No, I Didn't Use Cocaine

and I should probably that specify that I don't currently, nor have I ever, used cocaine. But, man, the questionnaire I completed tonight made me feel like maybe I did and just didn't remember it. You see, if you hang out with Zac for any length of time, you notice some...how do I put this...oddities in his speech. He stutters over words that start with "s" and he sometimes takes giant pauses and rolls his eyes so far up into his head like he's trying to forcibly eject a word from his brain.

To put in polite terms, Zac has speech dysflucenices that have persisted longer than they should. It's all cute when a three year-old says the Earth is the "Earf", but it's a little more troubling when a six year-old says "the" a lot like "fuh".

Zac's therapist was actually the one that brought it to my attention that maybe I would want to look into Zac's speech problems with his school. He said a speech problem wasn't going to help him keep and make friends anytime soon and I actually agreed with him for the first time. So, I set the Special Education wheel a'rollin and I feel a little like I've just been run over by a train. Zac was diagnosed as in need of testing. He was sent home with a packet of materials tonight for me to fill out. Here are a list of incredibly detailed questions they asked (just a small sample, really. The questionnaire was over five pages long, 10 point font):

• My highest educational status
• Who has legal custody of Zac
• Place of residence of parent that lives in the home (hahahaha....oh wait, that one isn't supposed to be a joke. Can I say the general VT/NH area with a smattering of "I don't know. He evades the law"? Wait, no, I can't. The box isn't big enough. Sigh)
• Problems during pregnancy with child? Weight gain? Medications (dosage and frequency), Persistent emotional stress and/or anxiety (wait, is this one another joke? Of course, I checked the box! Why do you even have to ask?)
• How long labor was? Was it natural, induced, were forceps used? Was their a C-section? (and then I started wondering..how long was my labor? Was it 30 or 36 hours? Yes, I was induced and yes, I had a c-section.)
• What age did the child complete bowel training? Bladder training?
• Did your child show any delays in gross motor development, such as sitting, crawling, walking, and dressing? (oh jeez, I think this deserves its own post)
• List of serious accidents, operations, and hospitalizations?
• Frequent ear infections? Persistent sore throat? Headaches? Tubes in ears? (God, those were a rough three years. Yes, yes, yes, and yes)
• Has disciplining the child been strict? lenient? (how do I answer that? I wrote in "kind of")
• How does the child spend leisure time?
• Is there any unusual family circumstance, crises, or trauma that may be affecting your child? (What's the sad part is Zac's family circumstance isn't particularly unusual anymore. He just doesn't have a father).

Then I felt lonely and sad. I want to talk to someone about Zac because right now, I'm convinced that my Zoloft use during my pregnancy, regular bouts of emotional stress inutero, and complete non-relationship with the FOB have caused my child to stutter. I'm really to blame here, right? I'm such a girl.
Zac's tucked away in bed and my cat is getting drunk from the heat that my cable box is putting off. Right now, I'm just holding tight to the knowledge that I've never used cocaine, whether before, during, or after my pregnancy. I have that, at least.

Zachary 6.5

I find myself not writing about the reason I started this blog: Zac. The days fly by in waves of "time to get up", "No, you can't watch another show," "have you fed the dog?" and "I told you NOT to put all your shampoo in the bath water. I don't care if you like the bubbles". You see, I'm the Sunday-Thursday parent. My parents watch him from Friday afternoon after school to Sunday at 3pm. I would like to blame this arrangement on my MBA, but I would be dishonest if I didn't admit that it started well before I spent two years getting my degree.

Being the Sunday through Thursday parent comes with a certain amount of responsibility. I'm the  "take-no-prisoners-you-will-get-in-bed-or-you-will-not-see-a-computer-for-three-days" parent. But Zac makes it easy to parent, even when I have to be a hardass. We went to one of his classmates' parties today and I realized raising Zac is a little like raising a male version of myself as a child. We went to Jumping Jungle, a local indoor fun house filled with bouncy air houses. After 45 minutes of ear piercing screams, balls, and running like a madman, Zac came down and sat in my lap. First, he did the classic kid thing of asking for money for the arcades (no) and if he could use my phone to play Angry Birds (no). Then he complained about how bored he was. "It's boring to just run around and scream," he complained. I told him the rest of his friends were having fun and maybe he should try it.

Then Zac looked under the air hockey table and found a beaten up game of Sorry. In the middle of the party, he pulled out the pieces and I looked over and saw this:

and I thought...he's just...me. I'm raising a nerd, and a gamer, and a book reader because I was once all those things. We both read every night before bed and my biggest threat to him is that I won't read another chapter in one of his books if he misbehaves.

He's just the best kid. He's funny, thoughtful, and smart as hell. When he asked me when kids would stop being mean to him for his lackluster social skills, I bluntly told him, "college" because I don't know how to raise a social kid because I'm not a social parent. So, he and are stuck together. Slowly making our way in the world. Learning and growing at each turn. I guess that's the benefit of both being nerds: if we can't figure something out, we can always google it.

Let me be very clear

It's not often that I repeat the title of my post in the first sentence of my post, but let me be very clear here: This is my blog. This is the most self-absorbed way that I have to communicate and express myself. Occasionally I think about making it private and just writing it for myself, but I love the online community that I've built through blogging and I wouldn't want them to make their blogs private, so I don't make mine.

I can't make it anymore crystal clear that this is MY blog. I solely control the content, design, and language. This is my space on the Internet and I suggest that if you don't like what you read, that you hit the back button on the top of your browser and never come back. In fact, I would say that if you know me offline and refuse to talk to me, that you are better off not reading what I have to say. I can actually guarantee that. Don't read what I have to say and then be too chicken shit to comment on it. This is my forum and I will defend it, fiercely.

You see? I've got a lot invested in this whole blogging thing. I have seven years invested in blog archives and I still enjoy what I do. I wouldn't write if I didn't enjoy it. But facebook has changed everything. Suddenly, when I post my blog link to facebook, everyone that I know in real life gets a window into a world that I normally keep very secret.

So, let me apologize. I will make you a deal: I won't write about you if you don't read what I write. Let's call it a truce. But let me be very clear, this is my blog. There is a reason they call blog readers "visitors".

Alone (I mean really, really alone)

It all started off as such a normal day. I went to work and Zac went to school. I had no idea that I would be getting a surprised text from my wonderful nanny. She said simply, "Hey! Call me!" in her text, with two exclamation points, no less. I was driving at the time, but still dug out my phone to call her. "The electricity is out  in the house," she calmly told me. I asked if anyone else's electricity was out on the street. "Maybe a breaker box blew," I reasoned. She checked with the neighbors and they had electricity. I told her to go check my breakers. She reported back that everything was in the on position. Then it occurred to me. I had changed electricity providers in October and there was a lag before they sent me my first bill. I got a bill due in December. Either I was in denial about the bill, or I misplaced the bill, or I'm a complete fucking idiot, I don't. The point is that the bill didn't get paid.

Then I got another bill in early January that was all happy and normal and said (I'm paraphrasing) "Sure, you were late on your December bill. Just pay the December bill and your January bill with this convenient 5% late payment fee, and we'll forgive everything. Cross our heart". So I believed them. I get paid on January 30th. I was like, "If I time this perfectly...if I write a check three days before it is due, then it will be processed on the day that I get my direct deposit and all will be forgiven.

What I didn't know was that they had send a disconnection on January 3rd. A disconnection notice that I never got. I'm going to give the company a free pass and say, "Maybe I didn't check the mail. Maybe it got lost in the 25 years worth of mail that I get from the previous owner. Maybe I just lost my f*cking mind" I don't know what happened. All I know is that on January 23rd, the power was off.

Do you know what it's like for a Financial Advisor to realize that they have messed up their bills to the point that a utility gets turned off? I'll let the irony sink in because it didn't escape me. I started crying and as Oprah would say, it was an ugly cry. I felt like a failure, not only as a Mom that couldn't even cook dinner for her son, but as a professional. I felt like a fraud. So I cried. I called Seven and let her talk me down from the edge of anxiety and depression.

I had two choices at that point: I could go home and try to scrounge up candles and flashlights and live on peanut butter and jelly until I found the money, or I could pack a suitcase and load up my Saturn with an enormous dog, my kid, and two suitcases. Yes, I'm not proud. In fact, I would challenge someone to find me a single Mom that has any amount of pride left. I tucked my tail between my legs, wiped the mascara off my face, and drove my ass to my parents house. Clicker came over to my house and took all the food I had in my fridge and freezer. Then I cried some more and went to bed at 9:30pm.

After paying December's bill, the disconnection fee, and the outrageous reconnection fee with money that wasn't mine, my electricity is back on. Zac, Sam, and I are back home tonight. When I was packing up my suitcase, my Dad said something along the lines of, "All these years, I've been waiting for you find your one, but it hasn't happened."

Alone. My Dad called me out for being alone. For not having someone that could make it alright when the power went dark. For not having someone that could hold me while I was crying. Alone.

I don't know if I've ever been more alone than I've been in the past two days.

Burning Bowl

I don't know how Officer Hotness and Chaps make me do it, but somehow, by some unknown, mystical force, I agree to leave my house and go somewhere other than work during weeknights. I can't really describe how much of a hermit I am Sunday-Thursday. Those are Zac's days. Those are the days that I work, eat, parent, eat, and sleep. In that order. Prior to the past month, there has been little to no deviation in that routine.

Here it is on Thursday and I've been social twice this week. Last night I went to one of the worst open mic nights that my ears have ever had to experience. Then tonight I went to Chuck E Cheese with, who else, Officer Hotness, her kiddo, my kiddo, and Chaps, who doesn't have a kid, but might as well at this point. I was there for over two hours. We saw Chuck E dance two times. Two! That big rat can shuffle like no body's business. I think Chaps was only tempted to shoot the rat once when he surprised her the first time.

We all had our own plans for Friday and Saturday night, so I suggested Sunday. Again, let me empathize. Never before in Zac's six year history on this planet have I suggested hanging out on a Sunday after 3pm. Never.

On Sunday at 5:30pm, the four of us are all to arrive at Officer Hotness' house for a Burning Bowl ceremony. You can blame google for coming up with that name. Then they looked at me. What was I going to burn? I'm pretty sure a blank look crossed my face. I started taking a mental inventory of house, scanning from room to room in my mind. Everything I could think of, I owned and had no lingering emotional attachments to anyone else. Sure, my couch has been sat on by people that have hurt me, but I can't burn my couch. I don't have papers, photographs, or mementos from relationships past that conjure up...well...anything, because they don't exist. Clicker once wrote me a letter saying how proud he was of me, but it has been lost in move and I wouldn't want to burn it anyways. He's my best friend. I have nothing, but some lingering resentment towards my MBA professors and their idea of "appropriate" reading.

It didn't even occur to me until I got home. Oh, I have some things to burn. Some things that our powerfully significant to me and shaped how I felt throughout out October, November, and most of December. Those things weren't at home, though, which is why they didn't come up in the initial registry. I keep them at work. I want to look into a bon fire and rip into tiny pieces the words that remind me of that period of self-doubt, stress, and mental instability. I let someone knock me off my game. I'm bitter that it happened, but I'm stronger now. So I'm going to burn the papers that remind of those months. Those damn months when I questioned my career choice, my choice in friends and confidantes, and myself. It's those memories that I will burn on Sunday and with my kid sitting next to me on a school night, I will be thankful to be surrounded by love and support. But mostly, it will feel just so damn good to let go.

Bat Shit

In my coming out post, I joked that women are all bat shit crazy and they make me bat shit crazy just by being near them. What I should have said was something along the lines of a Chinese fortune cookie: "You will yearn for the women that you cannot have. Your lucky numbers are 5, 7, 17, and 23".

You see, when men don't like you romantically, you never hear from them again. That's a gross oversimplification of the behavior of an entire sex, but give me a little credit here. I unsuccessfully dated men in Texas for seven years. Seven looooonnng years of online dating, most of which I chronicled on my blog. I know how this rodeo works. After a first date, you'll only hear from a guy if he thinks the fledgling relationship is going to go somewhere on the second date. Preferably somewhere horizontal. There is no, "Let's just be friends and get to know each other".

Then there are women. Oh my Lord. I have never had so many "friends" as I do with female first dates. When women don't see the possibility of a romantic relationship, there is always the very real possibility that this woman will become your best friend forever and ever, Amen. This situation works out if both parties, mutually agree, that you are completely incompatible, yet share a deep, abiding love of say...rhesus monkeys and Kit-kat bars. Then you can be friends! Short of that situation, one person is doomed to be longing for the other because there is a reason you went on a date in the first place. At one point, in the not-so-distant past, you both found each other attractive enough to meet for tea/dinner/drinks. That attraction doesn't stop with the phrase, "I'd just like to be friends" even when it's joyfully texted at the end of the date with a smiley face (:-) to soften the blow.

So there is a doomed sense of longing. Within the lesbian community, this longing can go on for years and even decades. While trapped in this version of Dante's Inferno, the friend is  forced to listen to other person's stories about their third blind date with her mother's uncle's friend that's on a softball team with a girl she knew in the third grade or how they are still in love with their ex-girlfriend from two years ago although all they did was fight. All the while, you know (oh how you know!) that you would in fact make this person wildly happy if only you weren't banished to the Friend Zone.

And this is just one of the many reasons that women make bat shit crazy, even if they do text me with cute smiley faces.

Don't Try This At Home: 2

Of course, there is a downside to writing. There are people that I hurt; feelings that are abused with a misplaced comma or paraphrased quotation. But mostly, there is the cowardice. It's so much easier to write than it is to ask the question and listen through uncomfortable answers. My words block out the sound of other people's words while I'm typing, at least momentarily. It's by far the most self-absorbed act that I could thrust onto the hemisphere.

So when I can no longer write, I read. A non-reader will never fully understand what a reader sees in books. Trust me, I've dated too many non-readers to not fully comprehend this phenomenon. They don't understand the connection anymore than I understand a connection to a video game or to sports team. When I read a book, I get to enter another person's mind for an hour, a day, a week. I inhabit their thoughts and feel their characters. They carefully construct the plot and narrative for my, what seems like, exclusive enjoyment. I, the reader. Any reader. I am both annonymous and highly unique. So, tonight, I read.

Don't Try This At Home

Last night I was sitting around with some new friends, The (Hot) Officer and Chaps (who would like to be referred to as WildCat, but let's be honest, we don't always get to pick our nicknames in life. Note the oblique reference to me being called "BJ" for the first 10 years of my life).  These two women collectively own more guns than a small Montana militia, yet they warm the very marrow of my bones. I was sitting listening to Officer Hotness play her acoustic guitar and sing last night and thought that maybe I had gotten the short end of the artistic stick. I can't sing well, I definitely can't play guitar, and "Chopsticks" is as far as I can go on the piano. In between songs, I lamented: "All I can do is write, and that's never gotten me any women". She then told me that, much to my surprise, very few women had fallen captive to her musical charms. Chaps said that it was especially hard for her to woo women on a set of drums, which we collectively agreed would be difficult for no other reason than the approximate distance you would have to sit to watch a drum player work her magic. 

Then I wondered what kind of cold-hearted bastards Officer Hotness had been singing to. Is there anything sexier than a woman singing with an acoustic guitar? If I'm not careful, I'm going to become a coffee shop groupie. If only I could sit drinking espresso in a coffee house chair typing out on my laptop about my most personal feelings. Good thing I don't drink espresso and the comfortable chairs are always taken at coffee houses, but oh, what a cliche a could be. It's a slippery slope. I would be embarrassed to know me. But writing is what I do and it's not as easy as you might think. Writing a self-confessing blog about intimate details of my life may look like fun and games, but I'm wracked with self-doubt and questions. "Did I share too much? Did I share enough to be interesting? Have I asked enough hypothetical questions to drive my readers absolutely crazy? Three in a row - that's pretty good. Let's stop there. Clearly a paragraph break is in order".

Sometimes I'm startled about the conclusions that I come to at the end of a post. My fingers write themselves with a clarity that my conscious mind can't seem to muster. So I write. That is my art. I am a writer. I'm also an exceptionally good reader, but that's not really a participatory sport, so let's just stay with writing.

For a while, I was paid to write and, like most things, the act of getting paid to write on a deadline killed any sense of joy that I felt from the spontaneous act. They I started my degree and got a job where I sat in front of a computer and worked in Excel all day, every day, and occasionally talked to people on the phone. The only way that I got through that job was by putting in my headphones and listening to hard core rap. Listening to Jay-Z and Eminem rap about the gangster life and how hard it is to stay authentic in suburban America matched my soul-crushing angst.

Now when I'm at work I listen to Deb Talan or Indigo Girls radio on Pandora, trying to soothe away my stress in between my calls to strangers. It's been a slow process coming back to my writing, but I feel it lingering. It will be seven years in February that I moved to Texas and started my blog. Happy (early) anniversary to me.

Fear

I've been reading comments about my last post and I really had no idea that so many people from high school, college, and Houston would read what I wrote on my blog. Let's just catch everyone up to speed, m'kay. I started blogging seven years ago when I moved to Texas. I was pregnant with Zac (who I called Peanut at the time). The archives for that blog can be found here: http://www.pregnantblogger.blogspot.com/. I'm pretty sure that I started blogging under the name, "Pregnant in Texas" before I realized that was more of a temporary condition than a blog name might suggest. Then I switched to "Not So Pregnant in Texas". At some point, when I cared about unique page views and readers, I moved over to my own domain name. Then my boss read my blog after an unfortunate google search and I took everything down. At some later arbitrary point, I started this blog and here I am. If you were bored reading that last paragraph, don't worry, the feeling was mutual.

Anyways, my point before I got mired in seven years of history, was that I was terrified that I had made a huge mistake. I kept reading about how people thought I was brave and authentic and I kept thinking, "Do these people realize who they are talking to? I'm the antithesis of brave."  I started thinking about everyone that I was friends with, including: Clicker's Mom, my Mom, my Dad, the FOB (Father of the Baby)'s sister, women from work, men from work, and my Great Aunt. Yeah, instead of having a lot of awkward, one-on-one conversations with people, (which is how I assume most people come out) I just let social media do the dirty work for me.

I'm still waiting for the backlash, which will only be felt in backhanded comments, silent, furious looks,  or words left unspoken because the world is too politically correct to publicly denounce a gay daughter/sister/friend/coworker/fill-in-title-here. It's much easier to just pass a law refusing my right to marry or have health benefits or my partner's Social Security.  *sigh*

I worried about the FOB's family trying to come and take Zac. Then I remembered that they've only met him once when he was a baby and I don't have a home telephone number so it would be difficult to contact me. Here is a fun tidbit of information about where I live: In Texas, second-parent adoptions of children with two gay parents can't be done in Harris County, where Houston is located. Families go to San Antonio in Bexar County to join together legally. That's over four hours away. Here's another fun tidbit: A Harris County Family Court judge made it a crime for a  same sex parent to spend time, alone, with his partner's biological children. There was no history of alleged sexual, physical, or emotional abuse. He was just refused the right to be alone with the children that he was helping to raise because of his sexuality *sigh*.

Then there is work. Work, work, work. I work a lot and I try to find ways to write about work in the most obscure ways possible, which isn't easy. Work dominates my life and I'm expressly forbidden to share my feelings on "social media that might be read by clients, prospects, or business partners". Let me give you an example: I was sitting in my cube one day about two months ago and I got a call. The person on the other end of the phone call had googled my name and my company's name. Google came back with upteen million hits, but the first seven links correctly referred to me and my job. Three of the websites that contained my information were put together by third-party distributors who had gotten my licensing information through the Freedom of Information Act. I was told to remove the profile of me that I didn't create and then remove the link on Google. I'll wait why you digest that. Has anyone tried to remove a link or reference to a link on Google lately? I've insurance companies approve surgeries easier than I could remove links. I tried, though. Oh sweet baby God, I tried. I tried for six hours and I'm too afraid to try the search again to see what comes up.

So there's that. I'm a blogger, working at a company that actively discourages blogging, and what I really want to write about is what it's like to be a female advisor in this industry, but, I can't. I can't wait for the day that the same person calls me up to talk about this piece. I can't wait to explain what a "cache" is and how I can't remove it from the mystical land where Internets live.

My point, which I swear I left somewhere around this place, is that I wanted to say thank you for the kind comments, both here and on Facebook . I'm not brave at all. I'm still terrified, but the feeling is subsiding as more and more days pass and the sky hasn't rained with the blood of baby lams and throng of wasps. I'm here. Doing better than just fine. Feeling pretty good, actually. So thank you.

If Only This Blog Had an About Me Section

There is a lot that I need to come out about before I start this post. My fear with this blog has always been (and continues to be), "What if XXX reads it and won't care for me anymore?" or "What if I embarrass my parents (again) and it hurts them?" I have no real way to answer either question, but at some point, I can feel things building up inside me and my desire to spill out my ever-loving guts on the Internet comes busting out. So, without further ado....

1) I'M HERE AND I'M QUEER!

That's the first part that I need to come out about. After my relationship with Clicker ended, I moved into my house and things just felt different. Although I lie in bed at night and worry that I won't have enough money and will be forcibly evicted from my house, I feel more settled here in a way that's hard to explain. I look around my house, constantly amaze, and think, "Hell ya. This shit is MINE!" I've even changed my sleeping habits. I used to sleep curled up on the far right hand side of my bed, but now I sleep in the middle or diagonally across the whole thing. I think the whole process of sleeping as if I owned the bed (which I do) confuses my cat to no end, but I'm getting off point here. My point is that I moved into my house and the way I look at life started to change. I realized that I can take control of my happiness and not leave it up to fate, bad first dates, or my fear of being 'outed' as a bad daughter, woman, lover, mother, and co-worker.

The me that I am, that I've always been, has wanted to be with women - even though they are all bat-shit crazy and turn me bat-shit crazy, but that's another post all together. Let me go onto point number two that I want to come out about and you'll see how this all ties in together:

2)   I WANT ANOTHER BABY!

Whew, I'm glad I got that off my chest. There are a lot of guilt issues with me being a single Mom and knowing that my friends and family will most certainly not support the expansion of my family has been difficult.

So, there it is: I'm gay, single, raising an amazing six year-old, and constantly worrying about money. The only way I can stack this less in my favor would be if I had a physical or mental disability. I guess that would make the situation worse. Or I could hate babies. That would certainly put a damper on the "I want another baby" outing party.

Sometimes well meaning friends will tell me that I need to seriously consider having another baby again, by myself (again), and what that would mean to my family. As much as I love my friends, that question is total bullshit. Would I even be bringing up something like another baby if I hadn't already put serious thought behind it? In the six and a half years that Zac has been on this Earth, have I ever, ever mentioned wanting to gestate another human being by myself? That's a definite no to both questions. Never before in my writing or personal conversations have I talked about how or why I feel like this is a necessary part of my life.

I can even feel now that I'm failing to adequately express the complex emotions that would go into a decision like this. I'm not sure that I'll ever be able to, but I at least needed to put it out there that there that I think about it a lot, especially since I found out my company covers fertility treatments at 100% on our health insurance.

If either of these two bold (with exclamation points!!) announcements cause you to love or respect me less, then I'm sorry. I still love and respect you. Maybe one day you can open your heart and embrace all of me. Until then, I'll be waiting.