It was a year ago today that my darling Olivia came out as a trans-woman. I am so proud of her for boldly finding her way to her true self.

Over the last year she has continued to explore the nooks and crannies of her gender identity and expression; it has not always been easy, especially when she’s struggled to communicate her finely-tuned self-regard to others in a way that does it justice.

In parallel she’s made great leaps and bounds toward independence, self-confidence, and self-determination. And she’s continued to confront her grief over her mother’s death.

She is an estimable young woman; I love her dearly, and am in awe of who she’s becoming.

Three of our motley crew went riding at Venture Stables yesterday. (Young) L’s friend S. came out with us and took photos, including this one, admittedly a little blurry, of me and Jack.

She happens to have captured me with my eyes up, my heels (mostly) down, and my hands in a (pretty) good position.

I have developed a great fondness for Jack; I’ve been riding him since the fall—more than six months now—and we have a developed a good rhythm together.

Cycling home on a crisp May night.

I’ve just left improv class where, among other things, I created the character of Roberta, an aging skateboarder with six children named Doug and an inadequate grasp of mathematics. We were a small group tonight, just three of us. On occasion it’s nice to have a small group, and tonight we gelled well.

The temperature for the ride home was just warm enough that I didn’t have to stick my hands in my pockets. The high from improv, combined with the freedom afforded by deserted streets, made cycling feel like ballet.

One of us three was new, moved here from Toronto just last month. I’ve asked her if she’d met Leo Cheverie yet. She hadn’t. But she’d already met Lobie Daughton, so she’s circling in more quickly than most.

My other character was an 80 year old actor with a gravelly voice and a soft spot for Frank, Sammy, and Dean. I loved her; she’d had quite a life.

To be successful at improv you need to believe. In the teacup you’re holding. In your skateboarding defeat at the 1972 Olympics. That the beer coaster you’re holding really is a leg razor. Or a makeup mirror. Or a mystery novel.

Riding home up Dorchester Street in the 9:45 p.m. stillness, thinking back to my day spent raking leaves, talking about the summer, having a Zoom call with the team in India, solving a problem with the Moon, visiting St. Peters Harbour, getting a hug, and another, having gifted lentil soup for supper, making silly, I am happy.

That too requires belief.

The laundry is done. The dishwasher is running. Olivia is asleep. It’s 11:33 p.m. and I’m about to turn off the light.

Mental illness, attention deficit disorder, and suffering, from Mark Dominus:

I understand that for some people it really is a disorder, that they have no desire to justify or celebrate or honor their attention deficit. For those people the term “attention deficit disorder” might be a good one. Not for me. I have a weird thing in my brain that makes it work differently from the way most other people’s brains do. In many ways it works less well. I lose hats and forget doctor appointments. But that is not a mental illness. Most people aren’t as good at math as I am; that’s not a mental illness either. People have different brains.

(Via Leah Neukirchen)

Thelma writes a loving elegy for her father on what would have been his 100th birthday.

Michelle Thorne on digital rights and climate justice:

The UN Secretary General just said in a tweet: We have 36 weeks—not 36 years, not 36 months—but 36 weeks, to dramatically reduce emissions from the world’s largest polluters to avert a climate catastrophe. Just 36 weeks.

Right now, there is a heatwave in India. With temperatures of over 45C for days on end, there are millions of people in danger and crops are failing. The people who are least responsible for the fossil fuel emissions causing this heatwave are suffering the most.

Russia’s war on the Ukraine is fueled in part by reliance on fossil gas. A water emergency was just declared in California. And these are simply headlines from this week.

The climate crisis is not a single issue. It is an era. We are living in it now. And we’re going to be living in it for the rest of our lives.

Back in mid-early COVID, when Receiver Coffee had reopened in Victoria Row, young Joel turned me on to face-masks from Medium Rare. I bought one. I’ve been wearing their masks ever since, replacing them once every 9 months or so when the nose wire fatigues and breaks.

Yesterday, coincident with the announcement that masks will soon no longer be required in most places on Prince Edward Island, a package of three I ordered arrived in the mail (Cook’s Edge, the local chef supply shop, has stopped carrying them).

I don’t despair at this: I’ll keep wearing a mask after the May 6–“masks will be highly recommended in most indoor settings” says Public Health—and it seems that masks may be with us, in certain situations, in perpetuity.

With my success burrowing between the layers of glass that make up the oven door yesterday, tonight I set to clean the true grimy inside-facing glass.

I wanted to avoid noxious chemicals, so I opted for baking soda and vinegar plus elbow grease. It worked!

I made a paste of baking soda and water, brushed it on the open oven door, sprayed on household vinegar, waited 15 minutes, and then scrubbed and scraped. The seemingly impenetrable was penetrated and the result, if not brand-new-looking, is certainly an oven door transformed.

This video from GE demonstrates their official guidance on how to clean the between layers of oven door glass.

My oven has had versions drips and droops behind the outside glass for a long time, and I’d long simply assumed they were in some completely inaccessible sealed chamber.

But no: by taking the door off (easy), I was able to take a soapy cloth rubber-banded to the end of a framing square (official guidance: yard stick) and squooch it up inside to gently nudge off the stains (not as easy as the video suggests).

My result wasn’t perfect. But the glass is much-improved. And I neither broke the glass nor needed to disassemble anything beyond removing the door.

Attached to the Guardian story Russia warns of nuclear weapons in Baltic if Sweden and Finland join Nato, the paper posted a correction:

This article was amended on 15 April 2022 to better characterise Kaliningrad as an exclave, rather than an enclave.

This Wikipedia page proved helpful in understanding the difference: Kaliningrad is an exclave because it’s a part of Russia geographically separated from the rest of the country. Vatican City, by contrast, is completely surrounded by Italy, and is thus an enclave.

The article is required reading for any student of geographic edge cases.