Just in case you thought I'd vanished with a puff of smoke....
I'm actually quite alive and mostly well. I am however wandering around in an arm sling these days as I decided to do a graceful dive into the sidewalk about a week ago and jammed my shoulder. Nothing is broken but I guess the impact of the fall caused a small calcification by my rotator cuff and it being unpleasant. I'm supposed to see an orthopedic sometime soon to have it looked at. Shouldn't be anything major I don't think. Otherwise my health has been good, both physically and mentally.
Had my disability hearing about a month ago and it went very well. My lawyer thinks there is about a 99% chance I won my case but I won't know for sure until the final vertic comes in, and knowing the SS system that could take ages. But I'm hopeful.
School is going well. I'm forever playing the game of catch up but in general I'm doing good. So far it looks like mostly A's and B's although I have the occasional missed assignment. All my teachers seem to like me and in general I enjoy most of my classes. This semester I have painting, printmaking, feminist theology, and women, culture and identity. When I'm not in class I'm usually hanging around the student center at either the Women's Center or the Queer Student Center. I was recently in the Women's Center's production of the Vagina Monologues as the narrator and our show raised over 3K for BARCC (Boston Area Rape Crisis Center). I'm also hoping to help put together a variety of events for both the Women's and Queer Student Centers.
I'm planning on going to two conferences in April, Transgender Lives: The Intersection of Health and Law Conference on April 14th at the UConn Health Center in Framingham, CT ( http://conference.transadvocacy.com/ ) and the Safe Colleges Conference on April 21st at Tufts University in Somerville, MA ( http://www.safecolleges.info/ ). Both should be excellent.
In other news I am seeing a wonderful transguy named Leif who I have been with about two months now. He's 22 and also a student at UMass Boston, an accounting student in the college of management. Very clean cut, very level headed, nothing at all like me, which is probably why we get along so well. He's a gentleman, treats me fabulously, and wow can he cook! And he can do my taxes, what more could a girl want! :) We aren't exclusive although he definately is my primary and vice versa and he is relitively new to the poly world so we're taking outside relationships of any kind slowly. But we both care about each other a lot and have pretty good communication and are planning to hang in there for a while so I'm pretty happy. It's about friggin time too! LOL!
I also recently came out to my mother as kinky. It wasn't intentional, she was asking me about my paintings and well all my painting this semester have been S/M related so I came out with it. Her first question was if I did any auto-erotic asphixseation (sp?), which was an instant reminder of how much Law&Order SVU she watches. She also wanted to know if my partner was into S/M, which I responded that he was, though not as much as myself. The words "sick" and "abuse" came into the conversation many times. She has decided that because I was once in an abusive relationship that I'm into kink as a result of that. Of course she also thought I was bi or gay because of that same relationship. Wiccan because of that relationship. Mentally ill because of that relationship, and so on and so on... Apparently I only make choices (well, according to her they aren't even really choices because I have no sound judgement) based on one part of my past and I am only a result of one persons effect on me when I was 17 years old. I don't know about you but I find this a little obsurd. My mother informed me that S/M is about control (she told me to look it up in the dictionary, cuz the dictionary is going to tell me what I need to know about it, HA!) as if this was news to me. Control scares my mother it seems. She asked me to really think about why I like being in or giving up control. I told her its fun. She didn't like that answer. I'm giving her two books to read, "When Someone You Love is Kinky" by Dossie Easton & Catherine A. Liszt and "Heath Care Without Shame: A handbook for the sexually diverse and their caregivers" by Charles Moser, Ph.D (my mother is a psych nurse and is more likely to listen to a Ph.D than anyone else). Other suggestions on how to get thru to difficult family on this topic appreciated!
I guess that's just about it for me at the moment, back to doing homework as Spring Break will soon be over!
Below is a pic of myself and several of my friends/fellow cast members from this years V-Day Vagina Monologues !
Had my disability hearing about a month ago and it went very well. My lawyer thinks there is about a 99% chance I won my case but I won't know for sure until the final vertic comes in, and knowing the SS system that could take ages. But I'm hopeful.
School is going well. I'm forever playing the game of catch up but in general I'm doing good. So far it looks like mostly A's and B's although I have the occasional missed assignment. All my teachers seem to like me and in general I enjoy most of my classes. This semester I have painting, printmaking, feminist theology, and women, culture and identity. When I'm not in class I'm usually hanging around the student center at either the Women's Center or the Queer Student Center. I was recently in the Women's Center's production of the Vagina Monologues as the narrator and our show raised over 3K for BARCC (Boston Area Rape Crisis Center). I'm also hoping to help put together a variety of events for both the Women's and Queer Student Centers.
I'm planning on going to two conferences in April, Transgender Lives: The Intersection of Health and Law Conference on April 14th at the UConn Health Center in Framingham, CT ( http://conference.transadvocacy.com/ ) and the Safe Colleges Conference on April 21st at Tufts University in Somerville, MA ( http://www.safecolleges.info/ ). Both should be excellent.
In other news I am seeing a wonderful transguy named Leif who I have been with about two months now. He's 22 and also a student at UMass Boston, an accounting student in the college of management. Very clean cut, very level headed, nothing at all like me, which is probably why we get along so well. He's a gentleman, treats me fabulously, and wow can he cook! And he can do my taxes, what more could a girl want! :) We aren't exclusive although he definately is my primary and vice versa and he is relitively new to the poly world so we're taking outside relationships of any kind slowly. But we both care about each other a lot and have pretty good communication and are planning to hang in there for a while so I'm pretty happy. It's about friggin time too! LOL!
I also recently came out to my mother as kinky. It wasn't intentional, she was asking me about my paintings and well all my painting this semester have been S/M related so I came out with it. Her first question was if I did any auto-erotic asphixseation (sp?), which was an instant reminder of how much Law&Order SVU she watches. She also wanted to know if my partner was into S/M, which I responded that he was, though not as much as myself. The words "sick" and "abuse" came into the conversation many times. She has decided that because I was once in an abusive relationship that I'm into kink as a result of that. Of course she also thought I was bi or gay because of that same relationship. Wiccan because of that relationship. Mentally ill because of that relationship, and so on and so on... Apparently I only make choices (well, according to her they aren't even really choices because I have no sound judgement) based on one part of my past and I am only a result of one persons effect on me when I was 17 years old. I don't know about you but I find this a little obsurd. My mother informed me that S/M is about control (she told me to look it up in the dictionary, cuz the dictionary is going to tell me what I need to know about it, HA!) as if this was news to me. Control scares my mother it seems. She asked me to really think about why I like being in or giving up control. I told her its fun. She didn't like that answer. I'm giving her two books to read, "When Someone You Love is Kinky" by Dossie Easton & Catherine A. Liszt and "Heath Care Without Shame: A handbook for the sexually diverse and their caregivers" by Charles Moser, Ph.D (my mother is a psych nurse and is more likely to listen to a Ph.D than anyone else). Other suggestions on how to get thru to difficult family on this topic appreciated!
I guess that's just about it for me at the moment, back to doing homework as Spring Break will soon be over!
Below is a pic of myself and several of my friends/fellow cast members from this years V-Day Vagina Monologues !