Green means go, right? Right?

Well, I had a little accidente the other day...totally 100% my fault. I was stopped at a red light, behind a fella in a Volkswagon somethingoranother and when the light turned green he didn't go, so I hit him. Okay, I didn't hit him because he was refusing to follow protocol when the light turned green, I hit him as a result of his abeyancy.

Obviously, nothing catastrophic in the grand scheme of car crashes - I was probably going about 1 mile per hour and, since I started out about 5-7 feet away from him, the impact was pretty minimal. I've been the hittee before, but never the hitter - I have yet to decide which position is the more challenging one to be in...check back in with me after I pay out on the claim.

Despite the apparent triviality that was this accident, I was pretty shaken up over the whole thing - my hands were trembly and my heart rate was racing. Yet, somehow, it didn't seem like it would be a very good idea to sit there and pop an Ativan at that exact moment. I followed Mr. Volkswagon over to the Walgreen's parking lot to exchange infos.

When I got out of my car, I began to apologize - very sincerely. I asked him if he was alright. Mr. Volkswagon stood there, with a disgruntled expression, looking at his dented rubber bumper and shaking his head back and forth. I told him that I was fully insured and that we needed to exchange information.

He just continued shaking his head back and forth.

"Sir," I said to him, "I've apologized and I've told you that I'm fully insured."

He said nothing - just grunted and glared at me.

"Sir," I continued, "There's no reason to be so angry - it was an accident and those happen. I've apologized, I've told you that I'm fully insured, and the damages appear to be pretty minimal. What more do you want from me?" After a short pause, I continued, "Is it alright with you if we exchange information now?"

"No. You give me your information and I'll send you an estimate," he told me.

"No," I told him, "absolutely not. Our insurance companies will handle this." (Did I look stupid to him?)

"But I did not do any damage, so you don't need my information."

"But we were both involved in the accident, so I do need your information. I will give you my information when you give me yours."

At this point, I was beginning to think that he was pretty lucky that I wasn't some asshat chewing him out for just sitting there when the light turned green.

He proceeded to walk over to the front of my car, where we both learned that there was absolutely no damage to my vehicle. This made him irate.

"See, you don't even have a scratch on your car!" Was he envious? "You drive a nice car and you get away with no damage and you have put a dent in my car!

This really seemed to piss him off. I decided not to take this bait, as I could see no good coming out of an argument over whose car was the nicest and how unfair that was. I told him again that I'd give him my information when he gave me his.

He grunted again and produced a driver's license and a copy of his registration with his insurance information below it. He then told me to write "I hit you" and sign it on the piece of paper where he'd written my infos.

"No way," I told him, "I'm not comfortable with that. I will tell my insurance company that I hit you and it's quite clear by the damage done that I was at fault, but there's no way I'm writing that down for you."

He wasn't happy about that, but that was too bad. What the hell was he trying to do? It was a really minor accident - was he going to try and take me to small claims court or something? Clearly this guy watches way too much daytime television. After the exchange, he just stood there. He really seemed to want to prolong this. I told him that I'd be phoning my insurance company either later that day or the next morning and that they would take it from there. He stood there looking at me and I told him that if there was nothing else he needed from me, then I needed to go.

I then popped an Ativan and headed off to work.

oooh, baby, baby

As I've mentioned before, J and I are trying to have a baby. J will be the bearer of said child and I will be in charge of all that pertains to the day-to-day maintenance of a pregnant lady. Having been on the pregnant lady end of things, I'm not sure which job is more difficult - I'll let you know.

Anyway, we're coming along rather nicely in this process. We've selected a donor - a tall fellow of Jamaican descent. His profile indicated that he has things in common with both J and I - he's a reader and a soccer player and J, being of Puerto Rican descent, liked the idea of a fellow islander. And not that race/ethnicity matter to us, it must be a deal-breaker for some folks, as it was amazing (creepy? weird? sad?) how rapidly the white-boy sperm gets snatched up.

So here's how the whole artificial insemination thing works: after you fill out a shitload of paperwork for the sperm bank, as well as for the doctor's office and you've selected a donor, you begin tracking your ovulation. This requires the mother-to-be to pee on a stick every morning until the telltale sign of the pending ovulation inidcates that action must be taken! Immediately!

We obtained a positive ovulation result on our third try. But ovulation is the easy part. The getting preggers part is a little bit more difficult, despite what sexually-eager teenage girls are told. Upon receiving a positive ovulation test, we needed to phone the sperm bank and alert them that we're ready to pick up a sample. We also needed to page the fertility nurse to schedule an insemination appointment with her for the following day. These both needed to happen by noon.

Upon phoning the sperm bank, J encountered a voicemail on the other end. This wasn't what she was expecting, but she left a message anyway. After hanging up, she told me that it seemed weird that she got a voicemail when she was expecting to reach a lab and give them time-sensitive information. She double checked the number we had written down versus the number she'd dialed. Sure enough, she'd just left a voicemail for someone with her name, phone number and telling the poor voicemail recipient that she was "ready for her sperm."

In the meantime, we waited for the fertility nurse to return our page. About fifteen minutes later, the phone rings. J practically trips over what appears to be air to get to the phone and check the caller ID.

"Hello?" J says, as if she has no idea who is on the other end of the line.

"Hi, this is Joanna, the fertility nurse - I was just paged?"

"I'm ovulating!!!!!" J exclaims excitedly.

"That's great!" Joanna replied, "but let's start with your name. Tell me who you are."

J became suddenly shy and embarrassed, but Joanna turned out to be a good egg and was very kind and understanding with regard to J's outburst. She must deal with this sort of thing all the time.

The next morning at the crack of dawn, we had to head to the sperm bank to pick up our sample (yes, we called again - this time with the correct phone number). After forking over a lot of money, we were handed a tank similar to the sort of thing one might use to inflate helium balloons. It was only about one third to half as tall as a helium tank and weighed around 25 pounds.

We carried our "man in a can" to the car to head over to the doctor's office for the insemination. Upon starting up the car, J and I suddenly exchanged surprised expressions. The radio was playing Bob Marley's "Lively up Yourself" - a minor coincidence that we were hoping was a good omen.

Later, however, when we were in the waiting room at the doctor's office, J nudged me and said, "are you seeing this???"

I look over just in time to see a very pregnant woman walking down the hallway.

What was so remarkable about her?

She was wearing a bright yellow t-shirt with a large green, black and yellow flag emblazoned across the front and the word "Jamaica" across the top.

Coincidences?

So we won't know for about another week whether or not we're knocked up (cross your fingers for us!), but if J's behaviors, sensitivities and food cravings ('let's dip these Fritos in dark chocolate!", "I wonder what peanut butter and cheese mixed together would taste like") are any indication, then it's a no-brainer. That or she's just somaticising every symptom in the book. I'll keep you posted.

The tights mishap

So, here I am attending my first ever professional librarian conference in Seattle, Washington (my home away from home) and am doing my best to get it right. When packing for the trip, I selected mostly clothing on the casual/comfortable side of professional on account of you never know who you might bump into and what opportunities may be available to you (as it turned out, there was nobody and nothing, respectively, but, again, you never know). And, knowing that I'd be walking all over hilly downtown Seattle, I selected stylish, yet comfortable, boots to navigate the terrain.

The first discussion that my traveling companion, *Heather, and I chose to attend was, of course, on the other side of the urban landscape. No matter, the weather was ideal for a city trek and it felt good to be out and moving.

Because I would be co-hosting a reception for my graduate program later that evening and didn't know if I'd have an opportunity to return to the hotel to change my clothes, I selected an outfit that could be construed as "business casual," as that had been what I was instructed to wear for the reception. And, again, you never know who will be there. As it turned out, nobody with a job offer was following me around like a lost puppy - and if they had, I'd likely be wary of said offer. But Internet Celebrity blogger, iAsshole, was attending! She was surrounded by, presumably, a hoard of fans trying to acquire some tongue scrapings when iAsshole wasn't looking.

Here's what I selected for the day: a black cashmere sweater (ribbed for my pleasure), a black skirt that fell a good three inches above the knee, kicky chartreuse tights by DKNY, and black mid-calf boots. To accessorize, I added a lovely long scarf that was a sheer black with green stitching in a fancy way and, of course, my green-framed specs. Even Heather told me that my outfit was adorable (thanks Heather!), so I felt confident that I could blend in with the cosmopolitan Seattleites without a hitch.

Unfortunately, there was a hitch.

My elastic in my lovely kicky tights had, unbeknowst to me while I was dressing, decided to go suicidal on me and, about halfway into the walk to the Westin Hotel on the other side of town, slowly started to creep downward.

Uh oh. I saw where this was going.

I asked Heather to stop and pose as a barrier for me so that I could stand near a building and pull up my Southbound tights. So not very cosmopolitan. I couldn't tell how far South those tights were willing to go, but it seemed prudent to stop and hike them up as they were loitering at the fullest part of my ass.

Another two blocks later, the top of my non-elasticized tights were hovering at the equator of my ass again and I just couldn't foresee stopping every block to hoist them up. So I decided to grin and bear it. Or, to bear it anyway.

By the time we walked in through the grand entry of the swanky Westin Hotel, my tights had fallen down the slope of my ass and were pausing at the tops of my legs and I wondered what could possibly hold them in place at that point. An image flashed in my head of my attempt to look dignified while the tights were bunched around my ankles, preventing me to take a stride any longer than four inches. As we took the escalator to the fourth floor, I tried to calculate how much wiggle room I had from the tops of my legs to the hem of my skirt.

The overcrowded discussion meant that we had to sit on the floor. Somehow I was able to manage this sans incident. When the discussion ended, Heather asked what I wanted to do. I told her that I needed to get to the Nordstrom we'd passed stat and purchase a control garment to hold my tights in place for the remainder of the day. Sure, there were probably some other places where a desperate woman could purchase a control garment, but the Nordstrom was closest. She was fine with that and relegated herself to the shoe department while I sought freedom in the form of constraint.

Now, I have mixed feelings about control garments in general and have, for the most part, opted out of partaking in what is so clearly a man-made accoutrement. Worse yet, the damn things come in sizes small and extra small! What on earth would someone so tiny need with such a thing? And just to rub it in, the photos on the tags of these garments revealed a very slender woman - perhaps a size 2 - donning such an item, apparently to show that it is, indeed, slenderizing. I growled at these tags and pulled a couple of different styles in my size. As I pulled on these torture devices, I wondered how they were supposed to create a slenderizing effect - unless I were to cover every inch of my body with them. Sure, everything inside of the garment was contained, but then the distinction between the inside and outside of the garment was drastic and looked freakish. Ironically, I purchased the girdle (these were girdles, weren't they?) that was the LEAST tight so that - should my clothing hug my body at any time throughout the day - I would not resemble a sausage attempting to escape its casing.

Now, more so than ever, I remain of the opinion that control garments seem most suitable for those wishing to trans gender.

*not her real name