400

Good freaking hell.

400 posts.

Two years ago, when I started TSOC, I couldn’t have possibly imagined what post #100 would look like, much less 300 more.

Blogging takes a peculiar kind of courage, especially when you’re semi-anonymous like me. I share some of the most intensely personal details of my life here. I talk about things with you that I would never say to my family or to my flesh-and-blood friends. You, my darling readers and especially those of you who have become real life friends through these pages, know me better than people who remember me in diapers! It makes for a strange intimacy, doesn’t it? There are random strangers scattered across the globe who know my deepest, darkest secrets.

You, all of you, whether you’ve ever left a comment or not, have helped me to heal, helped me to grow. You read my bleakest thoughts and keep coming back. You read my nattering insanity and offer moral support and humor. You make it okay for me to speak plainly. That’s a wonderful gift – the gift of acceptance. What else are we all looking for, out here in the breathing, bleeding world?

So, to celebrate my inability to keep my mouth shut or my fingers still, let me share with you yet another 50 random things that you might not ever have needed to know, and probably still couldn’t possibly care about!

1. Just about the only thing that hasn’t changed about me since post #100 is that I still want to teach college.
2. Sharkman is eight now, and I’m not sure how that happened.
3. The person I should have married, in the small-town fairytale, is helping us form our new family.
4. That feels poetically right, when it doesn’t jeeb me out completely.
5. I’m still working on issues with Rhett’s physical transition, but it’s feeling better by the day.
6. I don’t miss working 70 hours a week in corporate.
7. Sometimes, I do miss working 70 hours a week in corporate.
8. I get along better with my mother now than I have at any other point in my life.
9. My father is pissing me off, on a practically daily basis.
10. It’s only been since moving back to NM that I have been forced to understand the depths of his homophobia.
11. I still don’t feel my age, but the amount of time that has passed in my life shocks me when I think about it.
12. I understand, better every day, that I can’t control the crazy of other people. I can only control my reactions to the crazy.
13. I still haven’t mastered the art of patience. I’m starting to think I never will.
14. I still get embarrassed and defensive when I’m told that I’m acting like a girl.
15. My boys are the center of my universe.
16. Learning to relax in my traditional femininity, as part of femme, is one of my biggest personal challenges.
17. I have a jealous streak. This still surprises me.
18. My control over my temper is improving with age.
19. My temper is getting worse with age.
20. I never feel like I’m disappearing anymore.
21. I enjoy staying at home more than I expected to.
22. I feel guilty about that occasionally, for lots of reasons.
23. I never, ever expected to remarry. I’m glad I was wrong.
24. Some of the people I consider my closest friends are people I’ve never met in person.
25. I’m relearning, still, how to make myself a priority.
26. The internet continues to help me identify the areas in which I really am pretty narrow-minded.
27. Sometimes I wish my life came with a script and stage directions.
28. I still suck at managing my control issues.
29. I’m less stressed out now than I’ve ever been in my adult life.
30. Stress still brings out the worst in my control issues.
31. I have no idea what I am going to end up teaching – I can’t settle on a major.
32. The colleges I’m applying to for grad school are kind of intimidating.
33. I don’t intimidate easily.
34. I’m really looking forward to being pregnant again.
35. I’m terrified that I’m going to go through another postpartum depression like the one I had with Sharkman.
36. I’ve done more this year to become a “real” writer (by my definition anyway) than I expected to.
37. I might forgo graduate school if a) the writing thing actually works out or b) I get offered a job that I really want.
38. I caved and joined the Twittering throngs this year after swearing I never would.
39. I’m glad I did, except for the days when it gets on my last damn nerve.
40. I still can’t figure out what makes y’all keep coming back.
41. I’m learning to like Keith Urban. I don’t wanna talk about it.
42. I haven’t quite gotten comfy yet with expressing the amount of mush I carry around in my head.
43. I’ve been inadvertently cast in the role of class mom. I don’t wanna talk about it.
44. At least Sharkman doesn’t want to play soccer.
45. I want a girl. Rhett thinks this means we’re going to have a girl.
46. Having a girl terrifies me. Boys are easy.
47. I’m a closet romantic.
48. Almost two years later, I still don’t consider myself a “real” blogger.
49. I get completely geeked out about talking to people I’ve met online when we exchange phone numbers.
50. This was probably the easiest 50 to complete of them all!

Thanks for sticking around, y’all, and welcome to you newcomers who have stumbled in from one direction or another. It just wouldn’t be the same without you. *I* just wouldn’t be the same without you.

Looking for more? Check out the joint blog, filled with gushy marital ad nauseum, at This Side of the High Speed Rodeo. You can also find me sounding off as a Guest Lesbian, at Card Carrying Lesbian, on my adventures as a transwife in an oh-so-straight world.