I got a line on the new America

You know what? The punchlines write themselves.

It’s very clear you’re being unfair, King. No matter what you say, we won’t obey.
Gonna hold a revolution now, King. And we’re gonna run it all our way.

I wish I went to No Kings Day, but there were a couple of reasons why I chose not to, and the biggest one is where I live.

I’m brand new here and one of the cashiers at Hannaford already knows me. Some random guy asked me if I bought [somebody’s] house.

Like what the actual fuck?

Life in tiny town America, right? This is exactly what I signed up for, but damn… the realities are a little much some times. Did you know Amazon delivers in about four business days? That I’ve been reduced to shopping at fucking WALMART because everything else is an hour away? Yeah. I don’t even know where I can get a pizza. The two local places that I can find online closed during covid. There’s one Chinese place, but every time I drive by it, it looks closed.  Guess it’s a good thing I’ve finally learned how to cook.

My town has a Tractor Supply, a Hannaford, a McDonald’s, a Subway, and a Dunks.

That’s it for the big time brand names. Everything else is locally owned and operated.

Like I said. Life in tiny town America.

At any rate, strange things are afoot at the Circle K and I need to get the bookkeeping business rocking and rolling yesterday. It’s bad enough that I’m the new girl. It’s bad enough that I’m From Away. I don’t need to have my political affiliation out there just yet. And I’m not at all happy I felt that way, but in a crowd of 25-ish? I definitely would have stood out and since there are things happening that I absolutely cannot talk about, I didn’t want to take the risk of pissing off potential customers just because I lean blue.

Instead, I went to the Whoopie Pie Festival. You read that right. A WHOOPIE PIE FESTIVAL. I have died and gone to New England heaven. I love a good whoopie pie and I have missed them. Oddly enough, a New England treat cannot be found anywhere in South Florida despite the large number of snowbirds.

It was about an hour away, but it was a great drive through some of the prettiest backroads I have ever driven. It didn’t hurt that the entry fee was super cheap and that samples were a quarter each. There were about 20 bakeries and I stopped at every. single. one. The only one I wanted to sample but didn’t was Moxie flavoured.  Mind you, Moxie is one of those things you either absolutely love or hate beyond belief. There’s pretty much no in between and I am on the yuk side of the spectrum, but I bought a full sized one because I wanted to try it so badly. You can’t go to Maine and not sample a Moxie something, even if you don’t like the soda.

There was a cotton candy one at the same bakery that had the Moxie one and that? That was absolutely orgasmic. It was just sweet enough and I swear it melted in my mouth like real cotton candy. It was so good, I went back and bought a full sized one… and a Moxie one. That one is still sitting on my counter. I’m afraid to eat it.

Because Moxie.

At any rate… my 26 hour drive (assuming non-stop) was actually 37. (THIRTY SEVEN) I napped a couple of times at rest stops and the cats were relatively well behaved. I couldn’t get them to eat, sleep, or use the litter box, but they did at least eat some of their sticks and pee in their carriers. The soft ones because, of course, I got rid of the hard plastic ones. It was too hard to put the cats in them by myself. I’ve washed my car a few times and used a ton of febreeze, but the great thing about cat pee smell is that it doesn’t go away.

Oh, well. That was the worst thing that happened the entire trip, so I’m OK with it.

Got here in plenty of time to meet the furniture guys. I have all new appliances. And a bunch of things the movers broke - like my brand new TV stand AND the TV. I ended up having to order a TV because a) I can’t carry one that big by myself and 2) it wouldn’t fit in my car. When it finally arrived, I was so excited to set it up and… the screen was shattered.

I started to paint my office, and I was supposed to finish it today, but I fell asleep on the couch last night and didn’t take one of my bipolar meds. I woke up feeling pretty sick, headachy and feverish, in a way I only do when I forget to take that particular pill. Probably not a good idea to play with electricity and inhale paint fumes. Instead, I’m blogging and about to take a nap. In my defense, I did go grocery shopping and made brunch and that was more than enough for the way I feel right now.

Fun fact: I used to be able to forecast rain about a half hour to an hour before it actually started, and if I woke up gross and sinusy, it was going to rain. Sinus migraine? We were in for a serious downpour. Hurricane season almost killed me. I HAVE NOT BEEN ABLE TO FORECAST RAIN ONCE SINCE I MOVED HERE. I am broken… but in a good way?

I don’t know… I have a lot of stuff going on.

I’m very happy here, though, so that’s enough.

Now, if I could only find a fucking pizza place.

Not So Berry Challenge, Gen 1

Am I the only one that gets that reference?

Fun facts about buying a house in a dying small town an hour from civilization:

1) Furniture only gets delivered there every two weeks. I either move heaven and earth to get there Friday or wait until July because all the June slots are booked. I had been planning on keeping my IKEA furniture, but I have two pieces that are so old that they are not interested in moving AGAIN. Plus, they’re heavy-ish and at the end of the day, they’re at least 10 years old and I don’t feel like paying to move them to Maine as temporary furniture. So, because I decided to chuck everything and furnish the whole house with new things, I leave Wednesday, as soon as the movers do. 26 hour drive with 2 cats. Fun times.

2) UMaine Hockey has a waiting list. I just dropped $50 to put my name on a waiting list for hockey tickets. They had a really good season, so my timing totally sucks. Plus, it’s MAINE. They’ve always had a good team and I’m not surprised that they’re sold out, but damn.

3) New Englander’s have long memories. I signed up for internet and cable. When I gave the girl my address, she says, “Oh you’re in the new development.”

The. NEW. Development.

My house was built in 1962.

This doesn’t surprise me - I’m used to hearing directions like take the left at Yoken’s. Yoken’s went out of business in 2004 and the building had been torn down forever ago. The sign, however, lived at it’s spot for years after that. When the ex and I lived in New Hampshire, I once told him to turn left at Yoken’s. He looked at me like I was insane. The sign was no longer there and he had no idea what I was talking about. Also, in a different small town in Maine, my dad was getting directions to a church, and his aunt told him to take the right at the old [whatever the hell their name was] place. You know, the white house. Well, dad had no idea who the fuck they were talking about and the house was no longer white. It’s hard to get lost in a town with one traffic light, but we did.

The movers come Wednesday and I am this very strange mixture of nervous, scared, and feeling settled. I still have a few things to finish packing, so I’m going to do that as soon as I finish lunch. I’ll be living on take out until then because I want everything packed before the work week starts again.

Next I post, I’ll be out of here!!! Wooooo!!

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.

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.

I’ve never been so ashamed

becoming a Ukrainian citizen means renouncing my us citizenship… not sure that’s a bad thing.

I don’t even know where to start.

I’ve been profoundly depressed since the coup began and things are getting worse.

trump seems to think he can delete a whole bunch of people by forcing a gender binary on them. People are misgendering trans people on the daily and calling them by their dead names. Calling transwomen men.

It makes me sick to think that a Maine politician doxxed a trans teenager and became a maga darling, while the Governor is fighting for ALL of her citizens. mr. trump seems to think that his executive orders are the law. Gov. Mills was correct in saying that she follows FEDERAL LAW which is something that an executive order cannot override. But, you know, he doesn’t need to abide by the laws of this country because he’s the king or some shit. (btw, that article is unlocked if you care to read it.)

As someone who has struggled with being a cis female at various points in my life, this… is devastating to me.

However, I guess there’s a little bit of a silver lining for me? Everyone’s so concerned about ‘men’ playing women’s sports, they’re not paying attention to the women playing men’s sports. Dude, gender is not defined by what’s in between your legs. Gender is a societal framework that puts you in a pink box or a blue box. By reducing a transwoman to what equipment they were born with / gender assigned at birth, they’re completely missing the point. Most transwomen just want to be left alone to live their lives in the pink box, just like I want to be left alone to live my life in the blue one. (I guess mine is sort of purple since I’m a tomboy / butch?) It’s the CIS MEN who are the problem.

Just look at our felon-in-chief. He said that he liked to grab women by the pussies. I’d rather share a bathroom with a transwoman than that fine piece of work. At least that way, I know I’d be safe.

Remember man vs bear? I’d take my chances with a bear any. fucking. day.

For the record - I narrowly escaped being raped in high school by a member of the wrestling team. I was raped by a guy I thought was a friend in college. #metoo isn’t just some hashtag.

Do you know I carried pepper spray AND a personal alarm when I ran laps around a track at a public park last year? Even when it was crowded? I prefer treadmills for various reasons, but it was moving into the apartment that made me quit running. I just don’t feel safe. Maybe part of that is Florida - I was never this paranoid in New England. It’s hard to say, but I’ll find out soon.

So, yeah. I’m conflicted about that.

Add to that the whole putin’s bitch attacking Zelenskyy during a televised conference.

I. Have. FEELINGS.

I don’t have the words, however.

Yeah, the girl who writes non-stop, doesn’t have the fucking words to describe how shitty the current administration has made her feel in roughly a month.

I just keep putting one foot in front of the other and pretending I’m OK, when all I want to do is hide in my apartment and cry.

Speaking of - I HAVE RESERVED A MOVING TRUCK!  I leave this cesspool of a state in May.

I cannot fucking wait to be out of here - both the apartment and the state.