We continue to begin.

Things are starting to happen, slowly, slowly but surely. Jen has set up a GP appointment to make sure she's in general good health and we got a recommendation for a fabulous gyno who is some sort of superlesbian and delivers 30 babies a day. Ok, maybe a month. Regardless, she loves pussy in both a medical and romantic sense, which means she has both knowledge and empathy for us and that's the important thing.

I said this felt like being told to climb a monolith. I was being dramatic. And isolationist. Tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of women have gone through this process, and there is information, but you have to reach out and find it. I've never been much of a joiner and neither is Jen, and words like "prospective lesbian parents support group" make us both cringe. But we need help from people who know how this happens. So I've reached out online. We actually found the superlesbian ob/gyn through my postings to several LiveJournal groups. People with info were more than happy to share and people without info enthusiastically congratulated us and wished us good luck. In real life, I hang out with straight girls and gay boys and my girlfriend. The lesbian community in NYC has always struck me as cliquish and shallow and not a little predatory. It was such a pleasant surprise to find that another lesbian community in another place...well, in many places at once...might be helpful to us, might hold some some relevance in my life.

Meanwhile I've sent off my applications to librarian school. I'm very excited about this, but I'm getting concerned about what this will do to our financial situation. No matter what, I'm not going to incur any more terrifiyingly large loans. I'll go to a private university only on full scholarship, and I'll be equally if not more thrilled to go to city college, because it is dirt cheap and a great school. But thinking beyond tuition, the idea is, if I go full time, I can put my previously held student loans on deferment and maybe save some money and get somewhere with my credit cards. But the money needs to be coming in from somewhere, which means I'll also need to work as much as possible. Atlantic is fun, sometimes, but mainly really hideously annoying. Its also a job that requires a lot of focus for not a great deal of pay-off which is really just the opposite of what I'm looking for if I enter into a full time school situation. If I had my druthers, I'd like to make the bulk of my money through tutoring. It requires very little focus for basically the same hourly amount as Atlantic. Or, if I hustle and get myself a raise, then a better hourly rate. But I've had trouble getting Kaplan to give me jobs lately. I think, I hope its just my lack of seniority, but it makes me worry about leaving my now-full-time job to depend more on income from them. The solution I've decided on is to cross train for two other tests, the LSAT and the GMAT. Hopefully, by increasing the amount of tests I am able to tutor/teach, I better my chances of actually landing some assignments. The other solution is to scrap Kaplan, scap Atlantic and just look for the most lucrative possible job I can get. But while the money is appealing, I have no idea what that job might be and it makes no sense just jumping into a new field for the cash when I'm just starting in school for something else. While I'm getting paid, I need to leave my options at least somewhat open to avail myself of library related employment opportunities that I'm sure will come my way once I start school.

I've never thought this strategically about my future before.The pitiable state of my savings account is evidence of the fact I've never thought seriously about saving money in my life. It's always just be a question of whether I could pay my loans, pay my cell phone bill, pay my rent. But we're doing this, we're starting to do this, and we need money to keep doing it. From a sustainer, I need to become a provider.