Sorry for the brief outage – I’m a pillock and broke the website. Buuuuut after a battle with my hosting provider (who’ve changed, and seem to have disabled basically all the normal ways to upload files) I actually have not just fixed the shit I borked, but also finally managed to fix the site editor which had been broken for a long time and been running using a legacy plugin.
So go me, and if anyone wants to hire me apparently I can still unfuck websites.
I don’t think I normally write anything for TDoR. It’s usually, for me, a personal affair. Moments to think back on the people we’ve lost: the people who could have gone on to do amazing things; and the people who could have gone on to achieve nothing spectacular. Who would have lived quiet little lives.
It does not matter to me what they would have done. It matters instead that their opportunity to wake up and eat cornflakes, to watch the sun rise, to sit and play PS5 until late in the night was ripped from them by cis society. It matters instead that their parents, their families, the people they thought were their friends, that random people on the street, that our public media would all rather see them – and others like them – dead than happy and trans.
When I came out there wasn’t the huge body of evidence there is now that the best treatment for transgender people is gender affirming care. That puberty blockers work, and work well, and that transition and gender affirming care massively reduces suicidality. That trans kids and adults – mostly their pain comes from living in a society that consistently demonizes and diminishes. Their trauma from living in a society that sometimes tacitly, but often overtly, encourages cisgender people to harm or even kill transgender people.
And so as the literal bodies of evidence have mounted that the best way to support trans people is just to let us live our lives, affirming who we are, allowing us to just be? I have become increasingly angry. Because when I came out no-one knew about trans people. Mostly we were just a weird anomaly and subject of ridicule. But now? Now we know. These studies are riven with blood and loss and pain. And despite that – despite that – across the world people are choosing to harm us.
They are choosing to inflict pain for the sake of what? A few votes from pathetic people who can’t accept anyone different from themselves. Because they fear anything outside their world view. Because they can’t empathize with what they can’t understand? Because they’re scared that the tiny number of us will somehow destroy society?
It’s TDoR, again. More people who should be with us are gone because our cis allies and their cisgender friends have let laws go into force that kill us. So this year as the candle burns and I’m shredded by the pain of another year of unnecessary loss, facing down the uncertainty of the next presidency, most of what I feel is anger.
So Hi to any recruiters reading this. I guess this probably factors into why I can’t seem to get a job. That and being trans in the world. Seems like that’s pretty uncool right now. But being a pedo-affiliated-serial-sexual-assualter-and-white-collar-criminal, that’s just dandy. So great. Great. Thanks American society for clarifying exactly where your moral compass is pointing. I think that provides me with the information to make the decision about just how much sympathy I have for you as I make plans to fucking leave this shitshow behind.
A fascist was elected to office in the US – by both popular vote and electoral college. And apparently here I still am, a mixture of panic, sorrow, anger, wild frustration and bleak despair. I spent yesterday evening with friends, trying to paper over the cracks that keep leading me to cry. That keep leading me to the dark corners of despair. Eventually picking up the bass and singing with the friends I’ve made in this country. Feeling some tiny fraction of joy that I’ve had from being here. The irony that I’ve made some awesome friends, watched some of my friends flourish and have the best fucking year, and that I’ve had some pretty good moments (although we won’t talk about my job, because we won’t). And then ending it with this.
I keep wondering how people can be so fucking vile as to think a sexual assaulter who brags about it, a convicted felon, a serial liar who can’t even make a coherent sentence, is a better choice than an intelligent, informed, insightful, funny, fucking actually comes across as remarkably normal human woman. And then I decide that actually, misandry is the best fucking choice. This about covers my position on white men. And actually, most white women too. I have a few men in my life I trust. It’s a small number. People who’ve demonstrated that they aren’t utter fucking shit.
The rest of them can get fucked, since the odds in the US are way worse than 50/50 that they voted for Trump or didn’t bother to vote. White men voted at like 85% for Trump or didn’t vote at all. So fuck them. Fuck them. And along with that the vast majority of white women who are white-first then women a distant second (in their heads, but now they’ve voted for fucking Gilead we’ll see how they feel about that. Probably just dandy as long as there’s someone below them they can kick). I’m angry. I’m preparing to resist in whatever ways I can. But y’know, fixing this isn’t really my job. Yes, I have some privilege from being middle class. I have some privilege borne of the fact my parents managed to overcome the enormous racism my mother faced and had the fact my dad was white, so we actually had a good income and I got to go to a decent school and got to go to university, twice. Both times mostly on the state’s coin. And yes I have some privilege thanks to FFS and the fact I don’t so obviously read as trans, and only choose to look queer.
But I don’t have that privilege all the time. It’s very fucking conditional.
I’ve applied for jobs that I definitely should – on qualifications alone – have been interviewed for. But have got nothing or been turned down in hours after applying. Bear in mind I got my ER job basically without an interview. I turned up and based on my cover letter, experience and resume the woman who ran the department asked when I could start. That was one of the first ‘interview’ questions, then we had a quick chat. But since then I’ve been a lot more vocally out. A lot more visibly trans. And suddenly I can’t even get an interview for a PRN ER job? That is, to me, deeply suspicious. Especially when I’m told by people working at those hospitals that they’re desperate for staff.
So.
I don’t know what that means, longer term. I don’t know whether people in other countries will care the way that people here so clearly apparently fucking do. (I also don’t understand why anyone gives a shit.)
I do know that medium term I want to leave. I don’t trust anyone here who I don’t know and who isn’t visibly queer. I don’t care to find out what they’re like. I don’t care to be around people who have a greater than 50% of either wishing me dead or not bothering to stop someone else who’s wishing me dead.
I don’t know what my future looks like.
I don’t know where we’ll go.
But I agree with Ken White’s post (linked up there) that the US is going to see at least a generation of worsening conditions and worsening rights before it gets better. If it gets better.
Because I’m not sure how better will look at that point. The climate crisis will be way beyond rectifiable. The US will be unrecognizable and won’t have done anything to try and ameliorate the damage.
But it’ll sure have a shit hot bunch of nazi bars.
And I don’t want to be here for that.
Y’all who voted for this, that’s what you get to live. I’m gonna go find somewhere less shit to live.
The toilet is out.
We think there are two problems:
– The nipple in the wall is presumably leaking. I need to remove that nipple, make the hole big enough for a camera, then try and seal the fucking thing. Past, Current and Future Kate all hate this.
– With the toilet, we can’t see any defect so its possible it’s just water migrating through the toilet-seat-attachment holes and around the little blanking plate cover for the bolts, then finding its way from there through the bolts that attach it to the waste pipe ring, and *then* out (since it can’t get past the wax ring to go out to the waste pipe) through the little gap we left for water to get out. When we’ve dealt with the wall problem we’ll put the toilet in place but not apply any sealant, then we’ll *not use the shower* for a week or two, but use the toilet, and if it doesn’t leak then we’ll go back to assumption A – that it’s water from the shower. If it slowly starts weeping water again then it’s new toilet time.
Exciting, I know.
I’ve changed my presentation a lot over the past couple of years. I mean, that’s pretty obvious to anyone who’s been on here, or knows me in real life. I exercise now, for nearly an hour every day. Which is astonishing and weird and y’know, when did I become someone who casually does a 30 mile bike ride with a 360m/1200ft climb (granted on an ebike). When did I become a girl who runs 3 miles every day? Someone who gets pissy that they missed a swim, or that the weather’s inclement enough to stop her running. I don’t really know. When did I become so femme in my presentation that wearing trousers feels…odd.
I actually hit a point a week or two ago where I put on jeans and 1) realised it’d been months since I’d worn jeans, and 2) realised I really didn’t like wearing them very much. At least at that point. I’m sure I’ll get over it. But I’ve got super used to the light casual skirts I’ve been wearing through the summer and y’know; leg coverings that are heavy and tight, kinda meh. And I’m hardly high femme these days, just much more femme than I was.
But it ran into something odd today.
We built this house. At least, effectively. I mean, sure, some of the original exterior framing and most of the original sub floor and the structure supporting that is here. But everything else has been replaced. Mostly by our own fair hands. And today we had to work on the bathroom. The leaking toilet, and pipe that’s leaking in the wall (well, would be if that zone wasn’t turned off). And I found myself needing to connect with the self who did that work. And it felt super distant. I’ve not done anything much with working on the house (and yes, I do still need to finish the trim), but it was *weird* seeing this face, and this hair, and my grubby work jumper in the mirror before wandering out to pull out the toilet. Like I haven’t met this me. This me who is more femme in presentation but still does the same shit of working on the house, working on the car.
It’s interesting feeling the different facets of who I am shifting and fitting back together.
I threw together a loan label for my loan copy of Welcome to Dorley Hall, the phenomenal book by Alyson Greaves (it must be good because I don’t have ‘loan copies’ of any other books).
It’s all made with free SVGs.
I’m releasing it under CC-BY-SA 4.0
The following are the sources / licences for this:
The lion dormant: Source | Licence
The deer rampant – modified (broken antler): Source | Licence: Non-commerical personal use only
It’s not that I’ve not been up to stuff. We went on holiday to the UK to see my mum (it was a wonderful but exhausting trip – my mum planned stuff for every day we were together which was…intense. But a lot of fun to see her having so much fun. In the list of things I’ve recently discovered that are terrifying: canoeing on ‘white water’ with your 80+ year old mother in another canoe. In things that are fun: Watching her face when the guy driving the motorboat on the sea tour starts doing fast turns. It’s apparently where I get my love of going fast from.)
On that trip I got to see one of my oldest friend’s book-launch and listened to her reading and talking about it. It was *amazing*. I can’t express how cool that was.
I also got to see another of my oldest friends.
I stripped my bass guitar down. And I’ve been playing the loaner bass and singing and also running further (I do 2 miles on the regular now, and sometimes I do more).
We’ve had a water leak at the house, because fucking American plumbing and…yeah. That’s still needing to be fixed. Turning off the water to the toilet seems to have stopped it getting worse, but we’re going to have to take the toilet out. And it looks like the toilet is faulty.
And we’ve got new chickens.
I’ve made a new group of friends who are awesome and cool.
I’ve written most of another book.
I’ve spent some time beta reading another friend’s book.
I got a Calvin Klein LBD altered so it fits now, and I’ve got the cutest red dress and heels. Just need some time to wear it.
So yeah, it’s not like I’ve not been busy. I’ve been rambling on Mastodon and Bluesky and Discord. And I’ve been working for TE.
Oh, and obviously I had more (very minor) surgery – I had the lipoma that’s been causing me pain in my upper arm, removed.
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about things – y’know. Dealing with the undealt with stuff that I’d kind of ignored for most of my adult life. The fall out from having an abusive ex which has affected a bunch of things about the way I perceive myself and present myself in the world.
Sometimes I’ve thought about writing something here about it, and maybe I will. But mostly I’ve been exhausting my writing on writing fiction.
Anyhow. That’s kinda it.
Apparently June went by without a post. It’s not that I didn’t do anything. I wrote more novel, I submitted my existing novel to more agents, I cut trim, I worked both jobs, I played in a band (only in practice but they’ve started threatening me with us going to do an open mic), I sang. I made some new (online) friends. I moderated a discord about novelty mugs. I read some more of Whipping Girl and a lot more of various things by Zoe Storm and Alyson Greaves.
But…
…some how I didn’t make time for journaling.
Probably should, it’s good for my head.
Anyhow, I just dropped in today to fix the SSL certificate, which I’ve done, and now I’m gonna go write my second novel some more. It’s terrible at the moment, but it’s a first draft, so that’s fine.
I – as usual – have struggled with not working today. I’m back at work proper tomorrow so it’s very reasonable for me to have a day off, and I’m officially off sick, recovering, but that doesn’t stop me from guilting myself. I’d actually planned to use today for working on the house trim but then remembered that I needed to get the tyres swapped on the car. That’s a 3 hour process (seemingly regardless of whether I book it in or not, once time I booked it in and it took 4 hours so…). Anyhow, after that I decided to go look at a guitar amp.
Because see, yesterday, I bought myself a bass guitar.
I can actually play a bit now, although I need something in front of me – I don’t know anything by heart apart from These Boots Are Made For Walking. So anyhow. I bought this guitar which needs some love. Quite a bit of love, really. It’s a 1960’s hollow body Norma – which is basically the equivalent of an Argos/Walmart guitar – they were made super cheaply in Japan when Japan was busy churning out the stuff that China now churns out. But they’re moderately uncommon now, and I thought it was a fun thing to have.
But see, the amp in that picture is just for show. It’s my guitar amp that I brought from the UK without twigging that it’s just a plain transformer in there, so it’d need a step-up transformer to work, or a new transformer. And guitar amps aren’t well suited to bass guitars.
Which leads to the mistakes. I went to see a guy who was selling an amp on craigslist – now had I remembered the advert when I got there I should have been more suspicious. He seemed like a nice enough guy and I’m going to choose to assume that his story was true (his wife’s died, he took up the bass while she was sick, but got a better amp). However. He was in the process of soldering a connector onto the speaker cable and explained that when he’d tried it today the speaker didn’t sound great and he’d switched it for a spare he had around.
And when we powered it up it crackled. And the power light flickered. And in the end I agreed a price for it as-is suspecting a dry joint somewhere.
And there was:
However, fixing it hasn’t fixed the amp. Which is annoying because now I have two projects instead of one. And this one is barely worth fixing at the price of its replacement.
*sigh*
CW: Discussion of something that was verging on sexual assault; Health stuff.
