And also, I just love that she is such a human being around me. It could just be residual effects from old T, but like today, I mentioned to new T some of the stuff my mom used to do to punish me that was less in the realm of hitting and more in the realm of semi-normal parenting, and when she wanted to punish me "normally" she couldn't do most of the things most parents would do - I didn't watch TV, I didn't use many electronics, I didn't hang out with friends so grounding would useless, and so on, so my mother in her infinite wisdom decided that since the things I cared about most were school and my books, then when I misbehaved she would not let me go to school or not let me read.

She only actually did the school thing once, but T started laughing at this, I guess because it was so surprising to her, and she was like, "Wow, I'm sorry, but not going to school as a punishment?" And I sort of saw why she was laughing, because yeah, it sort of is funny that that was the most effective thing for my mother to take away. It didn't upset me that she laughed - it felt genuine, like she wasn't carefully schooling her reactions, so that reassured me that her other reactions to me were genuine too.

She also thought it was funny that one of my friends has decided that he will no longer tell me things he thinks I already know, which means he's cut down his talking level to about 20% of what it used to be. And T was like, "Well, you do know a lot!!!" It was just nice.