Saturday, April 26, 2025

strong desire to be treated as the other gender…

Why no. No, I don’t look butch when I leave the house. Not at all.

Here’s the thing: I have gotten a metric fuck ton of shit on Facebook recently because I’m LOUD about trans rights. In comments on news stories. In my Facebook DMs. I even had a friend threaten to not refer someone to my little bookkeeping business because I was “pro-mentally ill people”.

That last one? OMG.

Hey, fuckface (yes, you. I know you stalk my little blog. HI!!!!), I don’t know if you know anything about me even though we’ve been friendly for decades now… to be honest, despite the multiple visits here, I don’t think you’ve ever read a word I’ve ever posted.

If you did, you would know that I am pro-mentally ill people. BECAUSE I AM ONE, YOU DUMB FUCK.

Social anxiety? Check
Bipolar? Check
General Anxiety? Check
A touch of OCD? Check
Seasonal Affective Disorder? Well, more like annual, but there’s a cure for that and it’s called MAINE.
Gender dysphoria? Never diagnosed, but I know I have it. I’ve had more luck controlling that than the OCD, anxiety, or bipolar combined, though.

When I was younger, I couldn’t leave the house without a baseball cap. A practice my mother tried to literally beat out of me.

My dad used to call me “his son, [name]” in a joking fashion, but it felt right in a way my real name never has.

I used to live in men’s clothes - another habit that mother tried to beat out of me. Literally. I did so right up until my boobs got too big. (Hi again! I know you love my double Ds. You once wrote a very… interesting… poem about them one night when you were drunk off your face.) Anyways, my boobs don’t fit in men’s shirts any more unless I buy them a tad too big. Don’t even get me started on my breeder’s hips. Men’s pants are a thing of my past as well.

All the trappings of being born in a female body bother me. They always have, but I’ve learned to live with it because living my life as a man wasn’t a thing when I was at my lowest point. I know I talked about my fencing buddy, Phyl, before and how she transitioned after her wife died and her kids were grown.

I’ve been thinking about her a lot.

About how brave she was to transition so late in life. If I had the balls (HA!) to do it now that I’m fifty.

But it doesn’t matter because nobody cares about FTM trans people.

What they do care about is MTF, but not for the reasons you think they do. It’s not about bathrooms and it’s not about men genetically being better than women in sports. It goes deeper than that and to be honest, I’m not even sure they know why they need to force a gender binary.

May I remind you that Felon 47 was recorded saying he grabbed women by the pussy? YET HE WAS VOTED INTO OFFICE. TWICE.

I’d rather take my chances with the trans women than with a cis man.

Anyhoo… Did you know, they’re so worried about “perverted” men accosting girls / women in locker rooms, that they want to do gender checks? They are literally talking about checking female athletes for men’s genitalia.

Um, no.

I’m loving the backlash that’s coming out of the trans community, though. There are some trans men I follow that - if they didn’t announce they transitioned - I would never have guessed. Yet, our politicians think they belong in a women’s restroom. Because they have what I assume are grabbable pussies… I mean, who’s the real pervert here?

Seriously. What it is about conservatives / magats that make them so obsessed with penises? Peni?

Schlongs. Let’s go with schlongs.

It doesn’t end there, though.

This culture of fear about the different? It’s affecting cis women.

Read that again.

IT IS AFFECTING CIS WOMEN. THE VERY WOMEN THEY WANT TO ‘PROTECT’.

People are actually accosting cis women in bathrooms because they look masculine. That’s if they even get in in the first place.

There are videos and news stories. Blog posts. TikToks. Facebook posts. Instagram posts.

They’re out there if you care to look.

Now, despite hating my female body, when I was untreated for the bipolar, I was um… shall we say, unbothered by getting nekkid with men when I was manic. (Do you remember that night? I’m sure you do… since you were the recipient of a - and I quote -  “million dollar blow job”. Too bad you couldn’t afford it.) I’d regret it, sure, once the mania passed. But during those manic periods, I was too busy trying to get off, to make my body behave in ways it wasn’t built for.

I faked every. single. one.

EVERY. SINGLE. ONE.

(Yup. You, too, asshole. Especially with you, whisky dick.)

Looking back, it’s easy to think I was a sex-repulsed asexual, even though that term wasn’t well known back then. Now, hindsight being 20/20 and all, I think I’m just repulsed by anything that focuses on what’s below my waist.

Any way… you want to know why I say the quiet things out loud? Why I’m spending money supporting trans rights groups?

Because I could be one of “them”.

Because I want to be one of “them”.

I’m just too damned scared.

Saturday, April 05, 2025

I know I have roots there even if I don’t know where the trees are.

Hail! to the victors valiant / Hail! to the conqu’ring heroes / Hail! Hail! to Michigan / I forgot the words / GO BLUE!

A while back, I had this crazy plan to fly in and out of Boston - go see my friends’ band in Albany-adjacent cities and then catch a Bruins game. A nice, low-key, all-me, 50th birthday long weekend.

Yeah. That did not go as planned.

It became fly into Albany, see the two BMS shows, go to Boston and watch them lose to BUFFALO (BUFFALO! ACK!), drive to Maine and buy a house.

Dude, I bought a fucking house.

It’s the third one I’ve owned outright and the fifth house I’ve bought. Buying a house doesn’t get any less stressful the fifth time around, let me tell you.

But, let’s start in Albany. Future me is going to wish I wrote this somewhere, so why not here? I share everything else important here. (This may be a long one. Strap in! (Strap on? Whatever works!))

I get to Albany to find out they’re charging me a $200 one way rental fee for the car. Not only that, they’ve decided me to give me a Hyundai Elantra. The Elantras are REALLY low to the ground. Like, really, really, low. Hated that car since the moment he gave me the keys. Grrr. Glad I didn’t get a nicer car - that fucking $200 would have made the car way too expensive and I was already pushing my budget.

(I bet this is the most expensive vacation I’ll ever take in my entire life. Altogther, I spent roughly $203,000.)

I have always had good luck with Super 8s in Upstate NY. I am sad to say that the original hotel in Cobleskill fucking sucked. It seems minor, but the room had a broken safe. (I had a laptop. I didn’t want to bring it to a bar in an unknown neighbourhood.) They tried to put me in a different room. Broken safe. Third room? So moldy, I couldn’t even walk in the door. I walked out of the hotel in full Karen mode. (Well, they must have thought that. I thought I was being nice about almost dying.  Mold has become something I’m super allergic to. So, yeah, no thanks. You can poison someone else.)

So, I went ALL THE FUCK THE WAY BACK TO THE AIRPORT and stayed at the Tru by Hilton. That was ah-mazing. I’m only staying at Trus from this point forward.

Black Mountain Symphony killed it during that first show. I sat back and let the songs roll over me. It felt like the first time I could breathe in ages. All the stress. POOF! Gone. So nice to be home, surrounded by friends, and the best music ever. Oh, it was amazing.

I left the Tru to stay a little family run hotel closer to BMS’ second show of the weekend. It was a nice room. Nothing too fancy. (The BMS show was great, as expected, and I bonded with Bill’s mom a bit. Love her!) The absolute worst part of the night was when I was woken up by something. The bed was shaking. Literally shaking. Like someone was fucking with the mattress. And then, once the bed stopped moving, it felt like something got on the bed with me. (It could have been Guinness or the ex for the way the bed sunk.) The room got cold and I could feel someone in the room with me. This started at about 3AM and lasted until 3:30. I barely moved a muscle except to breathe and cracked my eye to look at the time.

Turns out there is a cemetery across the street from the hotel.

I guess someone just wanted to say hi.

From there, it was Boston. Battery Wharf Hotel. Eh. It was hard to find and they had valet parking. (I hate valet parking!) The restaurant didn’t serve me the first morning and I had waited for over fifteen minutes, made contact with three different people and was not acknowledged once. Grrrr. It was just… eh. It poured all day Monday so I didn’t leave the room except to go to the Bruins game. It was so weird being back in the Garden. Everything changed from how you get into the arena vs where the trains are. Bruins stank it up, but UConn and BU had boys on Buffalo. It didn’t help that Sweeney traded Marchy and Coyle right at the fucking trade deadline. Bastard.

From Boston, I headed to Maine.

Fell in love with a house in Dover-Foxcroft. $230K, 1.25 acres, river front, a she shed that was livable. I also fell through the floorboards. Too much work for that sort of money.

Ate at Bob’s Clam Shack, spent a good hour staring at the Nubble Lighthouse, and spent the night in a hotel at Long Sands Beach. Nice to reconnect with my memories of my father, even if I didn’t make it to Ogunquit.

Made my home base in Bangor. Millinocket’s about an hour north, but I had some rewards points to use and I didn’t see any Hiltons up there. Spent the next two days looking at houses. FIFTEEN HOUSES.

It was toss up between the emotional choice and the smart choice. The emotional choice had a beautiful view of Mt. Kathadin, but needed a lot of work. They were asking almost $200K for it, and I really doubted it would appraise at $150K. I offered a fair amount and they countered at basically what they were asking. Yeah, that’s a no. The view is BEAUTIFUL and well worth $200K, but a house with dated appliances and asbestos shingles is not.

I ended up going with the smart choice. A little three bedroom ranch, in move in condition, with a garage and a basement I can finish.

We close on May 9th. Movers come May 21st.

Had Chinese for lunch and my fortune was perfect: Trust in the journey of self-discovery; you are evolving.

Sunday, December 29, 2024

I find it wholesome to be alone in the greater part of the time. - Thoreau

I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. - also Thoreau

Hmmm… I haven’t read Walden and Civil Disobedience in forever. The fact that he’s top of mind today might mean it’s time for a reread. I mean, I still have my copy from high school. I’m surprised it’s held together this long.

 

The blue book in the background was an Xmas gift from the X, (Ha!) but I haven’t read it yet.

(Also, running around my head is R.E.M.‘s Finest Worksong, where we throw Thoreau and rearrange. Whatever that means. Michael, if you’re reading this, please explain yourself.)

Wow. THAT was the tangent to end all tangents. (Today at least.)

And now I’ve forgotten what…

Nope, I remember.

Can I just say what a bitch it is to start a company? Especially when you’re into tech and have a creative / marketing background? I spent a ton on software templates and social media posts in an effort to cut corners. The social media stuff may be well worth it and the two software tutorials / templates seem to be worth their money as well.

I spent last night branding the social media posts and building out the recommended schedule for them. I launch January 1st, so it’s coming up quick.

I just had a five day vacay from the day job and didn’t accomplish as much as I wanted to on the side hustle… but I also relaxed a lot. Burnout has been my constant companion for months and dealing with seasonal depression and obsessing about my move to Maine isn’t helping matters.

I have to work on day job stuff today because I don’t want to close November in January, but that’s a choice I’m making. Not the best one, but it’s a choice.

In the meantime, I’ll throw up a crappy home page with a link to my Calendly, Facebook, and Instagram pages. It’s at least something while I work on the back end.

Is it bad I’m buying shit from Amazon instead of leaving the house and going to Target just because I want the boxes? Yeah, it’s probably pretty bad…

In other news, I gave into the hype and saw Wicked. I broke much sooner than I did with Hamilton, and I’m just as disappointed. Hamilton’s soundtrack won me over, but I can’t say the same for Wicked’s. I don’t know why I can’t see these and obsess over them like my friends do. I want to love them that much, but they’re just… bleh.

So yeah, about that move.

I am constantly pissed off that I’m spending as much on a 700 sq ft apartment as I did on a 2K+ sq ft house. I can’t afford this on my salary, but none of the less expensive ones were as nice and after all their add ons (especially the cat charges), they were just as expensive. Florida real estate is stupid.

I can get decent houses in Maine for $100K - $200K. With a nice deposit, my mortgage will be more than reasonable. AND if I’m spending $2K a month on a place to live, I’d rather create equity than line some landlord’s pockets.

I’m moving in May / June and I will be working remotely with some support in Florida. At least that’s the plan. The boss already knows that I’m moving so it’s been discussed; he just doesn’t know the timeline. I’m saving that for after the holidays.

We’ll see.

Alright, I should stop stalling. The sooner I get the day job shit done, the sooner I can get back to doing nothing.

 

Saturday, November 09, 2024

*poke* *poke*

wands up…

OK.

That only took three tries and a panicked email to an EE developer I know… but I finally managed to upgrade the backend of my little blog. Finally.

So…

Detroit.

That was a trip and a half. So glad I went!

For as much fun as I had, there were a lot of bad things, but let’s start with the good:

Shannon picking me up and giving me Faygo pop (It’s a Detroit thing.) and promising to leave both my kidneys. It is fun to get picked up at the airport by internet strangers!!!

Going to the Red Wings game with Heather. The Wings lost and it was a shit game, but I was pleased to see a lot of familiar names on the Rangers’ roster. It was nice to be at a pro hockey game again. I am finally healing. Not healed, it will still be a long time for that, but healing…

THE SPIRITED FISTING WALKING TOUR!!! There’s a very famous statue called the Spirit of Detroit and a random statue of a fist. So… yeah. A bunch of us got bored and went on a trek so that we could get fisted. (God, even my pocket friends are weird!)

I ended up walking the 1 mile and 5K with Heather. It was nice to have the company, but the walk itself was odd. Instead of combining both races, like they’ve done at every one 1/5 I’ve gone to, you had to do each race SEPARATELY. Two bibs and about two minutes to change them out, if you were as slow as we were. It was nice, though. I can’t remember the last time I did a race with a friend.

The half marathon was the best experience of my entire racing career. It was cold as fuck that morning and walking up the Ambassador Bridge will forever live on in my nightmares. I’m kind of disappointed I didn’t get pulled over by the Border Patrols, because that would have made it even better. The sunrise over Detroit, the views from the bridge, doing the world’s only underwater mile… it was definitely a once in a lifetime experience.

Then, like idiots, we went on a ghost tour. Because after doing a half (or in one case, a full) marathon, the one thing we should do is go on a walking ghost tour. It was horrible. Absolutely fucking horrible. I’ve been thinking about sending a review myself. The girl didn’t know any of the good stories and it was… you know it’s bad when the highlight of the entire tour is a ghost cow. (Don’t ask.)

As for the bad (?): I cried as we approached Detroit. Like I didn’t even know how badly I missed the fall foliage until I saw it.

I was so energized by the cold that it was sort of terrifying. I know I miss the cold, but I didn’t realize I missed it that much.

I didn’t wake up with a barometric pressure induced headache the entire time I was there. Not a single headache all weekend, which is really rare for me during Hurricane Season.

I had the uber driver from hell. He asked how much the trip cost me (a 5AM trip to the airport) and I stupidly told him $80. HE BITCHED THE ENTIRE TRIP THAT HE WASN’T GETTING PAID ENOUGH. Like, dude, that is not my fucking problem. I tipped him too well - and got charged twice for the damn thing - and decided, yeah, never taking an uber again. Once was enough.

And… not only was I miserable to get off the plane in Fort Lauderdale, MY CAR BATTERY DIED. I waited three hours for AAA to get there and replace it. The guy was great, though. We had a really inappropriate conversation (Titties and a stick shift? I LOVE YOU!), but the test he did on the battery answered a lot of questions I’d been having. I’m due for an oil change, and was going to wait until then. But, my luck is shit.

I didn’t have much company during the half, so I spent probably ten miles of it deep in my head.

I decided that I was moving sooner rather than later, but now that I’m back in my shitty Florida life, I’m not sure I can speed run the move home. There’s absolutely no reason to stay, but I’m also very loyal to my boss. The man is a saint and I don’t want to hurt him. I can probably manage my job remotely, but I don’t even want to say that to him yet. There’s stuff and things going on at the day job and I’m not sure the timing is right for my exit. My lease is up on 6/25 so I have some time to think about it.

Oh well, like I told my shrinky dink, I need to break the cycle of staying in Florida for men who treat me well. But it’s not that easy and it’s causing me a lot of mental turmoil. She thinks I should leave now, but… She also thinks I should move back to New Hampshire or Connecticut, but Maine is calling my name. And, yeah, I am looking at Presque Isle which is about as far north as I can get. Which would mean I’m “isolated” again and working remotely won’t make the “loneliness” better. But she doesn’t understand. I like being “isolated” and I’m not lonely. The big thing she’s missing is that Presque Isle is only like 6 hours from Boston. Will it suck to still be a decent distance from my friends? Yes. But I’d rather be a car ride away than have to deal with airports and that stupidity.

I don’t know. I still have a lot to think about and a ticket to Epic Universe on Labor Day. So, maybe I wait until the fall to move home - it depends on my lease. If I have to renew it for a year, I will, but I won’t be happy about it. I don’t like renting and I definitely don’t like this place. I’d rather see if I can do a six month lease.

I don’t know. There’s too much going on right now and I just need to take a step back and breathe.

Trump won the election. Four more years of hell on earth and that’s all I’m going to say on that.

Saturday, October 12, 2024

Not again…

I aspire to this level of greatness

Can I tell you something?

I don’t have to buy two of everything any more!!!!

Want to see Matt Nathanson? Want to fly home and go to a Bruins game? Want to sit FIRST FUCKING CLASS?

When you are budgeting-obsessed and you realise that your budget is still built for two, and a mortgage, and a car loan… holy shit.

Once I revamped my budget to truly express my financial situation… wow.

For example, I’m going to Detroit to run the Freep International Half Marathon (traveling alone because someone didn’t want to go to Detroit.*ahem*). The airline offered me an upgrade to first class. It was just expensive enough that if I had to pay for two seat upgrades, there’d be no way. HOWEVER, since I only needed to purchase one? (Garçon, fetch me my Grey Poupon!)

Or, how about my trip home? I decided to take a little bit of my fuck you money and go home for my birthday. I have a very broad definition of home, so I’m flying in and out of Boston, going to Albany for two days, headed to Maine for two days, and watching a Bruins game. (We’ll talk about the B’s game in a moment.) When I decided I was going to get my live hockey on, I scoured the nosebleed seats trying to find a decent view at a price I was willing to pay - for two tickets. I only need to buy one, so I dropped what I would have spent on two completely shitty seats on one really nice one.

Or, I love Matt Nathanson, right? I would have had to buy two VIP packages to at least one show. (He’s playing in Fort Lauderdale and Orlando.) I bought two VIP packages any way - one for FTL and one for Orlando.

I FUCKING LOVE BEING COMPLETELY SELFISH.

Or, am I just enjoying the single life? I’ve spent so long trying to afford to keep us both happy with material possessions and experiences… I mean, I got a new car, he had to get a new car. Matching Mini Coopers, matching Jettas, matching Subarus (twice). It gets old. Vacations - needing to buy two plane tickets, having to plan a trip that makes sense and doesn’t have us ping-ponging all over New England for five days. (What? I can do what I want. He’s not the boss of me anymore.)

I’m really loving the freedom of it all.

That’s all.

So. About that Bruins game.

I’ve been avoiding the things that make me homesick for seven years. I’ve been avoiding all things hockey for six (to the best of my ability, of course).

Now that I know I’m heading home?

I’m embracing everything again.

Having an exit strategy is so freeing.

Where was I?

Boston. Hockey.

Focus.

I have decided that this is the year I go full-bore back into my hockey obsession.

Bruins? Of course.

College hockey? Oh, definitely.

UMaine season tickets are something I’m considering now that I’ve kind of zeroed in on a geographical area, and of course, I can’t forget my Huskies. UConn, not Northeastern.

Going to a hockey game is vastly different from watching one on TV. Duh.

And it is a pleasure that has been in lock-step with the worst pain of my life for so long.

Well, I’m ripping off the fucking band-aid.

I don’t have cable anymore, so I can watch whatever I want whenever I want and I don’t have to worry about stumbling on the Cats games / coverage / etc.

God bless ESPN+.

Now, if only those greedy fuckers at NESN would un-geo-lock their programming.

I will pay you fuckers for a year of Boston sports coverage.

Gladly.

Um… hi!

Tell me you’re in a manic cycle without telling me you’re in a manic cycle?

Yeah… it might be time to step away from the computer.

OK. I love you! Bye-bye!