Yesterday

Was a hard day.

Khubz slammed her finger in the door at daycare and they couldn't get her to calm back down. We took her to the doctor and it's not broken but it is gross and her fingernail is going to fall off (ichhhhh.) I also took my fine self to the doctor seeking a simple anti-viral flu prescription and walked out with a pneumonia diagnosis. WTF? So we got through yesterday and today Khubz is going to daycare and I'm staying home. Scully is out in Wichita this evening so I'm hoping for an early bedtime (for both me & Khubz)

I'm just kind of wiped out.

Day One!

I got my period today!
Unmedicated!

Yea!!

Apparently the trick is to stomp around the statehouse all day with only one tampon tucked away in your purse.

There's more work to be done but this is great news.

Let's get started, I say! Um, really? Asks my genius sister.

Listen to your sister, says my genius partner.

So we're waiting at least a month. This will give me time to continue getting my body ready (inshallah), we can save a bit more money (thanks for all the ideas!) and we can see if I can get my period again & how long the cycle is.

I have a progesterone prescription & Scully got it filled for me. So if I don't get my period in a timely way I can always use those meds.

Blogging for Choice: Choosing my body

Bodies on the margins have always had to fight for integrity.

Untidy, abnormal, non-compliant, oppositional bodies.

Bodies that can't be ignored when they're too big or small or too female or too ambiguous or too uncaring of gender rules altogether or too mobile in a power chair or too loud with their sign language or too brown or too black or too difficult to categorize or too fertile/infertile or too damn many of the above all at once.

Choice is the insistence on my body

My queer
fat
woman
body
My quasi-colored body

I use my body
in the service of these
illegal border crossings

I spill over
the sides of my seat
on a plane

I am a
passing
threat
toowhiteortoobrown
for you

I lay as a woman
with a woman
unscripted
in a world
that denies us

My choice
My daily choice
Is not solely about
abortion

It is that
this body
is
my body
even as it is

just as it is

without
anybody's
permission

Time to get creative

Okay, how can we raise some more cash without getting another job? (After all, I worked really hard to get Khubz and I'd be hard pressed to spend more time away from her.) Anyone ebay savvy? Two Shews, I heard you talk about Craig's list? Someone else told me about Treasure Troopers? We are planning a garage sale in the spring (thanks to the donated driveway space of some friends.)



Also welcome: cheap recipes that are not entirely dependant on sugar and white flour.



While we're at it, if anyone knows how to get me back to the gym, I'd welcome that advice too!

Quick call to Target

And the cost of Bravelle is actually $85 dollars a vial. Not $50.

Sometimes I feel a bit fucked.

$1500 in my closet

Yes, there is $1500 in my closet. And it's not enough.

I make a quick call to the fertility clinic to brush up on the cost of everything. My memory of what we did before was a sort of a blur of periodically shelling out $300 to the clinic here & there.

Cost of the insemination procedure? $206
Cost to wash (separate the tail from the core) the sperm? $60
Cost of the sperm? $400-$500
Cost of the crazy woman juice? $2250

This is for one cycle. . . one try. . .one month.

How did we do this before?
Insurance covered the cost of the fertility drugs.
And my policy now does not.

Will it cover the lab work? The sonograms? The progesterone? The hCG shot?

Scully and I talked through a couple silver linings to this really big problem.

• If we were only going to get insurance to cover one round of trying to make a baby, alhamdillah, they covered the first round. We know so much more. We won't be wasting time, money, meds, treatments just trying to figure out what kinds of help i need.
• We found this out before we incurred any costs. This relieves a lot of pressure.
• This means after I have my second child, inshallah, I can make a decision about whether and where to work based on what is best for my actual family, rather than wondering if I should stay somewhere for the fertility coverage while pondering whether to try for#3.
• I am totally proud of how Scully & I talk about money and I do believe we'll find a way to swing this.

Of course any silver lining is attached to a cloud: I still haven't gotten my period despite my best efforts to sabotage all my attempts to get my period back

All this is to say, how did we find $1500 in our linen closet? We have 5 boxes of Brevelle, each with 5 vials. Those suckers are $50 a piece. The vials. Not the boxes. We have 25 of them. Anyone want to check my math? $1500, right?

Yea us!

I mean, sure, they expired in December of'06, but the dr at the clinic said they should still be good. And so we're going to use them.

That gives me 7 days of treatments. To conceive Khubz I was on the meds for 15 days (3 vials a day.)

So all I need to do is figure out how to make a cool thousand and we'll have our first round financed. To celebrate, I went out and bought a $70 turkey. I know. Don't worry. It makes sense to me.

Mmmmmm. . .

Mmmm. . . Marker

Yummy, Yummy

Marker

Let's not read too much in to this

There's a 56% Chance That You Need Therapy

If you think you need therapy, you probably do. But there's a good chance you don't. Like everyone else, you have your fair share of problems. And unlike most people, you're fairly good at solving them yourself.

Do You Need Therapy?

Missing Widgets

Can you see my sidebar? With my links? My moon-watcher? My daughter's foot?? Where have my widgets gone?

What's up?

Lots. . . LOTS.

Things are super busy at work with our grand tra-la-la of the year coming up next week.

I've got a couple of friends with loved ones in the hospital so send your good vibes or blessings or hope or baked goods to Topeka and Kansas City.

The girlchild has begun biting me. me. Biting me. Mama? No biting. Daycare provider? No biting. Uma? Now I will BITE YOU. Someone told me that 2-3 years is a preview to adolescence. Man, have I got shit coming my way. (sorry mom)

On another note, did everyone hear Angry Black Bitch on NPR? She was fabulous. I can't say it any better than she did. Especially when you compare her eloquence to my frustrated huffs and sighs while reading Gloria Steinem's Op-Ed.

Hope all is well in the blogosphere. . . I haven't been visiting in a while but hope to catch up after things calm down.

What's the word?

Lots of them!

Khubz is now saying:

• Mama & Uma: though she says Mama mostly
• Hap-py! :she says this so much that we named her baby doll "happy"
• Agua: this is old news. Really, agua=any liquid substance. Bathwater? Agua! Juice? Agua! Mommy peeing? Agua!!
• Casa: this is said most excitedly at the end of long trips. For example, when coming back from Texas she screamed for an hour and a half. We pulled in to town and kept saying "we're almost home! we're almost home!" She calmed down and said through her tears: "Casa?"
• Duckie & Doggie & Woof & Quack : She also makes an elephant noise while holding her arm in the air like an elephant trunk
• Diaper: This is most frequently said while running away from us at top speed
• Hi & Hiya: The best is when she wakes up and we can hear her talking in her crib saying, hiya. Who is in there with her??
• ahi esta: Translates as "there it is" but comes out like aaaaiiieeeesta!!!!!
• pie: Spanish for foot, this is said while kicking her leg up in the air to escape a diaper change
• Apple: You can figure this one out
• up: this is one of Khubz's top 10 commandments. Thou shalt pick me UP!
• no-no-no-no-no: this is code for "watch me! Are you watching me? Better watch me! I'm gonna do it! Yes, I am. Watch! I'ma gonna hide your keys/ play with an electrical socket/ eat this dollar bill / make an international call on your cell phone. . . ."

Have I told you. . .

that I have an eating disorder?

Yeah. Bit of a struggle right now.

Currently

I am still laughing about a pun i made (effortlessly) with some friends just this morning. But rather than being accused of recycling this story when they read this I'll give another example of my fabulously quick wit.

I was in iowa this weekend with my family (all of whom caucused for Richardson, actually.) And I ran out to get some overpriced zionist coffee (said tongue in cheek, please don't snarp at me) and the guy at the drive thru window was doing his obligatory chattiness while fixing the mocha.

"So what are you up to on this warm January Saturday? Errands, huh? Well, I guess we've all got errands. Of course, then there's chores. I never was quite sure what the difference was between errands and chores. I suppose an errand is a kind of chore. . . " You get the idea. Finally he asks me if I'm working the following day. I am not. He says he's off the next day too. But he's got to work late tonight. Really late. Midnight late.

"Oh, that's so late. . ."

"Well, at least I get free caffeine. Can't beat that!" He is ever optimistic

"Yep. Not a bad perk. ha, ha, ha."
Nothing. i try again.
"Free coffee? Great perk? " I smile.
Zippo. Once more.
"Pardon the pun. Ha. Ha. Ha?"

Hmpf.

Give me my goddmn coffee.

Blog of Consumption

Uh.

You can all thank 2 shews for this.

It's good. A nice UMF! to our commitment to frugality and a much needed reminder of many things (like how badly I suck keeping up with my recycling)

So what have I consumed today?

• Morning's heat, electricity, housing, water to get ready for the day
• Deodorant in a recyclable plastic container, toothpaste from a recyclable container, dental floss from a recyclable plastic container, mousse from a recyclable metal container, moisturizer from a recyclable plastic container. . . oh, but, wait. Even though all those things could be recycled, our recycling center doesn't accept them.
• Gas to commute to work (alone because my carpool buddy is on vacation) as well as paying the toll to get here
• Electricity at work for my lights, computer, heat, digital serviced phone, the microwave to warm up lunch
• Ugh. Food: 2 apple/cranberry muffins, someone brought in brownies at work so I had one of those, lunch leftovers from last night, a dt. dr. pepper from the vending machine, another brownie, a cup of non-fair trade, pesticide laden coffee which i didn't like and only drank because i didn't feel like having water and i ran out of change for the vending machine
• 147 puffs with lotion kleenex even though they could easily use recycled materials, they don't and i may go to hell for saying this but I just love their lotion-filled softness

there is more. There is so much more.

Although, to my credit, there is not a third brownie to list.

And I'm posting this nice primer on fair trade for when I complain about how expensive things are at the merc (which is often) and for when I feel like our save money values conflicts with our mimimize evil values.

Goodbye 2007!

Most things deserve another look.

A different perspective.

An alternate view.

It shows us where the pits are, how thick the skin is and some places of unexpected beauty.

If you're looking for a good roundup of political events in 2007, I recommend this from democracy now. It's nice to hear about the year that did not show up in the local paper, the 'yahoo news' page, on npr (i do love them so, even though 2 shews calls me a nerd for downloading it to my ipod),or even on the daily show.

So if you're interested in taking a second look at the year consider this view that is not brought to you by ADM, Pfizer, Nabisco or Exxon.