tickled pink

Thanks for being pissed off with me yesterday. Today, I’ve downgraded my dissatisfaction to “ugh, whatever” but of course I still wish things were different. I went home last night and reviewed the profiles/photos of other donors that I’d downloaded back when our membership was about to expire. You know, just in case. Ha ha. I picked out my distant second- and third-place options to run by M, and also did some poking around on other banks’ websites to see how much it would set us back to look at some more donor pictures. Today I checked the Xy.tex website and would you believe it? My second-choice donor is sold out, too! Awesome!! I got on his pending list which is such a joke because we need to order sperm in the next 2-3 weeks, but whatever. I also got another email from the Xy.tex rep and she sounds really hopeful that something may still work out with The Beatle, despite the timeframe I gave her and the pending list placement she gave me. I don’t know whether to be grateful or annoyed about this. I’m leaning toward grateful for her good intentions but realistic about the (non-existent) chance that she’s on to something.

Last night was rough. Every time I looked at E, I got sad all over again that we’ll never get another shot to roll the same dice that brought him to us. Here we have this amazing kid who is smart and feisty and funny and cute as a freaking button, and I just want him all over again, or at least as close as the genetic lottery will allow. That option has been off the table for ages, and yet somehow it’s like the loss of it happened yesterday. It’s so bizarre how old wounds can get re-opened by new twists and turns. I also can’t stop re-hashing the opportunity we missed back in February when The Beatle had units available. If we’d been told at the time how this would actually go – nothing available until a final release in August/September – I’m 100% sure we would have bought then, but that’s not the message we were given. Nothing to do now except try to get the track to stop playing in my head. To that end, here’s a funny story about that perfect kid to reinforce why I should spend less time whining and more time counting my blessings.

I was tied up with a project all weekend and in my absence, M and E went aquarium shopping. They came home with a 10 gallon tank kit and had it set up by the time I got home on Sunday. We talked about how E would get to pick out a fish and name it and it could be his pet, just Elmo has a pet fish named Dorothy. I asked what he thought he might name his fish and without a millisecond of hesitation, he declared that his fish would be named Sandwich. OK then!

We made a deal with E that he could pick out a new fish for his aquarium every week that he did well during his swimming lesson*. Last night provided the first opportunity – a bit of a stretch perhaps, but we’re rewarding even the smallest of steps right now – and off to Pe.tsmart we went. E and I walked back and forth along the wall of fish, taking in the magnitude of options. I asked E what color fish he wanted and, again with no hesitation, he requested “pink!” I was just starting to say I wasn’t sure they had any pink fish, and maybe we could get red instead, when lo and behold, a perfectly pink guppy swam past our noses. E deemed it to be love at first sight and a few minutes later, we were headed out the door with little pink Sandwich.

The kid has a thing for pink. Also on this week’s shopping list: A new toothbrush for E. He is now the proud owner of a sparkly pink, purple and turquoise toothbrush with a picture of Belle on the handle that he picked out all by himself. He is over the moon. M is kind of happy about it as well. I think it tickles her to think of how irate the Reli.gious R.ight would be if they knew how our little lesbian family was single-handedly dismantling Gender one toothbrush (and fish) at a time…


*We’ve been going to swimming lessons once a week for the past year. E has consistently loved it and been eager to attend. About a month ago, E decided he hates swimming and refuses to go in the pool. We have no idea what happened. I have been blaming it all on his current instructor who I find to be overly-touchy (even when he is clearly uncomfortable with it) and untrustworthy (using bait and switch to get the kids to go underwater after she tells them they don’t have to). That said, I don’t really know if she is all or even part of the problem. I talked to the supervisor last night and she said it isn’t uncommon for kids his age to go through periods where they don’t want to participate. We’re switching instructors again (I think… I hope…) in a few weeks and we’ll see if things improve. If not, maybe we’ll just take a break for a while. The swimming school he goes to is pretty pricey and there’s just no need to pay that much money to watch our kid ruin everyone else’s experience when we can fight with him at home for free. So anyway, this week he got a fish just for going in the water and putting his head under once. I’m hoping that by the time we run out of aquarium real estate, we won’t need the bribe anymore. I guess that gives us about 9 more weeks. Cross your fingers…