Easter Monday

My hands are covered in globs of white paint. Lovergirl and I have been using our Easter long weekend in the time honoured tradition of house renovations, painting the stairs and new banisters that we had to have built as part of our pursuit of council approval. Before, it was all big chunks of different coloured hardwood, now it's all gloss white. 'Antique White USA' in fact. Lovergirl is in charge of the colour palette of our house, I can never tell the difference between 'Antartic Frost' and 'Bleached Cotton' and 'Clotted Cream'. It's white for goodness' sake. The stairs and banisters and everything all looks a bit clinical at the moment, vast acres of white, but with still one more coat to do, I'm sure it will look more homey when we get the ladders and tarps and paint pots out, and move our stuff back in.

Donor Dan and James came down from Brisbane for lunch on Saturday. They are sweet boys. They seem much younger than us, although Danny is thirty-two - frightening when thirty-two year olds look so young. James is only 23 so he lowers the average age of them as a couple I suppose - if Danny was going out with a 36 year old I'm sure he would seem as old as us...strange rambling tangent I have gone down.

It was very good to have them for lunch. I don't think they were terribly impressed with the bush house - they looked a bit ill at ease and i think they are the first people ever to come here and not say 'Oh, stunning view!' We are used to people gushing over our house. Definitely city people, I think we'd be safe to say. As for not having a toilet, they were startled but polite about it - but not having a toilet is pretty outrageous - I think they thought we were joking when we said 'You have to go and wee in the bushes.'

Regardless of their unfamiliar lack of enthusiasm for our idyllic retreat from the world, we had a very nice lunch. It was good to spend a bit more time getting to know them. I suspect that Danny is not as into James as James is into him...just a little undercurrent of tension there perhaps?

Dan has a wild life story, coming out here from Hong Kong by himself at sixteen, and he has only been out for three years. Before that he was married and a regular church-goer. I did ask him why he wanted to donate it's a big, inconvenient deal and I wonder what possesses people to do it. He said, 'Well, I have a selfish reason and a slefless reason. My selfish reason is that I would like to leave a piece of myself behind, pass on my genes. And my selfless reason is that I think gays and lesbians should be able to have families, and it's not going to happen unless people like me are willing to help out.' It was a good conversation - I talked about my fears that a donor would want to take the baby away, and once again he was really clear that that was not going to happen. I can see that from where he is now - there is no way he could have a child in his beautiful apartment - and when I am with him talking, I feel confident that he genuinely believes it and it's not going to happen. But when I'm away, my doubts start to holler from the sidelines...he could change as he gets older, you hardly know this guy, and so on.

Still, there's not much else I can do - I'd still rather have a known donor than an unknown.

Lovergirl is awake (it's eight-thirty) and calling down the (freshly painted) stairs for a cup of tea. Gotta go.