Tuesday, Jun. 02, 2015 - 1:15 p.m.

Foot is much better. Now have to correct my gait after two months of walking on it funny.

Big news in my family is my cousin's son, in his teens now, has come out as gender dysphoric and will be transitioning to female beginning next week. This is my very Christian family in west PA; they are totally supporting him and I'm so proud I just tear up thinking about it. He had been having a lot of health problems, and it turns out it may have been the stress of his situation. My mom also unexpectedly cool with it. I was not looking forward to discussing it with her and then she reminded me that my brother's last partner (who supported him more than he deserved given the shit he dealt out) is transgender. Oh yeah! I forgot! So my mom is awesome too.

She never really got the differences in socialization that have to happen early on for all gender normative behaviors to sink in-- so she was always talking about how Pauline would eat messily and cook messily, how weird it was that she liked Transformers and snakes and boxing and how she made all the women in the community dislike her by wearing her bikini around outside. And I'd always be like, well yeah. Where would she have learned how to eat and sit nicely and the restrictions on how and when a woman is allowed to show her body? And her interests are less exceptional when you consider that they developed (and were probably socially rewarded) when she presented as male. But mom never quite figured that out. But she does have love and gratitude and total acceptance of Pauline the individual.

I'm proud to say she has the same for my young cousin too.

Other than that, summer has arrived. Triple digit heat. No monsoon yet. Got my new fig tree planted. Been getting a little time to work on my own stuff, and it is glorious. So far I have just been printing things on shirts for us. Working on a couple new designs. Trains for Uly, slugs for me. Hope to turn my attention back to the sadly languishing etsy store again soon.

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