Is it odd that I’m heading to New York this afternoon without my children in order to launch an anthology that is, essentially, about them? Part of me is giddy at the thought of a trip to the big city without the kids and part of me is mourning the fact that, in my zeal to get Isaac to the babysitter on time, I rushed out of the house without saying goodbye to Rowan. Do you think it would be too intrusive to sneak over to the school and give him a quick hug? Don’t answer that.

Instead — if you’re not doing anything Tuesday evening — join me at Bluestockings bookstore and activist center at 7 PM for the official US launch of And Baby Makes More: Known Donors, Queer Parents and Our Unexpected Families!

Because the kids? They’re going to be all right — more than all right, even, if a new report from the US national longitudinal lesbian family study (NLLFS) has anything to say about it.

Has it been a week? It’s been a week. I would have written something by now, except that every post I could think of writing began with the line, “I’m the only person in the house who has not yet come down with the barfing sickness.” And that just seemed like tossing fate a big, shiny red apple and saying, “Take a bite, baby.”

Three… two… one…

Okay, still not barfing. We’ll see how long that lasts.

I invited me and the boys over to a friend’s house last Saturday evening for dinner and trampolining. At about 10 p.m., I got the phone call every parent dreads: “Anyone at your house barfing yet?” No, not yet, but on Monday morning I stumbled out of bed and was greeted by Rowan, who said, by way of good morning, “Isaac was throwing up in his bed all night.” Rowan, however, seemed as healthy as an apricot, so we sent him off to school. By midmorning, however, I had arrived at the school to collect him — a miserable, slick little package of a child — from the school’s office. “He’s been very brave,” the principal called as we left. By the next day, both kids were fine, just in time for Rachel to succumb.

Next in line? The babysitter.

My current goal is not to come down with the summer cold that both boys seem to have picked up. And to catch up on the various deadlines that went whooshing by à la Douglas Adams as I pulled extra shifts on barf-watch duty and childcare last week.

Fortunately, Dana Rudolph over at Mombian is picking up the slack, with the second of three giveaways for And Baby Makes More: Known Donors, Queer Parents and Our Unexpected Families. Visit her and leave a comment (by midnight today) about how you have created (or plan/hope to create) your family, or the language your family uses to describe itself, and you could win a copy. The lovely folks at Insomniac Press will mail you a copy directly, so you don’t have to worry about us infecting you.

Good luck!

Hey peeps (I have no idea where it occurred to me to use the word “peeps,” but it just sprang out of me, and I’m going with it) — Dana over at Mombian has been kind enough to promote And Baby Makes More: Known Donors, Queer Parents, and Our Unexpected Families with a giveaway of not one, not two, but three copies of the book over the next three weeks.

To enter today’s draw, visit Mombian and leave a comment that answers the following question:

Many of the essays in the book focus on the language we use for our families. How do you and your children (if you have any) refer to the members of your family—yourself and/or your co-parent(s), donor, birth mother, grandparents, or anyone else you consider part of your close family circle? If you don’t have kids, tell us what you call your own parents or what you think you’d like your kids to call you.

Dana’s full review of the book is here. And thanks to Insomniac Press for providing the books. Good luck!

There is, on my night table at this very moment, such a stack of possibility that I can barely contain myself every time I glance at it. It’s things like this that, of late, make me resent the real world, the one with its clients and deadlines and meals to be cooked and dishes washed and laundry folded, and aging, creaking bodies to be maintained. Some days (okay, a lot of days) I even resent showering. I want to play wildly with the children at the end of the day and then put them, happy, to bed and retreat, refreshed, to the couch — or to a bathtub more comfortable than ours with its straight up-and-down sides, obviously designed by a non-reader — and immerse myself in any and all of these books. And yet, they’ve sat there, some of them, for months. 

But no more! It’s spring, even if the thermometer dipped today back down to -15, and I am going to read. Here’s what’s in the stack: 

• Foreskin’s Lament, by Shalom Auslander. Every time I hear this guy read one of his stories on National Public Radio’s This American Life, I want more. Angry, brutal, and astonishingly funny stories of growing up in — and eventually leaving — an ultra-Orthodox Jewish family and community.
• Crisp, by R.W. Gray, known less formally in our circles as “Rob,” or our friendly resident sperm donor. I wonder if we would have chosen him after reading the book — the stories I’ve read thus far are full of fathers in trapped in burning cars and mothers who swell and swell and swell until they burst. I think we would have. Chosen him, that is.
• A Gate at the Stairs, by Lorrie Moore. I know pretty much nothing about Moore, but her name just keeps popping up, spoken in reverential tones by people whose opinions I tend to admire. So I’m giving her a whirl.
• The Book of Negroes, by Lawrence Hill. Rachel gave this to me for my birthday. I’m a few chapters in, and I get absolutely what all the fuss is about. Eager — and slightly scared — to continue.
• Salt Physic, by Jacqueline Larson. A confession: I’m not the best or most avid reader of poetry, but these ones about skinny-dipping and the contours of a grandmother’s — and a lover’s — body and salt and sweat and cornflakes keep hooking me. I read a couple at a time, in stolen moments. Plus, Jacqueline now has what may be the world’s most freakishly adorable baby.
• For the Time Being and An American Childhood, by Annie Dillard. If you teach a course in creative nonfiction, which I did this past fall, it is impossible to stop coming across paeans to Dillard as one of the genre’s founding and most talented voices. I grabbed these from a friend’s shelf to find out for myself. So far, I think I’m onto something.
• Half World, by Hiromi Goto. I haven’t read anything of Goto’s since Chorus of Mushrooms. ’Bout time.

Under the books are Dwell magazine, my escape into slightly pretentious but oh so pretty modernist architecture and decor, and Bitch and Bust magazines, for, respectively, “a feminist response to pop culture” and “women with something to get off their chests.”

God, I used to read, as a child, a dozen or more books a week. Whatever happened between then and now, I’m not so sure has been entirely a good thing.

What books are waiting on your nightstand?

So I’m going to write about somebody else’s book, for a change. This book, in fact:

Isn’t it pretty? It’s Crisp, Rob’s collection of short stories (Who is Rob? Read this.), and they are beautifully creepy, glittering-up-at-you-from-the-bulk-candy-bins mouthfuls of magic realism. They are, as Rob puts it, about “grief, disappointment, and the occasional dinner party gone wrong.” And I don’t think he means like “the dessert burned” wrong. (Although the best part of this book may be that Rob is entertaining my under-exercised five-year-old in the basement as I write these very words. Go, team!)

We’ve all been waiting impatiently for this particular baby to be born, and now it’s here. And those of you lucky enough to live in Thunder Bay are invited to its debut launch, tomorrow evening (that’s March 4), 8 PM, at Calico Coffeehouse. They do a mean book launch, let me tell you. I’ll be the girl behind the book table. See you there!