#hippie minnie out ✌🏻

[musette22]

Hellooo, it's me, I'm alive! Sorry for disappearing again this weekend, I hope everyone had a great one! 💛 Mine was really really wonderful, so, time to overshare because I'm feeling all mushy and tired but happy. These past few days made me realize once again how lucky I am to have so many incredible people in my life 💕 I love them SO much and I'm so grateful they love me too, which sounds cheesy but it's true 😅

I don't think anyone particularly needs these, but I still want to share some of the stuff my friends and family have said and done this weekend just because they're pretty amazing and I kind of wanted to write it down to remember it (I'll put most of it under the cut though, because it got longer than I anticipated. whoops, who's surprised, not me either)

So my friend's little boy, who is three, got a little confused about pronouns while he was chatting away, and accidentally called me a 'he'. His mom gently corrected him like, "No honey, auntie Minnie is a she." And when he asked why, she said "Because Minnie feels like a she. What do you feel like?" And he gave it some thought and said "I think I feel like a he", so she said, "Well, there you go, we'll call you a he then! But if you feel like a she later on, or auntie Minnie feels like a he, then that's also okay. Does that make sense?" And he looked thoughtful for a second, said "Yep", and carried on playing.

Later that day my other friend picked up her almost one year old, looked at his little face and said "I'm pretty sure he's either going to be a construction worker or a drag queen. Maybe both." And then kissed his nose and told him she'd love him regardless of what he'd become.

I was talking to the husband of one of my friends (who is my friend too, but I knew her first), and out of the blue he asked me, "What kind of music do you like to listen to? I know you like Arctic Monkeys, but what else do you like?" So I told him I listen to a lot of 40s and 50s music, among other things, and then the conversation carried on. And then later that night, Billie Holiday suddenly came on, followed by Chet Baker, and it turned out he'd actually made a whole playlist of 40s music because he realised he'd been playing a lot of recent popular music during the getaway so far, and he wanted me to hear something I liked too

At some point I was talking to the husband of my other friend, and when he asked me whether I'd been seeing anyone lately, I kind of shrugged and told him that it isn't really a priority for me right now, that I'm not excluding the possiblity of dating or starting a family, but I'm not actively looking for it either. He just clinked his beer bottle with mine and said, "Cool, that makes a lot of sense. We don't all have to follow the same path in life to be happy, right?" And I was already grateful that he got it, but then he was quiet for a minute and said, "Shit, I'm sorry, I bet you're fed up with people asking you about dating and kids. It's literally no one's business but yours and I'm sure that if you ever want to talk about it, you'll let us know. I won't ask again."

At some point, my friend suddenly dropped down onto the couch next to me, put her arm around me and said "My god, I feel like we've only talked about kids all weekend, sorry about that." So I assured her I didn't mind at all (I adore those kids, I really do), and she was like, "Still, tell me about what you're reading right now, and while you're at it, please show me the cutest picture of Chris you saw this week," and then she spent a while cooing over my boys with me in return.

I was sitting next to my other friends' three year old little girl in the car on put way back from visiting a nearby castle, and she was super impressed and a little overwhelmed in that way kids have sometimes. She kept wondering aloud whether 'the princess' had been at home, and whether, if she'd ever meet her, the princess would want to be her friend. So I told her that of course the princess would want to be her friend, probably even best friends, and then she laughed and said "No silly, you're my best friend" and hugged me, and I kind of melted into a puddle

During brunch today, I was telling a story about how when I was jogging recently, I thought I was being followed by a guy on a scooter, and that I'd stopped to send my mom my location because I was genuinely a little scared. As it turned out, the guy just wanted directions, so I laughed it off and told the story as a joke, but then my brother frowned and said, "No, but it's not okay that you can't even go on a run without feeling scared just because you're a woman", and then told me he read an article recently about the precautions many women necessarily have to take whenever they go out or go on a date, like location sharing, or faking phonecalls, or bringing pepper spray, because we often fear for our safety in a way that men rarely have to. And then he said he'd never realised that before, apologised to me, his girlfriend and my mom on behalf of men in general, and said he wished we'd never have to deal with any of that

I was talking to my mom while we were on a walk, and she told me about an old friend she'd run into recently. So I asked her how they knew each other, and she proceeded to tell me a story about how in the 80s, they used to do sit-ins together to demonstrate for immigrants' and unemployed people's rights. When I asked her if she'd never been worried about getting arrested or anything like that, she just shrugged and said "Not really, because I knew that we were doing it for the right reasons and that was what mattered most."

Anyway, I know they're all little things and they should all be normal things, but I'm aware that they aren't always, or everywhere, or for everyone. And they just made me stop and marvel at how wonderful these people all are, big and small, how comfortable and at ease I feel around all of them, and how amazing it is that they not only exist and work to make the world a better place, but they also care about me in return. Like, not to sound like a hippie, but whoa, I'm feeling a lot of love and gratitude right now ❤️