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Today I was helping run the booth for the local queer non-profit at the farmer's market and a woman told me that she would like a flag, pointing to our little bucket of flags. So I picked up the bucket and I brought it over and asked her which one she'd like.

"Well, tell me about them!"

"Oh! Okay! This one is the inclusion flag- its for everyone, including allies."

"What's this one?"

"That's the bisexual flag: it represents people who are attracted to two or more genders."

"Hmm... what about this one?"

"That's the nonbinary flag: it represents people whose gender isn't strictly 'male or female.'"

"Hmm... what's this purple one?"

"That's the asexual flag: it represents people who may not feel sexual attraction the way that others do."

She put her hand to her chest and got this really curious look on her face. "Tell me more about that!"

"Oh, happy to! So like if you're out with your bestie and someone real fine walks by and she's like 'omg look at him' and you're like 'girl get a grip?' Or like you just don't get what the 'big deal' is about sex or why everyone is so weird about it? But there's also room for like- you don't fall in love with the way someone looks, you're attracted to the person- their sense of humor and their kindness, or there's something about their personality that just makes it click for you? That's asexuality, too!"

And she got real quiet and seemed to think about it for a minute. So I grabbed our little informational sheet about different queer identities and handed her a copy. "If you want to do some research, this is probably a great place to start."

She thanked me and took an ace flag, stuck it in her hair.

Sometimes when you're online all the time, its easy to think that 'everyone knows about (topic), there's no reason to keep talking about it so much.' But while the people on the internet are real people, the internet ISN'T real life. And there are lots of people who do need to know that they do have community!

One of the jokes is that I'm a lot of people's 'patient zero' for discovering that they're queer. This is why.

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TOMORROW IS CHRISTMAS EVE!!!

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Star

Happy Holidays!

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I LOVE being alive so I can be mediocre at SO many different hobbies

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My bearded dragon is fascinated by the falling snow outside. He keeps going to the window to stare at it. He woke up from brumating to look at the snow.

He’s a desert species smh what does he want to do with snow...

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Even Weird Al has had that™ experience with Tony Hawk

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January 1: Polar Bear Plunge Day

(Also Happy New Year!)

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Someone was almost late to the Christmas party…

What do you think he was up to beforehand? 😊

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We have exactly one Christmas tradition in my house, and it feels very important to share it. I've been a cat person basically forever and for most of my adult life, my house has had more cats than people in it. They've all liked sleeping under the Christmas tree and all that, but other than that, they always just sort of ignored it.

But in 2018, we got Natasha.

There are about a dozen pictures like that, but I always adopt adult cats, so we figured this just came with having a kitten in the house. She was just this tiny little fluff who still fit in my cupped hands despite being about six months old, so we put away the ornaments, shrugged it off, and took advantage of the opportunity to have a really cute Christmas card the next year.

Then, 2019 came around.

Natasha escalated to sleeping in the tree in between trying to eat all the branches, and honestly, it was too funny to make more than a cursory effort to stop her. My partner and I assumed that since she was still pretty tiny, she had more growing to do and would surely get to a point where her own body weight would keep her from doing this. In the meantime, we left the tree without ornaments that year and just called it good.

But then 2020 came around, forcing us to acknowledge that:

Natasha was not going to get too big to do this. At this point it had become clear that she wasn't developing slowly. She was just a really tiny cat. She's less than half the size of any other cat I've ever had.

Natasha was also not going to chill out enough to stop doing this.

But hey. Who needs ornaments with a face like that poking out of the branches at you all the time?

Sure enough, 2021 Natasha also had zero chill about the tree, but at this point it would have been weirder if she did leave it alone.

I thought I had seen everything, but this year I'd been kind of down and my partner decided to surprise me by setting up the tree and stuff while I was at work. It was an incredibly sweet gesture considering they don't actually even like Christmas decorations. It also meant I got to come home to this.

I kept expecting her to fall out, but she just chilled there, surveying the room until she got bored. And yes, that is absolutely a big, fancy cat tree she's ignoring in favor of scaling the Christmas tree.

Two days before Christmas, she has finally gotten bored enough that I'm making my first attempt in ages to actually put up ornaments. At this point, I'm not sure if I'll be more disappointed if they have to come down or if they don't.

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rb to have a super gay 2023

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Jan 8: bubble bath day

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As if they needed an excuse to kiss 🙄

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Camper: oh nico hi! Were have you been?!

Nico: oh i just shadow traveled to CJ to see hazel!

Camper: that's cool! What you gonna do now???

Nico: probably gonna start hiding from my boyfriend

Camper: your boyfr-

Will: NICO DI ANGELO!!!

Nico: oh shit!! Byeeeeee

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Jan 12: kiss a ginger day

This one got ~extra~ attention

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Jan 16: appreciate a dragon day.

Festus and Leo’s favorite holiday