I have written many posts over the years, expressing how much joy I feel from my transition care. I see this as a moral obligation. The more girls know that happiness is possible, the more girls will fight for it, right? And yet, I see so many comments, tags, etcetera... Lamenting that it's impossible for them. And they assume the only reason I got treatment is because I have money... It hurts to be resented by those I see as the same as me. Because I'm actually broke as shit.

My family is poor as hell. I have to beg people to cover my healthcare costs pretty often. The reason I was able to transition is because I'm not American. I'm very aware of this. Living in a country that has affordable healthcare is... I struggle to call it a privilege, though I know it is, because I don't want to frame it that way. Transition care being accessible should be normal, not a privilege, and in many countries it is. America is the exception here...Not that my country is perfect, not by any means...

I had a friend. Couple cities over. Sweetest girl in the world... Hormones didn't work as well on her as they did on me... She wanted surgery, but. They wouldn't let her. Said she was too heavy... She was working out and dieting constantly, but she was just built big... Haven't heard from her for a few years now. Really hope she's okay. Kinda feel like I know better...

Think about her a lot. About how she must've felt about me, seeing me prance around with the body she wanted but couldn't get. About... if I could've done more for her, I guess. Don't know that I could've. Still think about her constantly. Think about her every single time someone gets mad at me for having access to healthcare when they don't... Eats at me.

... Still think it's important to talk about how good I have it, on the other side. People need to know what they're missing. The more girls transition, the better... Legally, DIY, doesn't fucking matter. I just want us all to be okay. Please just be okay...

I tried drawing random animals from memory in 2 minutes (based on a spilled ink video) but at the elephant I realised I'm really not good at it :'D
So I ended up redrawing them with references just to see the difference, and ended up spending way too much time on it.

So recently I went camping with my sister and I had a Linguistic expirience.

We were in Yellowstone being excited about geothermal features and generally enjoying ourselves becuae turns out Late September is the best time to hit up the Colder national parks- the only other people there was a family with matching windbreakers speaking german with Swiss accents and the Park Ranger patrolling around to make sure we weren’t planning on skinny dipping or the other bonehaded things tourists do.

As we’re on the way back to the car we see a woman in Bright Red Pants in the parking lot looking both lost and near tears.  She sees us and practically sprints over to ask us

“Parlez-vous français?”

Now, my sister is fluent in spanish, ok at pourtugese and italian and even has a good chunk of Japanese under her belt.  “yo hablo español!”  She offers.  Then offers the other three languages.  Madame Red pants shakes her head at all of them.

I have a dubious grasp of English, but I know enough German to navigate a major metropolitan area if everyone is real patient and repeats things three times for me. “Sprechen Sie Deustch?” I try.

Madame Red Pants (I can see her husband in the car looking equally bewildered. I cannot see the color of his pants. I assume they are equally Rhodacious.) looks crestfallen but tries anyway.  She takes out the park map and indicates the Norris Junction, while speaking French faster than I understand English, but it’s apparent she doesn’t know where she is currently, and needs to get to Norris Junction.

We know where she is and how to get to Norris but can’t convey this via pointing at the map and waving our arms. I feel genuinely bad, and she looks near tears with frustration. 

Then I remember.
The matching Swiss Family.

I jog back into the geyser complex and find them excitedly taking pictures of a chipmunk while the Ranger watches them suspiciously from behind a pine tree.  

“Sprechen Sie Französisch?” I ask, and they collectively turn towards me, freeing the chipmunk from thier gaze as it sprints off into the underbrush.

“Ja, bitte.” Says thier Matriarch and leader.

“Eine Frau is Veeeeerlos- no, Verloren! Kann Sie- aw crap what’s the word? Translate?”

“Oh, Ja!” Frau Windbreaker speaks Idiot Tourist too, apparently.  The Swiss collective follows me back to the parking lot and and Frau Windbreaker and Madame Red Pants have a very animated conversation in French that I understand exactly none of.  My sister, feeling left out, offers various memebers of the Swiss Collective trail mix.  some of them even take it. Frau Windbreaker turns to me.

“Wo ist Norris?” She asks, looking mildly embarassed.

I end up having to convey the directions to Norris in German, which Frau Windbreaker translates to French, hindered slightly by the fact that neither of these women know how to read a map, but eventually Madame Red Pants comprehends, thanks us profusely, gets in her car, and manages to turn the correct direction out of the parking lot.  Frau Windbreaker and I shake hands and all of us part ways with the feeling of a job well done.

Before my sister and I can get in the car, the Ranger appraoches us.

“Thanks for that. I’ve felt bad all summer that all I’ve been able to do is turn on google translate for people.”  he said, shyly.

At that moment my sister and I both realized that Madme Red Pants had both a GPS in her car and an Android phone in her hand.

Hopefully the next person to help her was more technologically literate or generally observant than we are.

(if you laughed, please consider tipping me on Ko-fi or see more lore on Patreon)

So while I was getting my haircut, the lady asked me if I had other plans for the day and I said:

“I’m just going to pick up the boy from daycare and then it’s date night.”

And the lady says “Oh! How old is he?”

“He’s three.”

“Mine too! Where are you registering him for kindergarten it’s such a hassle-”

And that’s when I realized I said “boy” and not “dog” because I always think of Charlie as “good boy” but this slip up has lead to a miscommunication.

The lady is now 6 minutes into a clearly needed rant about how unnecessarily complex shopping for schools is, esp when you have a neurodivergent child, so I can’t just tell her that Charlie is a dog because then she’ll feel awkward for unloading on me and she clearly has enough going on.

So the rest of the haircut became a game of “how much can I say about Charlie without revealing that he is not a human child?” And the answer is “enough to cover a half hour hair appointment, quite possibly several hours worth if I’m specific enough”

…While my phone was in the car, and I am SO MAD, but please enjoy this description:

• I take my own dogbeast, Charleston Chew, to puppy daycare at least once a week to get him some cardio and work on his social skills, and today after taking him in I saw the most.
• Bewildering Animal.
• This dog’s name is “Howdy” (presumably because it’d be rude to name a dog ‘Doody’) and he’s a German Shepherd/Greyhound X Bloodhound mix 
• Please take a minute to imagine this creature.
  
  
  
• His body is fairly normal- A smooth but thick red coat with a small, mottled black saddle.  He has a sock on his hind left foot (I think it was left.  he is eight months old and very wiggly) that makes it look like a jovial frat boy just rolled out of bed after a night of revelry.
• His skin bags slightly at his armpits and under his belly but not in dramatic fashion, until the cheerful gentleman that keeps him said 
• “Watch this!“ 
• and lovingly grabbed the skin over his shoulders and hips-
• -And lifts enough skin to cover Howdy’s Body again over him while all four of his feet remain planted upon the floor, tail wagging with glee.
• He weighs, I estimate, about 70lbs and his bulky-boned, with a long, sturdy tail and a trim body under the onsie-like skin.
  
  
• The Head though
  
• Oh Dear.
• Howdy’s head has a somewhat lupine profile- the combination of breeds leads to a long but sturdy snout, and not too much overhang of his lips.
• He slobbers an entirely tolerable amount.
• His eyes are large like a greyhound, bright golden brown like a shepherd and his eyelids work correctly, much to his human’s and the vet’s relief.  The wide bright eyes lend him a wild-eyed, moderately panicked look.
• The skin bags too, at the top of his head  and the rolls covered in velvety fur make for a constantly furrowed brow of worry and give him the overall expression remineistient of an edvard munch character.
  
  
• Then There Are The Ears
• His ears are the size and shape of a bloodhound's 
• but due to the mix 
• They 
• Stick 
• All 
• The 
• Way
  
  
  
  
• UP 
• They are somewhat tubular, curled inward and much longer than wide and almost the size of his head again. they swivel independently of eachother, like  the eyes of a chameleon.
•  "We think he makes that face because he can listen in on russian sattelites.”
  
  
• I confess.  
• I guffawed upon seeing him 
•  "OOOOOOHHHH NOOOOOO I’M SO SORRY HE’S BEAUTIFUL BUT HIS EARS-“ 
• "That’s alright ma'am.  God put him on this earth to bring people joy.  And he sure does.”

Bless this Bewildered and Bewildering creature.

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Among many other Talents, my family is good at insults.  Please enjoy:

• ”We promise to return Cousin Scott in as many pieces as we receive him.”
  “…Pieces, Plural?”
  “Scott, his artifical leg, and the wee peanut rattling around his skull that he uses for a brain.”
  
• “You’re going to make some some future paleontologist very famous when they discover your solid-bone skull.”
  
• “Professor Ingram has left for the University of Lousiana’s Psych department, thereby raising the average IQ of both departments.”
  
• “Can you believe someone started a rumor that I slept my way to the top?”
  “No way.  You’re nowhere near to the top.”
  
• “You are my sister and I love you but I’m pretty sure if I were to shout directly into your ear canal you’d echo.”
  
• “Some things ferment and improve with age- Wine and Cheese for instance. You’ve just decomposed.”
  
• “Dense doesn’t begin to cover it.  People who get close to him get trapped in his Event Horizon.”
  
• “Some people have a devil on thier shoulder that whispers temptations to them.  Yours is bellowing that that was over the line.”
  
• “I won’t deny that you have hidden depths, but they’re less like the potentially levithan-filled ocean and more like the secret compartment in the dryer where the socks get lost.”
  
• “I can’t come to your birthday Nina.  I’ve scheduled a root canal that day specifically so I wouldn’t have to.”
  
• “She describes her ancestry and it sounds like a fancy cheese platter but in person she’s velveeta.”
  
• “Your inner machinations are a rotating pie display.”

Someone in the Fort Collins Area owes me an explanation

So, I’m up at my parent’s house to return the power tools I borrowed and say hi, and I’m out walking the dogs. Got a leash in each hand, dual-weilding doggos. It’s a bit tricky but they’re used to this and don’t tangle as much and I’m the only person with good enough knees to stop them when they see snackable wildlife.

Anyway, we’re on the North end of the Poudre River trail, by overland, you know where that long bridge is? And I’m disposing of dog waste right before the bridge like a responsible adult when I hear what sounds like an ice cream truck playing “Yankee Doodle” at roughly five times the speed it’s normally played at and see the following:

There is a gentleman rapidly approaching our location who is also dual-weilding doggos, but in his case he’s got a pair of malamutes barreling down the trail at full Iditarod speed, clearly having the time of their lives. They’re hauling thier human behind them, whom I will describe from the top down:

He’s wearing a helmet, which is the only sensible thing going on here. He also has a magnificent handlebar mustache that is flapping joyously in the unusual October rain. He’s wearing a full body Spandex suit of such intensely clashing colors that is physically hurt to look at, but most importantly

He is riding

A unicycle.

It’s not a normal unicycle either this gentleman is towering over us mortals in an unreasonably massive unicycle, like he’d lost the back end of a penny farthing and decided that was an acceptable means of transportation. I see a device attached to the seat that looks like a pedal-powered music box which explains why my ears are being assaulted with the speed core rendition of Yankee Fucking Doodle. I do not see brakes.

I realize I have half a second to grab my own dogs before they decide to join or topple this strange Traveller from wherever Dr.Seuss books are set. I gather each animal under my arms and stand there with a collective hundred pounds of writhing canine under my armpits as the malamutes pick of speed and as they pass the gentleman cheerfully bellows something at me that I don’t hear because Arwen has already partially broken my hold and is attempting to climb on my head, presumably to launch herself at him.

And then he is gone.

We stand there, staring bewildered in the direction of his last known trajectory, listening as speedcore Yankee Doodle fades into the distance. Even after it is gone I still wait, because the trail ends in half a mile from here and I expect to here a crash, possibly even see a fire explosion. But nothing comes, only the sound of October rain and confused dogs.

So if you know of this gentleman and if he’s still alive/on the material plane, can you ask him something for me?

How the hell does he STOP?

took a depression nap and all i remember from my nap dreams is a nonsensical t-shirt design that left me feeling dazed and confused after i woke up.

Refurbished Screen Protector

A Meditation : 68 Capybaras

Available as a print.

Always feel nostalgic when I see the original Wheel of Time books so here is a drawing of my OCs based off cover art by Darrell K. Sweet :)