turtles

Sorry I haven't been around much, guys. Not been very sociable lately. But thought y'all might like to hear about this thing that happened last night...

I was driving home from school, late-ish, I left around 7:30 and it's a 1-1.5 hour drive. The drive was fine until I missed the last exit - my GPS didn't say anything and I had zoned out a bit and not been watching the exit signs (which is why I always have the GPS). So, no biggy, I got off on the next exit and figured the GPS would un-confuse itself and tell me how to get home; which it promptly started doing.

So I was driving around, basically, back roads through dark woods for awhile, interspersed with houses and things. Which is basically what you get if you go from one town to another around here, or even just drive around in our town, I swear to god there are sections of the town that are practically in Underhill 6 u 9

So I'm driving around places like this and I feel a little alert when in especially dark, woodsy areas, but mostly I'm confident. Even though I still don't seem to be getting any closer to anywhere I know. And then...I come out into a little spot with some houses and streetlights and, well, basically it's an intersection in the middle of one of these neighborhoods-in-the-woods, which tend to give the impression of emerging into civilization when you aren't. I even saw another car! And then I saw something in the road.

At first I thought it was just some kind of trash, but it drew my eye, and as I went past/probably over it I saw that it was 1) road kill and 2) had to have been some fucking huge animal. I'm talking like...a really, really big dog. The fur was way too long for it to have been a deer, and all white as well. Looking at it gave me a real feeling of wrongness, so much so that it made me nauseous for a few seconds. And I'm not someone usually disturbed by roadkill, I actually usually find it reassuring. (I couldn't see a head or foot or anything else to easily identify the animal, it was either fairly decomposed or...just a bloody pelt. It was very flat.)

So I keep driving, figure everything's fine, I'm putting the weird dead road thing behind me. I'm back in somewhat dark areas, but there's occasional streetlights! Yay! As I approach one light, an animal runs out into the road; I slow down, still a distance from it, but I'm able to see it pretty clearly (in retrospect, this in and of itself seems strange; even with my glasses on). It was a cat, very dark in color, running across the road. I noticed it was kind of odd that it was moving at such a high speed, but walking rather than galloping...it looked strange.

And then I got close enough to see that it had six legs.

TBH it wasn't too alarming of an experience, since the centi-cat just kept undulating its way across the road and didn't stop or anything, and by the time I reached the spot it was gone. It's not the first time I've seen one of these varieties of 'strange animals' - there's one that lives in a rock wall in a heavily-wooded street near here, that I used to walk by on my way home from school, and I would see it fairly frequently - but it was rather unexpected, and startling after the weird roadkill.


Then the GPS decided to up the ante and insist we had reached my house when we were only a few miles down that road and obviously NOWHERE NEAR my house. I kept driving for a bit before pulling over to investigate xD turns out it was taking me to the wrong address entirely...one I would have never put in, and had somehow been saved under 'home' in between last week and this week. My GPS is on my phone, so it's not like anybody else used it. Not sure how that happened. My phone has been doing all kinds of weird shit lately though, I'm hoping to get a new one this weekend.

Thanksgiving has never been a holiday that sat well with me. I understand for a lot of American families it's just about family and being thankful. In our family, it...isn't. I think that might be hard for some people to imagine when they've never heard how polite my grandfather can make a toast to genocide sound.

So I've never really been into any of the traditions, including counting what you're thankful for; but I recently found the time to stroll back over to Tranarchism and it's reminded me of how much I do have to be thankful for.

Things like making strides in California and that there are people out there who refuse to cater to cissexism and transphobia.

I'm also thankful for every single fellow trans person - whether you're stealth or closeted or out and proud or you disagree with how me and mine fight for our rights or whether you fight alongside us, or even fiercer, I am thankful for you; for your existence, for the fact that you're still living and breathing and brightening the world with your presence. You are beautiful, I love you, thank you, never give up on yourself.

I'm also thankful for our cis allies, those who really fight for us and stand beside us, or even just one of us. Thank you for your dedication to equality and willingness to stand against the world with us.

Also, people glitter-bombing Dan Savage. I am definitely thankful for that.