~I Like Too Many Things~

(CAUTION: may contain traces of hexes)

CAN i stop doing danhausen fanart? Probably

yes 😂 I can also operate one of these (this photo sadly doesn’t give you much of a sense of scale unless you look at the driver’s seat. those wheels are almost 5 ft tall)

I had no car and needed work, and conveniently there was a landscaping supply company within walking distance. I thought to myself, “I hate retail jobs and have always wanted to work outdoors, I bet this could be fun!” so. I applied and got an interview

now, all of this sounds very unremarkable until you realize one crucial fact: I am going into this interview as a transgender blue-haired twink. I literally look like this

somehow, I fail to properly think about this fact until I arrive on the premises and am surrounded by blue-collar, salt of the earth trucker men, and all of them are looking at me like I’m a flamingo escaped from the theme park. suddenly, I decide I have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting this job

.... luckily, it turns out that I am an extremely resilient snowball

somehow, through the sheer dumb luck of the universe and the joys of the absurdity of life... I get a second interview. they ask me to get an Oregon driver’s license so I can be put on the company insurance plan. I run into my future boss at the DMV and he smiles at me and claps me on the shoulder. I get officially hired that very week......... as a trans guy with shoulder-length blue hair and the build of the aforementioned flamingo

and......... it ends up being AMAZING. I mean obviously, there’s some confusion about me at first - I had to apply under my deadname, and I’m only a year on T so I don’t pass very well even without the hair. BUT... I’m a hard worker and good on a forklift, so after a handful of “what should we call you?” questions and a single “so... are you a girl or a boy? sorry - this is all so new to me”... I am officially One Of The Dudes.

I get nicknamed right off the bat (”Blue”). I get invited to weekly trivia night at the bar (it turns out that true gender euphoria is having a 6-foot tall bearded trucker man tell you “I don’t care if you’re gay, trans, or whatever - you can drive a forklift good and that’s what matters”). the guys in the truck workshop help me with my car troubles when I do eventually get a car. I end up being very useful for crawling inside of small spaces, like inside the lapidary (stone and gem work) saw and behind storage areas. they also find out I’m good at power washing and they fight over who gets to have me wash their rigs next. all in all..... I’m made to feel welcomed, valued, and even a little loved.

anyways, here’s some more pics:

me in the saw:

Clifford The Big Red Truck, freshly washed (all the trucks had names):

operating the Komatsu:

when it came time for me to quit, everybody signed a goodbye card for me and my boss gave me this sick obsidian and turquoise knife:

also I ended up with biceps like this

gumi my original character was cosplaying as kirby entire time? who is gumi you ask?

why he's a gumball! here he is with his gumball crew

he loves hugs

apples

and pizza

he is squishy

and invincible

thank you!!! and

ABBA IS FUCKING WHAT

I had like one, maybe two friends who were all like FUCK YEAH YOU PAINT IT WHATEVER COLOR YOU WANT, PURPLE BEDROOMS ARE AWESOME.

But when they actualy saw the finished bedroom, every single one of them was like, “Oh yeah, that’s really pretty.” (Well, the ones who supported me from the beginning were more like WOOHOO.)

When I got the job I currently have, my supervisor told me that I would need to buy my own clipboard to hold my various task sheets throughout a single day. I found an utterly adorable powder-pink My Melody clipboard on the Sanrio website. Pink isn’t a major favorite color of mine, but the design was so cute and My Melody is so precious I couldn’t resist buying it to use for the job. And you know what? Only my dad and stepmom said anything against it. Everyone in the various departments at my job know that that pink My Melody clipboard is mine, and most people have complimented me on how cute it is.