Miscellanea for a Friday evening

I gave my first presentation of the semester today. I had less than a week to prepare and ended up staying awake until 2:30 am this morning in order to finish it up. It was not a case of putting too much off to the last minute, but rather trying to cram in several other things into a finite period of time. Some random moments I have wanted to share :

• As Scooter sat on the potty last night, we chatted. I asked him, as I do from time-to-time so that I can introduce the idea gently, if he would like a baby brother or a baby sister. My intention with this question is to pose a yes-or-no question meaning, "Do you want a sibling?" His response: "A baby sister." And then: "Let's name her Luke. Luke Rusty Percy." Rusty and Percy are two trains from the Thomas the Tank Engine series; I'm not sure where Luke comes from.
• For various reasons--an odd combination of appointments, scheduling, a cold, and this bitter-ass weather--Scooter was home for a few days this week. When he went back to school today, there was information in his cubby about enrolling in the public school closest to the preschool for those who live outside its normal boundaries. Obviously Trillian and I have been talking a lot about this, but I hadn't thought about making a solid decision so soon. But when I picked Scooter up this afternoon, I talked a little bit to one of the teachers, mentioning our thoughts about not sending him to school next year (but not about keeping him home). He agreed that it might be a good idea. We'll be setting up a meeting soon so that we can discuss more fully (hard to do when a three-year-old's pulling on my arm and there's "tidying" going on around us), but this at least makes us feel better about our gut instincts.
• I had a 2 1/2-hour lunch with two friends from my department today. We've made a habit of grabbing lunch together every few weeks to chat, gossip, vent. A leisurely meal, good company, lots of laughs. The friend who was hit on by another (female) classmate brought up that this same woman told her recently that her clothing style is "dyke chic." As I've mentioned before, my friend is straight and quite firm in this--not in a freaked-out-by-sexuality, closet-case way, just a secure, knowledge-of-self way. Now this is something I'd noticed a while ago and it took me a while, because of this, to be sure that my friend was straight. It's a combination of her clothing (very put-together, but mostly pants, button-down shirts, and sweaters) and her carriage (assertive, with just a touch of what I call "the swagger"). Throughout our lunch, we found ourselves back on that topic... with me, as the resident lesbian expert, attempting to explain as best as I could. Many, many laughs.
• I found out from our friend who's ahead of us in the program that my supervisor had told her before I even started the program that I was exactly what the department needed--an unapologetically out, married lesbian with a child. He told her that would set some people's heads to spinning, something which, in his opinion, was needed in our isolated department. Yeah me! Shaking things up just by being who I am. (To everyone's credit, I should say that I haven't run into any obvious trouble within the department.)
• My two-month break is over. But you'll excuse me if I don't say much about specifics for a while. I plan on writing some general posts about the process, but am trying not to obsess over everything while I wait to test. One thing I will tell you is that I cheated this month. I'm supposed to wait until my LH surge before scheduling insemination for the next day, but I have been feeling that the previous tries were too late. So I listened to my body more this cycle and told them I'd surged before the test said so. Waiting to see if the deception paid off.
  

I'll be going to sleep soon, trying to make up for the sleep deficit I've accumulated. This weekend will be a time of catching up on other schoolwork and getting ahead on blog material for here and Mommy Blogs Toronto. Keep an eye out for new posts!