Battlestar Portlandia

I'm mostly a movie junkie, but I've been known to get drawn in to really good television, and right now I'm obsessed with Battlestar Galactica.

I just watched Season 2, Episode 5 where Starbuck has been kidnapped by the enemy Cylons and is being held hostage and drugged in a hospital called "The Farm."



And Starbuck isn't alone. Dozens of women are trapped there, all having their reproductive systems experimented on, their ovaries prodded, and their eggs harvested so that the big robot Cylons can make little baby Cylons.

I can relate. To the Cylons, that is.

And with all the costs and delays that have been going on with my cycle, I was just thinking that I should do exactly the same thing. If I found someone who didn't make too much of a fuss about being abducted, it could really work out.

Now, obviously I know that just because a woman is fertile, that doesn't mean she wants to have her eggs harvested, fertilized, and transferred into another woman's body. I appreciate that she'd have reservations, which is why I would to explain to her that the process would be short, that it's just a few eggs, and that I really want a baby.

I'm sure she'll understand.

I hadn't told anyone about my plan, but as it happened, I went out for Lebanese food with JM, and halfway through our veggie mezza platter, she pointed out that our waitress would make a great genetic parent to my children.

"Yeah, I guess she would," I said, as if I hadn't already been thinking it.

When the waitress brought our dolmas, I noticed how lovely and thick her hair was, and I imagined that its darkness combined with N's curls would be gorgeous on either a boy or a girl. She seemed healthy - not too thin but definitely in good enough shape that her my kids would probably be athletic, and since I've always wanted a basketball hoop in my driveway, I knew that kidnapping our waitress was the right decision.

I turned back to my falafel and considered next steps. The fact that JM suggested our waitress made me wonder if she'd help. JM does have a thing for reading horror books, although to be reasonable, that could be strictly recreational. More in my favor, though, is that JM has chickens whose eggs she steals every morning before dawn, and if you think about it, keeping chickens caged in your backyard is not that different from abduction, systematic-drugging, and organ-harvesting.

On the other hand, JM does have a level of empathy that might get in the way. She's got this über-feminist, "my-body-my-choice" streak, so she might take issue with my plan. Plus, now that I think about it, my clinic might have a few concerns, too; the waitress would need several medical exams, and I suspect that you can only bring in a patient unconscious so many times before they start asking questions.

By the time my pita spooned up the last of the hummus, my hopes were fading and reality was setting in. There were too many kinks in my underdeveloped plan, and my dreams of a Cylon-inspired reproduction farm were dashed. I had no choice but to go with my current donor - however long and expensive the process would be.

The plates in front of us were empty save a few sad sprigs of wilted parsley around the edges. As our waitress came to collect them, she unabashedly showed off the straight teeth, perfect posture, and long legs that my kids would never inherit.

"Anything else I can offer you?" she asked.

"Now that you mention it," I said, overwhelmed by both despair and garlic, "I'd love your ... baklava."