January 7

My poor, poor husband :(

He is a transgender male. He has been in transition for a year now. He has been taking hormone replacement therapy for about 5 months. His appearance has changed a bit, but he was already kind of androgynous (leaning toward masculine) to begin with, so it's nothing drastic. I say that to make the point that the picture on his drivers license is NOT that far off from what he looks like now. He goes by the name Michael, even though all of his legal identification still has his birth name on it.

On his way home from work last night, there was a Highway Patrol checkpoint. So when it's his turn, and he pulls up to the Trooper, the guy greets him with a "Hello sir. May I see your license?" Michael hands over the license, which identifies him with a female name & gender marker. This takes the Trooper off guard, and he questions Michael. "Are you sure this is you?" Yes. Trooper looks again, closely. "You sure about that?" Yes. "Hang on." He consults with another Trooper and they both come back to his truck and ask him to pull over to the side of the road.

Now - I understand that they are simply doing their job. They saw a man with a masculine voice and a name tag on with a masculine name (he still had it on from work), but this man gave them a license that had a different name and identified him as a female. This is a red flag. They were right to double-check. But for any transgender person, being questioned about your identity can be traumatic. So once Michael got pulled over, he explained that he is a transgender male, and he has only been in transition for a year now, and that he has not yet gone through the lengthy legal process to change his name and gender marker. (He can never get an amended birth certificate. Tennessee is one of the states that refuses to do that.) They questioned him a bit more, and the Troopers conferred with each other. I honestly think, from the way Michael described it, this was their first ever encounter with an FTM (Female-to-Male) person. In the end, the Trooper took down all of Michael's information and told him they "would be checking up on this".

Sigh.

My heart broke for him. It really rattled his cage. By the time he got home, he was pretty torn up about the encounter. It's bad enough that he feels rejection from his children. They are 27 and 21. The older, his daughter, has maintained contact but is completely uncomfortable with the transition and has not yet begun using Michael's preferred pronouns. She told Michael that the biggest reason she is upset with the whole thing is because Michael didn't disclose his gender identity earlier in life. She feels like it was a secret that was kept from her all her life. Which.... it kind of was. But Michael didn't open up about this to ANYONE until just over a year ago. He struggled with it his whole life. And he definitely didn't want anything taking away from his children. He put them first and made sure they had what they needed instead of focusing on making himself happy. His son, the younger, was completely irate when he found out, and has not spoken to Michael since that day. :( Out of all the various repercussions that have been experienced in the past year, that is the one that hurts Michael the most. I have no idea how long it will take before that resolves itself.

I wish so much that I could do more to make Michael's transition smooth. I want to take away all the hurt and frustration and intolerance. But I can't. All I can do is stand by his side and let him know how proud I am of him and be his loudest cheerleader. I just hope that is enough to make him realize how wonderful he is and how much he is loved for exactly who he is.

January 6

On this day in 2012, my beloved Papa passed away. I still miss him terribly. He was a scoundrel, but a mostly lovable one. heart emoticon I have nothing but fond memories of him.

On this day in 2013, I picked up my rotten little goddaughter Arii from my Nana's house to bring her home to live with me. She was only with me a year before her mother decided to punish me by taking her back.

Two incredibly special people. Missing them both very much, but for different reasons. At least I still get to talk to Arii on the phone from time to time.

January 5

I went over to Dad's house after work to pick up some stuff. When I got there, he was in the back yard with the dogs. He has two poodles, Misty & Midnight. Misty has this bad habit of carrying around a toy or ball of some sort everywhere she goes. She comes up to you like she wants you to play with her, but she turns her head at the last second so that you can't get the toy. It's her ultimate game of keep-away. She's really really good at this game. Today, she had a tennis ball.  I was bending over to try to get the tennis ball away from her. I tried several times, but she turned each time, and I couldn't get it. I finally got my hands on it, and Misty started to back up, and dummy me didn't let go. I was already bent over, and when I leaned toward Misty as she backed up, I lost my balance and face-planted on the ground. It unfolded in slow motion...... I was top-heavy and just crumpled forward. Knees. Elbows. Forearms. Face. Like I was just melting. I couldn't help but laugh at the situation. To make matters worse, once I was on the ground, both the dogs determined that I had done it on purpose to be able to play with them, so they both started pouncing at my head and licking my face. Which made me laugh even harder. 

The kicker is, Dad missed all of this because he had stepped out to his truck to get some items to take inside the house. So he turns around and steps back into the backyard to see me facedown on the ground, laughing, and trying to get my huge ass back up. He looked at me like "WTF?!". Which made me laugh Even Harder! LOL. It was so ridiculous. I could not, for the life of me, get back up to my feet, so Dad offered a hand. So crazy. I'm positive if it had been captured on video, I could win the grand prize on America's Funniest Videos.  

January 4

Amazingly enough, after all those nights of staying up until 3 & 4 am, and sleeping til noon, I was actually able to get up on time for my first day back to work after the break! Even more amazing than that, is that I didn't get sleepy or nod off once during work, *AND*, once I got home, I wasn't sleepy and didn't take a nap while I watched tv with the dogs. Someone must have drugged me. That's the only explanation. LOL

Work went really smoothly, considering it was the 1st day back after a two-week break. Yes, there were lots of emails and phone calls, but all went well. It was rather refreshing. 

I made an absolutely delicious pot of chicken mushroom penne alfredo for dinner, and caught up on a few episodes of X-Files. I'm trying to get ready for the new episodes that Netflix is going to be airing later this month. 

January 3

Really low-key, boring day. Lazily napped away most of the morning off and on. Made spaghetti for dinner, which is one of Michael's favorite meals that I cook. We watched some episodes of CSI, and now I'm headed to bed.

Desperately hoping that I will sleep well and be able to actually get up and make it to work on time. It's been 16 days since I've gone. I guess it's time to face the mountains of email and voicemail I'm bound to have by now. I really like working for the school system, but this first week back is going to be total torture.

January 2

Pretty great day. After just being lazy in the morning, I headed into town to pick up my prescriptions (I found my new cards! Yay!) and then stopped by Mom & Dad's for a couple of minutes. Much to Mom's delight, I found a Christmas present I had bought for her (and then put away for safe-keeping) while I was searching for my new insurance cards. She thought this was so hysterical because SHE does this kind of thing ALL. THE. TIME. So she got a huge kick out of ME doing it for a change. Lol

Michael and I headed to dinner at Olive Garden afterwards, and I suppose that was our one meal out for the month. Since we are trying to raise our credit scores to be able to buy our first home this year, we have discussed only eating out once per month. Completely reasonable & totally doable.

A quick trip to Toys 'R Us to look for a specific hot wheels car yielded no luck, so we headed home and watched a movie. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Black Pearl is always entertaining.

Nothing exciting, but a day with Michael is always a happy one for me :)

January 1

Had full intentions of picking up prescription refills today, but cannot find new insurance cards anywhere. Of course, I didn't look as hard as I could have. So tomorrow's goal is to clean house and find missing things.

Had traditional NYD dinner with family at Mom & Dad's house. Brother and his fam were there as well. Only one missing was Michael, and he was at work. Took Michael a plate of food to his work so he could participate in the luck & fortune feast too: hog jowl, collard greens, black eyed peas, and fried potatoes. It was delicious!

Michael is off the next two days, and he swears he is going to quit smoking by going cold turkey starting in the morning. It's going to be a long, anxious weekend. But this marks his first full year of transition, and the HRT does not combine well with the nicotine. I just really hope he can do it. I'm determined to get healthy this year. We'll each be on our own personal journeys thru hell to improve our health. Fingers crossed that we don't come to blows. Lol!

UT Vols won the Outback Bowl against Northwestern today! Feels awesome to watch my favorite college team get back to their former glory. Very proud of how hard this team has worked and how much progress they have made. #GBO #VFL