More from the notes:

I love this post

The horse thinks as it scratches an itch

God made me trans because he knew you couldn’t handle it

Because I saw this mentioned in the comments, I think what cis men describe when they speak about feeling ‘emasculated’ is very different than the feeling of gender dysphoria. It is an ego bruise. A dent. Anything that makes them feel like they are not an upstanding, radioactively, toxically masculine member of dominant gender. “I won’t eat any vaguely phallic fruit because it might look kind of gay and being gay makes you less of a man.” is very different than “My body, the way that I am forced to present myself and the way others perceive me is at odds with my inner self and the core of my identity as a human being and it hurts.”

Once again, God or fate made me trans because the guys who think eating a banana is gay and gay is bad would not have survived. A lot of gender is a performance, they’re rigidly reading from a script and yelling at someone in misplaced rage every time they feel like they got a line wrong, I’m doing improv comedy from the heart with a few fun quotes from the classics that I enjoy.

this was considered an outlandish joke in 2014

And, irrigation canals.

Saves 82% of water evaporation. 💧

Actually do cover our fields.

Solar doesn't compete with agriculture, and can be beneficial to it.

Just also cover our car parks.

This Delicious and Easy Recipe Only Takes 20 Minutes to Cook!! Perfect For Busy Week Nights!

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I’m not talking about humans pretending their untrained pets are service animals so they can bring them places they shouldn’t be allowed. I’m talking about my dog, who took one look at the two people with severe ADHD time-blindness and executive dysfunction who adopted him and was like, “Great. I am your Watch Dog now, as in, dog who functions like a watch. That is, if your watch was a seven-pound furby that could run this house like the goddamn navy. I will catapult myself onto your chest and nip at your hands when you fail to get up and Do Things in response to my incessant whining that it is Time For You To Eat Lunch/Get Out Of Bed/Go Exercise/Take Your Meds/Etc Now Now Right Now. This is a service I provide for to Helping You. No, you cannot opt out of the Helping You. Do not attempt to resist the Helping You.”

⬆️ Trained Professional

And he has like a fae-rules understanding of the scope of his duties and authority. He respects that we can and will override his judgment if we determine we do not actually need to do the Thing He Thinks We Need To Be Doing Right Now. But he is absolutely insistent that we give some indication that we have heard him and noticed what time it is first before he will chill out.

For example: My partner usually wakes up at 4AM to go for a run, but some days, he will just decide he needs the rest more than the exercise and turn his phone alarm off without getting up. Toby does Not Allow this and will stand on top of his pillow and stomp his little feet until the slovenly human has at least gotten out of bed and gone to the bathroom or the kitchen for a glass of water or something. But once he has risen and Done A Thing, thus acknowledging the passage of time, Toby will happily follow him back to bed and snuggle up for another few hours of snoozing

Some more Toby The Watch-Dog stories:

A combination of the aforementioned executive dysfunction + some appetite issues caused by my ADHD meds made it difficult for me to consistently make and eat a meal in the middle of the day, which usually caused me to put off lunch until I crashed out somewhere between 2-5PM with a wave of that so-hungry-I’m-nauseous feeling. Toby’s solution to this was to start bothering me every workday at around 10:50 (I work from home) and not chill out until I’ve at least TRIED to have lunch. If I sat down to eat but then got distracted by something on my phone for too long without taking a bite, he’d get upset about that, too. But I recently realized that he no longer bothers me about lunch. He’ll happily snooze through the day. I wondered why, until I remembered that a few months ago, I took some steps to address the root causes of this problem, which has resulted in me eating a proper balanced lunch consistently. He stopped reminding me because he trusts his big two-legged puppy to reliably feed herself now.

The three of us make the trip out to visit my parents for dinner about every other Saturday, always aiming to leave the house at 3:15, but lately, I keep underestimating how long it will take me to get ready and pull together everything we need to take with us, so I’ve ended up stressed and rushing out the door late. This past Saturday afternoon, after lunch, Toby was being all snuggly with me on the couch. I hadn’t planned on taking a nap, but he is very persuasive, so I dozed off without really thinking it through or setting an alarm. Meanwhile, Partner was totally engrossed in painting miniatures in the other room and did not have a timer set, either. To you, dear reader, this situation should have all the hallmarks of a looming disaster, and evidently, Toby shared that view even while asleep with his little pool-ball-sized head resting on my calf. I awoke some time later to him standing on my chest, stomping his foot, doing spins, and making those gentle little huff sounds that are not startling but will progress to loud whining if ignored. I checked my watch; 2:50PM. This dog woke me up at precisely the right moment to ensure I could get ready and leave on time without stressing—but wait, it gets better. Even after I’d gotten up, gone to the bathroom, and started to get ready, Toby still wouldn’t settle down. I tried taking him out, thinking he must need to go, but he just wanted to bark at passerby. I brought him back in, catching my partner’s attention, and we shared a laugh for how our little lying rascal woke me up right on time, after which Partner stood up from his painting and went to get dressed, too. Only then did Toby settle down. It wasn’t until we were driving home later that I figured it out: Toby did wake me up at just the right time on purpose, but he wasn’t satisfied until he saw me talk to Partner and Partner start taking steps to get ready, too.

But the funniest one, I think, was this past Sunday. As I mentioned before, most days, Partner gets up at the obscene hour of 4AM to go for a run. But on Saturday night, he told Toby that he would be getting up at 5:30 the next morning and asked him to please let him sleep in without pitching a fit. “But that’s ridiculous,” you say. “A dog can’t possibly understand the complex levels of abstraction and social construct in that sentence.” Until Sunday morning, I would have agreed with you. But I really don’t know how else to explain why Toby let Partner sleep peacefully through his usual 4AM wake up time and then insistently woke him at—I shit you not—5:29AM on the dot.

Partner’s 5:30 alarm does not do the “gradual fade-in” thing where it actually starts making noise earlier. There is no trickery here. My only other theory is that since Partner subconsciously knew he would be getting up at 5:30, he was coming out of REM sleep just before that time, and Toby picked up on the accompanying changes in breathing/heart rate/etc as clues that it’s almost time to get up. Which, if true, is still pretty damn impressive.

I have a new Toby The Watch-Dog story: On weekdays, I take ADHD meds twice a day. (Yes, I take instant release. Extended release is more convenient and performs better for my symptoms, but it also does dangerous things to my appetite, so instant release is the compromise.) One pill when I wake up, one just before lunch. I don’t usually have trouble remembering to take both doses, since they’re tethered to other activities and I use a pill timer. Yesterday, however, I was feeling a bit queasy after breakfast, so since my meds can also sometimes be a little rough on my stomach, I decided I’d eat a small, bland lunch and see how I felt after that before deciding whether or not to take the 2nd dose.

Toby watched me cook my lunch, sit down, and eat it without ever going back into the bedroom to take my pill. I presumably also smelled different to him, or my heart rate was lower, or whatever other combination of doggy-detectable signals would suggest I had forgotten to do the thing I always do. And he did not hesitate to let me know he had a problem with that.

Before I was even finished eating, he came and sat beside me and stared at me very intently—not like he does when he’s begging for a nibble, but like he does when he’s trying to tell me something. I asked him what was wrong, and he did his little inside-voice “woof” and spun in a circle (the cue we taught him for “I need to go outside.”) He doesn’t normally need to go in the middle of the day, but he just wouldn’t settle down, so I humored him and took him out anyway. Once we were out there, he just stared at me and kept spinning, which made no sense. I brought him back in, developed a hypothesis, and walked into the bedroom with him on my heels. Picked up the pill bottle and showed it to him. Then I pretended to take one, even washing it down with a little water, and washed my hands after like I always do. Finally, I turned to him and asked, “Happy?”

Dear reader, this seven-pound pusher blinked at me once, turned around, and trotted off to take a nap in his crate.