Charlotte's Blog ♥

If You Can't Name It, You Can't Fight It (2)

Charlotte ♥ — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 18:00:00 EDT

While I was out and about after work today, I decided that, notwithstanding the risks, I would use the little machine at a local Shopper's Drug Mart to weigh myself.

The last time I did was on March 4th (using the same machine) to update the surgical clinic's records and to facilitate a portion of the intake process and it was when I was sort struck by the resulting number. Not because I was technically underweight, but because I was being quantitatively informed about a result of what I was doing, but didn't want to admit.

All to say that, at least as of today, I weigh the same as I did on March 4th.

I have stopped losing and I feel okay with that.

At least I think I do.

Hard things are hard.

April 27, 2026

If You Can't Name It, You Can't Fight It

Charlotte ♥ — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 08:00:00 EDT

"I'm just careful, that's all. I just want my surgery to be a success! I'm middle-aged, after all."

"Okay, so maybe I have been restricting a little, but I'm not in any real trouble. It's just not ideal"

long, drawn sigh

"I have been good for more than twenty years! Why?"

...

"Why now?"

...

You can have more than one hobgoblin

As I wrote about in my last blog post here about three weeks ago, I have to be honest: I think I'm dealing with (exhales) anorexia again.

Not to the depths that I did in 2003-04 and I know that I can pull myself out of it, but the restricting, the guilt, the substitution of normal thoughts and eating with imagining the things I want to eat and make and looking up recipes... it's all coming together.

While it's never the time, it's most definitely not the time now: my surgery has been booked for June 1 (yay! finally!) and I want everything just right. To give myself the best possible chances at quick and successful healing.

Leading up to this surgery, I have had to keep periodic track of my height and weight in advance. In doing so, I have been quickly reminded why regular access to a scale is not something I've had since being in recovery the first time. Those metrics can be pretty seductive (number go down!) and quickly displace any more rounded logic.

I won't put any numbers here, but I will say that the last weigh-in saw me very close to crossing into a problematic zone on a certain flawed-but-nevertheless-widely-used index.

And frankly, you didn't need that figure to know what I've been doing, of course. It shows in my body, my face, and until recently, my colouring.

Dysphoria doesn't know anything

I would be lying if I said that it had nothing to do with dysphoric feelings (it's fuel in an ready tank), but it's also true that undernourishment often works at cross-purposes with advancing transition.

Am I a member of the IBTC because of genes? (Looks at family tree) or because I'm not getting enough? (Looks at family tree again)
Is me not getting enough doing anything for my figure? It doesn't seem to be.
Is me not getting enough doing anything about my ribcage? No. It can't anyway, but in concert with the above, it's making its proportions all the more obvious.
Is my not getting enough doing anything about my face? No. I feel worse about it as things get increasingly angular and I feel like a certain late-80s fast food advertising campaign.
Is not getting enough doing anything about my voice? No. That's silly. In fact, it may make it worse, as I get more acid-y, leaving me with a rougher-sounding voice.

The thing is that it's not getting me any closer to my goals and I'm just now largely paranoid that if I start regaining a little (as I really ought to), that it will accrue in all the wrong places.

Which it may!

That's a risk.

But it also may not and hormones ought to help at the very least.

Why make it public like this?

In my decades of experience, eating disorders really like the metaphorical cover of night to do their best work. A conspiracy of silence really allows it to blossom and grow. At my expense.

It may come, it may go, but it never really leaves.

Naming it and putting it out there, I have generally found, allows me separate myself from it and work to pull away from it.

April 26, 2026

It's Time We Caught Up!

Charlotte ♥ — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 09:00:00 EDT

I'm sorry. I've become even worse for blogging on the regular. It's not for lack of things going on either. I've been keeping up with photos at lottiephoto.ca and even here on the front page about once per week.

Toronto Time!

I will be boarding a Toronto-bound train tomorrow morning! The goal? To visit my sister! I know that we're going to have a lovely time and I just don't know how we're going to pack everything into just a few days.

Still, we'll hit the ground running once I arrive on Monday afternoon and won't stop until I board the train back to Ottawa on Wednesday afternoon.

The one thing that's a little strange-feeling in all of this is that Kathleen will be staying back home. It's partially a matter of saving money (cat sitters aren't free!) and partially because she will be flying to Halifax later this Spring, which will also be a solo trip for her.

Please Hurry

Now that I am just waiting for a surgery date, I'd very much appreciate it if I were given one! I know, I know. All of us who are waiting for a date would prefer it to be sooner rather than later.

It probably doesn't help that I've been hearing various conflicting stories as to how long it may take, which range from late Spring 2026 to Winter 2027. I sure hope it's not the outside date!

It Doesn't Leave, Part 1

I don't know if any of us really appreciate when we're warned about something we don't want to be being possible and it comes true. Especially if it comes true 20 years later.

I suppose part of me knew that I was at risk in some way, but since May 2024, when I was preparing to begin HRT and since last year when I began preparing for surgery, I made a number of changes to my lifestyle to ensure that, as a trans-woman-of-a-certain-age, that I was giving myself the best possible chance at everything going smoothly.

To this extent, I stopped consuming alcohol, limited caffeine to one coffee per day, cut down salt and sugar, and stopped snacking so much, focusing on fresher foods.

While not part of this change, as part of what I see as more organically shifting tastes, I first went vegetarian in early 2025, and then, after admitting that I could not step over, around, or through the ethical considerations any longer, vegan after Christmas this year.

With all of this combined, and when I was weighed for surgical intake, a number of things began to come into focus.

I don't like speaking this frankly about it, but I have found myself currently at risk of relapse.

Over twenty years ago, after a period of intense restriction that I was not able to get myself out of, I sought treatment in a program. While successful, I was warned on departure that it sort of doesn't necessarily leave you. That there is a residual risk of relapse. Indeed, when I was in the program, some of the other patients had been through them before.

Fortunately, I'm not there yet, exactly. But it is proving harder than I want it to be to turn this around. So I'm talking about it. And trying. I know that I can and I know that I will.

I just need to acknowledge it. I know that saying nothing is a great way to keep going in a direction that won't help me. It's certainly not helping my transition either.

It Doesn't Leave, Part 2

Sometimes we're trained so well that we don't even question what we're on about until it just seems to plainly silly that we have to step back and question why we're feeling a certain way and why we're acting a certain way.

In this case, I'm referring to the sheer terror I traditionally experience when someone asks if I'd like to go for coffee or tea or to hang out or anything at all.

The thing is, while I am somewhat introverted, I actually really enjoy socializing, but I have so often limited myself so that I kinda don't. Not really.

Earlier this week, I got to talking to two other nice trans people who wanted to meet for coffee. My first feeling was abject terror.

"Oh no! I can't do that! Why are they asking me? What does it mean? Will Kathleen hate me? Will she think I'm up to no good? How can I say no while still being a nice girl? Will they hate me for saying no? Why am I always put into these positions? Can I just leave their messages unread? Won't it look weird when I post other things? What if I abandon my account? What if I deleted it? Won't that be strange? I don't want to? What should I do????"

I mean, what an exhausting way to be, right?

It only then occurred to me that after 13 years apart and 9 years with no contact at all, I was still accommodating my ex's anxieties!

Anxieties that Kathleen does not share!

After talking about it with her, she said that's kinda stupid (I agree), that I should always feel free to have coffee/tea/whatever with people (if I would like to), and that she thinks that having friends is great (I agree) and that I should too (I agree).

And as if tracking ahead of what my imported anxieties were telling me, she made sure to stress that she trusts me fully and implicitly and that there is no reason to fear.

I needed to hear it.

Even if I knew it.

Suffice to say, I will be meeting with some nice people in the next couple of weeks and I am sure that we will have lovely little visits with nice beverages in nice places.

I'm not a mess, really!

These points above really make me seem like a mess!

I promise that I'm not!

At least, I'm working to not be one so much. :/

April 5, 2026

Yikes! More Than Two Weeks???

Charlotte ♥ — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 19:00:00 EDT

Admittedly, I have not really felt the urge to blog (outside of sharing photos) lately. It's a little odd, because things have been happening!

It's Getting Closer (No. 1)

Surgery!

Last week, I was contacted by the clinic that will be doing my surgery for a few more questions. And once again, when I saw that email appear in my inbox, I practically levitated!

I don't think I've ever answered questions about my health so quickly, and once they responded, it became official: there is nothing for me to do now but wait to be given a date.

So very very exciting!

Mastodons Are (Once Again) Extinct

Once again, I have left Mastodon.

This time, my complaint was really more technical than anything else. The instance I had been on experienced a considerable technical issue whereby it was sort of defederated from all others (and vice-versa).

Nearly a week with no fix in sight and no capacity to even migrate to another instance, I decided to just close the account. I don't really blame the person running the instance or the people running the server, but it really showed my how brittle it all can be.

Perhaps the resiliency of a federated system is located in the overall, but if you happen to be in a little corner that experiences challenges, that might not be the experience.

If you use Bluesky and are interested in following me there, my account is here.

It's Getting Closer (No. 2)

Just three weeks to go!

Just three weeks and I will be in Toronto to visit my sister! I am very excited for us to have a few days of sister time and, as always, am quite excited to be in Toronto!

I don't know how we're going to fit everything we're thinking of doing in since we have a list that would take six weeks to get through in a three-day visit, but hey, you never know!

Setting Our Sights Further

As it has really come to set in that visiting the US is unlikely to be safe for me any time in the foreseeable future, Kathleen and I have begun to consider other places we might like to visit.

At the same time, we've been very passively thinking about the possibilities of, say, moving to another country. Being geographically attached to a US that looks like it does is a little frightening, but being in a Canada that appears to be well on its way to becoming a vassal state is even more so.

While any international move is purely in the realm of speculation and can be better thought of as evidence of privileged fantasy, it has also caused us to begin to make plans to travel outside of our usual Toronto-Montréal-Halifax corridor.

Our (vague, tentative) plan?

In 2027, Australia! 🇦🇺

In 2028, Japan! 🇯🇵

After that? No idea! There's a big world out there and we've always wanted to visit places like Thailand 🇹🇭 and Germany 🇩🇪 and Mexico 🇲🇽 and Italy 🇮🇹 and you know what? I've always heard that Uruguay 🇺🇾 is just lovely.

First things first though: I won't be going anywhere without a passport.

Now that's a critical step and a small achievable goal!

Unexpectedly Exciting

Charlotte ♥ — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 06:00:00 EST

Having ordered a new (slightly customized) Mac mini last week, I have to admit: I am far more excited about its arrival than I thought that I would be.

I have quite a few reasons, as I recently outlined, but it all mostly seemed like a pragmatic decision. Better hardware compatibility and computer component costs have become exhorbitant with little evidence that they will return to earth any time soon.

Since customizations take a few weeks, I can expect to receive it somewhere between March 13 and 20. As the days have worn on, a sense of excitement has set in. Almost a relief even.

In the meantime, I've been restoring things to the way they were before Summer 2024. Rebuilding my folder structure in Apple Photos, refining and streamlining my film scans, transferring content to the Apple Passwords app from Bitwarden, making sure I have the right bits and bobs ready for things, etc.

It almost feels a little like a welcome home.

Go figure.

For her own part, not really seeing a way for her old base model M1 Mini to last through the time it may take for parts to come back down to earth, Kathleen decided to upgrade too!

It actually marks the first time she has purchased a computer for herself and for her own purposes. Before this week, it has either been student-issue or hand-me-downs.

But around the same time as me, she will be accepting delivery of a customized purple A4 iMac!

About Eighteen Months. That's How Long

Charlotte ♥ — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 06:00:00 EST

In the Summer of 2024 when I decided to pass my base model 2020 M1 Mac Mini over to my partner Kathleen, whose MacBook Air was nearing its end of life, it marked my departure from the Apple ecosystem. At least it did for my at-home computing. As I outline in my uses page, its replacement was an off-lease Dell tower that I installed Debian on.

My reasons were partially emotional (wanting a change of "computing scenery", nostalgia for earlier days), partially practical (wanting to be able to upgrade hardware after purchase - something Apple doesn't provide for on many systems), and partially asserting my values (wanting to have a bit more control over my computing, finding FOSS-type arguments compelling, being at odds with big tech, etc.).

After thinking it over for a few weeks - first passively, then more actively - yesterday afternoon, I opened the Apple Store app on my phone and ordered a slightly-customized M4 Mac mini.

Environmental Scan: Severe Irritation on the Horizon

One major source of irritation I've had with this Linux machine relates to my main hobby: film photography.

Although making photos and developing the film has nothing itself to do with the computer, living in an apartment too small to accommodate a dark room, my process involves scanning the negatives and slides to work with the final product digitally.

I have two scanners: an Epson Perfection V600 Photo, which I use for scanning 120 film, and a Plustek 8200i, which I use for scanning 35mm film. While the V600 is (nominally) compatible with Linux because Epson provides drivers and a sort of usable version of their software, Plustek does not.

When I made the switch in 2024, I understood this drawback and because I had already invested in SilverFast 9 for both scanners, I decided to do my scanning in Windows 11 running in VirtualBox.

It was never ideal. VirtualBox does not get along well with fractional scaling in Wayland, leaving everything blocky and fuzzy. Not exactly a good situation to be in when dealing with photos and it is compounded when the colour spaces between the two were different enough that it took quite a while to get a sense of what final scan would look like when saved into Linux. And if all that weren't enough, this clunky method is also quite slow in spite of my computer having 32GB RAM and an adequate CPU.

My dissatisfaction with my film scanning setup was recently underscored when, out of curiosity, I plugged the scanner into my mid-2104 MacBook Pro (which I recently replaced the battery for in preparation for post-surgery blogging), tried scanning a roll of film, and found that it was noticeably faster at scanning and processing than my main desktop's setup in spite of it having a slower CPU and a quarter the RAM.

(Although I wasn't really interested in paying for it, I did give VueScan a try, and found it too spartan and unable/unwilling to produce the results I've come to expect and prefer from SilverFast.)

Since there is a good chance that if I'm at the computer, I'm scanning a roll of film, the irritation only grew.

No Upgrades for the Foreseeable Future

It's possible that I might have been willing to overlook the scanning issue, but thanks to the market-distorting powers of some of the most awful companies, the market for upgrade components has gone caterwonky, sending prices skyrocketing in short order with no signs of them coming down any time soon.

SSDs, HDDs, and RAM whose prices I balked at before Christmas for being 2X what they were in the Summer are now going today for 2X-5X the price they were before the holidays.

In most cases, when combined, the retail prices for these upgrades (if you can even find stock in some cases) are making Apple's built-to-order prices look reasonable. I have no appetite for paying more than Apple's prices for the older and slower upgrades I would want for a 7-year-old second-hand computer.

Since upgradeability was one of the main practical reasons that I was willing to make a few usability and compatibility tradeoffs in the first place, left without affordable upgrades, the various incompatibilities and irritations stand out all the more.

Not Just Parts: Nostalgia also in Short Supply

It also turns out that I don't actually care very much about tinkering, customizing, and otherwise making my computer "my own" as much as I thought I did. I used to care deeply about this sort of thing, customizing my e16 or Windows 2000/XP installs extensively.

This has worked out the same as my relationship with video games: I lost interest in playing them in the early 2000s and since then, have been happy to play the occasional bit of Diablo or OpenTTD for very short bursts. Usually measurable in minutes.

On Linux, whenever I've tried out a different desktop environment or used Gnome plugins or whatever else, I set it up, use it for a few minutes, declare it "neat", and move on back to the mostly default Gnome desktop experience of Debian 13.

Values & Ethics: Same Green, Smaller Lawn

This one has been interesting, because there is something to it. At least a little bit, anyway.

The values - both spoken and lived - of so many active contributors and organizations in the FOSS community have values that align closely with mine. It is always heartening to see other trans women living their best lives and contributing interesting, useful, and vital things to the computing world.

It shouldn't be surprising, but the same sociopolitical machinations that have brought us the global fascist uprising we're currently facing have had a large impact on open source software too. The fash aren't all beavering away at X the everything app, OpenAI, or Facebook.

They're also vibe-coding FOSS apps and otherwise spending time advocating for remigration, trans elimination, and cheering on ICE and hoping to bring that energy to their own countries when not American.

I have most definitely lost count of the FOSS projects and "privacy-respecting" services that are lead by, supported, or at least championed by individuals and organizations whose values match those of today's best-known evil figures, and only lack the unlimited resources to make their rotten ideologies real.

It seems that every other day, I end up learning that another small piece of software is "fashware" and a brief look at the mailing list, Matrix, Discord, or Twitter accounts shows me that the programmer who has made it wants me dead.

The grass isn't greener, in other words, the yard is just smaller.

Eighteen Months Total

In the end, the downsides have just begun to pile up and the expected positives haven't really materialized. I really just care that my computer works in the ways I want it to, that it supports my hobbies, and that it otherwise quietly sits on my desk. I expect my new Mac to be delivered at some point between March 13th and 20th.

While my computing setup will change, I will continue to blog here as I always have: using a markdown editor, 11ty, and pushing to Neocities via GitHub.

I already do it that way on my 12-year-old MacBook Pro and see no reason to change it.

February 21, 2026

How Soon Was Then?

Charlotte ♥ — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 18:00:00 EST

Whenever a Smiths track plays on the radio, I am transported back to a bit more than 20 years ago. Thanks for KEXP just now, I was sent down memory lane.

I was struggling hard with an eating disorder at the time and The Smiths albums were very much present on my little pink iPod Mini. One dark winter evening, I decided walk over to the Zellers on Sparks Street to look for a new coffee grinder to replace the $8 blade grinder I had been using.

Between working nights stocking shelves at the city's underperforming-est Wal-Mart outlet (Lincoln Fields), trying really hard (and failing) to ignore the little transsexual in my head, and, uhh, well, constantly reminding myself of the dire consequences of giving into temptation, I plied the aisles of the old, dingy, and dimly-lit outlet in search of a burr grinder that I could afford.

As luck would have it, I did find what I was looking for: a fussy little model for $22. It was impossible to clean, loud, and under-powered, but it was also another in a long line of one-weird-tricks for me to convince myself that I could keep going with better prepared black coffee.

That sure would fix me.

There is no other point to this post: How Soon is Now? reliably, and seemingly forever, brings me right back to a grey, flat, and most entirely disassociated time of life.

I suppose it's a fitting gift from a most miserable and odious prick of a musician.

February 16, 2026

It Was Fun! Our Little Winter Day Trip

Charlotte ♥ — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 14:00:00 EST

Kingston was fun!

That's how we'd both put it, anyway.

We left Ottawa with our rental car at about 10:30 in the morning and made pretty good time, parking in Kingston near the arena around 12:40. The drive was uneventful: the highways were fairly quick and clear of traffic and there was no snow to be seen. The Corolla we rented didn't really have to work all that hard.

Reasons to Get Out of Town

Admittedly, the need for a day trip was probably more for me than it was for Kathleen. While we both get a little bit of geographic cabin fever at this time of year, I think it tends to be worse for me.

Kathleen's bigger motivation was to become more comfortable navigating!

Whenever we rent or borrow a car to visit a place that's not easily accessible by train or plane, it's my job to navigate. I enjoy it, and one of the ways my neurodivergent ways has always expressed itself was through road maps.

Whenever we'd get a new Ontario road map growing up, it would be up on my wall within minutes and I would study it intensely, memorizing highways and towns and their populations (or at least relative sizes, per the Province's analysts) and imagine visiting some day. While I don't really do this today, on any given quiet day, you can probably find me street viewing around some city or town.

It's part of why we like to joke that even when I don't know where I'm going, I know where I'm going!

There will be times where I cannot be with Kathleen in these situations and she will have to navigate on her own, however, so one reason for the rental and travel was that on matters of navigation, I would keep quiet and Kathleen would use the turn-by-turn navigation.

Assisted by Apple Maps (whose direction-giving Kathleen found much more helpful than Google's), Kathleen navigated us to and from Kingston without any issue whatsoever! Not one "recalculating route", not one "oops, we have to turn back".

Flawless navigation!

Stone City Fun

For my part, thanks in no small part to that time spent studying maps, and thanks to our family road trips to Southern Ontario, I unfailingly get a good feel when we are somewhere that feels to me link southern Ontario, and although we were firmly in Eastern Ontario (which normally feels like Northern Ontario, where I'm from), there is something about the province's design language along the 401 corridor and the geography along the St. Lawrence that will always perk me up.

We arrived in Kingtson quite ready for lunch and having searched for restaurants with vegan options, it didn't take us too long to find Atomica, whose lunch menu promised us two very tasty-sounding vegan pizzas, which we ordered once we were settled into a nice booth.

Now, they were absolutely delicious, with the mushroom one being slightly preferred by the both of us. We just would have preferred that it had not taken more than an hour to get them to us without any particular explanation. From where I was sitting, there appears to have been some kind of mix-up with our orders, but it wasn't really communicated to us.

After lunch, as we had planned to do, we proceeded to make our way up and down Princess Street, stopping in a various shops.

The highlights were found in the book shop, where I found another one of Emily Austen's novels, and the various vintage shops, which reminded me of the great shops we visited while in Halifax in September.

Unfortunately, winter dressing has consistently proven a barrier to shopping for clothes, since it's an entire production to get bundled back up, with an order of operations and everything!

(Coat, boots, purse, camera [if], backpack [if], scarf, hat, mittens.)

Finishing our little wander up Princess to Division and back again, we stopped into a a coffee shop for a little warm beverage and headed back to the car.

Once more, Kathleen's navigation was flawless, and made it back to Ottawa in good time, promising that we'd do this sort of thing more often.

Perhaps when the weather is better!

February 15, 2026

Winter Wanderlust · Heeding the Call

Charlotte ♥ — Sat, 14 Feb 2026 06:00:00 EST

The thing with having itchy feet is that at some point, it becomes intolerable and you simply must scratch them.

That is just what Kathleen and I will be doing today!

We've rented a car and will be doing the two-hour drive to Kingston for a little visit. We last visited for the day for our anniversary in 2024, had a lovely time, and committed to return some day.

Of course, we're going to do all of our favourite things: explore, enjoy a nice meal (or two, depending on how long our day goes), shop for books, CDs/DVDs, antiques, fabric, etc.

Of course I will be making photos! I have one of the Nikkormats loaded with some Fuji 400 (Fuji-branded Kodak Ultramax? Not really, but close enough for horse shoes!). I'm always tempted to bring more than one lens, but know that it's unlikely that I would switch or enjoy actually carrying more than one, so I've gone with the 85mm Nikkor-H.

Making Photos in Public

It is not too often that when out making photos out in public that I am accosted in some way. In fact, I can count the number of times on one hand and don't even need all fingers.

So when it happened this past Thursday, it stood out. In part, it only stood out because it is so rare. While I don't exactly occupy an anonymous presence in the world as a purple-haired visibly-trans woman, my day-to-day life, on the whole, is not one filled with conflict and tumult. I just go about my day and the biggest difference is that I receive far more compliments. I'll take it!

Still, as I've outlined in the blog piece above (and here), when I was making a photo of the Circle-K beneath the Place Bell parking garage at Gloucester and Metcalfe, a woman, who was passing through the scene, was positively convinced that I was making a photo of her specifically and did not appreciate it.

As I proceeded down the sidewalk after making the photo, she dropped most of her possessions and ran across the street into traffic to chase me down. Once I cottoned to the fact she was chasing me down, I stopped to see what her problem was.

Wide-eyed, she continued to yell at me for making her photo and then tried to give me a shove. Bracing myself, she found that it might not have been effective, so instead decided to heap transphobic invective against me. Nothing novel: just all the greatest hits that I don't need to replicate on my personal blog.

Once that part of the tirade was over, seeking the cherry to top her putrid cupcake, reached for "I'll see you in hell!", a statement that I couldn't help by chuckle about, so, with a stupid grin, I just responded "Yeah, I guess I'll see you there!"

It's part of a familiar pattern, unfortunately. When I experience such encounters in public, 100% of them have been from people who are clearly experiencing challenges much greater than mine.

I can't know for certain what her life was like, but it seemed apparent to me (while partially disassociating from the scene) that she was probably unhoused, but only very recently so. She had a large number of bags with her and when she shoved me, she used a black trash bag that seemed to be filled with clothing or bedding. Two other very large green reusable bags from a popular chain of dollar stores are what she dropped on the opposite sidewalk.

So, on one hand I understand.

There are people out there who make photos and video of others in public, usually for the purposes of feeding the online spectacle and I most definitely have been featured in such content.

It doesn't feel good! I remember one time where I was walking through the Rideau Centre to run some errands after work and some high school-aged girls stopped, laughed, and made unkind remarks while recording me on their phones as I passed by.

On the other hand, it's positively exhausting to walk around with those levels of over-driven awareness that someone somewhere in the vicinity might have a camera. 99.9% of people with a camera in public are not using it to make photos of any particular people or to otherwise make spectacle of anyone.

I know that when I first came out, I was stuck in a sort of hypervigilance mode, always aware of every stare, blink, phone, and smirk. It didn't help that the far-right would-be "influencers" were still skulking around the downtown area.

Some still are!

I generally won't pass Parliament because of them.

February 14, 2026

Winter Wanderlust

Charlotte ♥ — Sun, 01 Feb 2026 12:00:00 EST

For a girlie who's a bit of a homebody, it's rather often that I find myself with some pretty intense wanderlust. While it can happen at any time of year, the bout of it I face in winter is (a) guaranteed; and (b) worse than any other time of year.

I guess it makes sense, the inhospitable weather keeps me closer to home and I end up feeling a little trapped. When that is combined with my re-scanning film, watching movies, or trying to make plans for the year, my feet are hardly ever as itchy as they get in January and February.

Complicating matters, I am waiting to get a date for some surgery, which means that it's hard to make any concrete plans!

That's not going to stop me, however, so this year's list is:

Toronto: I really want to pay my sister a visit! And, I mean, whether it's because of itself or it's in spite of itself, Toronto will always have my heart and I will always want to go. We'd move there if it were feasible.
Montréal: I always enjoy Montréal and while we plan to be there for around two weeks, it will be for surgery. So while it will be wonderful and a source of a long-awaited relief, it will not exactly be a vacation.
Halifax: It's not a guarantee, but various life events happening may require our presence.

Of course, none of this helps in the immediate term, so if you end up seeing more photos from not-Ottawa where I usually put them, and I drop more references to the Littlest Hobo, Seeing Things, and other past vacations, that will be the more obvious ways I will be scratching that itch. Probably while I street view around some city somewhere.

February 1, 2026