One of many positives of finally officially coming out to my family is that they seem to have shifted politically to the left. They are Southern Catholic Republicans who now want same-sex marriage legalized and are happy as can be about their soon-to-be grandchild, gay parents or not. It's been quite a thing to behold.

This is exactly the sort of thing that gives me hope for the future.

One of many positives of finally officially coming out to my family is that they seem to have shifted politically to the left. They are Southern Catholic Republicans who now want same-sex marriage legalized and are happy as can be about their soon-to-be grandchild, gay parents or not. It's been quite a thing to behold.

Family friends of ours had a similar experience when they adopted a child of another race.

It helps a lot when people finally realize that "them" is actually "us".

NATLBSB

Sometimes it just leads to "oh, I didn't mean *you*, though. Like we talked about last week.

Comes to think of that - are there any political youth movements in the U.S.?

The only ones that I can think of are religiously affiliated.

ION, I give up. I can't get an appointment with my rheumatologist until October. So I made an appointment with the doctor I like at Student Health for today, to see if there was anything she could tell me to do or not do until I could see the rheumatologist. My appointment was at 2. I get there about ten minutes early. And I sit, and wait. At 2:30, I see the receptionist answer the phone. The person on the phone apparently wants to speak to the same doctor I'm waiting to see. There's a bit of a shuffle behind the desk as everyone asks everyone else where she is. Finally, someone calls me back, and tells me that my doctor is at a meeting. I can either see a different doctor in an hour, or schedule for tomorrow.

Now, the reason I wanted to see this doctor is that she knows me, and she knows my medical issues. I know that, with any other doctor at student health, I'll have have to teach the doctor how to spell and pronounce not only my name but also my diagnosis, and then the doctor will still have no idea what to do and will ask me what I want him or her to do. I have been through this before, and I am not in the mood to go through it again, since I don't know what to do about this ankle. So I say that I'll reschedule for tomorrow. But it turns out, the doctor that I know isn't on tomorrow. She isn't on again until next Tuesday.

At that point, I'm frustrated, I'm about to cry, and I know I am in no condition to try to explain anything to a doctor I've never met, so I say, "Forget about it," and leave.

We ditched the royal thing a couple hundred years ago.

And I'm not inclined to ask 'em back until we find ourselve some (im)proper Plantagenets. Windsors? Saxe-Coburg-Gothas? Bah!

And I'm not inclined to ask 'em back until we find ourselve some (im)proper Plantagenets

Some of the Tudors had good ideas on running a government.

Some of the Tudors had good ideas on running a government.

Well, Elizabeth, anyway.

I want to go to the farmers market and get blackberries and peaches and tomatoes. I'm not sure my ankle has enough left to get me just to the kitchen, though. I definitely can't make it to the market.