Scattered swiss cheese

After most of a year hemming and hawing, and perhaps a week of hardcore research and evaluation, I've come to a decision on finalizing my name so that I can get legal documentation started. I'm going with Kaylee Samantha Scheans. When my wife and I originally got married, there was never really much of a question as to whether or not she would take my last name. Her family is a huge part of our lives, and is full of people that I've loved from the first moment we met. There's a strength in them, as a mutually supportive unit, that kind of earns and demands honor. I was told early on that I'd unequivocally earned adoption in lending a hand digging out some of the many hoarded treasures that Grandma had built up over the years. Love and acceptance are easy currency within the group, given freely without reservation. Help is what you do when you can think of a way; waiting to be asked is a waste of time. As special and genuine as that felt, I soon l...

I have a new girlfriend, R! I've been hemming and hawing over how to introduce the idea, here, clinging to the vestiges of shame over being judged for having a relationship structure outside of the "normal" model. Realistically, that ship sailed a while ago, possibly even before I came out as transgender. Oh well. Bad mental habits take a while to get over, even when you're trying. The people that know and care about me enough to matter are aware already, and have had the time to wrap their heads around the basics of polyamory and ask questions. The bottom line is that my wife, E, and I have been philosophically poly from the very beginning, and have had many lively discussions about what that means to us that have only made us surer of each other. She's just had more opportunity to explore the idea, functionally, which is likely largely due to her being wonderfully social and outgoing, and me being not so much. I'm doing scads better there, though, ev...