It is officially official! I went to court this morning and got the certified court order for my name change. I then went to the social security office and changed my name and gender information there. I followed that up with my driver’s license. Then, I went to two financial institutions to update my info there. I also even updated my Costco membership. During lunch, I got a smoothie and updated my name with my local health foods store rewards program 😉 That was all done by 3:30 pm! Even though I had the day off, I then had to help a co-worker with something for a while, but now I can finally breath.

I had many kind people helping me today. The overwhelming majority of people that I interact with are positive and happy to help. They are also genuinely excited to and interested to meet someone who is going through transition. However, there were two people that addressed me as “sir” and “he” respectively. After the woman at the county office addressed me as sir, I looked her straight in the eye and said “I would prefer Ma’am.” She turned a little red and simply said “Oh, okay” and did not use any pronouns at all after that, which is fine by me. The person who referred to me as “he” was discussing how to accomplish something in their bank system (I caused lots of “How do we do that” discussions today!). The other employee said, “well then she will have to also sign..” – so I did not even have to speak up about the missed pronoun.

I have been up since 5:30 am and this has been an incredible day. The weather was perfect with only a light breeze so my hair behaved, all except that one darn strand that fell down during my Driver’s License photo. Oh well! I still think it is a decent photo for an ID. At least the information is all correct now!

Ariana is officially ecstatic!