How do you walk back into a room full of friends and acquaintances after you've stomped out and slammed the door?

You do so with a sheepish look on your face, apologize for the mess, and then you explain.

It's a hard life, and a hard balance for me. I live and work in a very conservative field, in a pretty conservative area. As you can imagine, a pagan, bi-sexual woman married (legally) to a transgendered woman has a difficult line to walk. Imagine the walk Grace has - it's even worse. We don't hide who we are; but we don't advertise it. (Only now I'm typing it again for everyone to see. I must be an idiot.)

Before anyone can go any further, I acknowledge that my re-posting of Pam's questions on Hagan's thank you thread was not the best idea. and that's all I have to say about it.

Virtual space is about the only place that I can be totally myself. And what you saw yesterday was a part of myself that I don't like very much, but I acknowledge and own.
I am a door-slammer. I was so hurt and angry (rightly or wrongly doesn't matter at this point.) that the only thing I knew to do was to virtually slam the door and cut the ties.

But I don't want to do that. This is the most vibrant, intelligent group of people I have run into in a long time. I couldn't even stay away a day. I wanted to see what Robert was writing about Health Care. I wanted to see if anyone had anything to say about the budget process starting in the short session. I wanted to see what the heck is up with North Carolina's Community Colleges and my hero Roy Cooper who must have a good reason (I hope he's got a good reason.)

So, I'm tiptoeing back in, sitting here in the corner. I'll just be quiet and read for a while.

Except, you know, there are some important budget items I want to keep an eye on, and I will bring updates to you on those.

As in everything - Peace, my friends, peace.