I mailed them in around July 15th. I was freaking out cause it says it's only supposed to take 7-10 days to process the papers and have them mailed back. I called 3 times and emailed the BMV once. Finally today I got a call saying they'd approved my papers and are mailing them back today! I'm not sure if my persistance sped up the process any faster, but it made me feel better. Looks like it generally take around a month, sometimes a little over that. Another guy is having his mailed today too...so I think they must process them in batches or something.
So when my name change is legal on Sept 30th...I'll be able to march down to the BMV with both papers in hand...and be legally MALE and legally ME.
I never thought I'd get this far.