to ask questions weren't involved in my business any more than necessary. She asks, "Who are you inseminating?" And this is where I stood with my mouth hanging slightly open for a second, not quite knowing what she meant. What, I'm inseminating my cat? (Now that is something I would never want to do!) I told her that I was inseminating myself. And she freaked out. She kept saying, "Oh no! Do you have a doctor? Oh no!" I assured her I had a doctor who said that it was completely okay that I do this. "Don't hurt yourself," was her reply. In the end, she and the pharmacist took ten minutes trying to take apart insulin needles and I told them it was very kind of them, but I would look elsewhere.

Emily then brilliantly remembered that our neighbor Sean who runs the local pet store/animal rescue had given us 1ml syringes when we first adopted Sara from him and she needed to be dosed with medicine. So I headed to his pet store. I asked him if he had any 1ml syringes and he said he didn't have any in the store, but he walked thru to the shelter and came out with a handful of syringes. I thanked him and asked him how much I owed him and he said not to worry about it.

So there ends the story of how we got a four months supply of syringes for free after an evening spent trying to purchase them.

A Kitten to Keep You Company Until Content Returns

But Who Will Teach Her Football?

Channel-surfing last night, I stumbled upon a basketball game, and settled in to watch. It was Denver vs. Dallas; at first, I paid more attention to Denver, because of my misplaced affection for Allen Iverson (why did I not know the Sixers traded him?) AND because apparently Dikembe Mutumbo plays/played for them at some point, and I have fond memories of him missing a goddamned free throw and sending that first playoff game into overtime WHEN WE COULD HAVE JUST BEAT THE GODDAMNED LAKERS IN REGULAR PLAY. TELL ME WHY AN EIGHT-FOOT TALL ATHLETE MISSES A FREE THROW? I'M FIVE-THREE AND MY FREE THROW PERCENTAGE IS BETTER THAN THAT. However, after about ten minutes, I settled my attentions on the fact that Dallas has a white boy who can play. The problem with watching basketball while trying to waste time on the internet work is that I usually watch ball on mute, so as not to have to deal with play-by-play. Really, ball games should be watched with company, so that you all have your eyes the same direction and are talking about something else. And possibly eating a cheesesteak.

But, being me, I started thinking about masculinity. I don't have any worries about not giving my child a 'male role model.' There will be a bunch of those around: Uncle, another non-bio uncle we have around, my brother, inshallah my dad for a while. However, there are whole universes of things that I simply don't have as cultural capital, because I didn't learn how to be a proper man in contemporary American culture. In fact, my child may not have access to them at all: none of the men mentioned above perform any sort of standard masculinity: gay, sensitive, artistic, mentally ill, not raised in the US, multiple of the above, etc. I don't want my kid to learn about domination and silence about emotions and agression.

But I want hir* to know what a carburator is. To be able to understand a baseball game. To have the general knowledge that is, in our culture, assigned to men. I've wanted to be butch--I've tried--but then I start knitting, or letting my hair get long which it always is and always has been, or trying on heels, or screaming about mice, or baking, and it all falls apart in a big mess of femme disaster. I can't teach my children the things proper men know, because I get a D in proper masculinity. A D+, tops, and that's just because I like sci-fi. And sports cars. Even though I can't drive.

There's another level that comes to me as I watch sports and think of my child. I don't know how to teach my kid about being a physical being. About running, jumping, climbing trees, as Eddie Izzard says. My reasons for this are not strictly about my poor marks in masculinity. I was a sickly kid. I mean, it started with the premature birth and the borderline-cerebral palsy and the year of intense occupational therapy and then the asthma and then that benign tumor that at fifteen became a cancerous one and then the three years of surgery and crutches and wheelchairs, and somewhere in all of that I skipped enough gym class to be lost at anything resembling physical activity. My surgeons said they wanted me to be able to run for the bus. I can, but three flights of stairs from subway to ground level leaves me a little breathless, and I fail at any task involving getting two parts of my body to act in contradictory fashions. I can't teach my kid to throw a ball. To run. If ze gets hir athletic skills from Kate's side of the family, ze'll be built for motion, and that is nothing I can ever give hir.

I watched the ballgame off and on, between work and non-work. I know the rules of basketball. I can watch a muted football game in a crowded bar and know when to heckle. Baseball is idiotic anyway. My child will learn how to throw a ball from someone else, will maybe learn how to kick hir way across a field like an uncle she never met, will have a running-jumping-climbing-trees childhood, will hopefully at twenty-seven be able to sit in a bar and perform enough masculinity for hir purposes. It's all I've got to give.

We have a date!

Today, Emily and I sat down and looked at my charts for the last three months, trying to determine when we need the sperm to be in our house. After some back and forth about the semantics of what before and after ovulation means, we have agreed upon a date. That's right folks, we have set a date for delivery. And that date is:

Saturday, February 2nd!

Yes, in less than a week, we will have little frozen spermies in our house. I find that truly bizarre. And quite exciting. When we decided on the date, I felt this sense of calm descend over me. I felt like I was coming off an adrenaline high. Having something about this first try be concrete is just so lovely. Now, I just have to call the sperm bank and figure out the details of delivery.

24 Hours in Pictures

The Katester informs me that there's this thing? Where you take a photo every hour you're awake of a day? One of the bloggers she reads said we should do it? Yeah, so I did it.

Here is:
FRIDAY, JANUARY 25, IN CRAPPY CAMERAPHONE PHOTOS

MIDNIGHT

We're watching a lot of TV these days that comes on late at night. A Daily Show (not The Daily Show; The Daily Show has writers, A Daily Show has Jon Stewart and Jon Oliver fuckin' around without a script), followed by multiple re-runs of Sex and the City, followed by the midnight Simpsons episode, and by the time we've worked through all of that the 2 AM X-Files is on...It's pretty terrible for us. Plus, Uncle's schedule keeps having him get in around 12:30...so we just stay up to be together. So this is what midnight looks like in our house: my wife, in her fleece pajama pants and robe that my mom got her for Christmas, clutching that remote like her life depends on it.

ONE AM

My comprehensive exams start in a week: Friday the First. For those not in academia, comps are a series of absurd hoops that grad students need to jump through; they ensure that you have a basic grounding in the core texts of your field, and they compel you to spend a whole weekend of your life writing pointless essays. Because of this, I'm spending all my time lately reading articles I don't find particularly interesting, so I can write pointless essays about them in a week's time. 32 pages worth of pointless essays. On the left is an article by Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan about democratic consolodation. On the right is my EndNote entry for said article. On the couch in the background you can see Sara's leg.

TWO AM

Oh, and did I mention our projected insem date is somewhere between Monday the fourth (the last day of my exam) and Wednesday the sixth? So we're a little obsessed. At 2 AM the wife felt the need to read to me about insemination timing.

I coulda done a three AM shot, but it would have been of me in bed in the dark, trying to fall asleep.

EIGHT AM

Kate had to leave for work early, so I got up to see her off, pack her lunch, and generally be wifelike. After she left, I picked up her bathrobe and put it on. I've been doing that a lot lately. This is a bathroom-mirror shot, if you can't tell.

NINE AM

Incidentally, all of the shots from this point forward? Could have been mirrors of the one AM shot. Instead, I photographed other things. There was some sort of Serious Cat Dramatics happening in the house this morning; I think there were more squirrels than usual on the back porch. Both Wicket and Sara kept tearing back and forth between back door and kitchen window with puffy tails. These R Srius Cats.

TEN AM

Because every morning needs some Dana Scully in it. Her hair looks so freakin' good in the ninth season, which is funny because the show is breaking my heart. Why even bother pretending it's the X-Files without some Mulder/Scully longing gazes and witty repartee? And Invisible Mulder? Not cute. I CAN HAS VISIBLE MULDER NOW PLZ. (Funny, I think that's what Scully's thinking the whole season, too.)

ELEVEN AM.

Finally I get around to breakfast. The smoothie of the week is strawberries, blackstrap molasses, maple syrup, soy milk, and plain cow's-milk yogurt. It's not disgusting, and it's healthy. Apparently.

NOON
Time to get dressed. I bought that shirt at the beach last weekend. This is roughly my fashion MO on school-or-other-official-days: ribbed tank top, button down shirt, sweater over top if it's cold enough, cool looking jeans. Hair alternates between up in a bun and clipped, and pulled in a low pony-tail. I like up better, but pony-tail is winning these days because 1) cold=hats=hair should be down and b) my hair is just a little too long and I run a severe risk of a big poof of hair puffing up like a rooster's comb. Need a haircut.

ONE PM

Workin' on the train. A different article this time. Also I kept having to pause in my reading to dance in my seat to "Dirt Off Your Shoulders," which is only recently on my iPod.

TWO PM

And I arrive at 'Snice, a vegetarian/vegan coffee shop in the West Village. I was meeting my exam study group. We are a motley bunch: different regional foci, different theoretical foci, different tastes in caffeinated beverages. You can see the edges of them through the glass. I got the seat by the door. It was cold.

THREE PM

'Snice has the most amazing freakin' cupcakes. They're vegan and covered with icing like I used to eat out of the can that I kept by my bed when I was a kid. We almost had them be the cupcakes at our wedding (for our gluten-eating guests), but the vanilla ones are healthy-looking: you know, they look like they have nutritional value. We didn't want to scare our guests, so we went with Crumbs' less healthy-looking but almost as yummy cupcakes. But I got one today. And a Cuban with soy ham and lots of mustard. And a large hot chocolate, which had entirely too like chocolate in it. Basically, I want liquid chocolate pudding.

FOUR PM

Once something passes two hours in length, unless it has a lot of shiny bells and whistles, I've lost my attention span. This is my "I'm done studying for my exam today" face. Taken in the bathroom at 'Snice. Luckily, we broke up the session about 20 minutes later.

FIVE PM

I got home around 5:30 to a very exciting piece of mail: my very first journal article is published! My copies have arrived! It's a graduate-student women's studies journal; the article is the first published thing I've gotten out of my undergrad thesis. That was my squee of the day.

SIX PM

My evening needed some Dana Scully in it, too. On second thought, those Doggett and Reyes kids are OK. I like there being Mexicans on TV, even when they're played by white girls. And there's a baby around. But still. I CAN HAZ. Etc.

SEVEN PM

Kate gets home from her super-stressful day, and we have to go out tonight (more on that below). Dinner is tomato soup with shredded cheese melted on top. This is a loser's way out of a meal, but she will eat it and it contains vegetables and/or fruit.

EIGHT PM

Our evening was spent at the Park Slope Food Co-op, where we've been members since we moved to the city. It's the largest member-run co-op in the country; there are about 30 paid employees, and 14000 active members, who all work one shift a month (roughly) and do all the major work of the store, from stocking to checkout to designing the newspaper and running the office. Kate's shift started at eight-thirty, but mine didn't start until 9, so I grabbed some much-needed groceries in the break. In this basket: cream cheese, frozen peas, soy milk, tortilla chips, peanut butter, and other necessaries.

NINE PM

Then I took my place at the cash register. Checking out groceries and taking payment are different jobs at the co-op, in order to reduce the number of people who handle cash. I handle cash. We just got a new system, that makes our lives much easier.

TEN PM

Providing plenty of time to do my homework. This is for class, not for exams. It hurt my brain due to the dumb. Sigh.

ELEVEN PM

Then we took the bus home. And came home. And watched TV (not the X-Files: I want her to stay married to me, after all). And ate cheese puffs. And blogged. (Photos not included of that. No one wants to see my in my little brother's red hoodie and blue cotton panties. Not even my wife; she hates this hoodie.)

Kate promises to do this soon...on a day when she won't just be taking photos of what she's watching on TV all day, which is what tomorrow is expected to be.

Revolution

As we begin this baby adventure, other parts of my life are going completely crazy. There are so many ways in which I can't talk about them on the internet, but suffice it to say, I finally have something to focus on that is taking at least as much of my concentration as the baby project, and that is saying something. So wish me luck on a scary, but ethically and morally correct course of action. At least I'll be able to tell our little Commune Child that they were conceived in the midst of a revolution.

We're off to the races!

Yesterday was a big day in the world of the Commune Child. It was CD1 of the cycle that we start inseminating. We had been trying to convince my body that it wanted to wait until Tuesday or Wednesday, but Monday was the day and so we go with it. We wanted to push the first possible insemination date a little further past the end of Emily’s Comparative Politics Field Exam, which runs from February 1-February 4. Looking at the year’s worth of data that we have gathered about my cycle, with CD1 on January 21, our possible insemination dates are February 4, 5 or 6. We will just have to hope that this month I go long!

This is all so very exciting and real. When I walked into my chiropractor’s office this evening, Dr. G. said, “Aren’t you just so excited about it!” Em had seen her earlier in the day and had mentioned that my cycle had started yesterday. I do love the interconnectedness of our lives. I think it’s a good environment to bring a child. Now we just need the universe to agree.

Kate on Privilege

I have always thought that Emily was much more eloquent speaking about class and privilege. I’ve always found it difficult to talk about the privilege inherent in the way I was raised, mostly because at the time I didn’t realize it was there.

I grew up in the same small town as Emily, although we didn’t meet until we attended the same public high school. We had very little in common when we met, same town or not. I grew up in a six-bedroom house on an acre and a half next to a large estate with 30 acres of land. My mother didn’t work outside our home once my parents had me until my brother and I were both almost in middle school. My father was throughout my childhood a clinical psychologist, a stock broker, a personal pilot, part-owner of a minor league baseball team and I had several friends who were certain that he must work for the CIA (this has never been disproven.)

My mother placed great value in books and read to me in both English and French when I was little (she was a French major in college and taught for a while). My father spoke a great deal about books being important, but never read himself. My parents had been big travelers before I was born and when I was born, they brought me along. I got my first passport when I was three months old. By the age of three, I had been to almost every European country.

I attended a private Quaker school from the age of 5 until the end of middle school. I chose a public high school because I wanted something more than I could find with the same twenty kids I’d been going to school with for the last ten years. My first sense of class came from discovering in middle school that one of my friends was on something called a “scholarship”. I was not entirely clear on what that was. In elementary school I took ballet, horseback riding, gymnastics and piano lessons. This was average at my private school.

Looking back at my childhood from a position of much greater understanding of class and privilege than I had for most of my life (although I am aware even the understanding I have now comes from a privileged place), I am struck by how stereotypically white, upper middle-class WASPy suburban my family looks. And from the age of twenty-seven and with significantly more historical context to my family than I used to have, I have to nod my head in appreciation to my father, who made a decision at a young age and did such a good job living up to it that I was in high school before I realized that our last name was recognizable Jewish.

My father was raised in a conservative Jewish household. They attended temple and lived in a mostly Jewish neighborhood. My grandfather was an immigrant from Latvia when he was fifteen. My father’s older brother attended the local public school and was bar mitzvahed. However, my grandfather was a teacher at a private boarding school that was viewed a feeder school for Yale. Unlike my uncle, my father attended the school my grandfather taught at, the only non-Christian, poor, scholarship kid at the school. Although I don’t know this for sure, my guess is that he saw what all his classmates had and how his family lived and decided he wanted to be a WASP too. He somehow convinced his parents that he didn’t want to be bar mitzvahed and then he went on to separate himself as far from his origins as he could manage. He went on athletic scholarship to a very good school (although, ironically, I think, not as good as his father and brother, who both went to Yale). He married a good Methodist girl from a thoroughly English family. He learned the stock market in the early 1980’s and put aside the money he needed to substantiate his new image. He sent his children to a private Quaker school and even went so far as to become Quaker with the rest of our family when I was ten. As Emily said in her post about privilege, he even managed to get himself onto something called the gentleman’s auxilery, the premiere in WASPy credentials in my book.

Emily said in her post, “Class is something you inherit, something that comes to you from your parents, and something you give to your children.” And she is absolutely correct. My father was given a certain class from his parents. And it was this lack of privilege that he rebelled against. He rejected it outright. He chose an entirely new class status for himself and he has forced his life and his circumstances to reflect his choice. He took this new class status and he inculcated this reality he had created into his children. And I am choosing to do the same thing with my children. Our children will know their heritage, where they came from. They will not be in high school when they discover that the first half of their last name is Jewish. We will teach them to celebrate the diversity of their class background, on all sides of their family and then they will have the choice to do with it what they will.

Emily On Privilege

Here is where I'm coming from.

Kate and I are away for the weekend. (This is relevant, I swear.) When we told people we were headed out of town Friday night, after a late meeting, and they asked us where, it's Kate answered. She named the beach town where we are, and says simply, "Em's folks have a place down there."

I can't say it. I can't say it because it's an admission of something I've never felt. If called upon to account for the free vacation time we spend here, I am a snippy answer: My dad inhereted half a single-wide trailer when his mother died. And, if I really feel like it, I can tell you about the family dramas involved, about the times when my folks have really considered giving the place up because of the monthly payments. Anything. I will tell you anything, to avoid being thought of as a person whose family has a summer house.

I've written some about my personal class history on my other blog: the post is here, and it's a little scattered but I rather like it. In any case, let's have it be enough that I grew up relatively-deprived for where I'm from, one of the only kids I encountered regularly who did not come from easy money. Beyond the general money-tightness, my folks went pretty broke in my teenage years, because I had cancer and we had shitty insurance. So I grew up with a bitterly-honed sense of class resentment, nurtured on merely the difference between being upper-middle-class and being lower-middle-class.

Kate's experience of class was different than mine; I'll let her tell you about it. But class was a problem for us as we started dating, not for any practical reason, but because it was a psychological barrier for me. I didn't like that she knew how to be around money. I didn't like that she knew what brand all her clothes were. I didn't like that she had a car, had a trust fund, had a private school history, had a father who served on something called a gentlemen's auxillary and that neither of her parents appeared to have worked a day in ten years. I couldn't handle it. I've learned how to, now, but it's a skill I resent. I resent privilege. I don't think I'll ever forget how.

------

Here is the first thing about the privilege meme. It is not about what your class status is now; it is about what class status you inherited. Most Americans harbor this notion that you can simply change classes and become someone else, by earning a degree or getting a job or winning the lottery. But you can't. Class is something you inherit, something that comes to you from your parents, and something you give to your children. (This is why I thought it was so powerful when when Bridgett did this meme for herself and her daughter; class can be changed, class can be inherited, class can be passed on all at once.) I think this is why the meme has appeared so frequently in the parenting-and-babies blog circles: we look at our children and we think of what we are giving them. I think about the kids I want to have: how I want to raise them in New York or somewhere similar, so they never think that only white faces are normal and that English is the only language in the world; how I want to teach them about art and music and bad television and good television and cheap boardwalk food and what it tastes like to grow your own dinner. I want them to understand the difference between needing and wanting, to understand about not being able to get everything they want and sometimes not even everything they need, because this is life. This is reality. These are the things I want to teach my kids about money and about class and about privilege: that we are human, that humanity transcends, and that the trappings of creature comfort can be traps, or they can be pleasures. I don't want my kids to have my resentment, and given the material situation Kate and I can predict ourselves being in over the next bit, they probably won't have it; we won't be rich, but we'll be able to keep ourselves together, and they'll be New Yorkers, after all. But I do want them to be aware. I want them to understand what class means, to understand where that resentment comes from. (I wonder if anyone's translated Nietzsche into third-grade-reading-level yet.) I want to give my kids my awareness, without my anxiety. That's why this matters to me.

------


There's another thing I thought about a lot looking over the privilege meme--besides the fact that my internal social scientist could mount an intense and complex refutation of most elements of it. (The cell phone thing? I didn't have one in high school in 1996-2000. My brother, who is a senior now, does have one. What does that mean? Why heating bills and not grocery bills? It was groceries that caused consternation in my house.) But looking over it, there are two different kids of class status being communicated in it. One of them is ownership-status: what does one have? What can one give one's kids? The other is knowledge-status: what sort of information can you convey to other people and your children about yourself. Ownership-status is all the things about summer camp, computers, cars. Those are things we can give, or not give; one can have the money to give one's kids their own computers, but decide not to do it. But knowledge-status is different: it's about giving your kids the assuredness to feel that they are capable of being full and complete members of the world. The actual money involved in reading children's books to your kids, in taking them to museums, or in presenting them with media images that reflect their own images positively. These are the gifts my parents gave me that I respect the most: the books, the museums, the encouragement. Those are gifts that not everyone feels entitled to give to their children; maybe they don't know they're there, maybe they don't know what they can mean, maybe they know but they don't have the time or the energy. And that's where class privilege kills people; that's where it takes away their power. I don't want to give my kids material things that build them up above those around them; it's against my religion, in a very literal way. But I do want to tell them they're worth listening to, worth talking to, worth spending time with. Class is not just about money, not just about what one has; it's about whether one feels entitled to exist. Everyone should feel entitled to exist. That's all I'm saying.

Emily's Privilege

Here are my answers to the privilege meme. Tomorrow Kate will offer her thoughts on what the meme means, and Sunday I'll do the same.

If your father went to college before you started
If your father finished college before you started
If your mother went to college before you started
If your mother finished college before you started
If you have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor.
If your family was the same or higher class than your high school teachers
If you had a computer at home when you were growing up
If you had your own computer at home when you were growing up
If you had more than 50 books at home when you were growing up
If you had more than 500 books at home when you were growing up
If were read children’s books by a parent when you were growing up
If you ever had lessons of any kind as a child or a teen
If you had more than two kinds of lessons as a child or a teen
If the people in the media who dress and talk like you were portrayed positively
If you had a credit card with your name on it before college
If you had or will have less than $5000 in student loans when you graduate
If you had or will have no student loans when you graduate
If you went to a private high school
If you went to summer camp
If you had a private tutor
If you have been to Europe more than once as a child or teen
If your family vacations involved staying at hotels rather than KOA or at relatives homes
If all of your clothing has been new
If your parents gave you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them
If there was original art in your house as a child or teen
If you had a phone in your room
If your parent owned their own house or apartment when you were a child or teen
If you had your own room as a child or teen
If you participated in an SAT/ACT prep course
If you had your own cell phone in High School
If you had your own TV as a child or teen
If you opened a mutual fund or IRA in High School or College
If you have ever flown anywhere on a commercial airline
If you ever went on a cruise with your family
If your parents took you to museums and art galleries as a child or teen
If you were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family

Kate's Privilege

In the next few days, Em and I will both be completing this meme about privilege and then speaking about our different experiences growing up five minutes away from each other in the same small town. I will bold all the things that were true for me. My answers are below:

If your father went to college before you started
If your father finished college before you started
If your mother went to college before you started
If your mother finished college before you started
If you have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor.
If your family was the same or higher class than your high school teachers
If you had a computer at home when you were growing up
If you had your own computer at home when you were growing up
If you had more than 50 books at home when you were growing up
If you had more than 500 books at home when you were growing up
If were read children’s books by a parent when you were growing up
If you ever had lessons of any kind as a child or a teen
If you had more than two kinds of lessons as a child or a teen
If the people in the media who dress and talk like you were portrayed positively
If you had a credit card with your name on it before college
If you had or will have less than $5000 in student loans when you graduate
If you had or will have no student loans when you graduate
If you went to a private high school
If you went to summer camp
If you had a private tutor
If you have been to Europe more than once as a child or teen
If your family vacations involved staying at hotels rather than KOA or at relatives homes
If all of your clothing has been new
If your parents gave you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them
If there was original art in your house as a child or teen
If you had a phone in your room
If your parent owned their own house or apartment when you were a child or teen
If you had your own room as a child or teen
If you participated in an SAT/ACT prep course
If you had your own cell phone in High School
If you had your own TV as a child or teen
If you opened a mutual fund or IRA in High School or College
If you have ever flown anywhere on a commercial airline
If you ever went on a cruise with your family
If your parents took you to museums and art galleries as a child or teen
If you were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family

Wait, you live in a commune?!?

People get confused when we say we live in a commune. Who lives in communes these days? No one. It's the year 2008. We're New Yorkers. We have cell phones and are snarky. Communes exist out in the woods with people who don't shower enough and grow their own food and are hopelessly earnest.

Wait a second. I don't shower enough and grow tomatoes and peppers out back. Shit. Bad example.

I admit, it's an unusual commune. There are only three of us; we used to be four, but we lost a member and never replaced her. We knew each other before we moved in together: Uncle and I went to school together, as did Kate and our former member. We don't live on forty acres in the woods, but in a three-bedroom apartment on a nice, quiet Brooklyn block. What we are is a household that is organized around principles of communal living. We are not roommates; we are not three people who happen to inhabit a common space. Although we each have our own belongings, our own lives, our own finances, we are fundamentally one unit, a group of people who have committed ourselves to taking care of each other. A family, to be exact.

We don't organize ourselves around the principle of equality; instead, being good post-Marxists, we go back to the source. From each, according to her ability; to each, according to her need. We juggle rent and grocery percentages, collectively budget for family vacations, and have a massive, never-ending chore chart that divides work by who has what time when and who has what talents and skeeves. (They won't allow me to do laundry, because I believe that it all comes out the same way no matter how you wash it; Kate never has to clean out the drain in the sink.) All together, we manage to piece together a household and a life, and a pretty nice one at that.

As for the baby. Well. We haven't yet sat down and had the major planning conversation yet, but some things are clear. Kate and I are the ones having the baby. However, he is excited; excited enough to read The Ultimate Guide to Lesbian Conception and Pregnancy on the subway, at least. In fact, all three of us are given to random bouts of potential-baby-related squeeing. And once again, it's from each, for each, and we push forward, figuring out where this will take us, knowing that we'll get there together, one way or another.

Things Dana Scully Does While Pregnant That Kate Is Not Allowed To Do

• Pull Guns On People
• Wander Through The Desert Alone At Night With a Flashlight
• Lift Heavy Trapdoors
• Get Strangled By Alien Bounty Hunter
• Get Thrown Against A Glass Wall By Alien Bounty Hunter
• Be Exposed To Dead Alien Slime
• Do Any Of The Above In Three Inch Heels
• Look Seriously Dehydrated After Doing All of The Above
• End Up Bruised About The Face And In The Hospital
• Smell Regurgitated Fingers
• Perform Autopsies
• Ride In Rowboats (Especially With John Doggett)
• Shoot The Ceiling (Actually The Giant Man-Bat On The Roof, But Anyway)
• Hunt Man-Bats In General

Items Not On The List:

• Save The World. I mean, if duty calls...
• Become Pregnant By Fox Mulder. Seriously, if he were willing to be our donor, I'd be all over that shit.

Why, yes, we have been watching the X-Files Season Eight marathon that ran on SciFi today. And, yes, this show seriously blows without Mulder on it. And I think I want to push John Doggett off a cliff. And not an Alien Bounty Hunter John Doggett either.

Get to know us better

Google Analytics tells me that our blog has had 29 unique visitors. Hello visitors! Special greetings to the two of you who have commented! For all of you, the following:

Because we never really know each other as well as we think, in response to this post I'd like you to ask a question. Anything about which you are curious, anything you feel you ought to know about me. Silly, serious, personal, fannish. Ask away. Then copy this to your own journal, and see what people don't know about you.

Mea Culpa

There was supposed to be a post yesterday. But I got distracted by...being an idiot. So no post. And it's my fault. And I am officially posting to mention the fact.

And that post I was supposed to write? It's coming.

Sorry, wife.

Emily Returns

Emily has returned this evening. Please stay tuned until tomorrow when we will return to our regularly scheduled posts.

What I've already sacrificed for this chance of a baby

I had my appendix out when I was fifteen. Once it was out, the doctors discovered that it was perfectly healthy and had no guess as to what had been wrong with me. At the time, and for many years after, I chalked it up to being absolutely miserable having just transfered from a very small Quaker school where I had been since Pre-K to a large public high school where I knew no one. I believed in psychosomatic illness; I actually still do, I've just gotten new data in recent years.

In the time between my appendectomy when I was fifteen and when I was twenty-four, I had been to many doctors about my intestinal discomfort, distress, love affair with the bathroom, whatever was the polite euphimism of the day. I had been told I was severely lactose intolerant and had Irritable Bowel Syndrome. I believed the doctors because I had found no reason not to. I was uncomfortable and unable to keep food in my body for very long, but I didn't know what to do about it. I've been 5' 7" since I was 11 years old and I fought to stay at 105 pounds. Eating didn't help, so I figured it was just my body type.

When I was twenty-four, I got hired by the same non-profit I work for today. And for the first time in the year and a half since I had graduated from college, I had health insurance. I decided to go crazy and try to address ever single health concern I'd ever had at once. By some wonderful chance, I stumbled across the path of the most lovely rheumotologist. I told him everything that was wrong with me and he said that all these random things that I had told him added up to a potential single disease. He ran some blood tests and sure enough, I was the proud owner of an auto-immune disease that had gone undiagnosed for ten years, my pointless appendectomy being the first outbreak of Celiac Disease.

It explained everything; my inability to gain weight, my love affair with the bathroom, my poor dental hygiene, everything. And the only thing I had to do to cure all my problems was never consume gluten again...

For those of you who don't know, gluten is in EVERYTHING. Gluten is Wheat, Rye, Barley and Oats(by way of always being contaminated). So, no bread, no pasta and pretty much no packaged foods because the American food industry has found that wheat is a wonderful, CHEAP, way to bulk out pretty much any prepared food. I was diagnosed in June of 2005 and I haven't had a Krispy Kreme donut since. I had been a pretty bad junk food addict my entire life and I suddenly lost what I considered to be entire food groups.

But it is worth it. My love affair with the bathroom has stopped being a necessity and is now a choice I get to make. I can finally gain weight; 125 pounds and proud of it. And I don't feel run down and tired all the time. Celiac causes severe cases of vitamin and mineral diffeciences. Emily has stepped up in wonderful ways to help me. She cooks all my food and in recent time has started gluten-free baking in a semi-professional way that involves me actually getting to have home-made cookies and cakes, which is amazing.

Through these past two and a half years, one consideration has kept me on the straight and narrow when very little else would. Women with Celiac Disease that is not under control are at significantly higher risk for miscarriage. Once you are diagnosed, ob/gyns say you have to be gluten-free without any cheating for two years before you should even consider trying to conceive. That's how long it takes your body to really begin to heal fully.

So my desire to get pregnant and bring a baby into our family is what kept me from weeping when I sat down at the conference table this morning at an all-staff celebration of one of my co-worker's promotion within the organization and saw the beautiful box of organic, yeast-risen donuts. It kept me from reaching into the box as time and time again the coworker who had brought the donuts in, explained in loving detail just how wonderful these donuts were. To be fair, my coworkers are great. They go out of their way to accomodate my food intolerances. In fact, they had bought me my own container of diced fruit so I wouldn't feel left out at the meeting.

I sat this morning with my container of fruit in front of me, the donut box being handed across me multiple times so everyone could try each kind and smiled, realizing that after two and a half years of abstaining, in just three weeks, we will start trying for that dream that has kept me from cheating, a healthy baby to love.

The Furry Children

When I'm at home and I talk about wanting a baby, I always have to pause and say, "I mean a HUMAN baby, princess." Like so many other queer households we are mommies to two beautiful little girl cats. In fact, it's our house motto: Queer Feminists with Cats.

At the moment we have Wicket, a beautiful black and tan tabby cat who will be five years old in April and Sara, a white and black kitten who will be six months old on Monday. While Emily has been away over the last nine days, Sara has become a very needy little girl. Since she came home to us at 8 weeks, she has been a cuddler, a constant source of purrs. But with Emily gone, she's become a clinger also. I am not allowed to sit at the computer without Sara draped on my lap, held craddled in my left arm or draping herself across the back of my neck, contentedly chewing on my hair. If I sit in my blue chair to read or watch TV, she mews plaintively for me to pick her up and then remembers that she can jump now and lands on my lap, feet splayed. She follows me into the bathroom and demands to sit on my lap.

I was instant messaging with a friend the other night and mentioned that I was becoming quite skilled at typing with one hand while cradling a baby cat in the other. I thought that this would be a useful skill when we have a human baby who needs attention all the time. Her response was that I would have to stop cuddling with Sara all the time or she would be jealous of a baby. And I've been thinking about that. Our cats take almost all of our mothering energy right now. I am Mama and Em is Mommy for them. Uncle is...Uncle. I don't think that there is any way that the cats are going to be happy about a little human who gets most of the attention and cries and doesn't pet them nicely. So, any thoughts? I don't want to stop paying attention to my kitty children, but I also want to prepare them for the changes to come and they don't speak English.

Theory and Practice

I find as the time for the first insemination gets closer and closer that it is more and more difficult for me to focus on anything else. I mean, I get work done and I sleep at night, but this baby thing is really taking over my brain. A year ago, when Em and I were gearing up for our wedding in May, I was just starting to take my BBT and taking prenatal vitamins. Em and I had agreed to not talk in any practical ways about children until after the wedding was over. At the time, even with the wedding on the horizon, I felt like I had baby on the brain all the time. Now, looking back, I clearly had no idea how much more baby on the brain I could get.

I think that the difference between then and now is that then it was all so very theoretical. We didn't really chart yet, we didn't have a donor picked out, we were so new to this whole aspect of our lives. Now, a year later, we have extensive charts for the last nine months, we have sperm in storage, just waiting for a phone call to come winging its way to us. We are just so much more present in the baby-making moment. There is still the aspect of the theoretical in that we aren't actually pregnant yet, but we are starting ttc in less than four weeks. How on earth am I supposed to be focused on anything else at this point?

I See Straight People: Or, How I Learned to Start Worrying and Love Political Science

I promised the wife I'd post today, so she could have a day off. I had one post planned, but it's not happening. (Aw, hell, it's an anonymous blog, right? I've got what we call "the crazies" round our parts. It involves a lot of not going to sleep, which wears on the braincells. The other post takes thought; this one is stream of consciousness)

I'm away in Arizona, participating in a big academic thing (which is going well, despite the crazies). However, this has been an interesting opportunity to ponder my position within the academy, for a lot of reasons: who do I say who my advisor is? What does it mean that I go to such a crazy school? Is my dissertation actually interesting to anyone?

And, more than anything, why the *fuck* is the discipline of political science so full of straight people?

In computer terms, there's something called 'pinging,' where you send off a signal from one computer to another to make sure the connection is there. (This is probably old hat to most of you, but is a relatively recent discovery for me, Mac user since 1996.) In any case, when I get into a group of people of unknown queerness, I start pinging desperately. I talk about my wife. I talk about queer organizing. I talk about gay bars. God help me, I make tedious sexual innuendo where appropriate. *ping* I say. *queersoverherepleaseletmeknowi'mnotalone*. *ping*

I remember this feeling from Model UN in college; traveling with the team, there was always a strangeness about spending so much time in that straight world. I said at the Model UN banquet my senior year that I appreciated the team for giving me my only consistent contact with straight people, and not only was it the laughline of the evening, it was so resoundingly true that it was a little suprising. And now I'm amidst a bunch of poli sci PhD candidates, including, amazingly enough, a fellow alum of that Model UN team. And I'm pinging. I think I've told more people about our plans to have kids in the last week than I did in the two months before hand. *ppingfuturelesbianmomoverhereping* I've said the words 'my wife' and 'our wedding' at least ten times a day. *pingareyououtthereping* I'm dressing as butchly as I can, which is, unfortuately, not that butch. *pingdykeintanktopoverhereping*

And nothing. NOTHING. I'm pinging like a motherfucker and the closest thing I've gotten to a result is a very nice straight boy with a queer girlfriend (he happens to share my taste in bad TV and sushi, so it's not a total wash). I'm seeing butch girls with short hair and nose rings talk about their husbands, effeminate boys using pool cues as proxies to convince me of something I don't really care about. I'm seeing a huge thunderous mountain of straight people. I'm sick of it.

So, yes, I'm happy there's a growing conversation here about having spouses and kids and how to make academia work while still having a family. And I'm happy that I'm here--there's no way I could not be. But I'm tired of pinging. I'm tired of trying. I am tired of straightness. I want to go home.

Independent Living

As I said in a previous post, Em and I are a codependent couple. We really enjoy spending the majority of our time together. We usually need a specific reason to go somewhere without each other. So the times when Em travels for her academics have always in the past been times that I put up with, killing time until she gets back.

This is why I am finding myself confused this time to discover that I'm having a perfectly nice time being on my own for these twelve days. Yes, I miss Em and look forward to her return on Saturday night, but I'm being independent and it is going well. It's not so much that I'm surprised by this as that I'm pleased. It's good to know that when she travels again that I can look forward to reading books, knitting the future baby an afghan, watching way to much TV, blogging and playing with the cats. Although I have some question whether my lack of anxiety around her absence has more to do with her only being in Arizona and not Palestine, and not my growing as a human being.

Friends Gossip

Today was my last day in a position of some noticeable authority at my place of Quaker worship. I'd be more specific but we are trying to maintain some level of anonymity and if I said exactly what I've been doing for the last 13 months, I think that it would be a lot easier to figure out who I am. That having been said, I am both relieved and saddened to be leaving this position. This last year has been difficult, but also rewarding.

Em and I decided this fall that I should step down at the beginning of the new year because the position requires a serious time commitment each month and also requires up to three hours of sitting in one place without moving on wooden benches while being watched by many people, and if, as we are hoping, I get pregnant in the next few months, my ability to do this will be compromised. I felt that it was better to step down at a time when someone new could be relatively easily appointed, as opposed to waiting it out and discovering the problem in the middle of a term of service. It seems more respectful of the meeting community. However, I've enjoyed getting to know the meeting better and being more involved.

In an amusing side note, the members of our meeting are such gossips. I mentioned, I thought discreetly, to one member of our meeting my reasons for not continuing in the position and within a few weeks, five different members of the meeting had either asked me if I were pregnant yet or talked about how exciting it was that Em and I would be "increasing our numbers." We have declared that we are very happy that they are all so excited, but that we will let them know as soon as we feel comfortable sharing a possible pregnancy with them.

The Traffic Game

We have this game we play. Whenever we are in the car and the traffic is looking really good and we are pleased by our progress, we never say, "Oh, wow, look at how well the traffic is moving, we're making great time." We say instead, "I'm sure that any minute now the traffic will slow down considerably and the trip will take longer than we planned." This is because of a theory that we hold that if you talk about how well something is going and presume to suggest that the future will continue to be good, something bad happens because you tempted the gods. This game doesn't always work, but a lot of the time it does and we can't explain it so we just go with it.

When we started talking seriously about having a baby, we realized that this was another situation where we needed to play the game. We couldn't say, "Of course, Katie will get pregnant really quickly so we need to plan for an October baby." That would just be asking for God to notice us and make it take forever for us to conceive. It's not that I believe in a vengeful God, I'm just really careful about jinxing my life. So we say instead, "We should buy 8 vials of sperm because we will certainly need all of them. We should stock up on OPK's because we are in this for the long haul."

That being said, there is this little bit of me that just keeps thinking about how I will be pregnant in just a few months of trying; about how I will be on maternity leave this time next year. (I will leave for another day the description of how good the benefits are at my job. Seriously, Em jokes that I work in Sweden.) And even as the little, quiet bit of me fantasizes about how big I will get over the next year, another part of me is realistically planning to be in this for the long haul. Because Emily and I have not found life to be easy and without trial. Death and serious illness seem to stalk us. So I try to nurture the little bit of myself that is thinking that this baby thing is going to be easy and straightforward, because deep down, I am so convinced that this is going to be one more thing that is really hard.

Missing My Girl

I've always theoretically known that this baby-making process is a two person project but these past few days have really brought home the practical aspects of that truth.

Emily has been away on an academic trip since January 1st, and already I am feeling her absence. Well, clearly I'm missing her. We are one of those codependent couples who spend a great deal of time together and rarely travel alone. Don't knock it, it works for us. But more than just missing her on an emotional level, I'm missing her on a very practical, TTC level. I chart pretty much every sign that we can figure out and she is away right in the middle of my cycle. For the first time since we started charting over six months ago, I am having to figure out how to monitor my own cervix. Let me just say, she makes it look easy. I really didn't comprehend until I had to do it by myself how tricky it is to read my cervix with anything resembling consistency and accuracy. All I can say is it's a good thing that this month is the last of our preparation months and we aren't actually inseminating this month or we'd be in trouble. Sometimes you can't appreciate your wife as much as you should until she's on the other side of the country.

The Chiropractor

I'd been thinking all day that I wanted to talk to my chiropractor, Dr. G., about how/if we will modify my adjustments for the TWW parts of the coming months. It seemed kind of a bad idea to be doing a lot of lower back work with potential babyness going on. Em said that Dr. G must adjust lots of women who are pregnant and don't know it yet, so she didn't see why it would be a problem. But I'm a worrier; it's a family thing. I come from a long line of worriers.

So I really appreciated when Dr G. walked into the room, asked my how my New Year had been and said, " So when are we doing this baby thing?" I really enjoy that our chiropractor (Em see her too) is so excited about the baby project. She mentions relatively often how much she loves that we've been together since high school.

I told her of the January 22nd beginning of cycle and the probable date of February 5th for the first insemmination and then she talked about how many different things she will do with me throughout my pregnancy to make it less painful and make labor easier. And again she mentioned how it should all be straightforward as I was so much younger than her other patients trying to conceive. (Since when is 27 young to be having kids?!) I really appreciative her positive, excited approach to this next part of our lives. I gotta say, I do love my chiropractor!

A Beginning

The Plot Synopsis:

A most unconventional household and its adventures in the babyverse. Our high-school sweetheart heroines embark on trying to conceive, and their bewildered roommate compels himself not to run from the room in terror every time the word 'cervix' comes into the conversation. Philosophy, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Indian food, and how much they'll have to clean when there's a baby around are prime topics of conversation.

The Cast of Characters (Such as They Are):

Kate: The Future Pregnant Lady. Firmly in her late twenties, spends her time working for a radical social-justice foundation and occupying the blue arm-chair in the living room.

Em: The Future Non-Pregnant Lady. By earning her PhD she intends never to have a job that actually requires, you know, work that isn't thinking. Usually found near one of her two favorite appliances; the KitchenAid stand mixer or her laptop.

Uncle: The Roommate. People asked him if he'd have to move out when his roommates got married. He just laughed. A professional dancer and photographer who ekes out a living with odd jobs (some of them very odd).

Wicket & Sara: The Cats. Very Important Cats.

The Setting:

A Brooklyn neighborhood about to tip from 'up and coming' to 'arrived,' much to the consternation of our cast. A lovely little communally-run apartment, complete with backyard garden and that grail of New York apartments, a washer-dryer combo. Organic food in the fridge, ignored chore chart on the wall, a fine layer of newspapers, homework, cat fur and fantasy novels covering all the furniture, a TiVo full of X-Files and Family Guy reruns. Something on the stove, ten to one.

The Conception Plan:

Charting has been going on for ten months or so, and has come to occupy at least 25% of Kate's brain at all times. (Em is routinely called in for data processing tasks.) First home insemination looks to be in early February. (Date picked to ensure that Em would be able to defend her dissertation prospectus before becoming a mother.) Eight vials of donor sperm are on ice in Los Angeles, awaiting orders. (Hey, they were going to raise the prices. We had to buy in bulk.)