BFN…

So after the weekend camping trip in Michigan with my family (which I had to stay completely sober for) and feeling queasy and weird and late…I decided to test today because it is the beginning of our week of stacation.  I have lots of projects that I need to focus on this week.  I spend way too much time at work and coping with life. I need more time to work on my art.  Its the only thing that makes me really happy.  So I wanted to just know so that I can deal with it, accept the loss of this cycle, and just go on for a little while not thinking about it!  Sometimes I think that I just can’t take my temperatures anymore.  Maybe I will feel differently when the next cycle starts, but I am just so tired of over-focusing on TTC…the first thing when I wake up every morning, when I have sex, when I think about my future…its kinda crazy.  So I’ve also decided that I’m not gonna get all upset and crazy when I get my period.  Its just retarded to be that dramatic.  Sure the sperm is expensive, but I can make more money. I have lots more eggs to experiment with! And at least now I can go to a fertility doctor to see “why”.

The good news is that DCI may have fucked up my cycle but it is making me a more leveled out person, maybe its making both of us a little more leveled out.  We’ve been getting along so much better.  We enjoy every moment we spend together again, its felt like the old days with us, and the focus is not so “all about baby making all the time”…The camping trip made me kind of realize that maybe its just not time–and when it is time–it will happen in some way.  I’m not running out of time.  I’m just getting started with my art business endeavors.  Perhaps there’s a higher being that just thinks that I should wait because a baby might slow me down…

I have to focus on our projects now.  We have a paid commercial spot for a really neat alternative psychology treatment. M has a brand new exciting job.  There is always good around, even though sometimes its hard to see it.

I’m going to seriously look into adoption options for gay people.  I know they suck, but I’m gonna look into it when I can.  Then maybe we can try again with the same donor sperm in September.  I need to figure out my new DCI-induced cycles now…and perhaps I can get a vignette trailer edited together to scout out some funding for our TTC Documentary Project.

Clawing a new life, in more ways than one.

I realize, after a long night of loneliness and blaming myself that I have driven my partner away from our mutual love and passion of filmmaking.  I strive to be the best at any and everything I touch–I practically kill myself trying.  But in that scraping and clawing, I have wore her down and made her unwilling to work on anything film related with me.  I’m just too hard on her and on us…

I feel terrible about that.  I want to change it, but the only way I see how is to go out on my own and focus on my skills to get me out of this boring, dead end, job.  It’s all I can do now.  Perhaps I can lure her back into my web and make it better for us this time around.   I just want a better life for us. It’s not that this is a bad life. We’ve done very well for ourselves since we moved to Chicago from Nashville.  We barely had an existence there at all…whereas here, we’re movers and shakers.  We’re involved with our own art and plugged into all sorts of neat things with the city.  Our connection to this crazy unapproachable city is strengthening.  VERY slowly…

But now I need to find that next step to make the leap from working on my film projects as a hobby to at least a solid part-time job and cut back my “day” job or even find a different job that is only part-time.

It’s so hard to make that decision and find a way.  But sometimes I think that prolonging it and thinking that I can “do both” is only pushing me further down the path of being “stuck in a life of middle class circumstance.”  I think I would rather be poor than limp and lifeless.

But I want to buy equipment.  Filmmaking is EXPENSIVE.  I’m trying to buy backup drives right now and it’s gonna cost $300 just to cover the basic needs that I have right now.  I need a system upgrade to give me access again to my mixer for sound production…another $200.  Not to mention, I’m hoping to take another production class this summer, but still paying on my production classes from last year!!  Urrgh.

I’ve taken steps towards a budget for us to live on, but even then…the bottom line is that sperm is sooooo expensive!  Still I have to find a way to juggle it all because we’re gonna have it all…damn’t. 

Filmmaking Beckons Me, Even with all the progesterone

Who says it’s a man’s thing?

We watched an incredibly tear-jerking movie last night about a salesman and his little boy–The Pursuit of Happyness and I balled my eyes out like some kind of freak.  I finally just gave up because I was so hot and just started pulling my clothes off and ended up going to sleep at like 9:30p.  I don’t think I’ve ever gone to sleep that early in my life.  I’m one to crawl around all hours of the night with my lady, dreamin’ up weird stuff, writing, painting, drawing…filming.

But Mariela laid in bed with me and we talked about our goals and our future and that was nice before I drifted off to I’m-completely-exhausted-all-the-time sleep.  Our dog is sick and had to be rushed to the vet yesterday morning.  We’re not sure what is wrong with him other than the fact that we found out that he has hip displaysia.  He’s on all sorts of medicines but cries when he has to come up the stairs.  I hate seeing him in pain…

I had weird dreams…mixed with bad parts all night!  And then woke up cold.  I hate the weather here.  I’m hungry for chocolate brownies and it’s only 7am.  I never want sweets–not even pancakey type things for breakfast.  My teeth are also sensitive, much like they are every month when I get my period.  The heartburn is better, but I woke up with what I would call “morning sickness” Sunday morning.  I was nearing the vomit/dry heave stage, so I sat on the bathroom floor for about 20 minutes petting my cat, hoping that I wouldn’t projectile puke on little Morty. I was actually hoping that I would vomit though…it was that bad. I crawled back into bed, whining under Mariela’s arm. She held on to me until I fell back asleep. I woke up again at 8:30a with a little heartburn, but nothing nearly as bad. Whew!  Maybe that’s the key–get up, nearly puke or puke, and then lay back down (preferably after eating a cracker or two) and then get up LATER!

I never anticipated that the TWW would be this hard for me.  I never dreamed that I would have one “symptom” much less a 100.  I thought that it would be something that I could put out of my mind and just go on with my life and then just test in two weeks AND THEN my life would change.  But my life changed from the very next day after we inseminated.  I didn’t even want to do the second insem!  It was like the “Donna Reed sex drive” had already started to show her ugly-yet-well-groomed head!  But I fear that it could just be one’a them “chemical pregnancies” and possibly have to go through all this try-after-try?

No way.  I can’t imagine.  I come from a long line of fertile-against-their-better-judgement women.  They made an art out of trying not to get pregnant but did…

It’s funny because I think about my mom a lot now for all sorts of different reasons.  I can’t imagine not keeping the three of us after she had us.  Yet I can almost see the bond that she must have for us, even if it’s in her own fucked up way. Recently, when we visited the new nephew, she told us about getting pregnant with me at 14 and that it was her first time!  We laughed and made fun of her and said that she was lying–but then maybe she wasn’t?

She doesn’t know that I’m trying.  I know that she would be excited and I guess that’s why I don’t want to tell her.  I guess deep down, I don’t feel like she deserves anything because she’s never worked for a thing in her life.  Why should she be given a grandchild when she threw me and my two younger siblings by the wayside?  We were adopted by 3 individual families (within her family–except for me eventually).  We were never a family again.  But now that my little brother has a son, she wants to be Grandma.  I don’t know.  It’s just so difficult.  Sometimes I think that the only way that I can really deal with all the family drama is to not really deal with it–move to the west coast and send pictures.  Let them all be who they want–a few times a year at most.

Most importantly, if I want to do that–I have to push on with our film productions and get things moving again.  I needed to take a huge chunk of time to deal with my own disasters and reconstructions, but now it’s time to get back in the editors seat and find some funding.  That is my goal for this week.  I need to have something edited and finished by the end of the weekend, Sunday night is my due date.  I would like to have a trailer or vignette completed–to use for begging and grant writing purposes.

P.S. Fertility Friend just said that I possibly implanted Saturday with a possible triphasic chart with today’s temperature!!!  –The day before my morning sickness bout.

The Dry Run for Labor…Day.

This past weekend was majorly exciting.  It was our “wet dry run” so to speak and it went perfectly…my signs couldn’t have lined up better.  I mean, its unfortunate that I had a melt-down and threw a fit…but its that sexual rage that few of us are gifted with…  Never look a gift horse in the mouth.

Speaking of disgusting and weird. We spent pretty much the entire morning Sunday looking for my cervix and boy that was something I’ll never forget.  I only wish we had the swimmers to have completed a try this month.  The signs were just so perfect.  And I fear that the universe is going to make it rather difficult next month–on our first try.  It’s bad timing for Mariela’s job whereas this ovulation window happened on a careless long weekend that we had really no obligations and could lay around in bed for most, if not all of the day, on Sunday.  But I remain steadfast on starting in October.  I’m always at my greatest in the Fall…the creativity (and money) flow from me like the fertile mucus of my cervix. 

I’ve also been pouring through THE lesbian conception book by Brill and fretting about all the little details of my last cycle before we begin. Then I was convinced about a book by Rachel Pepper, so I thought, smugly, eh I live in CHICAGO–I don’t have to order books about lesbians having babies from the internet!!  I can stop ON my way home at the feminist bookstore in the lesbian neighborhood with a woman and child themed name…eh hem…and get the book or browse similar books!  Right? Right. NOTHING.  Not even the Brill Book!  I think we live in a twighlight zone.  Sometimes I think Chicago is nothing more than a TON OF SMALL TOWNS ROLLED TOGETHER.  Honestly…wow.

I think nesting should be considered a disability and we should get extra days off for it.   It’s as if I’ve just worked non-stop on our apartment.  I have touched everything in our apartment, stirred the shit out of the Qi in there, and designed and re-engineered anything that would stand still. And then, I reach a point that I have to stand back and think–damn I’m good.  At one point this weekend we were struggling to take down our queen size loft bed.  I was holding two large sections with both of my arms and Mariela struggled with a long piece of wood caught on a bolt, I reach out with my one free limb, a leg and kicked it–freeing it from the section.  She looked up at me with amazement and said “what am I going to do when you’re pregnant?? I can’t do all this stuff!” My response was…why do you think I’m frantically doing it now?

The nesting projects:

• hung the vintage lunchbox collection in the kitchen from copper piping
• hung copper pipe along the dining room for our wall of “photos & etc.” (okay, I have a copper pipe fetish)
• engineeringly® ripped apart the plexi on our dining room table crapterpiece masterpiece…and paid a mighty fortune for 6 custom cut pieces…the drama continues on this one
• added another section of art bins for storage and to rid the place of open exposure to toxic crafting goodness!
• switched to green cleaners completely and expelled the Mr. Cleans and Cloroxes of the world…
• cleaned out the closet, completely!
• took donations to gay thrift
• took the bed down–very sad–but you can’t be pregnant on a 5 and a 1/2 foot loft bed. The Qi is already flowing…
• painted the radiator cover with a fresh coat of white–since it’s in the “Children & Metal: White” section of our Baqua. We certainly don’t want to end up with “white children” so it’s best to start off with “white metal” right?

We broke up with our ISP RCN after days of not having service, calling everyday to get the runaround, and then we received a bill showing that they’ve jacked the prices WAY up on us because our “promotion” has ended. We said, screw it! So now we’re without the internets until we start paying through the nose to have comcast now. Ugh.   And they can’t even install for 2 more weeks! WTF? I better look into DSL. I wonder if it’s still sucky compared to cable internet?

I am so disgusted that it costs that bloody much just to have the internet! I can’t even use my fucking cell phone ANYWHERE in my entire apartment because of all the radio signals going on in the area–a huge drop down list of Wi-Fi networks but all are protected. I think it’s stupid. I think we should all ban together and start sharing the cost of Wi-Fi with our neighbors! I don’t even WANT CABLE, just internet! Why should I pay $60 a month? That’s ludicrous. I’m almost tempted to just say forget it all together and try to live without it. I could use that money each month on other things…like baby stuff from Ikea, okay. But then…this wonderful, sharing community that I dream of couldn’t exist in a place like Chicago, where you don’t even know your neighbor after years of living next door to them. Why would they help me with internet when they won’t even hold the door open for me because they have no idea that I live in the same small building!

P.S. We dropped off our registration today with the sperm bank!  Excited and terrified all at the same time.

Second Consultation…getting closer

Yesterday evening we took a huge step towards starting inseminations. I didn’t expect to feel so confident during the meeting or afterwards, but it was like this huge weight that was lifted afterwards–not really weight, but pressure definitely. First of all, I spent the day at work with this ridiculous situation. They were drilling and grinding the exterior walls of my building–there was scaffolding covering my windows when I arrived. I purposely left all of my work at my office so that I would get there early and try to finish my first draft of a 25 million dollar budget–which I was having a lunch meeting to discuss…

As usual, I only leave myself a few hours. I enjoy the heat. But the DRILLING…ugh god it just wouldn’t stop. I have been through the most horrific dental nightmare this past year–so the grinding and drilling of every wall around me was enough to just make me jump out of the window. (Luckily they do not open.)

So I finally get to the meeting and realize that I’m in FAR BETTER shape than I had anticipated at this point in the proposal process so there was no need for me to be all freaked out, but it’s kind of my nature. Whew. A big weight is lifted and I am somewhat able to calm myself before rushing off to fight for a Cubs parking spot in front of our apartment and hop on our bikes and ride to the clinic. And again, I find it absolutely priceless–the location of this clinic–and will definitely include good footage in the documentary.

We’ve talked ourselves down and kind of tried to prepare not starting until October because we wanted to make sure that the chaste berry has had time to even out its effects on my cycle. However, after meeting with our AI specialist I feel really ready to start. We both seem extremely ready to start. She seemed almost overly excited about my charts and wasn’t concerned with the “short” luteal phase. She seemed to think that I was right around normal. Another weight that I’ve been carrying…

It really made me want to start inseminating during my next cycle. That leaves a LOT to coordinate before then, but its so exciting that I really don’t want to wait. If I waited for everything to be perfect, I’d be 38 and realize that I couldn’t wait for perfect anymore. And I realize that I’ve never had a family in my life–like the family that I have now with Mariela. Sure, my excessive pets drive her crazy. And her messy ways make me insane. But she is the best thing on this planet. She has the best light around her and for that…I am truly enchanted. We’ve been together for 7+ years but I’m so glad that it has taken us this long to get this close to starting a family. I wouldn’t have traded a moment of our crazy adventures, but I’m also thrilled at the prospects of starting down this new road with her. She makes me laugh and rounds out my edges.

We made a huge decision last night: we decided on a donor! We haven’t wanted to really choose a donor. I think because then it would feel real–and it would really be just WAITING. And now that’s what we’re doing–waiting. We also did exactly what we promised ourselves we wouldn’t do. We fell in love with the donor profile and are kind of “married” to the idea of using him. Fortunately we did have a few others picked as our side guys (the only other Colombian knocked out because they’ve had a baby by him at this clinic before). But this one…ugh he’s dreamy and perfect. He sounds just like M, smart, creative, artistic, brown… We were sold. I don’t really feel wrong for feeling so strongly about this donor profile–I believe, more than anything, in destiny. And he just feels right to me.

We’re so poor that we should only be considering the discount sperm bank, but I really wanted a Colombian donor. Not to mention, I think it would mean a lot to M. I have grand visions of our big family someday traveling to Bogotá to see our roots & experiencing the culture where she was born–they would share that strong connection always…

So we’re scraping our pennies together and hope to start in September. I’m not sure how yet, but we’ll see. If we have to push back to October, we will…but I dread the long cold winter here in Chicago. Perhaps all of this will make it a little easier to muddle through. We had such a great time at the meeting. I think the funniest moment was when I asked the AI Specialist how big the tanks are and whether I might be able to get it home on my bike? The look on her face was priceless. She said–not unless you have like a sidecar setup or something? “I rode your genetic material home on my bicycle…”

I think I’m gonna have to rent that “If These Walls Could Talk 2″ again where Ellen gets Sharon Stone preggo’ed!

We ended up even shooting some footage last night. We were excited and had planned to get to bed by 11:30p. But we couldn’t calm down and try to sleep until after 1:30a…

And I think I’m still just as excited today…