Goth Me And Rainbows

Not much happened today. I saw Belle and Joy briefly, I saw a pretty rainbow, and I dressed goth since it's almost Halloween.

Me in my goth outfit. black shirt, black jacket, black cap, skeleton hands necklace, screw earrings.

The pretty rainbow. Don't worry - I was a passenger when I took this photo.

Trans Rights Protest

Today after church I met up with Bruno at the trans rights protest in support of Proposition 3 which would keep rights for trans folks in MA by ensuring that people in MA can use the public facilities (such as bathrooms and locker rooms) that correspond to their gender identities. I was surprised at the size of the crowd!

The crowd.

One side of sign says “Let My People Pee” and the other side says “Keep Your Agenda Off Of My Genda."

Me and Bruno with my sign.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to stay too long since I had to leave for work. But I was glad I was able to come out.

This Week.

It's almost Halloween! Yesterday's costume has me thinking about Halloween costumes and how I love dressing up in costumes but I have never been someone who does those "sexy" costumes like other gay men do. This meme seemed to capture the gay men Halloween costume situation perfectly:

Top half says "Straight Guys on Halloween" with a bunny dressed as a cop and men dressed as Darth Vader, Jason, and Mario. The bottom says "Gay Guys on Halloween" and has the same characters in "sexy" versions of the same costumes. 

This week was nice and fairly uneventful. On Wednesday I had lab and ASL class. On Thursday I had brunch in Gloucester MA with Surrogate. On Friday I went through Mom's things to donation, visited my friend Alice in the morning, and visited other friends in the afternoon. Today I've got work at 3pm but I'm happy about that since it means I get to see Love Bug.

Restaurant Trick or Treat

Today I gave a group presentation on marijuana and pregnancy to a bunch of women in a drug treatment program. Then I went to a pharmacology review. But the most important thing I did was hand out candy!

Waldo's mom owns a restaurant and today the town did trick or treat at local businesses. Waldo and I dressed up as Pennywise and Georgie to hand out candy. Look at our awesome costumes!

Me and Waldo aka Georgie and Pennywise.

Waldo, Waldo's mom, and me.

In case you're curious - or better yet if you want to give them business - Waldo's mom's restaurant is Ristorante Molise. It's co-owned by his mom and his aunt and they serve AMAZING Italian food.

Coffee Date and New Friends

Today I went on a coffee date, which will not be a repeat experience. I also hung out with my ASL classmate and her (Deaf) girlfriend, which hopefully WILL be a repeat experience since they are nice and fun to hang out with and vegan. How often do you meet Deaf queer vegans? Not often enough. I think the highlight of my evening was when they taught me the sign for Donald Trump.

Drawing of how to do the Donald Trump sign. Basically you take your hand and pat it over your head like a combover. The other version is to do the same thing but wriggle your fingers like a combover flapping in the breeze. 

Church and God's Pronouns.

Ok. I have been looking for a local church for a while and I have finally picked one!

Hadwen Park Congregational Church

Hadwen Park is multiracial, friendly, and they host a well-attended coffee hour after the service. They have an active youth group, Bible study, an enthusiastic choir, and multiple ways to participate as a lay person. They have a food pantry, they host the LGBT Asylum Task Force, and they have a significant proportion of LGBT asylum seeker church members. Their pastor is a white woman and she uses both male and female pronouns for God, which I like. Every time I've gone there, folks were kind and welcoming to me.

Photo of a rosary lying on top of an open Bible.

In sort-of related news, I've decided to use female pronouns for God for the foreseeable future. Although Christians seem to agree that God is not male or female, most of us seem to use male pronouns. By using female pronouns I am questioning and counteracting that trend. After years of a male visualization of God, I think Christians need to tip the scales back the other way before coming to the neutral resting point where we really ought to be. At the very least I think this will help keep me from visualizing God as male gendered.

What A Week

Well, my weekend involved church, work, a movie date with friends, and an irksome school situation. Basically, our pharmacology professor emailed the class offering to push back our test by a week so we wouldn’t have two tests on the same day. The only catch is that we would all have to agree to this. Of course, one woman ruined it for everybody by saying she wants to take it as scheduled. I promise you I speak with 100% certainty when I say that my entire nursing class now hates this particular student.

Here we are, ready to watch a movie.

On Monday I spent the day attempting to study but my cats kept interrupting me with cuteness. I also talked to my dad and learned that because he was going to get drafted to Vietnam he signed up for the army and did aircraft maintenance/repair (helicopters were his specialty). He also learned to repair trucks and jeeps, and he’s trained to fire machine guns and whatnot from the air since the aircraft repair guys also doubled as shooters. He has never talked about this before so I had no idea. It was kind of weird to learn.

Me and my kitty Esh!

On Tuesday I took both tests - maternity and pharmacology. Then I had a work meeting and creole class. I was DONE by the end of all that so on Wednesday after my lab class I decided I needed to do something fun so I went to Salem with Joy and Mini T. Shenanigans ensued:

Me and mini T in front of the random gay doors.

Me, Mini T, and Joy waiting for our pizza.

Me and Mini T - we found fake eyebrows and a fake beard.

Mini T in the fake eyebrows and beard.

Joy drinks a beard in the fake eyebrows and beard.

On Thursday I had my maternity clinical, which was fairly uneventful this time. On Friday I studied, hung out with my cats, and visited Aquafabulous for dinner and gardening. Today I have work.

Now that things are in process I can finally mention it on here: my favorite patient recently became legally free for adoption and I have contacted his social worker to inquire about adopting him.

The big hurdles here are that:

1) This is not exactly an ideal time for me to adopt since I'm in school full time.
2) I'll need to move since he is a wheelchair user and there's no way to make my apartment accessible.

Ideally I would want to finish school, get a nursing job, buy an accessible house, and THEN adopt him. This may actually be feasible, since it's extremely unlikely that anyone else will apply to adopt him while I'm getting my act together. Most potential adoptive parents are looking for babies and young children, not disabled teens of color.

So in the meantime while I'm finishing school etc. his social worker suggested that I could become his visiting resource. Visiting resources undergo the same DCF background checks as foster and adoptive parents, and once they've been approved they can spend unsupervised time with the child and take them on outings to the playground or restaurants or museums or whatever. So now we've filled out the paperwork for that and are just waiting for the official approval to go through. Once it does, she'll let his family know that I'm becoming a visiting resource for him. They already know me because I've been at work when they've come to visit him so hopefully they'll be fine with it. Fingers crossed!

Anyway, since I'm likely to be blogging about him now I'm giving him a pseudonym: Love Bug.