Mama and Mommy, adventures in gay parenting

We're moving!

2007-05-01T20:09:00.000-07:00

Over to wordpress, where I have renamed the blog, "Mommy on the Floor, I'm not drunk, I'm exhausted!" I wanted a blog that reflected my new status as a working mother.

I am taking you all with me too! This page will refresh right about now.

In case it doesn't, here is the new address: http://momandmama.wordpress.com/

Do you ever...

2007-04-27T13:19:00.000-07:00

make a phone call, and in the time it takes for the person to answer, your mind has wandered, and your are thinking of something else, so you are actually surprised when someone picks up the phone and says hello?

I do that.

I am home with little guy today because he is sick. He was sick last night and kept waking up crying. We brought him into bed with us, which was sweet. But then this morning, I heard a THUD, and then a screeching wail. Yep, he had rolled out of bed, so it was off to the doctor's office this morning.

He's fine. Just has a big ol' goosebump on his head.

Though I am worried about the Google traffic….

2007-04-25T17:34:00.000-07:00

So the other day, my wife says to me, “The other nurses have invited me to a s#x toy party, but I’m not sure if I should go.”

“What!” I responded.

“It’s a bachelorette party, but I’m not sure…we have a busy weekend, and they will be drinking..”

“You are SO going to that party!”

A nurses s#x toy party! With drunk nurses! Have you ever heard anything hotter? Apparently, its just like a Tupperware party, but with toys. The young woman getting married requested it.

BTW - one time I mention taking a rectal temp, and its like I am running a medical fetish web site. You should see my stats. The things people are into.

The Reluctant Activist

2007-04-23T11:31:00.001-07:00

This next post is on a topic that makes me slightly hysterical, which is why I have hesitated to write about it. Massequality is the coalition group that is working to keep same sex marriage legal in Massachusetts. Getting involved with Massequality has meant doing a lot of things that I am not really comfortable with. I am a very shy person, and I stood outside the polling places during the Presidential election and asked people to sign petitions in support of us. And they didn’t send me to a friendly poll place in gay JP either. I have also been asked to talk to friends, families and co-workers about this issue. I have called, emailed and discussed this with just about everyone. (My current employer excluded. People don’t really “talk” here). I worry that my friends are getting a little tired of hearing from me about this issue.

But I want to direct everyone’s attention the blog, Pieces of Gray. This story breaks my heart. It involves love gone wrong, a child, late breaking conversions to Christianity, and the courts.

Cheryl Barlow and Keri Jones who lived in Utah, traveled to Vermont to enter into a civil union and traveled back to live in Utah. Please note that the rights and responsibilities of civil unions do not “travel” outside of Vermont. They had a little girl together. Cheryl Barlow was the bio mom. The relationship later ended, and Barlow converted to Christianity and renounced homosexuality. She refused joint custody with Jones. Keri Jones then embarked on an incredibly expensive and emotional journey through the Utah courts to try and gain visitation rights. In the end, the Utah courts declared her a legal stranger, and she has no contact with her daughter.

I do not know this family, but to say that I feel for Keri Jones doesn’t cover it. I ache for her. I can’t imagine anything worse than losing your child. And I have seen this very situation before. Life is difficult. People let each other down. But because of bigotry, gay families do not have the same access to the courts that straight families have.

So I continue to harass my friends, and my legislators. Because I want the abuse to stop. Because we are citizens, and we deserve the same rights as everyone else. Because I can imagine a different life for gay families.

BTW – I had asked a friend of mine who is a member of the clergy to call her state reps. I was a little embarrassed, and said, I hope I am not being annoying. And she said, “If you want to change things, you are going to have to be annoying.” So buck up baby! She didn’t say that last part, I added it in, but she was right.

Joy Joy Joy!!!!

2007-04-20T09:13:00.000-07:00

My boss just told me my business trip has been canceled! I was being sent because the because the boys in Houston weren't getting along with the boys in Boston. I was being sent to try and smooth things over. But now, they are getting along so poorly that they don't even want to talk to one another. Isn't that great?

It is probably just postponing the inevitable, but right now, I am pretty happy.

Sit down in your thinking chair and think, think, think...

2007-04-17T19:43:00.000-07:00

Housewife nominated me for the Thinking Blogger’s Award . This is really nice, and kind of funny since I haven’t been thinking lately, just emoting. Anyway, I am supposed to tag five other blogs that make me think. This is also kind of a nice way to point out some of the blogs on my blogroll, and let you know why I like them.

I feel kind of bad about this, because I think Rosie probably will tag him as well, but her nominees aren’t up yet, so I tag Paul at Original Faith. When I say that his blog makes me think, I mean, I need to be well rested to read it.
This blog is heavy on the local politics, but I really love Marry in Massachusetts’ blog about, what else, marriage laws in Massachusetts.
I am also going to tag Lesbian Dad for talking about gender roles and feminism through the eyes of a parent.
I can’t believe I am even going to tag this next woman, because I don’t agree with a friggin thing she has to say, but when I want to hear intelligent discourse from the other side of the aisle, I go to Boston Maggie’s. I think she at a military blogger conference right now or something like that, but I am tagging her anyway. (Yes, we do have republicans in Massachusetts. Here’s one – go read her blog)
The last one is probably the most controversial, but Comic Mom has really made me rethink my views on adoption. I don't agree with her, but she makes me think! Her views run against the norm, but they are the result of her experience, and her desire to speak the truth about being an adoptee. For this, she has been hounded half out of her mind by infertile couples. Luckily, she’s feisty, and I always like that in a girl, so I am tagging her too. (I don’t want to hear about anyone going over there and harassing her. She knows! She knows! Her views are unpopular).

I also want to say that I was going to nominate Dark Daughta at one tenacious baby momma, but someone beat to it. But I love her blog. If you have the time, open your mind and visit her.

So put this cute little award on your blog, link back to me, and tag five others.

For the families who lost their children today

2007-04-16T15:59:00.000-07:00

Maria, gratia plena
Maria, gratia plena
Ave, ave dominus
Dominus tecum
Benedicta tu in mulieribus
Et benedictus
Et benedictus fructus ventris
Ventris tui, Jesus
Ave Maria, gratia plena

Postpartum

2007-04-15T17:02:00.000-07:00

I had a difficult weekend. It started about Friday night, and by Saturday, I couldn’t get out of bed. I felt this numbness that was draining all of the energy out of me. By Sunday morning, I was just crying and crying, not able to do anything at all. I managed to pull myself together enough to go to an Al-Anon meeting Sunday afternoon, where the crying started all over again.

What prompted all of this was my boss telling me that I had to go to Houston for a business trip. I just got back from a business trip, and I don’t want to be away from my son and wife.

But of course, it’s about more than that.

My birth experience was traumatic. I was diagnosed with preeclampsia, and was suppose to be on bed rest. I wasn’t even supposed to sit up. I really needed the people in my life to take care of me. But they couldn’t. They couldn’t because I have always taken care of them, and switching roles was outside of their conception. They couldn’t because they are self-centered. They are selfish. They couldn’t because they were raised in the exact same household I was, and they are fucked up too.

It was the most vulnerable time in my life, and I felt completely abandoned. It ended up with my sister and me getting in a screaming argument. This was very bad. The danger with preeclampsia is that your blood pressure is raised, so this stress was not ok. She left before my son was born. We haven’t spoken since.

I have been angry since then. It was as if something broke inside of me. A valve came off. I have been difficult to deal with.

It’s been really difficult to communicate to people exactly what I have been going through. I had a therapist, but she treated my unwillingness to put my son in daycare as pathology. I fired her and just ended up angrier.

I have been trying to communicate with my wife, but she’s got her own shit to deal with. Not even in my AA meetings, where I usually find refuge, do I feel that I have been able to convey what this has all meant to me.

And now, I find, when something happens that I don’t like, I don’t agree with, I find it really difficult to deal with it. I don’t want to go to Houston. In fact, I don’t want to be working at all. I hate the separation from my son. And I am a little fucking sick and tired of being so freaking functional. Look where it’s gotten me.

BTW – the fact that I can even write this means that I am feeling a little better. And yes, I am going to get some outside help.

Mom and Mama - any other ideas?

2007-04-13T10:48:00.000-07:00

Hi Maria,

I’m so glad you stopped by. Despite, the name of my blog, we struggle with this issue. We decided on Mom and Mama because I am from the west, and growing up, I didn’t know anyone who called their mother Ma. It was always Mom or even Mother. My wife is a townie. Around here, Ma (spoken with a Boston accent MAAAH) is common. I became Mom and she became Ma. However, our son doesn’t talk yet, and he may have other ideas.

Mom and Mama, or some variation thereof, is the most common solution I have seen.

I have also seen kids with gay moms call them “Mommie Jane and Mommie Kay” but I think you want to get away from gender roles, and this doesn’t solve your problem at all.

I grew up with a girl with hippy parents who called her mom and dad by their first names. I’m not that into this though because it was kind of confusing. I was stunned to learn that this “Rob and Sharon” she always talked about, were her parents.

I have seen Mom and Nana, but Nana is how lil’ guy and his cousins refer to their grandmother, so I am not really into this one either

Polly over at Lesbiandad.net answers to Baba which means “Father” in several languages. You are still getting into gender roles, just foreign ones, but it works for some people.

I am asking around for you. Do any of the lesbian moms out there have any really great ideas?

I also want to recommend this book. It is a bunch of exciting essays written by the non-biological mother. A lot of them mention this very issue.

Because I listen so well to advice

2007-04-10T19:56:00.000-07:00

I was really glad to see Rhea stop by and leave a comment. She’s my old roommate, and it’s always good to hear from her. But her comment got me thinking. There are a couple of things that I have done in my life that have caused some serious reactions from other people.

The first one was quitting drinking. Your bar friends and alcoholic relatives don’t like it when you suddenly stop (except for Yoyo girl who was totally supportive).

The next thing was having a baby. For some reason, several people saw my pregnancy as an invitation to tell me all about why they chose not to have kids. I have some serious “nice girl” training that I struggle to overcome. In other words, I am always nice even when in my head I am thinking, “Why fuck are you telling me this? I don’t care why you don’t have children! I am obviously choosing differently.”

The latest one is deciding to go to law school. People have a lot of opinions about this. I guess there are a lot of feelings about lawyers. As a matter of fact, I am having dinner tomorrow with a good friend. She’s a SAHM. She is also a member of the bar. Every time I mention law school, she squeaks under her breath, “Don’t do it!”

I love all the support I’m getting.

La femme boheme

2007-04-08T12:52:00.000-07:00

I came back from California with the nastiest cold. I decided I should still go to work because I have only been there for a month, and I already took a couple of days of when lil’ guy was sick. I walked around Boston hacking like the female protagonist in a 19th century opera, except without the singing. People moved away from me on the train. It’s that bad.

When the weekend finally came, I got into my pajamas and laid down on the couch. I was all prepared to watch my Netflix movie, The Day I Became a Woman, which is an Iranian film about a 9 year old Muslim girl’s last day without a burka. But instead, I ran across this, The Flavor of Love Marathon, which is perfect for the Easter weekend. I watched an entire season in one sitting. When I woke up this morning, I really hated myself for it. (I am really glad New York didn't win).

BTW - I asked Jen if she thought I could have TB. She said no, she thought I had whooping cough. That is what she has seen at the hospital. Maybe I should go to the doctor.

I didn’t even RSVP

2007-04-05T19:09:00.001-07:00

I survived my first business trip. My wife still loves me, and my son knows who I am. It was interesting. It was a trade show, and Halliburton was there with a booth the size of my condo in Boston. They were even throwing a big party on the Queen Mary for everyone. I didn’t go. At the time, I figured I need this job because I have a kid and a mortgage, but I drew the line at attending a Halliburton party. Besides, I don’t drink.

When I got home though, I wondered if maybe I should have gone. It would be like attending a party thrown by Darth Vader and the Storm Troopers. I could have been a spy for the Rebel Alliance. As I write this, I have had the realization that I am a complete geek.

Bad Attitude

2007-03-31T19:01:00.000-07:00

I think I was in denial about this, but my company is sending me on a business trip for a conference across the country tomorrow. I am sad and resentful to be away from my family. Jen pointed out that we have never been apart since we started dating years ago.

The office manager at work found out that I was being sent to the conference and she said I was lucky. I responded that I was actually upset to be away from my son. Her response floored me. She said, “Oh, enjoy the break!” I just smiled, but I was thinking, “Why would I want a break from my kid?” This is woman who told me that day care was a great thing.

This conversation got me thinking. My boss is going to the conference almost a whole day early. I asked him why and he said he didn’t like being rushed. He works 12 hour days easy. He’s a vice president, so he might have to, but why go to a conference a day early?

Do people work to avoid there families?

My co-workers are nice and all, but for me, I would take Jen and lil’ guy any day. The only thing I am really looking forward to on this trip is reading on the plane.

Why I may be going to law school

2007-03-28T18:26:00.000-07:00

Housewife asked when did the law school thing happen. All I can say is that it’s been a long time coming. I took the LSATs a couple of years ago. I wasn’t really sure if I wanted to go, but I thought I would just study, and then take the test. I had horrible test anxiety, and didn’t sleep at all the night before. In my test taking section, I was the oldest one in the room by a decade. I thought to myself, “What are you doing here, Googie?”

But I did pretty well on the test. Then, Jen said to me, “Googie, you can have a baby or you can go to law school, but you can’t do both.” I choose the baby, of course. But once lil’ guy was here, I pointed out to my wife that some cash right about now would be nice. We decided that I would just apply to some law schools around town to see what happened. To my great surprise (and I mean that) I got into my first choice. They call when they accept you, and I seriously thought they had made a mistake. I kept asking Jen, “Do you think they put my application in the wrong pile?” She assured me that they were pretty careful about these things.

I have to admit, I am still not 100% certain, but I think I’m going.

My offline friends have asked me why I want to be a lawyer. I think because I am a lesbian, they expect a mooney answer like I want to save blind kitty cats from global warming, or something like that. The truth is I want to go because 1. I think I have the brain for it 2. I am horribly bored with the industry I am in now 3. somebody around here needs to start making some serious money.

Jen and I want to have more children. They will need braces, vacations, toys and if you live in Boston, money for private school tuition. Our hope is that I will make enough when I get out for Jen to stay at home with the kids while I work.

So that is the law school story.

Not to brag but....

2007-03-24T17:31:00.000-07:00

I think my son could have modelled for Raphael, had he lived in Florence in the 16th century.

Scrumptious Saturday

2007-03-24T17:24:00.000-07:00

Last week, my wife and I were watching Postcards from Buster. I think our son was asleep. The Canadian family Buster was visiting was making a homemade pizza. We immediately became obsessed with making our own homemade pizza even though we are both on diets. We are highly impressionable like that. We found a recipe in Cooking Lite, and we even made the dough and the tomato sauce ourselves! Dare I say it, it tasted even better than a pizzerias!

Here’s a picture, because I am a geek who takes pictures of her food.

Older, but not terribly mature

2007-03-23T19:04:00.001-07:00

I had a lot of complications with my pregnancy starting right at the get go. I won’t distress you with the details, but I was in and out of the hospital a lot. There was a lot of paperwork involved, and right on top of each section was the warning “Advanced Maternal Age.” But I am only 35! I would protest. It’s not like I was that 60 year old woman who just had twins. But there it was in black and white, an older mother.

Now that I have been admitted to law school, I keep getting these emails from one of the universities where I have been accepted. Apparently they have a group for students like me, its “the Older and Wiser group.” I just got an email from them today. My first reaction was, “gasp”, and them “f***ck u!” I’m so not going to that school.

By the way, I did decide on a school, one without and older law students’ league. I sent in my first deposit today. It still doesn’t feel real. I’ll believe it when I sign the promissory note for the 100,000 loan.

Fever rising!

2007-03-22T13:57:00.000-07:00

We have been having a crazy week here. My son’s been sick with that nasty virus that has flayed all of the kids around here. I have never seen him so sick. We have been back and forth to the doctor’s, and even went running to the hospital because his temperature hit 104.5. My wife took two days off of work, and I had to work from home two days. For those of you who aren’t paying attention, that meant I wasn’t in the office for two days in my third week of work! My boss was pretty nice about it, but I’m afraid he is thinking, “I’m never hiring a woman again.”

Meanwhile, I have been trying to get a project out the door and take care of a sick baby at the same time. When I first went back to work, I was trying to be zen like about it. I tried to work when I was at work, and be with my baby when I was at home. But this week, I’ve had to do both at once, which of course means I’m doing neither well. The kid is the priority though, I just hope I don’t get fired.

So as of this moment,

I haven’t brushed my teeth
I am still in my pajamas
House is a disaster
Dog hasn't been walked
Lil’ guy is in front of the television
Project isn’t done
Emails/calls have not been made

But, Googie Baba, I hear you say, you updated your blog. Yeah. I know.

See ya Travaglini, adios, good-bye, don't let the door hit you on the way out

2007-03-20T18:00:00.000-07:00

Bastard

Congratulations Therese Murray.

Gee, we replaced Finneran with DiMasi, Romney with Patrick, and now Traviglini with Murray, maybe there is a Higher Power after all

A Public Service Announcement

2007-03-17T18:42:00.000-07:00

Is it just me, or have we been having a pretty homophobic year already. It’s like a race to go on record as being against gay people. On many levels, I don’t really care who thinks homosexuality is immoral. If it’s against your religion, that’s your business. What I do care about is being treated equally under the law. I want to know that I will be able to visit my wife in the hospital and make medical decisions for her if necessary. I want to know that if something were to happen to me, she would be recognized as lil’ guy’s mother. I want to know that, god forbid, one of us becomes a born again Christian, and decides that homosexuality is evil, the other mother will have half a chance in court.

And here’s the rub. We live in a democracy, and those DOMA bills that have been passing all over the country, have been absolutely devastating to gay families. So I do have to concern myself with what others think of my life. Right now, there are 200 people whose opinion I am extremely interested in. They are the members of the Massachusetts State Legislator.

So, if you live in Massachusetts, and you live in one of these cities: East Brookfield, Oxford, Southbridge, Spencer, East Longmeadow, Springfield or Methuen, you have some work to do. Your state reps are brand spanking new, and have not declared their position on same sex marriage. Give them a call. They really do care what their constituents think.

Just to make it easy (thank-you Mass Merrier!) here is the contact info for each of them:

Charlton, East Brookfield, Oxford, Southbridge, Spencer
Representative Geraldo Alicea
State House
Room 437
Boston, MA 02133
617-722-2425

East Longmeadow, Springfield
Angelo J. Puppolo, Jr.
State House
Room 146
State House
Boston, MA 02133
(617) 722-2011

District Office
2341 Boston Road, Suite 204
Wilbraham, MA 01095
413-596-4333

Metheun
Representative Linda Dean Campbell
State House
Room 437
Boston, MA 02133
617-722-2425

My family and I thank-you.

Happy Birthday Sweetheart

2007-03-11T17:10:00.000-07:00

Things have been so crazy at our place since the baby was born, we have not celebrated birthdays properly. It’s my wife’s birthday, and I wanted everyone to know how much I love her.

At the end of the movie Babel, the director dedicates the movie to his children, calling them two bright lights in the darkest night. That line made me cry. Jen and my son are my two bright lights.

What I love about Jen is:

She is the most emotionally generous person I ever met
She loves to dance
She is great with kids
She has long beautiful hair
Her incredible intelligence is coupled with an astonishing lack of ambition
Her socks never match
She spends her entire day taking care of seriously ill kids. She has fallen in love with many of these kids, but still has had to watch them die. Amazingly, this has never dampened her enthusiasm for life
She is a great mother

I hope you have a wonderful birthday.

Love,
Your wife

Friday!

2007-03-09T17:22:00.000-08:00

We made it through one week! My lil’ guy seems to still know who I am. And the best part is that we get to hang out all day tomorrow. I am not doing an ounce of housework. I am just going to play with my baby.

Here are a few things that have happened to me in the last week that haven’t happened in a long time:

A guy tried to pick me up! He asked me if I was married. I said yes. He asked where my husband was and then he was confused when I said I didn’t have a husband.
A lady tried to get me to come to her church. One of the many nice things about being a SAHM is that you cut down dramatically on those encounters.
Honest to god – I almost sat in shit this morning. Someone had defecated on the bus.

For this I am separated from my flesh and blood.

Adjustment Disorder

2007-03-08T18:40:00.000-08:00

When I was first sober, I was in therapy. My therapist diagnosed me with Adjustment Disorder. I felt like that sounded kinda of mild. Things inside my head were very dramatic and earth shattering. Adjustment disorder sounded like I needed to floss more regularly or something.

I am beginning to see the wisdom of that diagnoses. I really do have a hard time with transitions. My lil’ guy is having an easier time of it. He seems to be enjoying day care. He is really easy going and loves being around people. At first I thought, maybe he gets that from his sperm donor. I am not like that at all. But something occurred to me the other day. Maybe if I hadn’t been brought up in an actively alcoholic home, maybe I would be more easy going as well. Maybe my constant anxiety is not an ingrained trait. If my father had gotten some help, I might have had an easier time growing up.

The Scoop

2007-03-05T19:17:00.001-08:00

Mostly, I was very bored. My computer got confiscated in China, or some such. My manager had scheduled training for me, but he kept getting called away to conference calls. He left me with a software manual – but no computer! I sat and read the manual. I was sad and lonely without my little boy.

Almost everyone in the office is from MIT. I understand maybe every third word. They laugh uproariously at each other jokes. I scratched my head.

Lil’ guy did great in daycare. Every time I called I could hear him having fun in the background. He slept 1 ½ hours for his first nap, but refused a second. I was really glad to see him when I got home.

I made it through the day. I can’t believe I have to do it all again tomorrow.

The Night Before

2007-03-04T18:41:00.000-08:00

I am having a hard time with this. I just can't believe that tomorrow he is going to spend his whole day with someone who is not me.

All Set for Tomorrow

2007-03-04T14:01:00.000-08:00

Here are the things I have laid out for my first day back at work

Pack and play for lil' guy to take his naps in
Supply of diapers
Bag of "transitional objects" to make his transition to day care easier. They include a few books, his Curious George monkey and a truck
Set of clothes for lil' guy
My shoes
Immunization Records and other paperwork
My purse with reading material (The New Yorker magazine)
Picture of me and my baby for me to look at during work hours

*sniff*

There are a few things I can't put out yet, but I need to remember - my lunch, his bottle of soy milk, his shoes and my work outfit.

If I have the energy tomorrow, I will log on and let everyone know how it all went.

Lentil and Vegetable Puree

2007-03-04T13:38:00.000-08:00

This recipe is for Kim at Maddbabies. It is from the book, The Healthy Baby Meal Planner. She is looking for vegetarian recipes for her babies. This one is super easy and really nutritious. We are not vegetarians over here, but we try to get a lot of vegetables into lil’ guy’s diet.

Lentil and Vegetable Puree

2 Tablespoons butter
1 cup, sliced, washed leek
1 ½ cup chopped carrots
¼ cup split red lentils
1 ½ cup vegetable broth or water
1 cup cauliflower florets
½ apple, peeled, cored and chopped

Melt the butter and sauté the leek for about 5 minutes. Add the carrots and continue to cook for 2-3 minutes. Add the lentils and broth, bring to a boil, then cover and simmer for about 15 minutes. Add the cauliflower and apple and cook for another 15 minutes or until the lentils and vegetables are tender. Puree to the desired consistency.

Makes 8 portions (theoretically)

Speaking of vegetables, I am snacking on raw carrots right now, which is really unlike me. Since I am going back to work and will be unhappy separated from my baby, I decided I might as well go back on Weight Watchers. Now, my misery is complete.

Things I can blog about, but not say out loud

2007-02-28T07:37:00.000-08:00

I am trying to keep my sadness over going back to work from turning into an out and out depression. I am having a hard time. I really want to enjoy my last few days as a SAHM, but honestly, I am fighting some really ugly feelings.

For reasons I don’t understand, going back to work is connected to my feelings about my family’s treatment of me and my son. As I mentioned, most of my immediate family doesn’t even acknowledge his existence. Besides a voice mail left when he was first born, my brother has never called or asked about him. My sister called once, and I haven’t heard from her since.

I have probably thought about my brothers and sisters every day since lil’ guy was born. I always knew that I didn’t come from a very loving family, but it wasn’t until my son was born that I realized how selfish they were.

What does this have to do with going back to work? I don’t know. Other than the fact that what I really want is to stay home but still have enough money to pay the bills, and that just isn’t the reality right now. What I really want is a supportive family, and that isn’t a reality either.

Compounding everything is the fact that I am running a fever and have a stuffy nose. Last night, I really wanted my wife to come home and take care of me. But there was a nurse at the hospital who had made some sort of mistake. She was feeling bad so my wife took her out for ice cream. She didn’t get home until late. I was really feeling sorry for myself by then.

I am just feeling pissy all over.

I am switching teams

2007-02-27T13:35:00.000-08:00

No. I am not going to start dating men. I am switching from SAHM to WM. That’s the feisty stay at home mom team to the beleaguered working mom team. They offered me the job. There were some tense salary negotiations for a couple of days. As much as I needed the money, I didn’t think their original offer was fair. I politely told them to bump it up or it was no deal. They did and I start on Monday.

I am sure me and lil’ guy will adjust. My wife seems relieved, and considering our financial situation, I do think it’s the right thing to do. After a year of my not working, we are seriously in debt. It’s a little alarming.

Nevertheless, I am feeling sad about being away from him. We have grown so close over this year. I don’t regret staying at home with him at all. I did not find it boring or meaningless or even lonely. It actually brought me a great deal of joy. The only downside was the constant stress of making the mortgage.

If anyone has any thoughts about staying connected to your child when you go back to work, I would love to hear from you. Leave a comment or email me at mary at thecybersecretary dot com.

February in Boston

2007-02-26T19:11:00.000-08:00

I did not learn everything I need to know in kindergarten

2007-02-24T12:28:00.000-08:00

Here in the Northeast we have indoor playgrounds. Pretty nifty in sub zero weather. My son loves the playground. He stands in the middle and makes a joyful screech as all of the bigger kids dash around him.

As I have mentioned before, my son loves wheels. I watched as he pushed a plastic cop car around the brightly padded tarp. I was chatting with the other dyke mommies when I realized an evil little girl had stolen his car, jumped in it and was trying to run him over.

That evening, I relayed this story to my wife. She works with a lot of kids, and is pretty good with them.

“Did you talk to the little girl, and explain to her your son was playing with the car? You could have told her that she needs to let him play with it but she could have it in five minutes,” she asked.

“No. I grabbed lil’ guy from underneath the wheel and gave her a dirty look. Next time I saw her, I muttered, ‘I’m watching you’.”

“I don’t know that kids get that kind of subtlety.”

“Well. Where was her mother, anyway?”

I guess I have a lot to learn about the playground.

Presenting….a little boy

2007-02-21T16:47:00.002-08:00

It still surprises me to see lil’ guy walking around a corner. When did he learn to walk? He does an adorable little disco dance with his arms to keep balance. I swear, I can almost picture him 6'0 tall and full grown.

Chivalry is not dead

2007-02-21T16:47:00.001-08:00

No news yet on the job front. They contacted all of my references but want me to come in for a second interview. That seems a little backwards, don’t you think? I don’t know why I am so nervous, I don’t even know if I want this job.

I wanted to relay a quick story about something that happened to me yesterday. When I came out of my interview, I went to my car and tried to get it started. It was stuck in the snow. But not in any usual kind of a way. It was stuck like Rush Limbaugh in a size 2 tutu stuck.

A gentleman saw me trying to get me car started, and he came over and started to push the car. A second gentleman saw what was going on, and he came over and helped too. These two guys shoveled the snow and pushed my car for over ½ hour. It finally broke free of the ice.

I just wanted to mention this because we hear so often how civility has completely broken down in society. But these guys worked their butts off to help me out for no reason at all. Their only reward was good karma and a hug from me. I thought it was worth mentioning.

By the time I came home, there was a message asking for references.

2007-02-20T18:23:00.000-08:00

Shit.

Up all night, mind racing

2007-02-20T07:22:00.000-08:00

I have a job interview this afternoon. I will post more cute pictures of the kid when I get back from it this evening.

The job interview is a last minute thing. I sent the company my resume yesterday, and they called me right away, even though it was a holiday. The job seems kind of intense. The company sells software that mines data for the CIA – yikes! What really bothers me is that it looks like a pretty consuming position. I was up all night thinking about it. I am afraid it’s going to totally take me away from lil’ guy.

Also, much to my surprised, I am feeling a little guilty interviewing for a permanent position when I might be going to school in a few months. I don’t usually feel guilty about my relationship to corporations, but this time, I am feeling a twinge of guilt.

I have been sending out applications for secretarial positions, but I just haven’t gotten any responses. So I sent out a couple of resumes in my old field, hence this interview.

I just have a funny premonition that they are going to offer me the job, and considering the financial situation we are in, I don’t know if I could turn it down.

But Googie, I hear you collectively scream, why don’t you just wait until you are offered the position before you worry about all of this. Well, that is just not how my mind works.

My goodness, a rant

2007-02-18T10:02:00.000-08:00

You know, Googie likes to think of herself as a non-judgmental sort. I don’t troll the internet looking for fights. I try to keep an open mind and live and let live. But check out this web site.

Ok, what the fuck is wrong with these people’s brains? Do you want your civil liberties threatened?

Do people have any understanding of how dangerous governments can be? Googie is sensitive to the fact that people are afraid after 9/11. She has even been persuaded for the need for a strong defense. Criminals and terrorist are a threat in any society. However, the most egregious criminal agents throughout history have been governments with unlimited power. Don’t believe me? Put down your bible for a moment and read the history of the 20th century. Terrorists are not capable of the slaughter that Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union inflicted on its own people. Government power must be limited for a country to be free.

So what keeps us safe? Here’s some hints:
Its not preemptive wars against sovereign nations
Its not warrantless wire taps
Its not prisoners in secret prisons
Its not nuclear weapons
Its not tanks, soldiers or guns

What keeps us free? It’s the Bill of Rights and our collective respect for it. But the Bill of Rights is really just a piece of paper unless its principles are aggressively fought for in courts of law. Thus, the need for the American Civil Liberties Union.

A couple of asides: Don’t you think Googie is going to make a rockin’ lawyer? I can’t wait for law school.

Ironically, though I now worship at the church of liberalism, many of my ideas about government come from the philosophies of Ayn Rand and the political writings of Barry Goldwater. Like I have mentioned, I was raised in a Red State in a Republican family. By the time I was 18, I had read the entire Objectivist canon.
What really gets my goat is that if these people simply read their own literature, they would realize this administration’s disregard for civil liberties is a very bad thing. But my guess is that the people who run this web site and its readers are not conservatives at all, but Christian extremists. I believe what irks them about the ACLU is that the organization has halted their wholesale attempt to take over American public life.

Cat Fights

2007-02-17T18:27:00.000-08:00

I promised myself that I wouldn’t blog anymore until a project I am working on for a client is done. Is the project done? No. I attribute my incredible self discipline to my Catholic upbringing, because you know that abstinence pledge worked out so well.

I am on a yahoo group for moms in my area. All sorts of moms are on it, straight moms, gay moms and even some men. It is a really active email list. Every thought that crosses the minds of these people gets emailed out. It’s everything from my daughter won’t stop eating toilet paper to my son is projectile vomiting, what should I do? The list is so active that I have surrendered an email address to it. The emails from the group just took over.

Every few weeks, without fail, a cat fight breaks out between the Stay at Home Moms and the Moms that Work. Today someone emailed an article about a local newscaster who gave up her job to be a SAHM and KABOOM, the fur started flying.

First of all, this strikes me as a rich girls fight. For most people, this isn’t even a discussion. I think for most people, the question is how are we going to pay the mortgage and feed a kid, not would I be more fulfilled at home or at work?

Second, parenting is the strangest thing. There is so much potential for misunderstanding and hurt feelings. I have never experienced another situation where ones choices can automatically offend other people, just because they made different choices. Co-sleeping can seem to be a negation of Ferber. Those who stay at home offend those who go back to work. Breastfeeding can seem like an insult to those who bottle fed.

Personally, I would like to see us support each other more. I know that the choices I made were grounded in the crucible of my reality. I breastfed until lil’ guy and I developed a painful case of thrush, and then we stopped. I stayed at home, but had to cash out my retirement fund in order to do it. Now I will be going back to work (ha ha). Accept in rare cases of abuse or neglect, I am sure other mothers make the best choices under the particular circumstances they find themselves in.

Musing on Housewife's Comments

2007-02-16T11:27:00.000-08:00

I found myself thinking a lot about housewife’s comments, so I thought I would put them in their own post Andrew Sullivan style.

Housewife wrote:

1. I had a pink dollar bill the other day, can someone please explain this to me? I hate not being in on the joke.

2. My father was adopted, he was born in Nazi Germany and his mother died either in the camps or during childbirth... too many stories and none of them matter. The point is that he flew all over the world to find his father and please him. He was well into his 50's before he realized that his father was the man who tucked him in at night.

I think with an honest portrayal of who everyone is genetically that reminds your little guy that parenting is an active action (my father never had that) much angst would be saved.

I'm sure there is wondering aloud and in quiet but perhaps this can be done without pain?

First, I think the most likely explanation for the dollar bill is that it got put in the wash with some red clothes. If there a mass pink bill joke, I’m not in on it.

Second, the story about your father is amazing. I completely agree that parenting is about the actions you take, not who you are biologically. To be honest, I come about this from an intense background. I come from a large biologically family, but we don’t function as a family at all. My father wasn’t a father to me. I really see my first AA sponsor as the woman who mothered me and helped me become the woman that I am. I have five brothers and sisters, but only have contact with my youngest sister. My brothers and sisters, with the exception of the youngest, have shown no interest in my son. And I mean no interest. None. Zip. Two of them have never met him even though he is over a year. They have expressed no interest in meeting him. In fact, have not really acknowledged that he exists. I am not sure that I can ever forgive them. Meanwhile, I have friends who would jump out of bed and come over in the middle of the night if I needed them too. One of his godmothers has a picture of Googie at work. They celebrate his birthday and know when he hit his major developmental milestones. They are all ready to take him to Red Sox games. Personally, I think biology is over rated.

Like I said, I have talked to quite a few kids of gay parents. Some of them seem really interested in their sperm donors, but others not so much. Mostly what I hear expressed is curiosity, not angst. My friend’s daughter, from the New York Times piece, said she wanted to see what he looked like, and then just take it from there. She seems pretty mature for her age. I don’t hear any big expectations from her about what meeting her sperm donor is going to mean for her life.

I did read a piece in the Washington post from a young girl I don’t know. Her mother is a straight woman who used an anonymous sperm donor. You can find it here. She does talk about depression and anxiety about not knowing her biological father. So what I was trying to say is that if my son should experience these feelings, I hope I have dealt with my shit enough to be there for him and help him deal. But maybe he won’t have any feelings about it at all. I have seen that too. As for me, I would not be comfortable if the sperm donor came forward, however, my personal comfort is no longer the most important thing to me. That stopped when lil’ guy came bouncing out of me and into the world.

Beer Money

2007-02-15T18:43:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine told me tonight that her daughter’s anonymous sperm donor has stepped forward and broken his anonymity. Her daughter flew out to LA to meet him. It was a big deal. It was in the New York Times. She was having feelings about it because she is the non-bio mom. She was bummed that there was one more biological connection that she wasn’t a part of.

I was a little freaked out by the story. Just last night, I watched the movie Broken Flowers where the main character goes out in search of his son. I was having nightmares about 3672 showing up at our house one day with pink flowers in hand asking to see lil’ guy.

I asked my friend how she was doing, and she said she realized it was ok to have feelings. She knew that her daughter loved her, and she could just step out of the way and let things happen. Then she said, “Its just part of the deal that you sign on for when you do this.” Her hands waived in the air when she said it. I knew exactly what “this” was. This is stepping away from the traditional family unit. This is traveling down a different, less worn path. This is deciding that fundamentalist be damned, you were going to have a family.

I have noticed that kids of lesbians experience a range of emotions about their sperm donors. Some seem really interested in who he is, others appear to care less. I have tried to mentally prepare myself for the questions our son will have. More importantly, I am trying to prepare myself for his feelings so that I can help him when the time comes. I believe that being open to his feelings are also part of the deal, another thing that I signed on for when I signed up for “this”.

I have to say though, that mostly, I am grateful. I am sure there are a lot of reasons why young men donate their sperm. My younger sister said at her university, the frat boys donate their sperm so that they will have beer money. Thank God for frat boys who need beer money! What would the lesbians do without them? I’d buy you a beer if I knew you. Our son is the best thing to ever happen to us.

Quick update

2007-02-13T16:59:00.000-08:00

So I woke up this morning to things being shut off. First it was the cable, and then the phone and then the internet. First thought was not how am I going to continue to send out resumes, but how will I blog? Luckily, one of my slacker accounts had finally paid me, and much to my surprise, the check cleared so I had money to get everything turned back on.

Yesterday’s interview went pretty well, but it was short. Not sure what to make of it. I think that means either the interviewer took one look at me and thought, “You are so perfect for this job, we don’t need to go on.” Or it means she took one look at me and thought, “I would rather have a poke in the eye with a red hot poker than work with you.”

In little boy news, my son has been soooo sweet lately. I’ve been a little bit depressed, and he and the dog just give me hugs and kisses all day. I’ll be sitting on the couch staring out the window, and he will toddle over to me and puts his arms around my knees and pats my leg. I didn’t even know he knew how to hug. No matter what, remember this, it has all been worth it.

The Mind of the American Male

2007-02-12T17:55:00.000-08:00

I have been thinking a lot about men lately. I have been reading books about raising boys. It’s been pretty eye opening. I never realized boys were so cruel to one another.

Then the other night I was driving home from my AA meeting when an NPR show came on about the “Mind of the American Male”. Even a couple of years ago, I would have thought, “Men own everything, and now we have to know what they think too?!” However, a little American male is now the center of my existence, and I was rather interested to know what men had to say for themselves. I drove around Boston listening to the program even though I had a sweet wife and ice cream at home waiting for me. (100% aside- Boston is not a fun city to just drive around in. Even at night. When I was young and living in Arizona, I would drive for miles. Those generous open highways! There was the beautiful desert and the dark sky that went on for days. A girl could really get her head together driving around Black Canyon Highway).

What really interested me about the program was that men seemed really anxious to join the discussion, and there were a lot of strong feelings expressed. However, the complaints struck me as kind of vague. There was the standard complaint that feminism has redefined the sex roles and now men don’t know what their role is. This is undoubtedly true. But wasn’t the height of the feminist movement in the 70’s. Like thirty years ago. You would have thought men would have figured something out by now. I think there has been some foot dragging.

There were discussion of girlfriends who had left them, and how hard it is to make a living. But nowhere in the discussion did anyone say something so insightful that I thought, “This is the heart of the matter.”

Now, I have dated men and women. In my judgment, there is little difference between them. And what is different gets exaggerated, my guess is for political purposes. I do think boys are raised in a manner that forces them to pigeon hole themselves into acceptable masculine personas. Just this year, I have observed boys being acutely discourage from expressing feelings and interests that would be considered unmasculine. I think some men take these lessons to heart more than others. Some men do this so thoroughly that they become dulled and completely cut off from parts of themselves. In some cases, the most interesting parts.

Comments left on my blog have been mostly from women, however, if a boy should happen to pass this way, I would be really interested to know your thoughts are on any of this. So please, consider this a written invitation to comment. Don’t worry if you are not a boy, I still would love to hear from you.

My lil' sugar booger

2007-02-11T10:10:00.000-08:00

Many thanks to Keith @ sickofffood.com for giving us his old digital. So its back to posting pictures!

I waited a bit to update the blog. I wanted to be in a better mood. I'm sure those of you out in blogland were a little tired of hearing about how lousy I felt, and how my life was completly falling apart.

I do feel little better. I'm doing a fifth step with my sponsor this afternoon. And I have a job interview tomorrow with an organization I am generally interested in. I would tell you who, but I don't want to jinx it. So wish me luck and I will let everyone know how it goes.

I'm in a pissy mood, and I can't get a hold of my AA sponsor

2007-02-07T16:08:00.000-08:00

I am in a super duper crappy mood. A guy calls me for an interview earlier this week, and I start out today with a whole hour to get across town. The interview wasn’t in a different city, it was just in another neighborhood. But after staying home for a year, I am totally unprepared for rush hour traffic. I was 20 minutes late, and you can imagine what they thought of that.

This whole job search has been a study in what not to do. I came really close to getting an offer with one job, but I am pretty sure that they found their way to this blog (based on my web stats), and that was the end of that. Somehow in the course of my short job search, I have managed to alienate every web design firm in Boston. I am beginning to think that I will never code in this town again.

On another note, I wanted to thank the people at this web site
http://tips.dennyhalim.com/2006/11/socialize-your-blogger-beta.html
for information on putting social bookmarks on the new blogger. Don’t they look cool?

Bring on the straight jacket

2007-02-04T14:16:00.000-08:00

Boston Maggie tagged me with this Meme: 6 weird things about yourself

I'm pretty weird, so I'm not sure if she knew what she got herself into, but here it goes:

Six weird things about me

I am not a vegetarian, but chicken completely skeeves me out. I won’t touch it or eat it. However, if it is in a dish, and I don’t know it, I usually like the way it tastes.
I totally love this ridiculous blog: http://www.cuteoverload.com/
I use to belly dance. At the height of my belly dancing career, I danced in front of 200 hundred lesbians. They screamed and hollered and stood on chairs during the performance. People tell me that I looked perfectly calm, but I was scared to death that I was about to get mauled by a bunch of sexed up lesbos.
When I was very young and very drunk, I got a really large tattoo on my hip. It’s a tough looking tattoo of a woman’s head that is the handle of a sword. Her neck elongates out into the blade. I immediately regretted it when I sobered up.
Per my wife – Every night, I get into bed, and then get out of bed to put on socks, and then get back in, then get out of bed to put on pants, and then get into bed, and then get out of bed to take the pants off. Eventually, I kick off the socks too. I do this every night.
The very weirdest thing about me is that I have an alternative life that runs in my head. I mean it actually plays like a movie, and I feel like I have very little control of it. In my alternate life, I was adopted by a couple of gay men and grew up in the Castro district of San Francisco.

I am suppose to tag six people. Here are four to start. I think of a couple more:
I am going to tag Keith at http://www.sickoffood.com/ and

Rhea at the Boomer Chronicles

Kim at Madd Babies

Robin at the Other Mother

Tomorrow

2007-02-03T17:22:00.000-08:00

You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.

I have entered a free fall financially and spiritually. I haven’t been able to pay my bills in weeks. Normally, this would upset me, but I am feeling an eerie calm about it. I had a bunch of interviews, but don’t have any lined up for next week.

I feel a bit like I have fallen off the face of the earth.

I did some meditating last night, and even a bit of bible reading. I couldn’t sleep, and I finished off the very interesting book on Rwanda, and decided to read from the Book of James. I believe that is where we get the One Day at a Time slogan from in AA. It says something to the affect of “you don’t know what will happen from one day to the next so stop pretending like your plans mean anything.” Or some such.

In my heart, I am an agnostic. But I have been contemplating giving some space in my head to the idea that there maybe a spiritual solution to my present problems. I will always have doubt. But I have a little bit of faith too. Maybe I need to let Faith have a run at things for a while

BTW – in an effort to get a project out the door for a client, I gave my son the digital camera. He’s very interested in it, and it keeps him quiet. He was very well behaved as he slammed that camera on the floor several times. You may not being seeing any more pictures of him until I go back to work and can buy a new one.

Disaster Narrowly Averted

2007-02-01T18:20:00.000-08:00

Or avoided by a mile. My son had been throwing up in the morning, just once, and then going on like nothing happened. I thought it was strange, but didn’t think much of it. This went on for three days when my wife, the neuro nurse, mentioned that morning vomiting was a symptom of brain tumors. I panicked, and dashed to get the pediatrician on the phone.

Meanwhile, pandemonium has broken out in my city. As you probably know, a little bit too creative ad for a cartoon caused the city to come to a standstill because the authorities thought they were bombs. Normally, this would create a dramatic reaction from me. I am one of those people who have a disaster kit in their basement, though it’s unclear to me what the duct tape is for. After 911 I tried to get my doctor to prescribe antibiotics for me. I wanted them on hand in case there was a bio terror attack. She refused.

But I completely missed the chaos yesterday because I was trying to get the nice nurse at the pediatrician’s office to take my son’s situation seriously. I wanted a CAT scan. She thought he needed chicken soup. Medical personnel are so unhelpful.

BTW – the vomiting ceased this morning.

What it means to be a boy

2007-01-31T05:02:00.000-08:00

I never realized how into gender people were until I had a baby. It starts in utereo. Once word got out that I was having a boy, my house started to fill up with baby blue onesies with footballs on them.

Now that he is a little older and beginning to show interest in things, I can’t help but feel that serious gender molding has begun. For instance, he is very interested in wheels of all sorts. He’s fascinated by them. If there is a toy with wheels on them, he crawls over to it and immediately starts maneuvering it. He likes to see things move. He turns the toys over to observe the wheels. He seems to be doing mini experiments like blocking the objects path to see what will happen.

Family and friends have observed this and delightfully exclaimed, “Look at that. He loves trucks!” They have shown their support by filling our house with plastic dump trucks.

However, I really think it’s the wheels and not the trucks that he is interested in. I think he would be just as fascinated with a pink Barbie convertible as with a Pick up truck. I have a friend who is in a wheelchair, and he seems just as interested in her chair as he does his trucks.

But boys liking trucks is socially acceptable, and I can’t help but wonder if he doesn’t respond to their approval. I also have an inkling that our family and friends are relieved that a couple of lesbians are raising a boy who likes boyish things. I wonder if this is how gender imprinting starts.

My life isn't so bad...

2007-01-26T18:26:00.000-08:00

Robin at the Other Mother is sort of my blogging idol. She is always coming up with creative ideas from her blog, which I relentlessly rip off. I have wanted to copy her booklist for a while, and have finally gotten around to it.

So you, lucky reader, can now see what is currently off the bookshelf and on my nightstand.

I am reading a very interesting book titled “We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families”. It’s about the Rwandan genocides. Its hard to wrap you mind around an entire country shutting down in order to extinguish a minority population. Nearly a million people were hacked to death by their neighbors in a matter of weeks.

What was really interesting to me was the response of the UN and other relief agencies. By having a policy of neutrality in the face of unrelenting evil, they became enablers of the killing. Not only did blue helmeted UN soldiers stand by while with loaded guns as people were being slaughtered, in some cases, they ended up aiding the people who had perpetuated the genocide.

You might be wondering why I am reading something like this. It’s because my sister has spent a couple of years in Africa. She is now in grad school at Columbia, and has left a bunch of boxes in my basement. When she was here for lil’ guys birthday, she encouraged me to read this book, and so I am.

As interesting as watching paint dry, but...

2007-01-25T18:12:00.000-08:00

I am having a lot of anxiety these days. I really didn’t sleep at all last night.

Meanwhile, our money problems persist. One client of mine made out the check to the wrong name. Another sent out two checks by accident, and then cancelled one. Of course, I deposited the wrong check.

I’m sure this is pretty boring to you out in blog land, but it’s what’s on my mind.

Furthermore, BU has told me I should file my FAFSA. But I am confused about my taxes, and of course, I haven’t received my W2s yet. So I am stressed that my chances for financial aid are slipping away daily.

Plus there is all of the stress around getting my boy into day care.

This would be a pretty convenient time to believe in God.

I do have one funny thing to share. I have a second interview with the DOD funded place. And you will never guess what the gentleman’s first name is – Dyke. That’s right. The dyke has an interview with Dyke.

Wish me luck.

A million things to do, and I am updating my blog

2007-01-23T16:02:00.000-08:00

Blog for Choice was very exciting. I found some new blogs, and was delighted that a couple of new people stopped by.

Also, Mrs. Happy Housewife found her way to my site as well. As you can see from her comments, she is lovely and gracious. Her post reminded me of when my son was just born. My wife would play Sinead O’Connor’s My Darling Child as I breastfed.
I got the pictorial year in review idea from Madd Babies, but I added my own take on it.

Here are some of the lyrics:

My darling child
My darling baby

My darling child
You gave life to me

My darling child
My darling baby

My darling child
You came and saved me

My darling child
My darling baby

My darling child
God gave you to me

Me little ninja
My little dancer

Me little streetfighter
Me little chancer

Me lovely boy
Me lovely babby

My pride and joy
Me little puppy

Why I am Pro-Choice

2007-01-22T05:05:00.000-08:00

Growing up, my mom’s best friend was from Manchester, England. Carol seemed exotic with that British accent, yet still familiar.

My mom and she would visit nearly every day. They would drink tea, smoke cigarettes, and roar around the house in laughter. She wasn’t religious or particularly conservative, so I am not sure what she thought of my mother’s proclivity for Limbaughesque monologues.

As I have mentioned before on this blog, I was raised in a steep ideological environment. Only Catholics went to heaven. Women who had abortions did so because they were selfish and could not control themselves sexually. Men never stayed with woman after having sex with them, and certainly not after an abortion. I was sent to a Catholic school, and lived in a Catholic neighborhood. The gardens of our neighborhood were graced with statues of the Virgin stepping on a serpent. I was surrounded by people who believed, more or less, the same thing. I never had any reason to doubt what my parents were telling me.

When my parents would go out of town, Carol would baby sit us. She had kids of her own. I am not sure who was taking care of them when she took care of us. I was in junior high when we got to talking one night while my parents were away. We were standing over the kitchen sink while I did the dishes and she smoked. She confided to me that she had an abortion. Actually, I think she told me she had three. There were illegal. She went to a woman who pounded on her stomach until she aborted.

“Don’t tell your mother,” she commanded, “She’ll pray for me.”

Of course I wouldn’t tell my mother. The experience was remarkable. It was the first time in my very controlled environment that I got a glimpse outside of my parents’ reality. Carol wasn’t selfish. She didn’t seem particularly sexual either. Moreover, it was her husband who had impregnated her before they were married.

I’m not saying that I changed my mind about abortion then and there, but it gave me pause. My vision became a bit wider than it had before. Also, it was strange to have a secret from my mother. I kept Carol’s confidence, and never told my mom about it.

Today, there are a host of reasons why I support choice. Mainly, I believe that the anti-abortion position is fundamentally a religious one. It relies on a belief that life begins at conception. However, there is no scientific agreement on that question. The constitution guarantees us separation of church and state, so I don’t think one religious view should constrict other people’s choices. Also, now that I am a parent and know how much it changes your life, I really believe that it needs to be a free and clear choice.

I think the episode with Carol was seminal. I was struck with how physically painful an illegal abortion must be. Somewhere in my indoctrinated brain, it occurred to me that anyone who would agree to something like that must be desperate. The thought flashed across my mind that their might be substantial reasons for wanting to terminate a pregnancy.

Having been brought up in the Pro-life movement, I have respect for people who are anti-choice. However, I am proud of my support for Choice. And I will fight tooth and nail to keep that choice legally available.

The Happy and the Pissed Off Housewife

2007-01-21T17:19:00.000-08:00

First off, I am not mocking you Pissed Off Housewife. I read your posts because I think you’re awesome. AND, it takes more than a Republican voting record and an NRA membership to scare me off. I am from Arizona. However, tell me you are into Precious Moments figurines, and I will start to back away slowly.

Second, by reading POH’s blog, I have a new obsession in my life. This woman:
Mrs. Happy Housewife

Mrs Happy Housewife is my polar opposite, and I find her fascinating. She is a pro-life, Christian Homeschooler who posts pictures of her craft projects and daily schedule. Her schedule is peppered with “tidying up” “daily chores” and “Bible reading”. My schedule is punctuated with watching The View and daily readings of the Anarchist Cookbook.

She has her house separated into zones which she rotates cleaning. She seems interested in Victorian literature.

I kept wondering why I was so drawn to her web site. I even tried to sign up for her members only section, but her web site smelled an imposter and wouldn’t let me.

Then I realized, she reminds me of my mother. In fact, she is exactly like my mother, only my mom was Catholic. One big difference is that my mom didn’t homeschool, but other than that, they are really alike. My mom was pro-life, Republican and anti-feminist. She spent her days organizing the house, the kids, reading Jane Austen and sewing.

So this got me to thinking about my mom who died ten years ago. When I was growing up, my mother was against:
Women who worked outside of the home, abortion, birth control, gun control, Democrats, Protestants, Feminist, Liberals, divorce, sex on television, sex in the movies, sex on the radio, gays and atheists.

She cried uncontrollably when Reagan was shot.

Then after 5 kids and 20 years of marriage, my dad divorced her. You would have thought she would take it hard, but she took to divorce like a fish to water. She got a job and quit going to church. We stopped having a curfew and could watch whatever we wanted on T.V. She was a teacher and she worked in a poor neighborhood. She accepted that two of her daughters were gay. She voted for Clinton, twice. Before she died, she confided to me that she was sure God was woman.

She what is real? Was she really a pro-life Christian woman, or was that an act for my Dad? Did divorce free the real her? Or was a matter of her thinking evolving due to her life circumstances? There was one constant however, to her dying day, her floors were immaculate and her sock drawer organized.

First Birthday

2007-01-16T10:10:00.000-08:00

I have been away from blogging because we had a busy weekend. We had a 1 year party for my little guy. That means dealing with the in laws. Honestly, they are a great family, but they are cut from an entirely different cloth than my “get drunk and let everyone know what you think about them” relatives. They communicate in a waspy code I haven’t yet been able to decipher. They tiptoe around making seemingly mild statements. I later learn that these gentle musings are packed with layers of meaning. For instance, my mother-in-law will say innocuously, “The baby is getting so good at walking.” I later learn from my wife that translates to, “Your son is not wearing appropriate shoes. And why not? Because you don’t have a job and can’t afford them. I know you want to stay home with the baby, but I want a straight daughter. Looks like nobody is going to get what they want.”

I have a hard time navigating this world. I should have paid better attention in English Lit when we were reading Edith Wharton. Part of the reason I have a hard time is that I don’t know when to shut up. And there are a whole host of things that shouldn’t be talked about. My wife forgets that I don’t speak Wasp, and forgets to warn me not to talk about certain things. For instance, law school. Apparently, we were supposed to keep my law school attendance a secret until I graduated. Boy, wouldn’t they have been surprise.

Another secret? Chili. My wife and I love my chili. I was brought up in the Southwest, and I can make a bowl of chili. But my father in law has a recipe as well. Its heart healthy, and doesn’t taste at all like it should. I’m sorry, but if there is no bacon grease or beef, you don’t have chili. You have some sort of northeastern bean stew. So when I was talking to my mother in law about the party, she asked me what we were serving.

“Cold cuts,” I said, “oh, and chili.”
“We can bring the chili,” she said.
“That’s ok. We can make it here.”
“Everybody loves Warren’s chili.”

And I knew I had lost.

“Why did you tell her we were having chili?” my wife asked.
“I didn’t know it was a secret.”
“Now we have to have their chili.”
“I just want to be able to talk to them honestly. You know, tell them we prefer our chili.”
“Sorry, it’s complicated.” Translation: “My mother wants a straight daughter, and she’s not going to get that any more than you are going to get to eat your own chili. Looks like nobody is going to get what they want.”

Figure it out

2007-01-11T13:07:00.000-08:00

My life has become a Rubriks cube, of sorts. If one part of my life lines up, then all the other sides get jumbled.

Right now I am not working, and am able to spend a lot of time with my son. That makes me happy. However, this has been accompanied by a lot of hand wringing over money. My wife is a dyke of the Waspish variety, and it is not like her to come out and say what she thinks. So every month, I hear some variation of, “I just wanted to let you know that we aren’t going to be able to pay all of our bills this month.” I have been married long enough to know that means, “Would you go out and get a job already, you’re KILLING me.”

If I get a job in my old industry, it would probably solve our financial problems, BUT it means working long hours. I won’t be able to see my son much, and that’s not ok. If I get a part time job, I will make less money, and I am not sure the expense of daycare would be justified. However, if I don’t work at all, we continue to have financial problems. See what I mean? I can’t get the situation to work!

I was so desperate that I actually called up my last employer to inquire about getting my job back. This is the job where I dragged my humongous, pregnant belly out the door, spitting and screaming, head turning a 180, spewing venom. I was a little pissed because I was pregnant, and they were doing construction on the building. I was genuinely afraid of lead and asbestos, and maybe being a little dramatic for affect. At any rate, they wouldn’t hire me back. Go figure.

First Year Check Up

2007-01-10T09:59:00.000-08:00

My tough guy didn't even cry when he got his shots! He doesn't get his stoicism from me. Here he is with the pediatrician.

Blogger

2007-01-09T10:01:00.000-08:00

There is something whacked about blogger today. Half my template is gone and Madd Babies is totally MIA.

BTW, pissed off housewife, I put your link up in my blog roll. I am a little nervous that you might piss off some of my readers. I was worried about that with Tricia Shore's Comic Mom's blog as well.

I guess this is a good of time as any to say that I don't agree with everything that is said in the blogs that I have linked. Actually, I almost completly disagree with everything that Comic Mom has to say. However, all of the blogs in my links are blogs that make me think, and that I visit nearly every day. The only time I take off a blog is if it appears that the it has been discontinued (I am looking at you Left O Center).

You, gentle reader, can visit them and make up your own mind.

Spiritual Beliefs other mumbo jumbo

2007-01-09T09:28:00.000-08:00

Over the last couple of months, I have met more than one person who tagged themselves as spiritual. It irritates me. Probably because I haven’t quite come to terms with my own beliefs, and the spiritual moniker strikes me as a little presumptuous. I think the term spiritual should come with some sacrifice. Go walk around with a hair shirt and live in a cave, and then maybe.

At the same time, I have felt pressure to come to terms with God. I have a kid, and I am going to have to tell him something. Right now, my religious/spiritual beliefs are this mixed bag of wishy washy mumbo jumbo musings. It would be a whole lot easier if I were religious. However, I can’t stand the idea of telling him something I don’t 100% believe in.

When I was growing up, I desperately wanted to be a nun. This strikes some people as odd, but in my Catholic neighborhood, the nuns had the most exciting lives around. They went off on missions to places like Africa and Australia. I contrasted that to the women in my neighborhood that had 8 kids and were beaten on Saturday nights. Joining a convent sounded pretty good.

Alcoholism runs in my family, and by the time I was in high school, I had developed a fine case of it. Along with that, I became, how shall we say this, sexually adventuresome. The convent idea was becoming less viable.

By the time I hit my twenties, I was very sick from drugs and alcohol and entered recovery. By this time, I had no beliefs at all. I wasn’t an atheist. I just didn’t think the question was really important. I was told to pray for a day of sobriety in the morning, and say a prayer of gratitude at night. I was told that it didn’t matter if I believed it or not, to just do it. Remarkably, this worked. I haven’t had a drink or a drug in ten years.

You would think this would be the end of it, but yet, the doubt had never completely vanished from my mind. I was raised Christian, and the whole drama, the virgin birth, the miracles, the rising from the dead, just seem so unlikely.

However, I am a foxhole believer. When things get tough in my life, I do revert back to my childhood faith. I have to admit that things have always worked out, the last Con Con not withstanding.

So where does this leave me? And how do I communicate to my boy that there may be a God, and if there is, surely it is the most important fact of our existence. However, it’s hard to know?

When I was newly sober, an old timer said to me that it isn’t so important whether there is a God or not. What is important is my willingness to believe. I think that this is one of the most profound things I have ever heard. Maybe it’s not so important whether or not Jesus was the Savior, as the idea that we can be Saved.

And these are the two who saved me.

Speaking of staying alive

2007-01-07T08:24:00.000-08:00

One of my wife’s favorite uncles is in the hospital. He had a heart attack. Normally, I would be pretty upset about this. However, after last week’s Con Con, I decided to go over to Know Thy Neighbor.org to see if I knew anyone who had signed the petition to ban gay marriage. I hadn’t really thought through what I would do with the information. And wouldn’t you know it, this man who had always been so kind to us, had come to our wedding and wished us well, had signed the petition. Its true that there has been some fraudulent activity. But I talked about it with my wife, and she thinks he probably did sign it.

I was going to confront him on it, but then he had triple bypass surgery. Even my wife says that what he gets for signing that petition.

Staying alive

2007-01-07T08:09:00.000-08:00

After little guy hit his first birthday, more than one person said to me, “Congratulations – you have made it for a whole year without killing your baby!” I thought it too. On Friday morning, I mused, “how bad of mothers could we be, he’s still alive.” In fact, I think keeping your baby alive is one of the main skill sets of being a mom. And it’s not a sure thing either.

It starts in your pregnancy when you start reading those “What to expect books”. They should really be called, “Everything that could possibly go wrong.” I used to be a girl who smoked two packs of cigarettes a day, and could stay up for days at a time doing shots. Suddenly, I was terrified of brie.

Once the baby is born, there is the scariest of all possibilities – SIDS. You make it past the first six months, and you feel a little bit better. Maybe you don't have to check their breathing every ten minutes. Then they start moving around, and the potential for fatal accidents is increased. It took a long time to get it through my head that my little guy has no reasoning abilities. I thought he would stop crawling at the edge of a bed, because obviously there was no bed there. There have been a few trips to the doctors.

So through luck, wisdom and a hard head, we are all still alive. I am grateful.

It is getting harder to take pictures of him, because as soon as he sees the camera, he tries to grab it.

But what’s more fun than a camera? A stove, of course.

Happy Birthday Googie Baba!

2007-01-05T06:18:00.000-08:00

This time – a year ago today

2007-01-04T16:15:00.000-08:00

I was in the outpatient maternity ward. I had been put on bed rest because of preeclampsia. I was having my blood drawn every few days. On this particular day, the doctor came in and said that my protein levels were abnormal. She said I had three choices: 1. Just wait to have the baby naturally 2. Have the baby tonight (induction) 3. Have the baby tomorrow (induction)

So I said, “If I were to wait to have the baby naturally…”
She cut in, “That’s not a good choice.”
I said, “Ok. If I were to have the baby tonight….”
The nurse cut in, “That’s not good choice. You will be up all night in labor. Why don’t you go home, get some sleep and have the baby in the morning.”
“Ok.”

So I didn’t really have a choice, after all. We went home, I didn’t sleep AT ALL, and the baby kicked all night. I couldn’t wait to meet him.

Didn't pray hard enough

2007-01-02T13:58:00.000-08:00

Guess we will have to see what happens next legislative session.

My thanks to Blue Mass Group for Blogging the convention. Bay Windows kept crashing, so your blog was the only way to follow what was happening.

Con Con Confusing

2007-01-02T13:29:00.000-08:00

I am very confused about what is happening at the Constitutional Convention. I thought we were dead in the water. Now it looks like they took a vote to reconsider the last vote.

This is embarassing, but I actually am praying this ammendment dies. Got down on my hands and knees and prayed. I know the other side is praying too, but I am asking God to please, listen to me. Don't listen to them, their butt bags.

(I assume this is theologically indefensible, but I have a pretty conflicted relationship with God. He is pretty used to this from me.)

Eve of the last day of the legislative session

2007-01-01T17:59:00.000-08:00

I am bracing myself for bad news. They only need 50 legislators to approve it. Then they vote on it one more year, and if it passes, it goes on the ballot. It will be a couple of more years of campaigning to keep it from becoming law. A couple more years of treading through attacks on my family.

The baby’s godmothers wanted me and the kid to show up at the state house tomorrow. I didn’t like the idea at all. It brings out all of the homophobes, and if they lose, I think they could become hostile. I know that he is too young to understand, but I didn’t want him exposed to that. Right now, there is nothing in his consciousness about hate. He has no idea that people hate his family. I am sure someday we will have to deal with it. Right now, I just want his mind free from it for as long as possible.

Good night sleep tight

2007-01-01T17:57:00.000-08:00

My son woke up after I had put him to bed. I was holding him in the dark, and he was making these soft cooing and singing noises trying to get back to sleep. It was so sweet, and I really felt like a mother. He laid his head on my shoulder and closed his eyes, but if I put him in the crib, he would scream. It reminded me of how much I like being physically close to my mother when she was alive, even though she wasn’t the cuddly type. Even when she was dying, my sisters and I would climb in the hospital bed just to be near her.

I was talking to a friend of mine about him. I wondered out loud when he would want to sleep by himself and not with us. She laughed and said that she was 41 and still wanted to sleep with her mother. She had plastic surgery and her mother was staying with her. They had to share a bed and she was thrilled. She said her mom had a “mommy smell”. Apparently, her mother smells like Nantucket (yes, we are talking about a well off family). She was like “Mommy!” I guess her mother was a little freaked out by her enthusiasm. Her mother said, “Honey, I got to go put on some lipstick.” And got out of bed.

Not bad for a girl from Phoenix, AZ

2006-12-30T12:22:00.000-08:00

Dude! You're 83% from Massachusetts!

Okay, either you come from the western half of the state or from the Boston area. Still, it's not bad, so I'll give you the thumbs up. Cool!

How Massachusetts are you?
Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

Though, you don't have to be here to long before you figure out that you can't actually park the car in Harvard Yard. Why not? Just try it and see what happens. Never met such vicious meter maids in my entire life.

I was just thinking one of the things I really love about my wife is that she is such a townie. I asked her the other day what she wanted for lunch and she said (without irony) that she wanted a clam strip platah

I asked her if she wanted an "r" with her clams.

Enough with the Lists Already

2006-12-28T16:54:00.000-08:00

I do not know why my year end retrospection has taken the form of ‹ol ›
‹li › ‹/ol › but I think this is probably the end of it.

5 Things I would do differently

Forgo circumcision and leave the kid intact
Breastfeed longer
Lay off the McDonald’s cheeseburgers and the JP Licks milkshakes during my pregnancy
Start my consulting business a year before I had him, not now
Try and be a little bit more relaxed about everything

5 Things I would do exactly the same

Get the epidural
Quit my job and cash in my 401k so I could stay home with my baby
Go with #3672
Become so enraged that a friend of mine and her family are harassed by a bigot in Brookline Village, that I start a gay parenting blog.
Defy James Dobson, Mitt Romney, Ron Crews and every other homophobe, and create a family with my wife and son!

The Rest of the Family

2006-12-27T19:02:00.000-08:00

My wife told me that the dog was jealous that I never blog about her. That’s pretty amazing since I didn’t know she knew how to read. But I am nothing if not accommodating.

For Calliope, here is the rest of the family….

Calliope

Calliope is a purebred princess surrounded by mutts (us). She is a Tibetan Terrier that we bought from a North Shore breeder in lieu of a new couch. She lets it be known that the present arrangements are beneath her. But we think she love us anyway. As a puppy she destroyed every last pair of high heels that I owned. That included a $350 pair of Gold Lame Ballys that I used to light up the dance floor with. We didn’t speak for a while, but its ok, everything’s cool now.

The Cats have had very dramatic lives

Schmoo

Schmoo had a troubled past. She was on the street and pregnant by the time she was 9 months old. She had the kittens and was then institutionalized at the MSPCA. That is where we come in. We adopted her, brought her home and she hid out in the closet for two days. She then came out of the closet, no pun intended, and went to sleep on the radiator. She pretty much hasn’t moved since.

Josie

Josie was a tiny kitten in a Georgia animal shelter. She was slated to be gassed in three days time. Meanwhile, Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana. I was six months pregnant and doped up on my own hormones. Watching my fellow Americans rage at the television in a desperate attempt to be rescued from the Superdome caused me to fall into a deep depression about the futility of life and our federal government. I decided to save something, so I saved Josie, who I had found on the internet. She came to us filled with worms and fleas. It cost over a $1000 once Angell Memorial was done with her. She is a really undomesticated cat. For the first few months she would fly at us, claws drawn. She would attack our bare toes and knees. At which point, I would screech, “I saved you from a CERTAIN DEATH, you little shit.” She displayed an appalling lack of gratitude. Furthermore, I have promised my wife to stay away from animal rescue web sites.

First Noel

2006-12-26T11:04:00.000-08:00

You didn’t think I was going to forget the Christmas pictures, did you?

Surround by new toys, but fascinated by the screwdriver

But he loved the new car!

Out for a Christmas Drive

Top Ten Best Parenting Advice of the Year

2006-12-24T09:02:00.000-08:00

The first thing I want to say is that this is what worked for us. I find the whole mommy war thing disparaging. I really try not to take sides in the go-to-work/stay-at-home breastfeed/bottle feed battles. I am super determined not to have a dog in the fight. So don’t take any of this as criticism if you did something different, k?

Top Ten Best Parenting Advice of the Year

10. Breastfeed. This seems like a good place to start. When my little guy had colic, this was one of the few things that actually helped. Plus, I do think there is something to the idea that it helps with bonding. Also, I noticed when I weaned him at 6 months, he did start to get ear infections.

9. Co-sleep. When you go to parenting classes, you will hear about the dangers of co-sleeping. I bought a beautiful crib with every intention of keeping my baby in it. But then you have the baby, and he has ideas of his own. In fact, he screams bloody murder every time you try to lay them in the gorgeous crib. So into your bed he goes, sound asleep. I then started asking around, and it was like a dirty secret among parents. Everybody is sleeping with their baby. Really, everybody I asked - straight people, gay people, single mothers and fathers. Everyone had their babies in their bed.

I was worried about this arrangement for safety reasons, so we eventually used a co-sleeper which attached to the bed. It gave him a safe place to sleep, but he thought he is in the bed with us.

Arm's Reach Mini Cosleeper Bassinet Natural

8. Don’t buy too much! Parenting is such an anxious time. You want to do everything right. Marketers are really gifted at exploiting this. But we found we had way more than we needed. People will buy tons of stuff if it’s your first. Hand me down clothes work just as well as brand new outfits from the Gap.

I like Dr. Spock because he is sort of like the doctor from Retroville. This is his checklist. It’s pretty short:

Car Seat
Crib, bassinet or cosleeper
Sheets for the crib, bassinet or cosleeper
Blankets for swaddling
A few onesies and sleepers
Diapers
Nursing Bras if you are going to nurse
Two or three bottles and formula if you are going to formula feed
Carrier
Diaper Bag
Digital Thermometer and nose syringe

The only thing that I would ad is that you probably do want a baby hat to keep their head warm.

Compare this list to what Babies R Us says you need, and you will get a sense of the interest that you generate with your pregnancy.

7. Baby wearing. Like I mentioned below, the sling didn’t go over so well. However, the Baby Bjorn and the Moby Wrap were fantastic. Why I was able to figure out the convoluted wrap and not the sling is beyond me.

6. Infant Massage. This only works for a few months. Once they start crawling, you will never get them to sit still for it. But it was fun in those first few pre-mobile months when there just isn’t a lot to do. We took a class at a local center, but I think there are also some good books out there.

5. Let people help you. When you first bring baby home, people will see your cute baby and generously offer to babysit. They are probably thinking you won’t be up to letting someone else take care of your baby. As soon as the offer hits the air, grab a pen and paper and take down their name and phone number!

4. Nap when your baby naps.

3. Make your own baby food. I know it sounds crazy, but its way cheaper than buying it already canned, plus you know where it came from. Even using organic food we save a lot of money. Plus, you are able to give your kid a wider variety than what is offered.

2. Try to respond to your baby’s cries as best and as in a loving manner as possible. However, if you think you are going to lose it, it’s ok to put the baby in a safe place, and take a break (see below)

1. Don’t listen to advice! Listen to your baby. People are going to give you tons of advice. Some of it will work for you and some of it won’t. Don’t feel guilty for making different choices. The wise mother who told us that has two beautiful kids, and doesn’t seem to ever give a second thought to what people think of her parenting. This is pretty different than my wife and I. We actually stress quite a bit when criticized. But we are working on it.

Wow, that was a long post. I think we need a photo break.

Top Ten List of Worst Parenting Advice

2006-12-22T16:11:00.000-08:00

It’s the year end, and we are close to little guy’s 1 year birthday. I thought I would put together a post of all of the worst pieces of advice I have encountered over the year. Here is my list of the least helpful things that people said to us. I feel the need to point out that our baby had colic early on, so a lot of this advice was in response to that situation.

Top Ten List of Worst Parenting Advice

10. Strollers – Get the Travel System!

9. Use a sling.

8. Put baby cereal in the bottle, he’ll sleep better.

7. Give him gripe water.

6. Give him water.

5. Don’t let him watch TV.

4. Put him on a schedule.

3. Don’t ever give him a pacifier or a bottle.

2. Don’t let him sleep in your bed.

http://www.askdrsears.com/html/7/T070600.asp

1. Don’t let your baby cry – ever.

Next post – the 10 best pieces of advice we received over the year.

Until then, another picture

Suddenly, things turn around.

2006-12-20T12:20:00.000-08:00

I got a new client yesterday. I had cinched the deal at a Christmas party. You should have seen me. I was trying to be cool and casual, like, “Let’s see if it would be mutually beneficial to work together.” But really, my knees were about to buckle under, and in my head I was thinking, “I need this money so badly!” The gentleman’s assistant called me yesterday to say she was sending a check. Once it gets here, I am going to get it to the bank so fast the teller’s head is going to spin.

A couple of thank-yous. Thanks Jill and Brenda for the gift cards to Stop and Shop. And thank-you Kim for the gift card to Stop and Shop. At least we had enough to eat! And thanks Christie and Janet for listening to me sob. We get by with a little help from our friends.

I’m still going to the job interview tomorrow to see what they have to offer. I think the boss lady, my wife, would like it if I had regular employment.

With some of the Stop and Shop gift card money, we bought ingredients to make cookies. Here is a picture, ala Anna Ginsberg. For some reason, my wife bought orange, black and white icing, so the Christmas cookies have a Halloweenish flair.

My wife went out last night, and then the baby woke up. I got him out of bed, and we ate the cookies and watched Christmas specials on TV (which were really hard to find, by the way). Though I think it may qualify me as a bad mother, it was really fun to have him up a few hours after his bedtime. I had him all to myself.

Here he is eating the cookies, and sitting in front of the TV. We were in so much trouble when Mama got home!

Here he is checking out the Christmas tree.

The new normal

2006-12-18T16:32:00.000-08:00

Like I mentioned, I was at a party a couple of nights ago. I was seated with my son next to an older lesbian on one side, and the director of the insemination program at the local gay health clinic on my other side. One after another, the lesbian families started arriving at the party. The babies were all different ages, and they just kept coming like it was Provincetown’s Family week.

“This is freaking me out,” my friend on the left said, “In my day, if you were a gay mother, you did it the old fashioned way. You got married to a man, had a family, and then ran off with a woman.”

“It freaks me out too,” my friend on the right said. This is the one who runs the insemination program for lesbians.

“You? You enable this!” I protested.

Which got me to thinking, in my neighborhood, almost all of the families are gay. If you have kids in my neck of the woods, you probably are in a same sex marriage. The children have come to us from all sorts of different ways. Foreign adoptions, adoptions out of DSS, artificial inseminations, and maybe even some the old fashioned way (see above). My little guy is going to think same sex couples are the norm. He will think it’s the kids of straight parents who are weird!

Separation Anxiety

2006-12-17T14:56:00.000-08:00

Since we are having such money problems, I am considering doing something drastic. No, I don’t mean putting a ski mask on me and the baby, and then robbing a few local banks. Though, I did consider that. I mean finding a job. A real job with a paycheck and shit. I thought I would just send a few resumes out and see what happened. On Thursday night, I sent out two. Friday morning, 8:30 am I got a call for an interview. How about that?

It was good to know that my skills are still marketable. However, I was talking to a friend of mine to process this. Lesbians love to process. Anyway, I was trying to say that I would be sad if I had to leave my little guy for five days at a time at a daycare. But before I could get it out, I burst into tears. I am having some feelings about this. She mentioned that it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. I could go back to work part-time. I decided she’s right. I think that is going to be my main point of negotiating with any job I interview with. They have to give me flex time or no deal.

He’s a pretty social kid. He loves the other kids at our playgroups and he really loves activity. I think he would adjust pretty well. It’s me who would have a hard time with it. I don’t like the idea of being separated from him at all. However, the money crisis has made things really stressful, and I don’t think that is a good environment for him either.

I went to a party last night, and several of the mothers assured me that day care was a positive thing. They’re kids look alright. I did get a full year with him at home. I know that is more than what a lot of people get.

A time to sleep

2006-12-13T18:23:00.000-08:00

I am struggling with my little guy’s nap schedule. He sleeps wonderfully at night. He goes down before 7:00 and then sleeps all the way to morning. We have dropped pans in the kitchen creating a huge racket. He doesn’t even stir.

Totally different in the daytime. He HATES his naps. He acts like we are killing him when we put him down, he wakes up if someone in the building sneezes and never sleeps more than 45 minutes.

I had read that the morning nap disappears around the 1st of the year. I guess in a bid to avoid some of this unpleasantness, I decided to try and see if he could make it without the first nap. He usual takes one around 9:00. So 9:00 came and went, and he was fine. But by 11:30, he was laying his head on the floor, sucking his thumb. So I put him in his crib, and he slept for 1 and ½ hours. Not bad. But I didn’t know what to do when he got up at 1:00. Should I put him down for a nap at 3:00? If he slept a long time, that would delay his bedtime routine. So I kept him up. He didn’t make it too 5:00. He was in such a bad mood. It was like I had given birth to a cranky little bear. So down he went at 5:30. I think we are going to go back to two naps.

Speaking of animals, I saw this post on Andrew Sullivan today.

http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/2006/12/dominion.html

I have been wanting to go vegetarian for some time. It just hasn’t been doable with the baby, and running around like a mad woman, I mean starting a business. But this picture definitely makes me think twice about eating meat. It’s funny too, because when I think of animals that are going to become food, I still think of a farm. Someplace where the animals are at least happy and well kept. This points out that they are actually treated with unimaginable cruelty in today’s industrial farms.

Little guy takes a big step!

2006-12-10T17:13:00.000-08:00

Little guy took his first step yesterday! It was more like a lurch and then half a step forward, but it was pretty impressive. We were at my sister in law’s holiday party. He was hanging onto the back of a chair doing his little dance. His grandmother was behind him and called his name. He turned half way around with one hand still on the back of the chair and then lunged towards her. He took a step towards her and then she caught him. Then everyone went crazy. It was amazing.

I was telling someone the other day the story of when I was inseminated with him. We had been trying for a while and I was getting a little despondent. I have little patience for these things. I had to go to the doctor’s alone because Jen was at work. It had been a crazy month because I had switch facilities and there was a lot of chaos in getting the sperm over to its new home. I had ovulated really late, like three weeks into my cycle. I was on clomid and feeling more insane than usual. But the minute the doctor gave me the insemination, I felt the spirit of a little boy in the room. I went home and told my wife that I was sure that I was pregnant and that it was a boy. I wasn’t at all surprised a few months later when the radiologist pointed to the ultra sound screen and said we were having a boy. I felt like I knew him from the moment he was created.

Polygamy and Plumbing

2006-12-09T11:19:00.000-08:00

I mentioned in my last post that the faucet fell off the bath tube. It just fell right off. Neither my wife nor or I are handy dykes, so we just sort of stared dumbly at the tool box wondering what to do. Finally, my wife says to me, “What we need is a Nikki.”

She means Nikki from HBO’s Big Love.

We love the show. It’s about a polygamist family in Utah. Nikki is wife number two, and she is good at fixing things. So this got me to thinking – we do need a Nikki. In fact, if you get away from the one man one woman thing, suddenly, all sorts of new possibilities open up. You could have a mom who is good at fixing things, and we definitely need a mom who is good at brining home the bacon. My wife has the medical thing down, so she could be the boo boo mom. I would be the staying at home and making cookies mom.

So we have a couple of openings. Are there any good looking, high wage earning lesbians out there who are good at plumbing who would like to join our family? We are two chubby, in debt lesbians, with two cats, one dog and a really cute baby.
(Crickets chirping)

Anyone…..

Anyone who knows us knows that this is ridiculous. We are pathetically monogamous. And, much to my delight, my wife figured out how to fix the faucet while I was writing this. I’m so impressed. She looks so butch with that screwdriver.

Random thoughts

2006-12-08T18:47:00.000-08:00

We have been having a hard time over here. A client of mine didn’t pay me, and that has thrown us into some financial chaos. I know that I will regroup, but it happened in a bad month. Then, Yahoo randomly overcharged my account $150.00. My wife borrowed a friend’s car, and rammed it into a post, of course. I got a $75 parking ticket. And then, the handle fell off the faucet of the bath tube. We are not handy, so we are going to need a plumber.

Am I glutton for punishment?

So, according to the Google webmaster rules, you are not supposed to do this, so I am putting it into pig latin:

Ifway ouyay ouldway ickclay onway ethay Ooglegay Adway, eway
ouldway ebay ostmay atefulgray

Thanks! You guys are the best.

I know this blog is getting pretty self indulgent. I hardly ever talk about my son anymore. But, he has a new tooth! He has been working on it for months. He just had a ton of hair and no teeth. But now he has just the sliver of sharp white on his gums.

I realized the other day, I love blogging. I mean, I really like it. I like throwing out opinions on random things, and then checking the stat counter to see who is coming to the site. Yesterday, I got a visitor for Virginia. I’m going to pretend that it was Mary Cheney herself. Why not? Anna Ginsburg stopped by for a visit after I blogged about her.

Guess whose coming to dinner, Republican style

2006-12-07T15:13:00.000-08:00

Mary Cheney is pregnant. I have somewhat of an obsession with the Cheney family. I think that it is because I am from a Western, gun slinging, pro life rally attending, bloody fetuses in the air, Republican family myself. And my name happens to be Mary. I am a lesbian. Hmmm, so maybe I am really just fascinated with myself????

I found the right wing blogosphere reaction to this story pretty interesting. They are just tripping over themselves to condemn them. Robert Knight has said that “the child was conceived with the express purpose of denying it a father.” It is my contention that the Right Wing is perfectly ok with gays and lesbians as long as we are ashamed and closeted. I think it is pretty clear now that there were Republican operatives who knew that both Haggard and Foley were gay. But they weren’t open about it. They were being good boys playing the Republican game. Bibles in the daytime, prostitutes and underage boys at night.

It is when we live our lives in a proud manner, create families and refuse to be silenced that they get all hot and bothered. I think the right wing is much more comfortable with a devastated preacher and disgraced congressman than they are with a happily, pregnant woman and her partner.

I noticed this when I came out at my first professional job a few years ago. The bank’s gay and lesbian resource group invited everyone to come out at work. And so I did. The reaction from my colleagues was great. I was given a lot of support, and I noticed I had produced a bit of intrigued. People were pretty curious about this lifestyle. But the minute I mentioned that I would like to have a wife and family some day, it was a completely different story. I was hushed up pretty quickly. People just did not want to hear it.

Any way, congratulations to Mary and Heather. Mary, listen to me – get the epidural.

Seating arrangements

2006-12-03T15:04:00.000-08:00

A little while ago I posted about the great time we had at my friend’s bridal shower:

http://momandmama.blogspot.com/2006/10/pary-with-ann-coulter-clones.html

The wedding was this weekend, and I was just a little bit apprehensive about it. She is an Episcopal priest, and was being married by the bishop of the diocese. Archbishop Tutu’s daughter was the matron of honor. I couldn’t help but think – this is going to go on for forever.

Well, we had a great time. And she sat me and my wife right up front at her fancy reception. She had too. Years ago, she went to a wedding where all the people of color were sat in a corner. She’s African American and she was a bit irked. So when I got married, she said, “I’ll come to your wedding, but you better not put me in the corner.” When we were making out the seating arrangements, I sat her first – in the front.

So when she got married, I said, “You know where you have to seat me.” She returned the favor. We were right next to the Bishop. Congratulations Jamie and Karen.

On a totally different note, I got into law school. I’m not sure if I want to go. I’m thinking, it’s got to be easier than being a stay at home mom.

I know what you are looking for - and its not here

2006-11-27T18:44:00.000-08:00

My understanding is that there has been a change in the Google algorithm so that if you are looking for porn, you may not find it as easily. See here: http://seoblackhat.com/2006/11/21/free-porn/

Apparently, Google is now assuming that you are not looking for porn until you refine your search and make it really, really clear that you are. Why they would do this, I don’t know. I would think that they would assume that you are looking for porn, because you probably are.

I have a stat counter on this blog that tells me what keywords people are using to find us. There is a sudden uptick in “nurse giving rectal temperature, pic.” Apparently, there are a few medical fetishes out there. I’m so sorry to disappoint you with our domestic blog. It’s a timely search though because my son has a double ear infection. We’ve had a few rectal temps around here. Now if I could just get my wife to wear this outfit for me.

Quick Update

2006-11-24T18:43:00.000-08:00

I have an overwhelming desire to post to my blog tonight. I am such a geek. Not much is happening here though. Little guy is almost walking. He is cruising around the furniture, but he isn’t quite there just yet. We think he is teething. He is running a fever and is drooling like crazy, but we haven’t seen any pearly whites just yet.

My wife is working a lot. She is working tonight as a matter of fact. Me? I am still trying to get a consulting practice going. I joined a networking group where you are supposed to meet one on one with all of the members. There are thirty members, so I am running around like crazy meeting with everyone. It’s kind of funny because I don’t have much work to do. I kind of feel like I have an imaginary job. I’m running around the city going to meetings and I pass out business cards, and that's about it.

Also, I don’t quite know what to obsess about now that the anti-gay marriage amendment might actually be dead. I just don’t know what to replace it with. I worry about money a lot. If we ever become financially solvent, I might have a real crisis on my hands.

Since I have broken my rules about not posting pictures, I thought I would give you guys one more.

I do not feel pretty

2006-11-18T17:16:00.000-08:00

Anne Sexton said something to the affect of: I use to be pretty, now I’m just me. I have been looking all over the internet for the actual quote. If anyone knows it, please email me or leave it in the comments.

Blogs are weird. They are personal and public at the same time. This feels like a personal post, but I don’t know most of you, so I am going to blog it anyway. I am going to trust that those of you who do know me, love me enough not to hold my character defects against me.

I have been thinking about this quote lately. I look a lot different than I did before the baby, and its not sitting so well with me. I had a horrible pregnancy and gained 80lbs. I am still lugging around 40 of it. I use to have long, red hair, but it changed color during the pregnancy. For expediency’s sake, I chopped it all off. I am still getting use to my new self.

So this is the part that is hard for me to talk or blog about. I did not realize until now how much I leveraged my prettiness in the world. I would categorize the new people that I would meet into two categories. “Prettier than me” and “Not Prettier”. If I was uncomfortable in a situation, I could rely upon my physical attractiveness to help me meet people. People were interested in me.

Now, I know. I know. I know. Pretty vain. Pretty shallow. In my defense, it has a lot to do with my upbringing. My mother, despite giving birth to 5 children, remained at a fashionable 110 her whole life. She use to say things to me like, “There’s no reason to learn how to change a tire, just stand by the side of the road and look cute. Someone will help you out.” It’s a terrible message. But there was a truth to it. I was often pulled over for speeding, the policeman never gave me a ticket. Even more bothersome to me is that I really think people took my opinions more seriously 3 years ago than they do now. To be fat is to be invisible. Like the erstwhile quote says, now I’m just me.

I ran across something today that I wanted to share. It is from the blog, Dress A Day.

You Don't Have to Be Pretty. You don't owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not to your co-workers, especially not to random men on the street. You don't owe it to your mother, you don't owe it to your children, you don't owe it to civilization in general. Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked "female".

What it all boils down to now is that I just don’t have pretty in me anymore. I know I could do something about it. I can’t make myself younger, but I could lose the weight. I could scrape up the money to visit those Newbury salons I use to frequent. But I won’t. I guess this is how someone falls into the “Not Pretty” column of the debit sheet.

I have been trying to think of new ways to leverage myself. Did you see “The Fisher King?” In the movie, the Amanda Plummer character complains to Mercedes Ruehl that she has no personality. Mercedes Ruehl says “You want a personality? You can be a real bitch.” So instead of being the pretty one, maybe I will be the bitchy one for a change. Besides, I have since learned that you don’t actually need to know how to change a tire if you have Triple A.

Am I dreaming?

2006-11-09T17:10:00.001-08:00

I am feeling somewhere between totally relieved and totally confused. When I first heard that the legislators recessed from the ConCon, I really thought the lawmakers were just postponing the inevitable or buying time. But the word from BayWindows is that this is a victory. They say that it’s unlikely that the legislators will take this up in January. My wife is at the hospital and I had just put the baby to bed. Reading the news coming out of the ConCon, I was just so filled with emotion I broke down and cried. Can I really not worry about this anymore? Can I stop taking my French lessons that I don’t study for anyway?

That and seeing the Democrats take both the House and the Senate AND Rumsfield stepping down. What a difference a couple of years makes.

Election day - finally! We win!

2006-11-08T16:41:00.000-08:00

The elections were really exciting. I was very proud of my home state of Arizona for being the first state to reject an anti-gay amendment.

My excitement has been offset with a sense of sadness tonight. Tomorrow, the Massachusetts legislator’s will meet to decide whether or not to advance our own anti-gay marriage amendment.

From what I have read, barring any procedural moves, it will probably pass this year. It could end up on the ballot in 2008. I am so proud of Boston sometimes. I feel like a real citizen here. I don’t feel that way towards the entire country. Anti-gay measures in places like Virginia and Missouri tell me that they don’t want me here. I am happy to oblige. But I really like Massachusetts. It makes me sad that people feel that this is even an issue.

I know in the long run there is a good chance we will win. By the time it’s on the ballot, gays and lesbians will have been marrying for four years. That is a pretty long time. And we now have Deval in the corner office. In the meantime, its scary and demoralizing to constantly have my rights questioned.
Sometimes, when I look at my son, I am happy that he understands so little. He doesn't know there is hatred. He doesn't know that there are people out there who hates his family. He just moves through his days looking for his next adventure

Janice Marie Parker Pierce August, 25, 1943 - October 31, 1997

2006-10-31T16:56:00.000-08:00

On another note, October the 31 is kind of a pregnant day for me. My mother died nine years ago of colon cancer. At the very moment she was dying, John Keats Endymion was being read on the radio. So she died to these words. They are very beatiful, and I think must have been a comfort to her. I know that continue to be a source of comfort to me, and I read them every year in her memory.

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkened ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
With the green world they live in; and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
'Gainst the hot season; the mid forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead;
All lovely tales that we have heard or read:
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink.

Happy Halloween!

2006-10-31T16:39:00.000-08:00

I love this holiday. I almost died from the cuteness at the Tot Lot. The kids were killing me.

I decided to post some pictures of my little guy. I worked at a church for a number of years as the webmaster. They put the fear of God into me, so to speak, about posting pictures of children on the internet. They saw predators lurking behind every screen. I guess I have internalized it because I have been nervous to post any pictures. Really, they should have been looking for the predators in the sacristy, but that is another story.

I have been visiting all of these really great parenting blogs, and everyone else has pictures of their cutie pies. So here it goes. He is kind of incognito in the lobster out fit anyway.

I hope that you all have a fantastic time tonight.

Adoption Day

2006-10-28T15:26:00.000-07:00

We had a big week here in Boston. Our second parent adoption went through, so we went down to the courthouse. A lot of my friends who are gay parents express annoyance that they have to go through this step. Personally, I am just grateful we live in a state were we have legal protections for my little family.

It was pretty dramatic though. We left really in the morning to get to the courthouse on time. But there was a huge accident in front of us. We were diverted into the tiny, congested streets of Roxbury on the last day of Ramadan. Traffic was at a complete standstill. We completely freaked out. We were yelling at each other, yelling at the other cars, the cops…everybody. We were so worried about what would happen if we were late. We finally get into downtown Boston, and of course, we couldn’t find parking anywhere. We parked in a handicapped space just so we could book it to the courthouse. (I’m not condoning this behavior. In our defense, we never do this sort of thing).

We went racing down the Financial District, flying past all of the morning commuters and big dig construction workers. We made it to the courthouse just in time. Then, our lawyer was 45 minutes late. She was stuck in the same traffic we were.

The judge couldn’t have cared less. She strolled in 15 minutes after our attorney came storming into the room. My wife was worried that she would grill her about her parenting skills. She did no such thing. She just picked our son up and let him chew on the gavel and pound on the keyboard. She was older, had really blonde hair, and just the thickest Boston accent you ever heard. She kept saying, “He’s so cute. I am going to sign the adoption papers over to me.”

Then she signed the papers and it was all over. We were at the clerks waiting for the ugly yellow adoption certificate. I looked over at our son and said, “You have no idea what’s going on, do you?” Then my wife’s mom said the sweetest thing. She said, “She knew he was her mother.”

We went to Legal’s afterwards. They had these delicious baked oysters. They were great.

Our little guy has had a cold since then. He has been pretty crabby. In fact, I have never seen him in such a bad mood. Every toy I gave him he would just through on the floor with a screech. Even when he’s intolerable, I love him so much. He is just my little streetfighter.

Party with the Ann Coulter clones

2006-10-15T17:49:00.000-07:00

My wife and I went to a bridal shower for a friend of ours. She is straight and marrying a very nice guy who I also happen to be friends with. She is a priest in a pretty wealthy town. Some of her parishioners were there as well as other clergy. Even though she is a member of the clergy, she is really fun and down to earth. She wore her clergy collar into a sex shop and proceeded to buy me a sex toy. I know because she called me on the phone to see what I wanted. I am pretty excited about her wedding.

On the day of the shower, I just couldn’t pull an outfit together so I wore jeans hoping it would be ok. As soon as I walked into the party and saw the other women dressed in dark velvet and beautiful plaid bows, I knew I had made a mistake. I felt like such a slob.

I tried to engage one of the parishioners in conversation. She was Ann Coulter thin and blonde. She was an attorney but now was a stay at home mom. I was interested in her because I am thinking about applying for law school. She muttered that law school was a big mistake, and then turned back to her other suburban friends.

We were there with our son, and boy, was he unhappy. We thought he would nap in the car, but no luck. He stayed awake the whole time. He fell asleep at the party, but would wake up startled every there was clapping when the bride to be opened up a present. We ended up leaving early because we were afraid our son was about to go into a full out melt down.

As soon as we got into the car, my wife turned to me and said, “My god, they were so straight.” I knew exactly what she meant.

I am blogging about this incident because there were a few things about it that interest me. The first thing that became clear to me is that I really surround myself with people who are very much like me. Even my straight friends aren’t sooo straight. Generally, we are a pretty grungy crew. The women at the shower were very thin and well coiffed. They shrieked and giggled every time the bride to be opened a box of lingerie. I think this what marshaled the comment from my wife.

The second thing was that it was apparent to me that it can be really hard to interact with people who are a different class from you. I don’t like to think of myself like this. I like to think that I can relate to pretty much anybody, but I tell you, these women were tough. But its not like I was raised in a cave, I went to Northwestern for crying out loud, I have been around rich people before.

And the last thing I want to say is that babies and polite company just don’t mix. I should have learned by now. But I’m pretty stubborn. We keep trying to take him to nice restaurants when we should just resign ourselves to IHop.

Don't eat your veggies

2006-10-09T16:32:00.000-07:00

Did you see? There is a recall on lettuce because of ecoli fears.

http://www.fda.gov/oc/po/firmrecalls/freshexpress05_03.html

All I can say is that if ecoli breaks out in cheez its or diet coke, I'm in big trouble.

Time to log off

2006-10-06T20:41:00.000-07:00

There is a saying that I like very much that goes something like this: You don’t have to show up for every fight you are invited to.

I think about this saying a lot when I get into online “discussions”. I think that there is something about disembodied text that just brings out the worse in people. Sometimes I get sucked into a discussion and have a tremendous urge to be the last person to post a comment. This happens even when I know I am talking to someone who has the coherence of my grandfather 3 months before he died of Alzheimer’s.

I try to avoid bulletin boards or comments on blogs if there is an argument brewing. However, with all of the crap that is being said about the Foley scandal, I found myself showing up for the street fight, invitation or not.

The postings were on belief.net. I felt like I was in some kind of Alice in Wonderland upside down world. According to the thread, homosexuals are oversexed, miserable, have multiple partners and absolutely shouldn’t be allowed to get married, and Rep Foley proves it.

I have to laugh about the oversexed part. I should be so interesting. Honestly I am so tired from working and taking care of the baby, sex is the last thing on my mind. In fact, I have a pile of laundry and dishes, a living room full of toys and dried baby food my shirt. At this point, I don’t want sex so much as a clean house. Though, I’d take sex too..

And I just have to wonder, who are these people that they are talking about. These hypersexed, multi-partnered, drug taking, circuit chasing, youth loving, prada wearing gays? I’ve seen them on tv. But, I live in a very gay neighborhood, and nobody that I know is like this. The gays that I know worry about sending their kids to kindergarten and when to make a run to Toys R Us.

There is something about getting into an argument with someone who insists something is true that you know isn’t true that makes you feel a little crazy. I had a friend who would insist that all lesbians had been sexually molested. I pointed out that I hadn’t been sexually molested and neither had my wife. But she would just repeat her claim over and over. After a while you need to just stop arguing. And if you are online, you need to log off.

Bonsoir

2006-09-29T22:19:00.000-07:00

I grew up in the Southwest, where there was a certain distrust of governmental powers. This was particularly true if there was a Democrat in office. When the men lost their minds, there was a Southwestern flare to it. They would join militias and bury their guns out in the desert because they were convinced the government was coming to take their ammunition away. I would actually see the men do this and I would think to myself, “My God their crazy. Who could be so paranoid?”

I’m a little bit older now and I no longer live in the desert, but I have to say my mistrust of the government has grown exponentially these last few years. I’m not burying guns. I don’t own any. However, I have been learning to speak French. Every Monday night, my friend and I go down to the local Adult Education Center and conjugate French verbs. I’m sure you are thinking that it’s a worthy endeavor and not at all crazy. But I have to tell you the reason why I am doing it is because I have grown convinced that before my life is through, I am going to have to make a run for Canada. I want to speak the language once I get there. I have my passport on me at all times, and I am dismayed that my wife does not have one. I have even been watching Julia Child so that I will be fully acclimated to the local cuisine.

I’m not sure whether or not to give the laundry list of things scare me about this country. I do not like all of the DOMAs that have been passed in the last few years, I do not like the war in Iraq and I do not like these new anti-terrorism bills that tromp all over the constitution.

At first I thought this has nothing to do with being a parent, but it does. Its one thing to feel like you are not safe. It’s a whole another to feel like your child isn’t safe. When I look down at my little boy at night, I feel such love for him its almost too much to bear. Suddenly I feel like I have a lot in common with those guys who buried their guns in the desert. I want protection. I want no harm to ever make its way in from the outside into the nursery room. I want my little guy to always be as peaceful as he is now in his little Halloween sleeper that says “I love my Mummy.” I can’t believe how crazy I feel, but I want a handle on French sentence structure and gun buried nearby.

TLC

2006-09-21T17:44:00.000-07:00

It’s been awhile since I have updated this blog, mostly since I am so busy. I am trying to start an at home business and still take care of little guy. I am finding it really challenging working at home and having a baby. I never would have tried to start my own business if I didn’t become a mom. However, I now realize that a new business is kind of like a new baby, and it needs to be fed – a lot. If I had known this, I would have tried to start the business a year or two before having the baby. Instead, I have a real baby and a new business venture.

However, I am not so busy that I ever miss TLC’s Bringing Home Baby. It’s a show where they show a family in the first 36 hours after coming home with a new baby. I like TLC, I do. I like all of their corny baby shows, but I found myself getting a little testy with them. They were just so relentlessly heterosexual. Despite all of the different types of families out there, they never seemed to deviate from the one mother, one father cookie cutter family. Just when I thought all was lost, they feature a gay family on Bringing Home Baby. I was so excited, I blew the chunks of Oreos I was eating all over the floor. The family was a couple of dads and their two twin daughters. I was so pleased, I emailed them. You would think I had all the time in the world.

Brothers and Cousins, or something like that

2006-09-02T17:39:00.000-07:00

I was contacted by a woman who had used the same sperm donor as I had. She lived relatively close by and wanted to know if we would like to meet. There is an organic farm with a petting zoo at the halfway point between our homes. I was surprised at how excited I was by all of this, and we agreed to get together.

She was very nice and very friendly, but she made it clear that she didn’t want them referred to as siblings. That was fine by me. I really didn’t know what to make of all of this.

Her son is a few months older than mine. When we met at the farm, I remarked that they looked like cousins, not brothers. There was a resemblance, but they weren’t the spitting image of each other, so I thought. I wanted to know if her son had cowlicks like ours (he didn’t) and if he had sleep issues (no again).

Of course, we weren’t at the farm a half an hour when a nice lady came up and asked if they were brothers. Dead silence. I don’t know what that woman must have thought. Finally, the other guy’s mom said, “They're cousins, sort of.” It was an answer that works, but it kind of bothered me since it wasn’t really the truth. I think I might have been more comfortable just saying they weren’t related at all, but I hadn’t thought this through. We went to a restaurant, and the waitress asked if they were twins! This time we just said no, they are several months apart.

My wife and I had decided to use a sperm donor to avoid emotional complications, but here we were in the thick of another one. They weren’t brothers and they weren’t cousins, there are some other thing that I don’t think has a name yet. The other mother isn’t a gay woman, but a single mom by choice. It is not just gays and lesbians entering this brave new world. This world without proper names for our relationships.

Swimming Lessons

2006-08-20T09:11:00.000-07:00

We missed our son’s swimming lesson this morning, again. If there are any new parents reading this, and I can offer a piece of advice, skip the swimming lessons. In fact, skip all of the classes. Your baby won’t care. In fact, they would rather be at Home Depot in the ceiling fan department. It is a real hassle getting there. I signed up for so many things, Baby Yoga, Baby Swimming Lessons and a couple of mothers groups. It is what I imagined myself doing when I was pregnant. My gay and lesbian parenting group is the only thing I am able to consistently get to. They have a drop in policy, so you have a couple of hours to make it, but even then its sketchy. If he seems like he needs a nap right before its time to go, I have to make a choice. Go and hang out with other adults, but have a tired and cranky baby. Or I can put him to bed, and hang out by myself. As much as I need companionship with people who are not drooling and pooping in diapers, I don’t really want my son to be overtired. This is how I miss most of our activities.

Plus, I go to therapy. If I can’t get someone to baby sit him, I drag him to the therapist’s office. This wrecks havoc on his naps, and I feel like a bad parent. Most other days, I just concentrate on getting him on a consistent sleep schedule.

I really like that new Dunkin Donuts commercial where the mother is driving her five kids around to all of their activities. It reminds me that there are sure to be plenty of classes for him to attend in the future. But for now, he is sleeping.

Changes

2006-08-15T12:52:00.000-07:00

Its been awhile since I last posted, and we had a lot of changes around here. The baby is scooting around the house like a little commando. Since he has figured out that he can get himself around, he is less interested in being held. You can imagine how distressing that is. He seems to vacillate between wanting to be on his own, and wanting to be held. Sometimes it appears that can’t make up his mind, or that he wants both things at once. I know what that is like. Often, I want safety and freedom when they aren’t always compatible with one another.

He has also gotten incredibly big. I literally can’t keep him in clothes. He is only 8 months, but I have to dress him in clothes for a one year old. He is eating more and more solid foods, and making an impressive mess.

Having the baby has been a big economic strain, and my wife and I are trying to make it on one income. The financial thing has been stressful for our relationship as well. I have been trying to get some work on the side to bring in a little extra income. I’ve been doing some networking online, and have found that a lot of stay at home moms are doing the same thing. A lot of them are Christian moms. I am finding that I have a lot in common with Christian SAHMs. Talk about karma.

Bad week in the courts

2006-07-17T06:50:00.000-07:00

Its been a bad week for gay marriage proponents. The Nebraska gay marriage ban has been reinstated, as well as the ban in Georgia and New York’s highest court ruled that it can deny marriage to same sex couples since it is the court’s intuition that two opposite sex parents were best for children. Note that the court did not feel the need to provide actual data, just an intuition. Is there any other group of people that are as oppressed by other’s intuition? If the courts and legislators are unable to provide the rational for their decisions and instead rely on “unsettled feelings” or “intuitions” is this not bigotry, pure and simple?

I think children are the heart of the matter. Not that these decisions are made for the benefit of kids, because if that was their concern there would be healthcare for everyone under 18, and more money in the educational system. I believe the real motivation is to discourage gay people from forming families, which is in its essence, a denial of our basic humanity. We can form loving relationships, have children, and build lives, but don’t expect any help or approval from society or the legal system. And oh, keep it out of straight people’s faces, since the very fact of our existence is somehow offensive to them.

I found this all pretty depressing. We had spent the weekend in Ogunquit, and I did have one situation that made me feel a little more optimistic about the future. My wife and I entered a coffee shop with our son asleep in his stroller. My wife went to get some coffee, and a young mother entered with her husband and daughter. She saw my son and exclaimed how cute and chubby my son was. She then went over to my wife and asked if that was her son, and my wife said yes, it was. She repeated her compliments and then went back to her family. It was kind of thrilling to have a random straight person acknowledge the reality of our family. I think our son is the best little ambassador for gay families. Maybe this is the best we can do, one straight person at a time.

Straight anxiety and gay marriage

2006-07-13T08:37:00.000-07:00

I haven’t been blogging about the marriage debate here in Massachusetts, because I find the whole debate so painful and anxiety producing, I have a hard time thinking about it. I couldn’t watch the TV yesterday because of it. But this morning, as in all mornings after the debate comes up, there is a slew of commentary from straight people on what this all means. I am a bit of a compulsive letter writer, but I cannot answer all of them, however, I found this article on slate particularly annoying:

Hate and Marriage: http://www.slate.com/id/2145620/nav/tap2/

I found the authors address on google, and this is what I wrote to him:

Dear Sir,

Let me see if I understand this. Gay people should abandon the fight for marriage because of straight people’s mostly unconscious anxiety about their gender roles. This is the most ridiculous argument yet. If I understand you correctly, gay families should remain legally unprotected because the majority (straights) are anxious? As a gay woman, I have seen the limits of democracy. If the majority wants to discriminate against a minority, then they can. Really, nothing stopping them.

I think your point is that this deep seated anxiety which causes 70% of the populace to trip over themselves getting to the voting box to vote against gay marriage is not bigotry, but it is. If there is no rational reason to expand marriage rights to gay people, if it is indeed, something that really belongs on the psychologist couch and not in legislation, it is discrimination. Not perhaps the virulent hateful kind, however, the haters drive the debate, and the anxious pick up its rear. All I can say to all of this, I hope you get over it so my family and I can have full citizenship in this country and are able to protect each other legally.

If you would like to add your two cents, this is his email address: rford@standford.edu

On another note, my state senator Dianne Wilkerson came through like a champ once more for gay people. I am calling her office with a thank-you and a donation this morning. This is her site: Dianne Wilkerson(Yes, this is how I spend my time when the baby is asleep).

On second thought

2006-07-02T06:23:00.000-07:00

I have been thinking more about this breastfeeding situation. I am more attached to it then I realized, even if I am being gnawed on. I don’t think my son will have any problems being weaned. He already takes a bottle of formula pretty willingly, I think its me who is going to have a problem. Every time I am tempted to do it, I just think of the first few days of his life. He latched on so well at the hospital, like he was a pro. The nurse kept on saying how smart he was, and I was amazed that we were able to do it. I didn’t have a lot of confidence in my ability to make milk. It just seemed too weird, but there I was feeding my baby.

He had all of these really cute breastfeeding expressions. He had a very serious one where he would furrow his brows like he was solving a physics problem. There was another one where he would lift up his eyebrows like a connoisseur as if he were saying, “This is an excellent batch.”

Now he messes around a lot when he is eating. He smiles, he looks all around. If I am breasting in public, everyone gets a good look at my nipple. I am not sure what to do about the biting. Its like he is conducting an experiment in cause and effect “Look when I bite down, that funny lady screams.” I never pictured myself one of these people who breastfed their babies until they were toddlers. He is six months now, and that is when I thought I would stop. I’ll keep doing it for now.

Breasts and Bottles

2006-06-30T11:02:00.000-07:00

I remember when I was pregnant feeling like my body had become community property. I had wild cravings for junk food. People had a lot to say about this. Everyone from co-workers, friends to people I didn’t even know wanted to tell me about what I should be eating or not eating. I finally came up with a rule that I used in response, I told people that the non-pregnant were not allowed to tell the pregnant what to do. It was surprisingly effective. And then I had the baby, and once again, everybody in the world has an opinion.

Of course, I am not complaining about people who offer to share their experience if you ever need it. Those gracious people are life savers. My sister-in-law is like this. She has plenty to say when asked, but never butts in. But there is a whole army of others who want to tell you all about the best sleeping arrangements, baby carriers, toys, television shows, you name it.

I have been thinking about this because I am thinking about weaning my six month old son off the breast. Truthfully, we have been moving in that direction for a while. I have had repeated problems with thrush, which made feeding painful for me, and eating painful for him. Now, he is beginning to teethed and has been gnawing on my breast. Do you know what it is like to put your nipple someplace knowing it is going to be bitten? It’s a little nerve wrecking.

I have mixed feelings about this because I don’t know if I will have another biological child, so this may be the only breastfeeding I ever do. Despite all of the problems, I do think it helped me bond with my son. He is so cute when I feed him too. He looks up at me and smiles, and it just kills me.

I am also not looking forward to the Breastfeeding Nazis either. These women really have their scorn down to a science. Half the time, they don’t even have to say anything. They just give you a look, and you know they disapprove. But like I use to say when I protested in front of abortion clinics, it’s my body, my choice. I wish people would have a little more respect for women’s bodies. Even with a child inside or outside of them, these arms, legs and boobies are private property.