Out with the old and in with the new

Well I feel a little stressed today.   It may be self imposed stress though, but I have a big list of things to get done before I leave for work tomorrow.  I cleaned the house yesterday and really focused on getting things like cleaning the stove and scrubbing off all the hard water marks in the showers.   I want it to be a little easier to clean when we move out to your new home next month.    One of the things that I have been worried about was getting rid of our old couches and glider chair that we have had in our sun room for a while not knowing what to do with.  As I was cleaning the house I had a idea of what to do with them, I vacuumed them and spayed some Fabreze on then and moved them out to the front yard with a sign that said FREE.   We live on a major road so there are a lot of people driving by all the time.  In the first 15 minutes someone had picked up the glider rocker.  It took a few hours and someone took the sofa and loveseat.  I’m happy that they went to someone’s house and will get some more use.    We still have a refrigerator and a ping pong table to sell and 2 window air conditioners to sell before we move yet.  I think that I will try to sell them on Craig’s list.

We have moved countless times across country, so our family is not new to the stresses of moving.  It still doesn’t make it any easier though.   This move we have really involved everyone much more than in the past moves.  In the house hunting everyone has been involved in choosing our place to live.  For me the real stress is to come though.  The packing and moving part doesn’t really bother me too much.  I think the most stressful part is getting adjusted to the new town.  Finding a new church, making new friends, finding new doctors, making new friends is what bothers me the most in moves.  It is also a great opportunity to look at areas in our life that we want to improve on, and make those changes.

I am very excited for the fresh start for our family.  

Eagle Scouts

I have been pondering the Boy Scouts of America’s ban on gay membership and leadership.   Being part of the LGBT community I take it to heart that they are discriminating against a selected class of people. 

I have been watching the movement on how more and more Eagle Scouts are renouncing there Eagle Scout Awards.   This is a very powerful statement I think, and I am hoping that BSA is not taking this lightly.  I think that currently only 5% of the boys will obtain an Eagle Scout award.   For these boys it involves a lot of time and dedication and huge amount of work.  The boys must have been in some form of leadership, earn 21 different merit badges,  plan and work a service project for the award, and make it through a board of review.    This is why I say that renouncing ones Eagle Scout Award is a big deal.

As an Eagle Scout I personally don’t know where I sit on renouncing the Eagle Scout Award.   I have 2 differing views on the situation.

My first view is that by renouncing my Eagle Scout I am making a onetime statement to the BSA.  I am not sure at this point how effective it is to the organization.

My second though is to not renounce it and try to become more actively involved in the organization and groups to try to make positive changes in the BSA policies.

Being an Eagle Scout has given me the strength and courage and skills, to drive through so many of life’s though roads.   

Being a trans women I don’t talk that much about my scouting experiences now, but it has given my great usable life skills that I have used throughout my adult life and continue to use to this day.   I think that every boy should have that chance regardless of their sexuality or gender.

Traveling

Well I’m off working again; I’m not doing the normal driving to work this time.  I’m getting the pleasure of working in Seattle so I’m riding on one of our company plane to work.   It only feels like yesterday that I got home as well and here I’m heading to work.   I was able to pack in a fair amount of things to keep me busy while I was home.   Between working at the churches food bank and catching up on the lawn and family things I was pretty busy and the 12 days home went by so quickly.

I got a nice surprise yesterday though.   The plane that I was going to ride ended up being a day late so I was able to stay at my 2^nd home (AKA Fox and Hound) instead of staying by the airport in JFK.  It just made my night being able to sit on the front patio eating some nice pizza and enjoying a bottle of wine as the sun started setting and the fireflies came out.  It is such a calm and peaceful way of ending a day.

This last weekend way really fun, on Saturday Tina, Christa and I marched in the 3^rd annual Charleston Pride Parade.   We were marching with South Carolina Equality group.  We have never done something like that before so we didn’t know what to expect.   Tina was real uncomfortable as we were waiting to line up and go, and to top it off it was way hot morning.   For the 1^st part of the parade route there were not too many people on the sides of the streets.   Christa was so cute and was handing out little American flags out to little kids that were out watching the parade.   When we turned onto West Montague we could see that there was a lot more people waiting to see the parade.   I had to laugh because Tina turned and looked at me and said you are so going to owe me big for this.   I am pretty sure I am still paying her for the last thing I got her into the TV show we did J  But hey isn’t that what spouses are for though.  But all kidding aside Tina really did have a great time.  It was not close to what she expected and was really surprised at how positive of experience it was.   Christa really had a great time as well, after the parade she was out taking all kinds of photos with her camera.  While I was working at the Charleston Area Transgender group Christa and Tina went to all the booths that were set up and bought a lot of things.  One of Christa’s favorite this is a button that says I love my two moms on it.   It was a really cool experience and I think that it’s something that we will plan to do next years as well.

A very nice week

Last night’s fireworks ended a great week.  Work was uneventful and quite enjoyable and really stress free.  I even got to have a nice sunset as I was loading one of our flights.  The air force boys have been extremely helpful on our flights too, it just make life so much easier.

Yesterday I had a day off and I thought I would treat myself to a pedicure.  It has been months sense I have had one.   Before things got really busy the last few months we used to go to a really nice nail salon as a family and get our feet pampered once a month when I would get back from traveling.   I think we really need to get back to doing that if we can squeeze in the time.  I was always a bonding experience for us.   I went to this nail salon just up the road yesterday mostly because it is so close to walk to, I have not really heard much about it but it always seems busy when I go by though.   I was pleasantly surprise at the experience.   I got a hot stone pedicure, and it was so good!   At the end after they massage your legs the use hot stones to finish the massage.  I really enjoyed the heat of the stones and the smooth stones, it was really soothing.   After they painted my nails the brought me out to a round table to dry the polish.  This is where I was caught off guard for sure!  They proceeded to give you a nice neck and back massage.  For the people that know me I’m a little weird on my body space and people that I don’t know touching me really bothers me.  I think for that reason I have never choose to get any kind of messages, even though I have always wondered it if would be good or not.   I really enjoyed the neck and back message so much,  I would go back just for that any day J   I would have to say that going there was the most pleasant experience I have had at a nail salon ever.

Where do we learn to hate?

In the news lately there sure have been a lot of sad stories about how another transwoman was murdered and another teen committed suicide for not fitting in.  When is it going to be enough of this hatred and bulling, when is society going to realize that everyone has value as a human being! 

As babies we are born unbiased to everything.   So where do we learn to hate some one that is different from us?   Is it from TV, religion, scouting programs, teachers in our schools or parents?  How does society determine that being LGBT is any more unacceptable then being different in any other ways?  Who are the people that make the decisions of what is normal in our society? 

The last few weeks I had the opportunity to get to know two really cool moms while I was working up north.  What I really liked is that they unconditionally accepted their children for who they are.  In a very difficult time of major change in their lives, these moms’s chose to stick by daughters and support them 100%.  Because both of those moms chose to accept their daughters early on in their changes, the relationships have just blossomed into a close bond that every mother and daughter longs for.   This gives me hope that maybe someday my mom might be able to accept me as her daughter.  But more importantly it made me think about my relationship with our two daughters. I want them to know that we will be supportive of them even if they are different from what society thinks they should be.   I also want them to be accepting with everyone that they may interact with as well.  My hopes are that this next generation can put the stop to all the hatred out in this world.