At last, I can paint in peace

The silly little housewarming party is over and now I can stop trying to get everything done before it happens. I was starting to get Wes-like, overly-ambitious given the actual number of hours in a day. Trying to slide in a task or three too many. Let me bake dozens of mini pizzas and six flavors of sorbet pops and some whole wheat sourdough bread and then let me be sure to paint the new wall and plant grass in the backyard and then build planters and benches out of concrete bricks and wood in my spare time. Yeah, I know.

So I have started taking on these tasks at a more normal speed. Today is painting. I started last night in between making the pizza dough for dinner and the bagels for breakfast.

I think I found my OB/GYN by accident. I just went because my new doctor told me to but I seem to have stumbled upon the foremost queer-interested obstetrician in Park Slope. It was the usual script – the line of questioning turns away from what relatives had cancer and towards what method of birth control I use. None does not normally suffice, as the next question is “Are you trying to get pregnant?”

(Wait. A brief interlude about my old-ness. That is a new question. They used to look at me reproachfully when I said none, and I would quickly explain I slept with girls. But there was a supposition in that look that I was too young to have children. I am now very ready and excited to have a baby, but I also don’t feel that much older than before. Than 10 years ago. And so, I was sort of blown away by the new supposition that I must be trying to get pregnant. When I told him, “Not yet but in the fall,” he said “Great! 29 is a good age to get pregnant!” I was taken aback. What happened to the reproachful look? What happened to my youth? Yikes! It is really time. I am really 29 now! OK. Let me go on.)

I had an inkling he was cool because he knew the Callen-Lorde Center, where I went for health care until now. He said he was planning to volunteer there. Most of my doctors do volunteer there. Because most of them are queer. So hmmm…

Once I told him a brief version of the Wes story, and he nodded a lot and smiled a lot and expressed his support, he started to stumble over pronouns.

“He,” I said firmly. “When we met I was a lesbian but now I don’t know what I am. I don’t worry about it too much.” (I like to try to add something memorable so they can possibly stop stumbling.)

He laughed. He launched into “Don’t worry about this at all. I am totally cool with this.” And then about how he and this friend of his, a reproductive endocrinologist (fertility doctor) are starting a group for lesbians who want to have babies and “I know it’s not the same but it’s… the same process.” (Extra points for acknowledging this!!) And he offered to call this friend so we’d be all set to see him in the fall.

Whoosh. This was an unexpected meeting, let me tell you. But it looks like, for once, I managed to stumble into the right thing without over-librarian-ing myself, researching it to death.