Welcome to my Life

Catherine O'Hara

people carved trenches 3,000 years ago and filled them with chalk in the shape of a horse but what’s interesting is that if you fail to maintain the horse by adding new chalk regularly, it will disappear. for 3,000 years, we’ve been filling in chalk in this horse so it doesn’t disappear.

we’ll never know what the purpose of the horse was originally. we’ll never know if it had ritual or spiritual significance or if it was just art. but we do know that people maintained it then, and, even though the meaning of the horse has long been lost to time, we continue to maintain it now.

the people who made this horse are long dead, but they live through us still, don’t you think?

Today I got to meet his daughter and he insisted she meet Bug too, so after foot dips, I walked them out to the pens. I called for Bug several times, but she did not appear. I don't blame her. it's cold and rainy out. So I went in to find her, and she was absolutely not budging at all. Nestled up with mantis on their heated perch, inside their curtained-off, decorated, insulated coop. I did end up letting the daughter walk through to come see her and give her a little pat, because I want to get along with my neighbors and want them to like the birds (much easier all around if everyone likes the birds).

But like imagine it's the dead of winter in Michigan, and your elderly father insists that his new neighbor has peacocks and you go to see them thinking maybe they're turkeys, or like, one random peacock like some farms have, and instead this is what you find

So I tell Jane to bring her boy over to a bbq I'm having and she can tell him she's trans at my place surrounded by queer and trans people who love her and will support her if he ends up being awful.

She waits till the end of the bbq to tell him the news, by which point the rest of us have learned that Jason is a kind, friendly, empathetic, hard working, dummy. So we sit down, all of us a little worried about this gym bro's reaction when she tells him she's trans, and that she understands if he doesn't want to keep dating her it's no big deal.

He's baffled, so we explain what trans is, and after the disclosure that she hasn't had bottom surgery yet...

"Oh you have a dick?"

"... yeah."

He look's around at the room full of people with baited breath, his clearly a little afraid girl friend says

"Oooohhhh! I get it! You think- don't worry Babe! Watch this!"

And ya'll this man jumps up, runs into the kitchen and returns with one of the bratwurst we had for grilling and proceeds to tilt his head back, put it down his throat, hold it in his mouth for a moment, and spit it up without even a whisper of a gag and then looks around at the group absolutely beaming with pride.