And there's a certain inherent violence to the smoothie, what with shredding the fruit in the blender. You can imagine some lovely things.

mmmm. The path of the smoothie sound delicious.

And I like the point someone made in that link of...so you go with it and let the kiddo be a boy or girl or whatever. And then god forbid they change their mind back...so what? So now you let them grow/cut their hair and buy new clothes and call them a different name? Ooooooh. (They would've grown out of those clothes anyway, hint).

Note to brain/body: WHY are you attracted to people who are not useful/helpful/into you??? WHY? WHY? Why do you persist in going "oooh!" when the terribly inappropriate person does something while dancing that seems "hot" to you? WHY do you persist in wanting to drag ConfusingGirl off the dance floor, even though she seems not into it, and you know you can't even sustain a conversation with you? Meanwhile, WHY can't you be into the very fun girl who you ended up accidentally talking to until 2AM?? But noooo, nooooo Body, you can't be all "Oooh" for that one. USELESS, self, USELESS.

As an antidote to the rage-inducing transphobia, I've been reading and rereading this post by my sister about some of the kids & dads at the birthday party place where she works.

In the light of this horrifying episode with the talk radio show advocating violence against transgender children, I just wanted to share something from earlier today.

As some of you know, I work as a birthday party performer. Today's theme was "Princess and Pirates". During part of the party, we lay out costumes for the children to put on-- some for pirates, and many princess dresses.

Now, kids being kids (of three years old), many of the boys were drawn to the brighter colors and lighter fabrics of the princess dresses, and we had about three of the boys in princess dresses for most of the party.

Each one of the fathers smiled, took pictures, and just let the boys play. One even, while taking pictures, turned good-naturedly to another dad and said, "Like the daughter I never had".

It was really just nice to see Dads letting their kids be kids. They weren't old enough to be thinking of what gender they were supposed to be, and just picked out what colors they liked. And they were loved and supported for it.

Thought I would share.

Jess, that's awesome.

Transphobia sucks.

I'm currently tying to figure out how I'm going to get through the next month. In July, I start making good money, and will continue to do so through the end of the year, but this month is going to be barren. I'm still a bit short on this months rent, but I'm hoping my bank will cover the check anyway. I don't know, it's a new account. What little income I have for this month will cover some bills (but won't be coming in soon enough to prevent Internet shutoff next week), but I'm on my own for gas and food.

I've been scrambling to keep up since earlier this year, but this month is looking very bleak. I've already borrowed from family and friends, and that's all tapped out. I'm flat out stumped today. Frankly, borrowing any more at this point is just going tone a bad idea. I've called some temp agencies to see if they have anything super short term, but haven't had any success.

Ugh. Anything you can e-Bay or Craigslist? That's gotten me a little breathing room in tough times before.

Maybe. We'll see what I can dig up, but I'm not very confident that anything I own will sell.

I think part of the problem is that food and gas have become so expensive. I can think of a couple of things I could sell that might net me $20 or so, but that doesn't fill my tank, or feed me for more than a couple of days.

I'm looking into applying for food assistance, but I've got a lot of company for that, so I don't know how far that will get me.

Sorry I don't have any suggestions, Sean.

I just went grocery shopping, and have determined that nowhere in my neighborhood has plain unsweetened soy milk. I found several brands of plain soymilk with sugar, and one brand of unsweetened vanilla soy milk, and a zillion different kinds of vanilla and chocolate, but no plain unsweetened. (I also need plain unsweetened almond milk for a recipe I want to make, but I knew I'd have to go to Whole Foods for that. But I expected the regular grocery store to have at least one brand of the soy.) t /first world problem

Sean, your situations sucks, especially since when you do have work, you are so, so busy. I had this idea that you could maybe ask everyone you know for $30, against spending 2-3 hrs doing their least favorite chore, or some such. Except I suspect that would be impractical, since you might be up to your ears in work by the time they could cash in.

I really don't know how not to be sick with worry about T right now, and nothing that anyone is telling me or I'm telling myself is helping.

sj, why not just give yourself permission to be worried? While her prognosis appears good, M has had something happened to her which IS extremely worrisome. Come to think of it, being merely worried is irrational. Your BFF had a stroke. If you were both 70 it would be worrisome. At her age, it's f-ing terrifying. Yeah, you need to be able to keep the screaming in your head to a dull roar so that you can continue to function. Screw it, no you don't. I hereby give you permission to be freaked out, for as long as you need to be. You also have my permission to be thankful to the point of tears that she is going to be ok. You feel what you feel, and you take some time if you need to.