Pigs are flying, the curvaceous lady is singing her tune, the cows are back home cracking open their beer...

For the second time this week, I have just had a completely pleasant conversation with my mother including much talk about the wedding. Holy crapola. I think she must be making a special, cognizant effort to be nice to me, especially about the wedding stuff. She's asking questions about it. She's joking with me about it. She's offering to learn how to emboss paper so she can help make our invitations. She's saying she'd like to give us some money for it, but can't make promises because she and my Dad don't have much left over these days. I tell her anything they'd like to offer would be much appreciated and if they can't contribute cash that's completely ok and then we talk about bridesmaids dresses. She asked what we're going to do with our last names and I even brought up having kids without incident.

I really love this stuff (and I'm hoping it won't come crashing down in some big fight). She and I have had such a bumpy road of it since I came out to her, several years of really bad periods followed by periods of two-steps-forward-one-step-back stuff, so I'm trying to appreciate this without setting my heart on it. I love my mother. I feel sorry that she has had to go through so much turmoil and inner change because she happened to be one of the many parents of gay children. I admire the strength of this remarkable woman and so deeply appreciate the efforts she makes for me- I know I haven't been the easiest daughter in the world. She turns 60 next month and I know I want to spend as much time as possible soaking up her love and reflecting it right back to her while we're still together; when I was 9 years old, I realized one night while trying to fall asleep, for the first time, that my mother wouldn't live forever and I cried into the wee hours of the morning until finally going to sleep. That's a feeling that has stayed with me since that night and so often I have to push my thoughts about that finiteness away in order not to cry some more. I love my mother so much more than I could ever express. Now, as I think about becoming a mom myself (and I think about that all the time), I can't imagine another person loving me like I love my mother, but at the same time I really hope they do.

"Union, Union are we. Just as Union as Union can be!"

"We're gonna get somethin' for our labor,
For Union, Union are we." Woody Guthrie

Yay for our union local! During our contract negotiation meeting last night, management quietly and nonchalantly withdrew their proposal to eliminate health insurance benefits for domestic partners of employees. Woo hoo! That doesn't take away the initial disrespect or the sense that management really doesn't give a crap about the workers, but it's not on the table anymore so we're happy!

Dear sister S, I promise not to make you wear this.

Decisions, decisions.

You know, the farther we get in trying to decide how to try for a baby the more complicated it gets and the more conflicted we feel. I keep wondering when we are going to hit that peak and then get to relax a little bit about it. I think what drives me nuts is just the not having a plan, yet. We have all these options and decisions to make, but so far we have no definite plan, and so I obsess about the decisions. I want to know. And the more options we consider, the more I become convinced that there really isn't anything better about one way than another way most of the time, which makes it all the more difficult to make a decision.
For example, known donors vs. unknown donors. While I think a known donor can be a great gift to be able to offer our child, it can also be a detriment to our child by exposing him or her to potential custody battles, which will probably not happen but if they do, have proven to be very harmful to children. Which is better? Neither. Both are indications of caring parents, and which way just depends on the parents. So what kind of parents are we? Well, we're not parents, but what kind of parents-to-be are we? Well, we're not the totally anonymous donor kind, but we are still debating if we are the yes-donor (where he's anonymous at first but can be contacted when child is 18) or the known donor kind. I think we're the known donor kind, but that brings up lots of other decisions. Do we go live or frozen? Live has advantages- namely the much greater likelihood and speed with which we could get pregnant and the greatly reduced cost- almost free. Then again, frozen has advantages- we don't actually know this guy, so it would be to our benefit to have the 6-month quarantine of his sperm and retesting to make sure it doesn't carry any STIs; also very importantly we could order up the swimmers anytime we want and have them shipped up here, rather than have to drive 5 hours each way for the live ones. Then again, the bank would charge us somewhere between $4,900 and $5,700 for everything, plus additional years of storage, plus shipping fees, so... there goes the kid's college fund. And the wedding. Arrgh! Since going through the bank in our case also makes no difference legally, and since we do pretty much trust that he's in a stable and fidelitous relationship with his partner, all that expense is seeming more and more useless. At this point I think we're leaning toward the live route, especially because I learned this interesting fact from "The Ultimate Guide to Pregnancy for Lesbians" saying that some midwives can now "spin" the little buggers in a portable centrifuge and do an IUI for you at home (or wherever you are), so we could hopefully get this going right quickly! Whenever we do decide to start. Hold yer horses, Bertha! Not yet!

Cat-astrophe

*TMI warning* My cute cat is not so cute at the moment as she just had a major runny-poo-got-stuck-in-her-bum-fur incident, and try as I might the stuff is not coming off, and now the little bugger just ran under the bed. Damn. This is usually a two person job, so I think I'm just going to be singing "smelly cat, smelly cat" until J gets home from work at 3. Ewwwww...