Growing up one of the things that was definitely instilled into me by my parents - well at least my Mother, as well as my grandparents - was respect. I don't mean the kind of "respect" that you see people such as athletes and other public figures clamor for; but rather real respect. Respect for your "elders", respect for "authority", and so on. Now, respect was not something that was a "right" - with respect came responsibility for those people to earn/deserve your respect.
Perhaps I'm turning into one of those "old people" that I used to make fun of as a child - you know the ones that always said things like "back in my day <blah blah blah>" and such; but it just seems to me that things have changed and not for the better. I think there is no better example than President Obama (or even the last few Presidents that have preceded him). Agree with his politics and policies, or don't - that's the right of anyone to do; but regardless of how anyone feels about the man or his politics/policies, doesn't the office of the President deserve some respect? If I had a dollar for every mean, hateful, or disrespectful comment I've seen since he's been in office I'd probably be wealthier than Bill Gates and Warren Buffet combined. I'm of the firm belief that a person can express their dislike for something without turning it into a personal attack, but yet it seems that I'm in the definite minority on this.
By no means is this limited to our Commander In Chief, I see the same thing occur all over the place. Children treating their parents in ways that I never would have contemplated when I was that age; service employees taking abuse from customers; and so on. I'm by no means overly religious, but one thing I did take from my childhood was "do onto others...." and it just boggles my mind that so many people seemed to have either missed out on this or simply decide it shouldn't apply to them. Is it so hard to be polite to the person making taking an order or ringing up purchases at the store? Just because someone is having a bad day themselves do they really need to try and ensure everyone around them also has a bad day? Again, I know there are times when that server/cashier/etc may have a bad attitude themselves, but the vast majority of incidents I see aren't that - they are simply people being rude/hateful/disrespectful because they can be.
I guess I should cut this short as I need to get back to work and my mind is more on that than this, but to part "a little nice goes a long way" and I really wish more people would give that some thought when they are interacting with others, be it in person, via social media, or whatever. Just saying...
- M
Wednesday, August 27, 2014
Sunday, August 24, 2014
The Best "Tangible" Gifts I've Ever Received...
I consider myself a very lucky woman, I've received a lot of gifts throughout my life. The greatest of those gifts are non-tangible gifts - my loving and supportive wife J, my wonderful daughter P, my "sister" M, and so on. But those are something I'll discuss another time. What I thought I'd talk about today are some of the "tangible" gifts I've received that have really meant a lot to me for various reasons. These are in no particular order, although a couple of things that J has gotten me stand alone above the rest.
- Sony Wireless Headphones - I spend a lot of time in our bedroom, I have an actual "office" area downstairs for work, but I'm just as likely to work up here as I have a very nice setup on my desk (3 PC's 5 24in Monitors, and so on). Even when I'm not working I like it as I can have the TV on and still be on the computer(s), or I can be playing Xbox, or whatever. Well for a long time J was on nights which made this a challenge as I often watched TV with subtitles (and was learning to read lips <G>) and I'd play my 360 with no sound which wasn't a lot of fun with games that had a lot of dialogue (The "Arkham" games, Quantum of Solace, and so on). At some point a few years ago M and M2 went out of town to visit a friend of theirs around my birthday. They came home with a pair of these Sony Headphones (model RF970R). I was skeptical at first, but they have been wonderful. They sit in a dock next to the TV and I can watch TV, play games, whatever without disturbing J. Now it's not as big a deal anymore since she works days now, but on occasion when she goes to bed earlier than I do I still use them. They work all through the house so I can go get a drink or even check the mail and continue to listen to the game or whatever. Definitely a great gift.
- Curtains - These probably sound silly, but when we moved in I insisted on blinds for our bedroom. I always wanted blinds - but it was a *huge* mistake. Our windows face the east which means the sun pored in every morning early and made sleeping late difficult at best. A couple of months ago I had to go out with one of our re-sellers to a customers site (one I had installed myself years ago) and upon coming home M and M2 had hung some very dark curtains for us. While I wish they were two pieces to allow easy opening of the windows, that's a minor quibble as they make it so dark when they are closed we can now sleep in peace even if we want to sleep in late. They seem to keep it cooler in here as well. For something so simple, they've been a great gift.
- Jewelry - I've gotten plenty of jewelry over the years from J and M; be it earrings, necklaces, bracelets, and so on; but these three pieces all came from J and stand out above all others. The one on the left is a necklace that is visible in many of my early photos. I always loved it because it was among the first pieces of "women's jewelry" that J got me and the chain is long enough to hang down around breast level (which also means it can go on over my head without having to be unclasped). I don't wear it as much these days - mainly because of the other necklace in this photo - but I think it will always be my favorite necklace. The ring - well J had gotten me rings before - most of which didn't fit, or in the case of one I really loved - I lost - but this one is the one I wear EVERYTIME I leave the house. It means so very much to me and no matter what other rings I may or may not get I'll never not wear this one. The last piece in this picture is another necklace that J got me - well really she got me the charm as the chain it came on was too small, but I ended up putting the charm on this chain and it works well. It doesn't hang as low as the first necklace, but it still fits me nicely and is one you'll see in many current photos. In case the inscription cannot be seen it reads: "If Your ♥ Is Open, It Can Never Stay Broken". When I first got the charm it didn't mean much to me, but as I've transitioned and as my love for J has gotten stronger this has taken on a great meaning to me and I wear it as much as I can - often even with a second necklace. I love you sweetie and these pieces mean so very much to me.
- TV - M has gotten me a couple of TV's over the years and while I greatly appreciate the 42in LCD in our room right now, nothing compares to the first big screen she got me nearly 20 years ago. I came home from work one Saturday night to it, I had always wanted a big screen TV and never thought I'd have one. Well she had her Grandmother take her to Sears and she bought it herself and arranged to have it delivered. It was a Phillips Magnovox projection model - I believe it was 52 or 54 inches I don't recall for sure, but it had PIP, smart sound (to keep those commercials from blaring) and so on. I loved it and we had it for probably 7 or 8 years until we finally got a DLP model when we reconciled as friends and moved into the townhouse while this house was built. While a 52 inch TV isn't as big a deal today, nearly 20 years ago it was huge compared to what most people had and it meant a lot to me then and I still have fond memories of it.
- "Add A Size" - This probably sounds funny, but of all the things I've been given in regards to my transition, the one thing that I've gotten by far the most usage out of are these. They are a simple set of silicon "add a cup size" breast forms - I believe these came from Wal-Mart. J got them for me pre-transition, but I didn't use them much. Once I started transitioning I got actual full-size breast forms, but those quickly became too big with the growth I had. So I've settled into using these - they are large enough to give me a nice look in my clothes, but small enough to not cause a distraction. I do *not* leave the house without them even if I'm not totally done up. They are like a security blanket of sorts for me and I appreciate them so very much.
- Guess Purses - I've got several purses and I like them all, but I have two Guess purses. The first one is a black shoulder bag that M got me and I love it and will never give it up. However, a little while back J got me a beautiful matched Guess purse and wallet, both in pink. I haven't used them yet, but I believe I will be this coming week. Frankly they are prettier than the black bag, but it's also more of a traditional purse than a shoulder bag and I'll need to get used to that. Regardless, I greatly appreciate both purses and can't think J and M enough for them.
- Our First Cat Emily - I wrote this post on Friday 8/22/2014 in the morning, before I realized how sick Emily was and before we had to take her to the vet to euthanize her on Saturday. As sad a moment as that was in my life, it's good to know that she will not be suffering and has moved on to a better place. But I would be remiss if I didn't thank my wife J for Emily. We got Emily shortly after we got together - sort of as a birthday present for me. I - and Emily - owe J a debt of gratitude as I believe we gave Emily a wonderful last 8 years of her life and I know I never would have adopted/rescued Emily if not for J. While Emily was a very independent cat as I talked about in the post I made about her last month, she brought not only me, but all of us in the house great joy and I like to think we did the same for her. While she may be physically gone from this world, I know her spirit will live on with us for the rest of all of our lives and she'll be waiting on the Rainbow Bridge for not only me, but for all of us. J, thank you so very much for Emily and even more so for sharing what you did about the Rainbow Bridge - you have no idea how much better it's made me feel today. I love you so very much and I know Emily did as well and I know she'll be there for us when our time comes.
I guess that's enough for now, there are lots and lots of other things I've been given over the years that mean a lot to me, but these things stood out at the moment. Hope everybody is having a great weekend.
- M
Saturday, August 23, 2014
Goodbye Emily....
About a month ago I started seriously considering that at least a couple of our seven cats were nearing the end, specifically I suspected that the first one to depart our world would be our first one Emily, or our fourth one Sampson which is why I wrote about each cat last month.
Last night about midnight the realization that it would in fact be Emily and that the time was now really set in. The evening before she had seemed to not really be herself, we had to go get her for dinner - the cats always have dry food out and we feed them wet food through the day if one (or more) of them is hungry, but normally they eat breakfast around 8am and dinner around 7pm and Emily didn't show up for her dinner. She ate, but not like normal, and then went to lie down in a secluded area of the living room. It wasn't really "normal" behavior for her - at least not normal based upon the last several months as she had gotten far more social with us. I suspect at least partially because her eyesight was failing and she needed some assistance from time to time.
Yesterday I really didn't see her during the day, but that wasn't too strange as some days I'd see her more than others, but when she didn't come to dinner yet again we went looking for her. We finally found her holed up in M2's room - she liked to spend time in the closet in there as it was out of the way enough that the other cats didn't bother her and she had a nice quilt she slept on. P brought her down and she really didn't seem to want eat, which really concerned us. About 11pm, J went downstairs to check on the laundry and found Emily at the water fountains - we have two of the Drinkwell ones - she was "crying" to use J's words. Now as I wrote in her little bio a few weeks ago, Emily was always a quiet cat - unless she was "hunting socks" for us, so when J brought her up to me and told me that we knew it was going to be her time and it was no longer a matter of if, but rather when.
She let me hold her for a long time which was out of the ordinary for her as normally a couple of minutes and she'd want down. It was painfully obvious that the last of her eyesight was now gone, she had no reaction to anything in front of her face and when I finally put her down, she could barely walk, she stumbled around the room and couldn't find her way out. She finally made it into P's room which was very out of the ordinary and headed for her closet. At this point I knew she needed to go to the vet this morning and that it would likely be a one way trip. I texted M to tell her, but she had come to the same conclusion before they had all left for work. J and I spent a good chunk of the night sitting with her and petting her and truthfully I wasn't sure if she'd hold on until this morning. I finally convinced J to go to bed as she had to work today and I continued to sit with Emily. She finally got up and made her way downstairs to the fountains but despite seeming to want to drink she couldn't/wouldn't - she finally just settled down between them and let me pet her some more. After a few minutes she got up and started wondering around - but she was obvious "lost" - I suspected she needed to use the litter box so I carried her to one of them which she immediately used, but she could barely get out. She finally went into the formal dining room to lay down and I held out some hope that we were wrong about it being Emily's time as she often slept in there. At this point I couldn't stay up any longer so I went to bed since I knew M was going to wake me in a little bit when she got home for lunch.
About a hour later M did come home and wake me up and Emily had moved downstairs and it was obvious that we weren't wrong and that she would need to go to the vet this morning. M and M2 spent some time with her and I tried to get a little sleep so I could take her. Our vet didn't open until 9am this morning - I suppose we could have taken her to the 24 hour vet that's not that far away, but I wanted to use our vet if at all possible. M called them when they opened and while they were booked solid, once she explained things to them they told us to bring her up. J wanted to go, but I wasn't sure how long we would be and I didn't want her to miss work or be late - probably a poor choice on my part - but as emotional as J gets I figured it was best to say her goodbye here at the house, the same with P.
When we got downstairs, Emily was back in the formal dining room and looked even worse. We picked her up and I didn't have the heart to put her in the carrier so I carried her myself to the car and to the vet. As we were arriving at the vet I knew we were doing the right thing as Emily hated going outside and hated the car and really didn't like to be held very much and yet she let me hold her for a good 15 minutes without so much as trying to get down. M and I took her inside and they put us in an exam room right away. One of the girls came in to find out what was going on and once we told her she said one of the vets would be in shortly and she asked if we wanted to discuss what to do with Emily if the choice to euthanize her was made - as painful as that was to do we elected to. We chose cremation and said we wanted her ashes so she went to get a book of urns to select from. In the meantime the vet popped in. It was a short discussion, we explained the behavior the last 24/48 hours and frankly based upon her last visit the vet (and us unfortunately) knew the day was coming. She said we could probably prolong her life for a few days - but as much as I love Emily and wanted to - I just couldn't do that to her. We felt it was her time and we wanted her to go out with dignity and *WITH US* - while those extra few days would have been nice, I was deathly afraid her time would come when all of us were sleeping or nobody was around or something like that and I was afraid she'd suffer. I wanted to be with her for her last few minutes so we elected to euthanize her.
The vet said she'd be back in a few minutes with a shot to relax her, and about then the first girl came back with a catalog of urns and such. M and I picked one out and continued to pet and comfort Emily as best we could. A couple of minutes later the vet came back with an assistant and they gave Emily the first shot and gave her back to me. Over the next 10-15 minutes she became even more relaxed as the shot was doing it's job - and the girl came back to get our choice of urn and to take care of the arrangements. Finally a few minutes later the vet came back with her assistant to actually finish the process. They lied her on the counter and gave her the last shot and she passed gracefully into her next life. It was as sad a moment as I've had in a long time - perhaps ever - as I had such an attachment to her and I've never suffered a real loss since I've been on hormones and it's hit me hard. I can't seem to stop crying. We stayed with her for a few more minutes and the vets assistant told us we could stay as long as we wanted, and while I wanted to - I just couldn't. I want to remember Emily as the cat she was for the last 8 years. My only regret is that we didn't have her for the first 8 years of her life, but during the 8 we did - I will always believe we gave her a great life and that she loved us - I know we all loved her. It was so crushing to have to euthanize her, but now she can hunt socks as much as she wants, she'll be able to see again, and basically do all those things that she loved to do but could no longer.
We all loved Emily and we will miss her horribly, but I know in my heart that we did right by her both over these 8 years we had her as well as today. She'll always be my baby, my "1 of 7", and a lot of other things, and I'll never forget her - nor will anyone else in the house I'm sure. I know we will all move on because that's what people do, but the house will never quite be the same without her. She moved in with us and had been here every single day since we moved in and none of us - not me, not J, not M, not P, not M2, could say that. Rest in peace Emily - you deserve it sweetie.
Emily Bensinger - ??/??/199? - 08/23/2014
- M
Last night about midnight the realization that it would in fact be Emily and that the time was now really set in. The evening before she had seemed to not really be herself, we had to go get her for dinner - the cats always have dry food out and we feed them wet food through the day if one (or more) of them is hungry, but normally they eat breakfast around 8am and dinner around 7pm and Emily didn't show up for her dinner. She ate, but not like normal, and then went to lie down in a secluded area of the living room. It wasn't really "normal" behavior for her - at least not normal based upon the last several months as she had gotten far more social with us. I suspect at least partially because her eyesight was failing and she needed some assistance from time to time.
Yesterday I really didn't see her during the day, but that wasn't too strange as some days I'd see her more than others, but when she didn't come to dinner yet again we went looking for her. We finally found her holed up in M2's room - she liked to spend time in the closet in there as it was out of the way enough that the other cats didn't bother her and she had a nice quilt she slept on. P brought her down and she really didn't seem to want eat, which really concerned us. About 11pm, J went downstairs to check on the laundry and found Emily at the water fountains - we have two of the Drinkwell ones - she was "crying" to use J's words. Now as I wrote in her little bio a few weeks ago, Emily was always a quiet cat - unless she was "hunting socks" for us, so when J brought her up to me and told me that we knew it was going to be her time and it was no longer a matter of if, but rather when.
She let me hold her for a long time which was out of the ordinary for her as normally a couple of minutes and she'd want down. It was painfully obvious that the last of her eyesight was now gone, she had no reaction to anything in front of her face and when I finally put her down, she could barely walk, she stumbled around the room and couldn't find her way out. She finally made it into P's room which was very out of the ordinary and headed for her closet. At this point I knew she needed to go to the vet this morning and that it would likely be a one way trip. I texted M to tell her, but she had come to the same conclusion before they had all left for work. J and I spent a good chunk of the night sitting with her and petting her and truthfully I wasn't sure if she'd hold on until this morning. I finally convinced J to go to bed as she had to work today and I continued to sit with Emily. She finally got up and made her way downstairs to the fountains but despite seeming to want to drink she couldn't/wouldn't - she finally just settled down between them and let me pet her some more. After a few minutes she got up and started wondering around - but she was obvious "lost" - I suspected she needed to use the litter box so I carried her to one of them which she immediately used, but she could barely get out. She finally went into the formal dining room to lay down and I held out some hope that we were wrong about it being Emily's time as she often slept in there. At this point I couldn't stay up any longer so I went to bed since I knew M was going to wake me in a little bit when she got home for lunch.
About a hour later M did come home and wake me up and Emily had moved downstairs and it was obvious that we weren't wrong and that she would need to go to the vet this morning. M and M2 spent some time with her and I tried to get a little sleep so I could take her. Our vet didn't open until 9am this morning - I suppose we could have taken her to the 24 hour vet that's not that far away, but I wanted to use our vet if at all possible. M called them when they opened and while they were booked solid, once she explained things to them they told us to bring her up. J wanted to go, but I wasn't sure how long we would be and I didn't want her to miss work or be late - probably a poor choice on my part - but as emotional as J gets I figured it was best to say her goodbye here at the house, the same with P.
When we got downstairs, Emily was back in the formal dining room and looked even worse. We picked her up and I didn't have the heart to put her in the carrier so I carried her myself to the car and to the vet. As we were arriving at the vet I knew we were doing the right thing as Emily hated going outside and hated the car and really didn't like to be held very much and yet she let me hold her for a good 15 minutes without so much as trying to get down. M and I took her inside and they put us in an exam room right away. One of the girls came in to find out what was going on and once we told her she said one of the vets would be in shortly and she asked if we wanted to discuss what to do with Emily if the choice to euthanize her was made - as painful as that was to do we elected to. We chose cremation and said we wanted her ashes so she went to get a book of urns to select from. In the meantime the vet popped in. It was a short discussion, we explained the behavior the last 24/48 hours and frankly based upon her last visit the vet (and us unfortunately) knew the day was coming. She said we could probably prolong her life for a few days - but as much as I love Emily and wanted to - I just couldn't do that to her. We felt it was her time and we wanted her to go out with dignity and *WITH US* - while those extra few days would have been nice, I was deathly afraid her time would come when all of us were sleeping or nobody was around or something like that and I was afraid she'd suffer. I wanted to be with her for her last few minutes so we elected to euthanize her.
The vet said she'd be back in a few minutes with a shot to relax her, and about then the first girl came back with a catalog of urns and such. M and I picked one out and continued to pet and comfort Emily as best we could. A couple of minutes later the vet came back with an assistant and they gave Emily the first shot and gave her back to me. Over the next 10-15 minutes she became even more relaxed as the shot was doing it's job - and the girl came back to get our choice of urn and to take care of the arrangements. Finally a few minutes later the vet came back with her assistant to actually finish the process. They lied her on the counter and gave her the last shot and she passed gracefully into her next life. It was as sad a moment as I've had in a long time - perhaps ever - as I had such an attachment to her and I've never suffered a real loss since I've been on hormones and it's hit me hard. I can't seem to stop crying. We stayed with her for a few more minutes and the vets assistant told us we could stay as long as we wanted, and while I wanted to - I just couldn't. I want to remember Emily as the cat she was for the last 8 years. My only regret is that we didn't have her for the first 8 years of her life, but during the 8 we did - I will always believe we gave her a great life and that she loved us - I know we all loved her. It was so crushing to have to euthanize her, but now she can hunt socks as much as she wants, she'll be able to see again, and basically do all those things that she loved to do but could no longer.
We all loved Emily and we will miss her horribly, but I know in my heart that we did right by her both over these 8 years we had her as well as today. She'll always be my baby, my "1 of 7", and a lot of other things, and I'll never forget her - nor will anyone else in the house I'm sure. I know we will all move on because that's what people do, but the house will never quite be the same without her. She moved in with us and had been here every single day since we moved in and none of us - not me, not J, not M, not P, not M2, could say that. Rest in peace Emily - you deserve it sweetie.
- M
Friday, August 22, 2014
How Open To Be About Transitioning....
I'm not a huge social network person. I do have accounts on many of the various sites as both Madison and <old name>, although in the latter case the only one I really use is LinkedIn and that's really only for work stuff that I have no choice for. As far as the Madison accounts, it's really confined to Facebook with perhaps 40 friends/family/acquaintances, Twitter - which I really seldom use anymore, Pinterest - which is more for myself, and Google+. Of all of them I've found that I really like Google+ the most; and really that happened by accident. A very nice trans-woman added me to her circles at one point and eventually invited me into a transgender group that she was running. As per my policy I won't name her (or the group), but I assume if she reads this she will know who she is and let me say "thank you" once again as it's really because of you that I've embraced Google+. However, this post isn't about social networks per se, it's about how open to be (or not be) before/during/after transitioning.
That being said, I will say that the impetus for the post did come from a couple of discussions I've taken part in recently on Google+. Actually it was really one specific conversation thread that I jumped into a week or two ago. Before I go on let me get a bit of a disclaimer out of the way:
As that discussion went on, the crux of the rationale for the opinion in question seemed to center around the fact that some post-transition friends of this person didn't come out and openly support a rally that was meant to benefit those who were pre/mid-transition. Don't get me wrong, I can understand how that would be frustrating, but to universally condemn those who didn't come out to provide support I felt was short-sighted and honestly wrong. I believe the reality to be that it's no different than a lot of other causes (perhaps almost all of them) - and that is when a person has a "dog in the fight" they are far more likely to be vocal about a given cause. In this case, those that are post-transition no longer really have that dog in the fight so to speak and as such probably aren't as likely to feel a need to rally for something that will not necessarily affect them. Don't take that the wrong way, there are plenty of people who are post-transition that feel compelled to be out and push for changes and I have an immense amount of respect for those people. But just because someone is not publicly active for a given cause/event (or even at all) in no way means that aren't still being supportive - either currently or previously.
I can not speak for anyone else, nor do I want to, but for *ME* I simply want to be accepted as a woman *first* and foremost. The fact that I'm "trans" vs "cis" ideally wouldn't matter. Now I'm not naive and I know there are times it will matter, but hopefully those times will continue to become less and less. I for one would not go to a public march/rally as that's simply not the kind of person that I am. However, I also did fight to legally change my gender on my birth certificate in this state pre-surgery despite the fact that the states statutes require that. While I wasn't the first person to do so and as such the path to do so was laid out for me - I still took the time to do it and I've shared the process and experience that I used to do so with anyone who's wanted to know about it both here and elsewhere. The process was slightly different for me (different part of the state) than it was the person who provided the original information to me so I've made my court paperwork available to anyone who's wanted it as well. Some (many? most?) probably don't care as there is a time and money element to this and reality is that the Federal government will change a gender marker without nearly as much hassle and once that's done a Passport is as good as (if not better than) a license for most things when it comes to ID and in some cases the Passport change has been good enough to get the state to change a marker on a license. Yes it's not a birth certificate change, but in reality how important is that for most things? My goal wasn't really my birth certificate anyway, it was my license, but due to the way the court order was written I went ahead and had it done as it has simplified other things for me. But my feeling is that if it helps even one person in some way then it was worth the time I've spent sharing the information and if it does help someone then it was probably more effective than me personally being out marching in a parade somewhere.
But this isn't about me or what I have or haven't done. It's about the community in general. Yes I am grateful for what anyone has or continues to share/do for the transgender community and I would like to think that everyone else who has transitioned, is transitioning, or has even thought about transitioning, would also be grateful for this. However, to condemn anyone for choosing to remain private before/during/after their transition - well I simply cannot support that kind of thing and I think those that believe that should rethink their position as they may well be in a position at some point where the sacrifice(s) they might have to make to be completely open may not be worth it to them either.
I think with that I'll wrap this up, it's sort of meandered all over the place and that wasn't my intention, but I need to get back to work as I think I've used up the majority of my lunch time on this. As always thanks for reading. :)
Before I go I do want to share a recent photo. I haven't been out as much lately as it's been so very hot (among other things), and I'm still struggling with the new hair, but I hate not having a thumbnail on my posts so here goes.
- M
That being said, I will say that the impetus for the post did come from a couple of discussions I've taken part in recently on Google+. Actually it was really one specific conversation thread that I jumped into a week or two ago. Before I go on let me get a bit of a disclaimer out of the way:
While I strongly disagree with some of the opinions that were expressed in the discussion I took part in, I do respect those same opinions and the people who have them. Just because I do not agree with something or someone does not make me right or them wrong, and I really wish more people could have a debate and keep this in mind in lieu of letting it drift off into name-calling or other unpleasantness.With that out of the way the thing I took issue with was a comment (and I'm paraphrasing here intentionally) was along the lines that "being stealth was wrong". The actual words that were used were more inflammatory than that, but semantics aside this was the bottom line of the comment(s) that were made. *MY* opinion is that the decision to be "stealth", "completely open", or something in between, should be a decision left up to each individual person. None of us can possibly know the exact circumstances of anyone else's life and as such *I* feel it's very presumptuous to make the statement(s) that were made. I feel that anyone who transitions has to make at least some sacrifices in their lives, but for many being "completely open" would lead to sacrifices that aren't necessary such as the loss of employment or family/friends or so on and to automatically expect anyone who transitions to potentially make those sacrifices when they may not need to is wrong in my mind. Now as I said above, just because this is my opinion doesn't necessarily make it "right", but in this case it's definitely one opinion that I don't feel I would ever waver on.
As that discussion went on, the crux of the rationale for the opinion in question seemed to center around the fact that some post-transition friends of this person didn't come out and openly support a rally that was meant to benefit those who were pre/mid-transition. Don't get me wrong, I can understand how that would be frustrating, but to universally condemn those who didn't come out to provide support I felt was short-sighted and honestly wrong. I believe the reality to be that it's no different than a lot of other causes (perhaps almost all of them) - and that is when a person has a "dog in the fight" they are far more likely to be vocal about a given cause. In this case, those that are post-transition no longer really have that dog in the fight so to speak and as such probably aren't as likely to feel a need to rally for something that will not necessarily affect them. Don't take that the wrong way, there are plenty of people who are post-transition that feel compelled to be out and push for changes and I have an immense amount of respect for those people. But just because someone is not publicly active for a given cause/event (or even at all) in no way means that aren't still being supportive - either currently or previously.
I can not speak for anyone else, nor do I want to, but for *ME* I simply want to be accepted as a woman *first* and foremost. The fact that I'm "trans" vs "cis" ideally wouldn't matter. Now I'm not naive and I know there are times it will matter, but hopefully those times will continue to become less and less. I for one would not go to a public march/rally as that's simply not the kind of person that I am. However, I also did fight to legally change my gender on my birth certificate in this state pre-surgery despite the fact that the states statutes require that. While I wasn't the first person to do so and as such the path to do so was laid out for me - I still took the time to do it and I've shared the process and experience that I used to do so with anyone who's wanted to know about it both here and elsewhere. The process was slightly different for me (different part of the state) than it was the person who provided the original information to me so I've made my court paperwork available to anyone who's wanted it as well. Some (many? most?) probably don't care as there is a time and money element to this and reality is that the Federal government will change a gender marker without nearly as much hassle and once that's done a Passport is as good as (if not better than) a license for most things when it comes to ID and in some cases the Passport change has been good enough to get the state to change a marker on a license. Yes it's not a birth certificate change, but in reality how important is that for most things? My goal wasn't really my birth certificate anyway, it was my license, but due to the way the court order was written I went ahead and had it done as it has simplified other things for me. But my feeling is that if it helps even one person in some way then it was worth the time I've spent sharing the information and if it does help someone then it was probably more effective than me personally being out marching in a parade somewhere.
But this isn't about me or what I have or haven't done. It's about the community in general. Yes I am grateful for what anyone has or continues to share/do for the transgender community and I would like to think that everyone else who has transitioned, is transitioning, or has even thought about transitioning, would also be grateful for this. However, to condemn anyone for choosing to remain private before/during/after their transition - well I simply cannot support that kind of thing and I think those that believe that should rethink their position as they may well be in a position at some point where the sacrifice(s) they might have to make to be completely open may not be worth it to them either.
I think with that I'll wrap this up, it's sort of meandered all over the place and that wasn't my intention, but I need to get back to work as I think I've used up the majority of my lunch time on this. As always thanks for reading. :)
Before I go I do want to share a recent photo. I haven't been out as much lately as it's been so very hot (among other things), and I'm still struggling with the new hair, but I hate not having a thumbnail on my posts so here goes.
- M
Wednesday, August 20, 2014
Venting About Work....
Don't get me wrong, other than the lack of support for me wanting to transition I *really* do like my job for the most part. I'm definitely under-paid for my skill set and what I actually do and even worse under-appreciated, although I suspect that the same could probably said for the vast majority of people who may read this.
The under-paid part I can probably more readily accept than the other two things I mentioned as it is a (very) small company and as such resources tend to be more limited. Now that's not to say I'm happy about it as when I took the job a huge deal was made about "cost of living" where I live at and I accepted that point as it is simply cheaper here than where we are based out of; but the flip side to that is that I feel if you wanted to use that argument when negotiating a starting salary then you should at least ensure a cost of living raise each year which has not happened. In fact I think in seven plus years now I've had three raises. I will temper that by saying I have gotten a bonus in some years as well, which I am grateful for but none of those have equaled what a COL adjustment would have been and since they were bonuses and not raises there is no long term affect.
The two things that gnaw at me the most are the other two, and especially the fact that I do feel under-appreciated. In seven plus years I'm not sure that I've ever heard my boss flat out tell me that I do a good job - and if perhaps I've forgotten one or two then those would be the only one or two in that time. Now, I have heard from people we deal with that he does say I do a good job, but really would it be that hard to tell me himself? I spent a lot of years in hospitality and retail and the majority of that time I was in supervisory roles and this is one thing I prided myself in. When I had subordinates (or on occasion even superiors) do a good/great job I let them know they did and how much I appreciated it. For that matter even if the job wasn't good/great, but simply if the *effort* went "above and beyond" what the expectations were or even perhaps what the persons capabilities were I ensured I let them know just how much I appreciated that effort. It doesn't cost anything other than a few seconds of my time and I know *I* appreciate hearing those things so I have no reason to believe that the vast majority of people don't also appreciate it. Don't get me wrong, when I was in a position to give or even influence reviews/raises I made every effort to take care of those that deserved it (and a lot of times even those that may not deserve it, but simply needed it); but sometimes I wasn't in a position to do that so I at least wanted to express some appreciation/gratitude. I always thought that this kind of thing was important, although I suppose maybe I'm in the minority here - but even if I am shouldn't someone as a supervisor (and/or owner) be cognizant of what motivates their people and do what they can to encourage that? Yes I know some would say that my check should motivate me and it does - and as I've talked about before I give more than I'm compensated for by choice, but if you could do something that wouldn't cost anything but a few seconds of your time and get effort that you really weren't paying anything for why would you not do it? Just boggles my mind.
The other big issue is the transition issue and I think I've adequately covered that before so I won't delve into it very far. But for those that haven't read the early entries here let me simply say that when I broached it, well it did not go well. Instead of the first conversations being with me to see what could be worked out and/or how could this work - those conversations were calls to their lawyers to see their legal standing. This just crushed me to no end as I've bled for this company and to see things go down like that - well words cannot begin to express how I felt. I still bleed for the company and give them far more hours and effort than they pay me for, but these days it may only be 45 or 50 and not the 60, 70, or in some cases 80+ hours it was some weeks before this came up. Considering my interactions with anyone outside of our company are minimal at best (generally only via phone) I still fail to see why it had to be this way. I had even offered to present male for those rare occasions I was going to have to be face to face with somebody (generally once a year on average, although in the last 12 months it's been 4 or 5 times), but that didn't budge them. So I made some less than desirable choices and even had some spirited debate over those choices with my therapist Kelly when it came time to write my letter for my orchiectomy (which I didn't need based upon my choice of surgeons, but I still wanted it) and will probably do so again when it's time to get my SRS letter from not only her but a second one as well. But my families well being was more important to me than taking a stand with work and there is/was some selfishness involved as I do like working remotely; but eventually this will come to a head - hopefully "post SRS", but we'll see.
But none of that is really the reason for this rant, it's actually far simpler than any of those things. It's about "time" and "communication". When we did a "rewrite" of our apps a few years ago I got the installer routines pawned off on me. I knew nothing about how to do that and had to teach myself. I didn't ask to drop several thousand dollars in fees and expenses to go sit in a formal class, I simply asked to get a book and I'd figure it out myself; but even that got screwed up as instead of sending me to get what I thought I needed I got sent an outdated book on the product (InstallShield if it matters) and had to muddle my way through that. I spent lots and lots of hours figuring things out and was able to get installers built; but even then it became a fiasco as while we really have two products, one of them actually has multiple pieces and in the "olden days" a single installer installed all of those pieces. Well for reasons that I still don't know or understand to this day he wanted separate installers built so I went from two installs to four and actually double that as instead of utilizing the ability to have a unified installer to do a full install and/or update he had always done separate installers for updates so now I was at eight. Over time we've added some options to our software and as of now including maintenance packs and now some internal software (which is really what has me on a rant today) - I'm over 20 install routines to stay on top of.
What makes it worse is part of the reason for some many installers is that the people installing our software - and these are NOT end-users, but rather re-sellers that have been trained - cannot follow documentation. The documentation is something that was an initial responsibility of mine and something I take great pride in. I came from a re-seller and one of the selling points when we elected to take on the product that I now document, support, and help develop was it's documentation. I feel I've made it even better than it was and when it comes to installation it is documented step-by-step with screen shots and specific instructions so that literally *anybody* reading this could do it without *any* prior knowledge of the product. I literally spent days and days recently delving into the depths of InstallShield and InstallScript to basically "idiot proof" things because these people simply refuse to read and follow directions. The part that really gets me was the rationale my boss gave for doing this - well the documentation is "x pages" and that's too long. Well hey it's that long because *you told me to do it that way* and if you remove all the screen shots and such it's not really that long; but whatever, I sucked it up, figured it out, and made it happen.
However, even that isn't the crux of what has me agitated, it's what has happened the last two days. We've went to an internal app for licensing purposes which I still foresee being a disaster, but that's neither here nor there. What is the issue is that I have spent two days creating separate installers for the server piece of this licensing app and the client piece (again why do we need separate ones???). We're talking about a *single* server and maybe 3-4 clients total. This app could have been put in place without an installer in perhaps 15 minutes on *all machines total*, but instead I was up until 3am last night finishing it up. To make it worse, despite multiple conversations beforehand, he went and did a couple of things that meant I had to write both pieces first and then start testing and as anybody that works in software development knows there is little worse than multiple things being changed at once when it comes to testing. Since he chose to do that despite what we talked about I had to do both installers first and then start testing which made it far more time consuming to debug the few issues that came up; but hey it was my time not his, so I guess it didn't matter.
Now today my focus was to me updating the other installers for a pending beta release which I started on, and for some pieces that's not a simple update, but recreating from scratch (and yes there is a reason for that, but it's really beyond the scope of this blog entry). So I'm in the middle of that and now he wants me to go back and write update routines for this internal app because he's chosen to make changes to the code 24 hours later. When we discussed this weeks/months ago the intention was that we would not only not have installers for the internal app, but that if we needed to update the code we'd simply manually deploy it. Had if I had known yesterday that he had changed his mind I could have either chosen to create installers that would do both the initial install and the updates; but now it's too late for that as he's installed it on the machines in question so I have no choice but to write two more separate installers to do what he wants. I guess I shouldn't care as I get paid the same regardless of what I work on; but what is going to happen is what always happens - I'll work on this and once it's done he'll start wondering why the other thing(s) aren't done. And I really don't get that as the things I do are all things he has done at one point or another so he should understand, but yet he doesn't seem to and it boggles my mind.
In years past I wouldn't have let things like this bother me and I would have simply turned this into one of those 60/70/80+ hour work weeks to get everything done as he wants. But considering the above mentioned "gripes" I have, I'm hard pressed to sacrifice my personal life (such as it is) anymore. Yes he'll get his 40 hours, and really more like 50+ this week, but why on earth should it be anymore than that? And before somebody says 40 should be enough, it probably should, but I make considerations that I have a *zero commute* and figure for that I can give a little bit of time "off the clock" (although being salary there is no clock per se). But a little bit of time is one thing, a "second work week" is another and I really don't feel that it's appreciated, so the motivation to do something like that any longer is really not there. Maybe I shouldn't have written all of this as I'm sure at some point it's going to come back and bite me in the backside, but I can't help it. I do a good - no great job - and I work long and hard; but at some point there has to be some reason to continue to go "above and beyond" and frankly I can no longer find one where I'm at today which is a real shame. I guess at some point I shall have to "seek life elsewhere", although perhaps that will be a good thing when/if it happens as hopefully I can land at a larger company as I've become disillusioned with small companies. I always had this idea that a small company (especially one this small) should be more like a "family" - and perhaps this is his idea of a "family", but it's not mine and that's a shame. I'd rather put up with large company issues than continue to make the sacrifices to work at a small company and be treated as I have been.
I guess I'll cut this off now, it's probably come off as a self-serving rant and for that I apologize, but I needed to vent a bit and since J is at work this was the best option for that. If anybody has stuck around this far, thanks for indulging my rant. :)
- M
The under-paid part I can probably more readily accept than the other two things I mentioned as it is a (very) small company and as such resources tend to be more limited. Now that's not to say I'm happy about it as when I took the job a huge deal was made about "cost of living" where I live at and I accepted that point as it is simply cheaper here than where we are based out of; but the flip side to that is that I feel if you wanted to use that argument when negotiating a starting salary then you should at least ensure a cost of living raise each year which has not happened. In fact I think in seven plus years now I've had three raises. I will temper that by saying I have gotten a bonus in some years as well, which I am grateful for but none of those have equaled what a COL adjustment would have been and since they were bonuses and not raises there is no long term affect.
The two things that gnaw at me the most are the other two, and especially the fact that I do feel under-appreciated. In seven plus years I'm not sure that I've ever heard my boss flat out tell me that I do a good job - and if perhaps I've forgotten one or two then those would be the only one or two in that time. Now, I have heard from people we deal with that he does say I do a good job, but really would it be that hard to tell me himself? I spent a lot of years in hospitality and retail and the majority of that time I was in supervisory roles and this is one thing I prided myself in. When I had subordinates (or on occasion even superiors) do a good/great job I let them know they did and how much I appreciated it. For that matter even if the job wasn't good/great, but simply if the *effort* went "above and beyond" what the expectations were or even perhaps what the persons capabilities were I ensured I let them know just how much I appreciated that effort. It doesn't cost anything other than a few seconds of my time and I know *I* appreciate hearing those things so I have no reason to believe that the vast majority of people don't also appreciate it. Don't get me wrong, when I was in a position to give or even influence reviews/raises I made every effort to take care of those that deserved it (and a lot of times even those that may not deserve it, but simply needed it); but sometimes I wasn't in a position to do that so I at least wanted to express some appreciation/gratitude. I always thought that this kind of thing was important, although I suppose maybe I'm in the minority here - but even if I am shouldn't someone as a supervisor (and/or owner) be cognizant of what motivates their people and do what they can to encourage that? Yes I know some would say that my check should motivate me and it does - and as I've talked about before I give more than I'm compensated for by choice, but if you could do something that wouldn't cost anything but a few seconds of your time and get effort that you really weren't paying anything for why would you not do it? Just boggles my mind.
The other big issue is the transition issue and I think I've adequately covered that before so I won't delve into it very far. But for those that haven't read the early entries here let me simply say that when I broached it, well it did not go well. Instead of the first conversations being with me to see what could be worked out and/or how could this work - those conversations were calls to their lawyers to see their legal standing. This just crushed me to no end as I've bled for this company and to see things go down like that - well words cannot begin to express how I felt. I still bleed for the company and give them far more hours and effort than they pay me for, but these days it may only be 45 or 50 and not the 60, 70, or in some cases 80+ hours it was some weeks before this came up. Considering my interactions with anyone outside of our company are minimal at best (generally only via phone) I still fail to see why it had to be this way. I had even offered to present male for those rare occasions I was going to have to be face to face with somebody (generally once a year on average, although in the last 12 months it's been 4 or 5 times), but that didn't budge them. So I made some less than desirable choices and even had some spirited debate over those choices with my therapist Kelly when it came time to write my letter for my orchiectomy (which I didn't need based upon my choice of surgeons, but I still wanted it) and will probably do so again when it's time to get my SRS letter from not only her but a second one as well. But my families well being was more important to me than taking a stand with work and there is/was some selfishness involved as I do like working remotely; but eventually this will come to a head - hopefully "post SRS", but we'll see.
But none of that is really the reason for this rant, it's actually far simpler than any of those things. It's about "time" and "communication". When we did a "rewrite" of our apps a few years ago I got the installer routines pawned off on me. I knew nothing about how to do that and had to teach myself. I didn't ask to drop several thousand dollars in fees and expenses to go sit in a formal class, I simply asked to get a book and I'd figure it out myself; but even that got screwed up as instead of sending me to get what I thought I needed I got sent an outdated book on the product (InstallShield if it matters) and had to muddle my way through that. I spent lots and lots of hours figuring things out and was able to get installers built; but even then it became a fiasco as while we really have two products, one of them actually has multiple pieces and in the "olden days" a single installer installed all of those pieces. Well for reasons that I still don't know or understand to this day he wanted separate installers built so I went from two installs to four and actually double that as instead of utilizing the ability to have a unified installer to do a full install and/or update he had always done separate installers for updates so now I was at eight. Over time we've added some options to our software and as of now including maintenance packs and now some internal software (which is really what has me on a rant today) - I'm over 20 install routines to stay on top of.
What makes it worse is part of the reason for some many installers is that the people installing our software - and these are NOT end-users, but rather re-sellers that have been trained - cannot follow documentation. The documentation is something that was an initial responsibility of mine and something I take great pride in. I came from a re-seller and one of the selling points when we elected to take on the product that I now document, support, and help develop was it's documentation. I feel I've made it even better than it was and when it comes to installation it is documented step-by-step with screen shots and specific instructions so that literally *anybody* reading this could do it without *any* prior knowledge of the product. I literally spent days and days recently delving into the depths of InstallShield and InstallScript to basically "idiot proof" things because these people simply refuse to read and follow directions. The part that really gets me was the rationale my boss gave for doing this - well the documentation is "x pages" and that's too long. Well hey it's that long because *you told me to do it that way* and if you remove all the screen shots and such it's not really that long; but whatever, I sucked it up, figured it out, and made it happen.
However, even that isn't the crux of what has me agitated, it's what has happened the last two days. We've went to an internal app for licensing purposes which I still foresee being a disaster, but that's neither here nor there. What is the issue is that I have spent two days creating separate installers for the server piece of this licensing app and the client piece (again why do we need separate ones???). We're talking about a *single* server and maybe 3-4 clients total. This app could have been put in place without an installer in perhaps 15 minutes on *all machines total*, but instead I was up until 3am last night finishing it up. To make it worse, despite multiple conversations beforehand, he went and did a couple of things that meant I had to write both pieces first and then start testing and as anybody that works in software development knows there is little worse than multiple things being changed at once when it comes to testing. Since he chose to do that despite what we talked about I had to do both installers first and then start testing which made it far more time consuming to debug the few issues that came up; but hey it was my time not his, so I guess it didn't matter.
Now today my focus was to me updating the other installers for a pending beta release which I started on, and for some pieces that's not a simple update, but recreating from scratch (and yes there is a reason for that, but it's really beyond the scope of this blog entry). So I'm in the middle of that and now he wants me to go back and write update routines for this internal app because he's chosen to make changes to the code 24 hours later. When we discussed this weeks/months ago the intention was that we would not only not have installers for the internal app, but that if we needed to update the code we'd simply manually deploy it. Had if I had known yesterday that he had changed his mind I could have either chosen to create installers that would do both the initial install and the updates; but now it's too late for that as he's installed it on the machines in question so I have no choice but to write two more separate installers to do what he wants. I guess I shouldn't care as I get paid the same regardless of what I work on; but what is going to happen is what always happens - I'll work on this and once it's done he'll start wondering why the other thing(s) aren't done. And I really don't get that as the things I do are all things he has done at one point or another so he should understand, but yet he doesn't seem to and it boggles my mind.
In years past I wouldn't have let things like this bother me and I would have simply turned this into one of those 60/70/80+ hour work weeks to get everything done as he wants. But considering the above mentioned "gripes" I have, I'm hard pressed to sacrifice my personal life (such as it is) anymore. Yes he'll get his 40 hours, and really more like 50+ this week, but why on earth should it be anymore than that? And before somebody says 40 should be enough, it probably should, but I make considerations that I have a *zero commute* and figure for that I can give a little bit of time "off the clock" (although being salary there is no clock per se). But a little bit of time is one thing, a "second work week" is another and I really don't feel that it's appreciated, so the motivation to do something like that any longer is really not there. Maybe I shouldn't have written all of this as I'm sure at some point it's going to come back and bite me in the backside, but I can't help it. I do a good - no great job - and I work long and hard; but at some point there has to be some reason to continue to go "above and beyond" and frankly I can no longer find one where I'm at today which is a real shame. I guess at some point I shall have to "seek life elsewhere", although perhaps that will be a good thing when/if it happens as hopefully I can land at a larger company as I've become disillusioned with small companies. I always had this idea that a small company (especially one this small) should be more like a "family" - and perhaps this is his idea of a "family", but it's not mine and that's a shame. I'd rather put up with large company issues than continue to make the sacrifices to work at a small company and be treated as I have been.
I guess I'll cut this off now, it's probably come off as a self-serving rant and for that I apologize, but I needed to vent a bit and since J is at work this was the best option for that. If anybody has stuck around this far, thanks for indulging my rant. :)
- M
Friday, August 15, 2014
How My Hobbies Have Changed Since Transitioning...
Before I chose to transition my hobbies were fairly simple. I love to read, although I don't do it nearly as much as I used to. I used to love to play tennis and shoot baskets, but over the years as I put on weight those things became things I no longer enjoyed, and in the case of tennis you need someone to play with. There were some games I enjoyed, Civilization III being probably the one I played most. I'd fuss around on the Xbox 360 a bit (Trials HD and Trials Evolution being my favorite time killers), and so on. As far as sports, well I followed the local teams quite a bit - the Rams, Cardinals, and Blues, as well as the Missouri Tigers (usually basketball and football) on occasion.
Since my transition my hobbies have changed a bit. I still read on occasion, but even less than before as it's really an unsocial activity when it comes down to it and I'd rather be doing something else for the most part. I also don't watch much in the way of sports any longer - I make an effort to catch the Rams if they are on, but the Cardinals and Blues - well I couldn't tell you the last time I watched a full game of either outside of the playoffs; same with Mizzou. The Xbox - well I barely turn it on anymore, if not for the fact that M2 has his own and there are two community ones in the game room, I'd put my elsewhere, but for now it (and it's jtag'd twin stay up here).
While most of those hobbies seem to have went by the wayside, I have picked up some new ones. Shopping being first and foremost, but me still being me I hate to spend money so I try not to go all that much, although the grocery store provides sort of a happy medium for my desire to be out shopping. Plus it plays into one of my newer hobbies and that is cooking. I'm by no means some gourmet, for the most part I stick to simpler recipes, both out of necessity and the fact that I have some picky eaters, but regardless I enjoy it and I've turned out some stuff that is really good - including a baked spaghetti last night that J said was good, and M commented on it not only last night, but also today told me how good it was when she reheated it. That is totally out of the ordinary for her, so she must have really liked it which felt good. That's not to say I don't have things that are less than good, but J and M are usually troopers and will at least make an effort to eat whatever I come up with which is appreciated.
Now while I consider cooking to be a hobby to an extent, it's also necessary for us to eat so it's not a true hobby for me. However, crochet is. I'm not sure why I picked it up, I remember shopping at a Wal-Mart with J and M and we ended up in the crafting aisle for some reason and I saw a little starter kit and thought I might like to try it. I actually sent J back a couple of days later to get the kit and I started teaching myself to crochet. Early attempts weren't great:
That heart was the most successful of the bunch. However, over time I got a little better, although my "color choices" weren't always great as is evidenced by my first attempt at a scarf which came out looking like a piece of bacon:
I moved on to scrunchies and hair bows since I thought I'd be able to use those myself - although it turned out that I didn't have long enough hair to do so; although J and M have worn some on occasions. Here's an example of one:
And another one:
In fact as I sit here typing this I'm working on a scrunch for M right now. It's a little more involved than the ones above, but hopefully will come out.
As to why I like crochet, I think it really comes down to the fact that it's sort of a tedious task and for somebody like me that's actually a good thing. I can sort of "zone out" for a while and just count stitches and such. Plus I think it plays to the submissive part of me as it's a very repetitive task and those are things that have frustrated me in the past.
Well I'm not sure that this post was really what I envisioned, but what's done is done, so I'll go with that. Have a great weekend.
- M
Since my transition my hobbies have changed a bit. I still read on occasion, but even less than before as it's really an unsocial activity when it comes down to it and I'd rather be doing something else for the most part. I also don't watch much in the way of sports any longer - I make an effort to catch the Rams if they are on, but the Cardinals and Blues - well I couldn't tell you the last time I watched a full game of either outside of the playoffs; same with Mizzou. The Xbox - well I barely turn it on anymore, if not for the fact that M2 has his own and there are two community ones in the game room, I'd put my elsewhere, but for now it (and it's jtag'd twin stay up here).
While most of those hobbies seem to have went by the wayside, I have picked up some new ones. Shopping being first and foremost, but me still being me I hate to spend money so I try not to go all that much, although the grocery store provides sort of a happy medium for my desire to be out shopping. Plus it plays into one of my newer hobbies and that is cooking. I'm by no means some gourmet, for the most part I stick to simpler recipes, both out of necessity and the fact that I have some picky eaters, but regardless I enjoy it and I've turned out some stuff that is really good - including a baked spaghetti last night that J said was good, and M commented on it not only last night, but also today told me how good it was when she reheated it. That is totally out of the ordinary for her, so she must have really liked it which felt good. That's not to say I don't have things that are less than good, but J and M are usually troopers and will at least make an effort to eat whatever I come up with which is appreciated.
Now while I consider cooking to be a hobby to an extent, it's also necessary for us to eat so it's not a true hobby for me. However, crochet is. I'm not sure why I picked it up, I remember shopping at a Wal-Mart with J and M and we ended up in the crafting aisle for some reason and I saw a little starter kit and thought I might like to try it. I actually sent J back a couple of days later to get the kit and I started teaching myself to crochet. Early attempts weren't great:
That heart was the most successful of the bunch. However, over time I got a little better, although my "color choices" weren't always great as is evidenced by my first attempt at a scarf which came out looking like a piece of bacon:
I moved on to scrunchies and hair bows since I thought I'd be able to use those myself - although it turned out that I didn't have long enough hair to do so; although J and M have worn some on occasions. Here's an example of one:
And another one:
In fact as I sit here typing this I'm working on a scrunch for M right now. It's a little more involved than the ones above, but hopefully will come out.
As to why I like crochet, I think it really comes down to the fact that it's sort of a tedious task and for somebody like me that's actually a good thing. I can sort of "zone out" for a while and just count stitches and such. Plus I think it plays to the submissive part of me as it's a very repetitive task and those are things that have frustrated me in the past.
Well I'm not sure that this post was really what I envisioned, but what's done is done, so I'll go with that. Have a great weekend.
- M
Sunday, August 10, 2014
Picking Your Battles....
When I started this blog my intention was to basically "document" my experiences transitioning, both for myself to look back upon, and hopefully for others who might find something useful from my thoughts and experiences. Whether or not the latter has been a success, I do believe the former has been and continues to do so. I would strongly recommend that anyone who chooses to transition keeps some sort of blog, journal, diary, or something - be it public like this or private. The same goes with copious amounts of pictures of yourself during your transition.
That being said, I initially had no intention of writing this weekend beyond my "hot chocolate fiasco" that I posted on Friday. However, I've gotten the lawn mowed and trimmed, the grocery shopping done, the laundry is in the washer/dryer, and I've got my 60+ miles walking in for the week; so I thought I'd write something. I was struggling for a topic that I could get into, so I went to browse the various Transgender subreddits over at reddit.com and one jumped out at me. I won't get into the specific post that stood out, but rather my thoughts on that issue.
I'm a firm believe that in life you simply cannot win every battle - maybe disagreement is a better term in this day and age, but as I'm sure anyone who reads these entries knows by now I'm not exactly "politically correct" all that often, so we'll stick with "battles". This can relate to relationships with your SO, family, friends, or even strangers; work; and anything else, but I'm going to focus on the first two entries there as for me at least those are the two most common.
So lets start with work. For those of us who have to work (and can work), unless we own our own business (which I do not) you will work for someone. I've worked for companies (very) large and (very) small - although nothing really "in the middle". By very large, I mean companies that are world-wide, and by very small I mean a handful of employees. Regardless of the size, there are a few constants and among those are that you are simply not always going to get your way. Perhaps that's not the best way to put it, but reality is that there are simply times when somebody makes a decision/policy that you simply believe is wrong or inappropriate for whatever reason. When that happens you have to make a choice to either go along with the decision/policy or to take a stand and potentially accept the consequences that might well come from that stand.
I recall a time when I was working as a store manager for a very large pizza chain - one might even call it a "Hut". My area manager at the time - who I really liked and is arguably the second best "boss" I've ever had - asked me to take a transfer from another store. She told me he was having issues with that store manager and was trying to find him another store. He was certified as a shift manager, but preferred to deliver pizzas, and had semi-limited availability. I really didn't need someone at the time, and definitely not someone who I got the impression would be a "headache", but I agreed to the transfer as I knew she wouldn't ask if she didn't really need me to do it. Well as it turned out most of my staff knew the young man and I was quickly informed that his "issues" with the other store manager revolved around his sexuality. Now this was about 20 years ago or so, but even then I could care less about his sexuality - all I cared about was if he could do a good job or not and he really did do a great job for me. I took an immediately liking to him and really didn't understand how he could have issues with anyone unless they flat out had a problem with an "out of the closet homosexual man" which he was.
All was going fine for several months until my area manager got promoted - she was a "trainee" and had been handling a "mini-area" of a handful of stores and now she was getting a full area and our store was going back to our original grouping, but with a new area manager. This area manager (and our new market manager) were coming from a different market that had been sold off to a franchisee and we knew very little about him. Now this guy came in and immediately rubbed me the wrong way. I had an older store and truthfully my people were not as "clean cut" as I would have liked, but they worked hard and I appreciated and respected that. We ran great numbers across the board and I'll admit I pushed a few things such as I paid any of my shift managers their "manager rate" even if they delivered for example as I felt they deserved that even though it wasn't technically company policy. I figured it was good for morale and as long as I was making my labor cost why should it matter. I knew this area manager was going to be a handful when he came in one Friday just as dinner rush was starting and the only thing he could find "wrong" with the store was that my manager corkboard was "messy". Now it was out of customer view and while to someone who gave it a cursory glance it probably did look cluttered, but everything that was on it was relevant. I was amazed that he had nothing better to do but nitpick that, but I dutifully took 5 minutes to "clean it up" for him. That battle wasn't worth fighting, I just wanted him out of there so we could have a good night.
Soon after though a battle did come up that I felt was worth fighting and I did fight it. Now it ended up leading to me leaving the company sooner than I would have liked - although I really didn't mind as I was in the process of getting my Microsoft MCSE and was already looking for a new job anyway. This same area manager came in one Saturday afternoon - I normally had myself there, a "cook", and two drivers at that time of day and one of the drivers was the transfer I mentioned above. Once my closing shift manager came in, the area manager wanted me to go outside and have a chat since the office in the store was not private - so he walked me up the strip mall and had us sit down on a couch outside a Rent-A-Center. He flat out told me to fire the young man. I sat there for a few seconds trying to think as to what he had done and I couldn't imagine what that could be so I asked - I'll never forget the response. "He's gay".... To this day I don't think I've ever been that angry over a work issue - not even over my own issues with my current company and me transitioning. I calmly got up, told him I had no intention of firing the young man and that unless he had something else I needed to get back to work as we were getting busy.
There was no "direct" fallout from that, but the area manager made it his mission to make me miserable and I finally couldn't take it any longer so I left - it's been the only job I've ever quit without giving notice and to this day I think it was the right thing to do - both taking the stand for my shift manager and leaving with no notice. Unfortunately once I left they did end up running the poor young man out anyway, but I felt I had done what I could. Perhaps I could have or should have made more of an issue about it, but the area manager had been very careful to have this discussion "one on one" and out of earshot of anyone else so it would have been my word against his and there was no way I would have won that.
Boy I can't believe I just spent 4-5 paragraphs on that, this is getting far longer than I intended, so lets move on to personal life as that was really the crux of what I wanted to talk about. I'm going to focus on relationships with a SO - in my case, my lovely wife J. I'm sure there are people out there who can say they've never had a disagreement/argument with their SO, M's grandparents used to say that - but truthfully I simply do not believe that. It's human nature to disagree at least sometimes and unfortunately sometimes those thing do end up in an argument or the like. When it comes to J - there are plenty of things she does that get on my nerves. As an example she tends to leave water all over her side of the bathroom vanity and on the floor when she showers/gets ready to go somewhere. I've mentioned it a couple of times and she's gotten better for a day or two, but then it starts up again. The old me would have turned it into a fight multiple times by now, but these days - well it's just not a battle I need to win, much less have. So if I see water on the sink or floor, I simply take a few seconds and wipe it up. There are other battles that I do feel I need to win - an example would be her sleeping. All too often she wants to spend too much time with me on a work night. I don't tend to sleep as much as she does in general and my commute is from the bed to my desk - her's is easily 30-45 minutes each way so even if we work the same days her days are longer (plus her shifts are longer) so simply put there are times she should be in bed and doesn't go because she's trying to spend time with me. This carries over to her days off sometimes as she's so tired from not resting during her work days that she ends up needing to sleep away chunks of her days off. To me she's cutting off her nose to spite her face with regards to that, and frankly she shouldn't be driving at all, much less some of the back roads she uses - when she's not rested. She's too important to me to lose her to a foolish accident because she's not as mentally sharp as she should be due to lack of sleep. So those battles, I do fight, and I do fight to win. I'd rather have an argument over that than to let her risk her well being just so we can "get along" at the time.
That's really the bottom line here, there are some battles that are worth fighting, there are some that - well they just aren't worth it. To me the key to a relationship - be it personally or professionally - is to know which battles are which and act accordingly. Unfortunately it's a skill that I often find lacking in people, especially younger people - perhaps it's lack of experience on their part, perhaps it's just that times are different, I don't know.
Well I've rambled on far longer than I intended to, and really I'm not sure that this post was what I envisioned - but it'll have to do as I need to flip the laundry around and get a quick pre-dinner walk in, so as always thanks for reading.
- M
That being said, I initially had no intention of writing this weekend beyond my "hot chocolate fiasco" that I posted on Friday. However, I've gotten the lawn mowed and trimmed, the grocery shopping done, the laundry is in the washer/dryer, and I've got my 60+ miles walking in for the week; so I thought I'd write something. I was struggling for a topic that I could get into, so I went to browse the various Transgender subreddits over at reddit.com and one jumped out at me. I won't get into the specific post that stood out, but rather my thoughts on that issue.
I'm a firm believe that in life you simply cannot win every battle - maybe disagreement is a better term in this day and age, but as I'm sure anyone who reads these entries knows by now I'm not exactly "politically correct" all that often, so we'll stick with "battles". This can relate to relationships with your SO, family, friends, or even strangers; work; and anything else, but I'm going to focus on the first two entries there as for me at least those are the two most common.
So lets start with work. For those of us who have to work (and can work), unless we own our own business (which I do not) you will work for someone. I've worked for companies (very) large and (very) small - although nothing really "in the middle". By very large, I mean companies that are world-wide, and by very small I mean a handful of employees. Regardless of the size, there are a few constants and among those are that you are simply not always going to get your way. Perhaps that's not the best way to put it, but reality is that there are simply times when somebody makes a decision/policy that you simply believe is wrong or inappropriate for whatever reason. When that happens you have to make a choice to either go along with the decision/policy or to take a stand and potentially accept the consequences that might well come from that stand.
I recall a time when I was working as a store manager for a very large pizza chain - one might even call it a "Hut". My area manager at the time - who I really liked and is arguably the second best "boss" I've ever had - asked me to take a transfer from another store. She told me he was having issues with that store manager and was trying to find him another store. He was certified as a shift manager, but preferred to deliver pizzas, and had semi-limited availability. I really didn't need someone at the time, and definitely not someone who I got the impression would be a "headache", but I agreed to the transfer as I knew she wouldn't ask if she didn't really need me to do it. Well as it turned out most of my staff knew the young man and I was quickly informed that his "issues" with the other store manager revolved around his sexuality. Now this was about 20 years ago or so, but even then I could care less about his sexuality - all I cared about was if he could do a good job or not and he really did do a great job for me. I took an immediately liking to him and really didn't understand how he could have issues with anyone unless they flat out had a problem with an "out of the closet homosexual man" which he was.
All was going fine for several months until my area manager got promoted - she was a "trainee" and had been handling a "mini-area" of a handful of stores and now she was getting a full area and our store was going back to our original grouping, but with a new area manager. This area manager (and our new market manager) were coming from a different market that had been sold off to a franchisee and we knew very little about him. Now this guy came in and immediately rubbed me the wrong way. I had an older store and truthfully my people were not as "clean cut" as I would have liked, but they worked hard and I appreciated and respected that. We ran great numbers across the board and I'll admit I pushed a few things such as I paid any of my shift managers their "manager rate" even if they delivered for example as I felt they deserved that even though it wasn't technically company policy. I figured it was good for morale and as long as I was making my labor cost why should it matter. I knew this area manager was going to be a handful when he came in one Friday just as dinner rush was starting and the only thing he could find "wrong" with the store was that my manager corkboard was "messy". Now it was out of customer view and while to someone who gave it a cursory glance it probably did look cluttered, but everything that was on it was relevant. I was amazed that he had nothing better to do but nitpick that, but I dutifully took 5 minutes to "clean it up" for him. That battle wasn't worth fighting, I just wanted him out of there so we could have a good night.
Soon after though a battle did come up that I felt was worth fighting and I did fight it. Now it ended up leading to me leaving the company sooner than I would have liked - although I really didn't mind as I was in the process of getting my Microsoft MCSE and was already looking for a new job anyway. This same area manager came in one Saturday afternoon - I normally had myself there, a "cook", and two drivers at that time of day and one of the drivers was the transfer I mentioned above. Once my closing shift manager came in, the area manager wanted me to go outside and have a chat since the office in the store was not private - so he walked me up the strip mall and had us sit down on a couch outside a Rent-A-Center. He flat out told me to fire the young man. I sat there for a few seconds trying to think as to what he had done and I couldn't imagine what that could be so I asked - I'll never forget the response. "He's gay".... To this day I don't think I've ever been that angry over a work issue - not even over my own issues with my current company and me transitioning. I calmly got up, told him I had no intention of firing the young man and that unless he had something else I needed to get back to work as we were getting busy.
There was no "direct" fallout from that, but the area manager made it his mission to make me miserable and I finally couldn't take it any longer so I left - it's been the only job I've ever quit without giving notice and to this day I think it was the right thing to do - both taking the stand for my shift manager and leaving with no notice. Unfortunately once I left they did end up running the poor young man out anyway, but I felt I had done what I could. Perhaps I could have or should have made more of an issue about it, but the area manager had been very careful to have this discussion "one on one" and out of earshot of anyone else so it would have been my word against his and there was no way I would have won that.
Boy I can't believe I just spent 4-5 paragraphs on that, this is getting far longer than I intended, so lets move on to personal life as that was really the crux of what I wanted to talk about. I'm going to focus on relationships with a SO - in my case, my lovely wife J. I'm sure there are people out there who can say they've never had a disagreement/argument with their SO, M's grandparents used to say that - but truthfully I simply do not believe that. It's human nature to disagree at least sometimes and unfortunately sometimes those thing do end up in an argument or the like. When it comes to J - there are plenty of things she does that get on my nerves. As an example she tends to leave water all over her side of the bathroom vanity and on the floor when she showers/gets ready to go somewhere. I've mentioned it a couple of times and she's gotten better for a day or two, but then it starts up again. The old me would have turned it into a fight multiple times by now, but these days - well it's just not a battle I need to win, much less have. So if I see water on the sink or floor, I simply take a few seconds and wipe it up. There are other battles that I do feel I need to win - an example would be her sleeping. All too often she wants to spend too much time with me on a work night. I don't tend to sleep as much as she does in general and my commute is from the bed to my desk - her's is easily 30-45 minutes each way so even if we work the same days her days are longer (plus her shifts are longer) so simply put there are times she should be in bed and doesn't go because she's trying to spend time with me. This carries over to her days off sometimes as she's so tired from not resting during her work days that she ends up needing to sleep away chunks of her days off. To me she's cutting off her nose to spite her face with regards to that, and frankly she shouldn't be driving at all, much less some of the back roads she uses - when she's not rested. She's too important to me to lose her to a foolish accident because she's not as mentally sharp as she should be due to lack of sleep. So those battles, I do fight, and I do fight to win. I'd rather have an argument over that than to let her risk her well being just so we can "get along" at the time.
That's really the bottom line here, there are some battles that are worth fighting, there are some that - well they just aren't worth it. To me the key to a relationship - be it personally or professionally - is to know which battles are which and act accordingly. Unfortunately it's a skill that I often find lacking in people, especially younger people - perhaps it's lack of experience on their part, perhaps it's just that times are different, I don't know.
Well I've rambled on far longer than I intended to, and really I'm not sure that this post was what I envisioned - but it'll have to do as I need to flip the laundry around and get a quick pre-dinner walk in, so as always thanks for reading.
- M
Saturday, August 9, 2014
How *NOT* To Make Hot Chocolate...
I thought a little humor might be in order this weekend, so I'm going to share a story from this past Christmas Eve. J had asked me to go down and make her some hot chocolate. I decided to use M's Keurig for it. I managed to
turn it into a 21 step process that went basically like this:
1) Find a Hot Chocolate K-Cup in the mess of K-Cup's in the pantry.
1) Find a Hot Chocolate K-Cup in the mess of K-Cup's in the pantry.
2) Discard old K-Cup from the machine and put the new K-Cup in.
3) Five minutes later after pushing every button on the machine multiple times, multiple buttons at the same time, holding buttons down, opening and closing the reservoir, taking the K-Cup back out and putting it back in, etc. Rather than go ask J how to use it, instead head to downstairs computer to get on the Internet to figure out how to turn the thing on.
4) Armed with the knowledge of a power button the back right of the machine head back to kitchen.
5) Turn on Keurig - SUCCESS....
6) Stand there and watch it tell me it's not ready for several minutes while wondering if it would've been easier to microwave some water and use some old fashioned hot cocoa mix.
7) Machine says it's ready, but now I need to guess at the cup size. After pondering that briefly settle on a cup size and hit the button to brew.
8) Stand there for 2+ minutes while nothing happens.
9) Again, instead of going to ask what I'm doing wrong, head BACK to the computer to do more Internet research.
10) Determine that maybe I messed up something back in step 3.
11) Head back to the Keurig and start checking everything.
12) After opening and closing the K-Cup lid, and trying to brew again I now have a stream of warm chocolate liquid going into the cup.
13) Get concerned when the stream of warm chocolate liquid turns to water while coffee mug isn't full.
14) Get more concerned when stream of water stops with cup only 2/3rds full despite picking the next to largest cup size.
15) Hit "brew" again and watch more water fill cup with no signs of stopping.
16) Frantically get into cabinet to find another mug to take the excess water.
17) Watch it fill up partway while wondering if the original cup of Hot Chocolate is alright or not.
18) Ponder throwing out Hot Chocolate and starting over, then realize if the one I have is wrong then the another would likely be wrong as well.
19) Decide to take the Hot Chocolate upstairs to J and let her try it while neglecting to mention anything from the first 18 steps above.
20) J says the Hot Chocolate is fine (as to whether it really was or not, who knows), and then proceeds to be thoroughly amused at the fact that I can't figure out a simple kitchen gadget.
21) I now thoroughly humbled return downstairs to turn the Keurig off and vow to never use it again.
- M
Friday, August 8, 2014
Transitioning As A Submissive....
While far and away the most popular post in this blog was the one that I detailed J and I's trip to Michigan for my orchiectomy, after that the posts I've made regarding J and I's attempt at living a Dominant/Submissive (D/S) lifestyle are consistently among the most viewed posts here. I will say that's a bit of a surprise for me as in my opinion the majority of the content of those posts is pretty bland. Part of that is simply "by design" as I have another blog that is dedicated to that topic; although I find that I only tend to write in that one when J requires it. I prefer to use this blog to express my own thoughts and normally those thoughts tend towards things other than the D/S dynamic of our relationship. That being said since those posts do seem to have more than their fair share of activity and since I really wanted to post something for the weekend and was lacking a suitable topic I thought now would be a good time to delve into our relationship dynamic and how my transition affects that.
As I've said elsewhere, J and I both are natural submissives which in some ways is like trying to force the north poles of two magnets together. For those that aren't into the "lifestyle" that may or may not make sense, but at least for us it's simply a fact that we've struggled with since we've gotten together. And not only in a D/S context, but in everyday life. Now before I go on let me make a statement that I often make and that is this:
But really, this isn't about that, it's more about how being submissive and a trans-woman work together as well as conflict with each other. For starters there is my emotional state. I've always been the type of person who has tender feelings. I sort of joke that my feelings literally get hurt multiple times per day, but it's not really a joke, but rather reality - I simply take *everything* personally. Now over the years I've gotten to the point that while it still occurs, I also get over them quickly. But it makes things very difficult for J as she can say the most innocent thing and it will upset me/hurt my feelings. I make an effort to not show it as often as possible - especially with her - but sometimes I simply cannot help it. It really becomes challenging for her as verbal humiliation is something that she's very good at and truthfully is very effective with me; but it's a fine line - probably too fine - as since things that might have been said pre-transition and been effective are now things that may well be "over the line".
Then of course there are the physical issues. While I consider myself a woman - as does J - I still physically don't have "all the right parts" so as much as she can treat me like a woman she cannot do some things that a dominant might do to a female. For example since my breasts are (hopefully) still growing she tends to avoid doing anything that might impede that growth. On the other hand, while I do have growth, it's not enough to have them big enough to do some things that a dominant might chose to do with a cis-female submissive. Then of course there is the area "down south". Since the orchi separated me from a couple of life long friends it makes certain types of play such as chastity difficult at best; although even prior to the orchi this had become a challenge anyway between the hormones, the blood pressure medicine, and my mental state there wasn't much arousal which made many of the kinds of things that a dominant might want to do with a cis-male difficult at best and in many cases impossible.
Other things have become difficult to impossible as well, such as humiliation via things such as cross-dressing, since I do live/dress as a woman now it's not like she can really do that. I suppose she could make me dress as a male, but I just don't think it would have nearly the effect that it did back pre-transition when I would be made to cross-dress. Wearing heels is no longer a punishment - I love heels and wish I could wear them all the time. Same with makeup, and so on.
Now this isn't to say that we haven't adapted. We have, although it's an ongoing process. And a learning process at that as we are both going where neither of us has been before and as such some things work, some work well, others don't work, and some fail spectacularly. That's less of an issue for me that J. She takes any failures hard which is a touch ironic as I'm really the one that normally "has to succeed". But when it comes to this I seem to be better equipped to handle the inevitable failures than she does. Considering I'm the one that takes everything personally in general, she really takes any failures personally and as such when they do happen it's hard for her and it makes it hard for us. The other thing that makes it hard for us is me. The analogy I used with her - earlier today in fact - is that in some ways I approach our D/S lifestyle as that of a wild horse with her as the cowboy who needs to break me. Ideally she'd do that without any "help" on my part just as the cowboy would to the stallion. It's taken me some time, but that simply isn't going to work for us, J just isn't that kind of person. It's going to have to be more of a joint effort - I'm going to have to actually work at being submissive just as much as she has to work at being dominant. It's a definite mindset change for me as back in the day when I was more or less a full-time submissive, my Domme (we'll call her J2) was different that J is. Not better, simply different. J actually has more experience - albeit from the submissive side - than J2 did at the time, but J2 was more of an Alpha personality than J is and it made things different (again different, not better, not worse). I was also much different, definitely much younger, far more naive, less jaded, and in some ways simply a better person. I know I cannot be the person I was say 20-25 years ago, that's not possible, but I'd like to think that in many ways I could be similar to the person I was back then and I think if I can do that then J and I will have things go even better than they are now - both in the D/S context and in our marriage. It's not that things aren't good now, I like to believe that they are as good as, if not better than they have ever been (I'd lean towards the latter), but I also believe that they could be even better and that's what I'd love to see happen and now I think I understand what I can/need to do to help make that happen.
- M
As I've said elsewhere, J and I both are natural submissives which in some ways is like trying to force the north poles of two magnets together. For those that aren't into the "lifestyle" that may or may not make sense, but at least for us it's simply a fact that we've struggled with since we've gotten together. And not only in a D/S context, but in everyday life. Now before I go on let me make a statement that I often make and that is this:
I'm by no means saying that how J or I see being submissive is the way *anyone* else may - be they submissives, dominants, or neither. I'm writing this from *OUR* perspectives on things, and even then it's really mostly *my* perspective since J is at work at the moment. Now I do believe she would agree with most, if not all of what's here (and if she doesn't I'm sure she will get around to writing something herself on the topic). So as always feel free to agree or disagree with what I'm writing here as it might relate to you or those you know, but for us this is how it is.Back to what I was saying above, the fact that both of us are naturally submissive does impact our non-D/S lives in many ways. For example we often get taken advantage of be it by friends, family, work, or so on. In some cases it simply happens because of our "submissive nature", in other cases I firmly believe it's intentional because people realize that they can get away with it. I'm not saying we simply let people "walk over us", but the reality is that sometimes it almost comes down to that. I think I'm the more likely of the two of us to take a stand when it happens, but even that doesn't occur all that often. I do think we are both far more likely to stand up for each other than ourselves and really that plays into the submissiveness we both exhibit as from our perspectives a submissive will generally always look out for whomever they are attached to.
But really, this isn't about that, it's more about how being submissive and a trans-woman work together as well as conflict with each other. For starters there is my emotional state. I've always been the type of person who has tender feelings. I sort of joke that my feelings literally get hurt multiple times per day, but it's not really a joke, but rather reality - I simply take *everything* personally. Now over the years I've gotten to the point that while it still occurs, I also get over them quickly. But it makes things very difficult for J as she can say the most innocent thing and it will upset me/hurt my feelings. I make an effort to not show it as often as possible - especially with her - but sometimes I simply cannot help it. It really becomes challenging for her as verbal humiliation is something that she's very good at and truthfully is very effective with me; but it's a fine line - probably too fine - as since things that might have been said pre-transition and been effective are now things that may well be "over the line".
Then of course there are the physical issues. While I consider myself a woman - as does J - I still physically don't have "all the right parts" so as much as she can treat me like a woman she cannot do some things that a dominant might do to a female. For example since my breasts are (hopefully) still growing she tends to avoid doing anything that might impede that growth. On the other hand, while I do have growth, it's not enough to have them big enough to do some things that a dominant might chose to do with a cis-female submissive. Then of course there is the area "down south". Since the orchi separated me from a couple of life long friends it makes certain types of play such as chastity difficult at best; although even prior to the orchi this had become a challenge anyway between the hormones, the blood pressure medicine, and my mental state there wasn't much arousal which made many of the kinds of things that a dominant might want to do with a cis-male difficult at best and in many cases impossible.
Other things have become difficult to impossible as well, such as humiliation via things such as cross-dressing, since I do live/dress as a woman now it's not like she can really do that. I suppose she could make me dress as a male, but I just don't think it would have nearly the effect that it did back pre-transition when I would be made to cross-dress. Wearing heels is no longer a punishment - I love heels and wish I could wear them all the time. Same with makeup, and so on.
Now this isn't to say that we haven't adapted. We have, although it's an ongoing process. And a learning process at that as we are both going where neither of us has been before and as such some things work, some work well, others don't work, and some fail spectacularly. That's less of an issue for me that J. She takes any failures hard which is a touch ironic as I'm really the one that normally "has to succeed". But when it comes to this I seem to be better equipped to handle the inevitable failures than she does. Considering I'm the one that takes everything personally in general, she really takes any failures personally and as such when they do happen it's hard for her and it makes it hard for us. The other thing that makes it hard for us is me. The analogy I used with her - earlier today in fact - is that in some ways I approach our D/S lifestyle as that of a wild horse with her as the cowboy who needs to break me. Ideally she'd do that without any "help" on my part just as the cowboy would to the stallion. It's taken me some time, but that simply isn't going to work for us, J just isn't that kind of person. It's going to have to be more of a joint effort - I'm going to have to actually work at being submissive just as much as she has to work at being dominant. It's a definite mindset change for me as back in the day when I was more or less a full-time submissive, my Domme (we'll call her J2) was different that J is. Not better, simply different. J actually has more experience - albeit from the submissive side - than J2 did at the time, but J2 was more of an Alpha personality than J is and it made things different (again different, not better, not worse). I was also much different, definitely much younger, far more naive, less jaded, and in some ways simply a better person. I know I cannot be the person I was say 20-25 years ago, that's not possible, but I'd like to think that in many ways I could be similar to the person I was back then and I think if I can do that then J and I will have things go even better than they are now - both in the D/S context and in our marriage. It's not that things aren't good now, I like to believe that they are as good as, if not better than they have ever been (I'd lean towards the latter), but I also believe that they could be even better and that's what I'd love to see happen and now I think I understand what I can/need to do to help make that happen.
- M
Thursday, August 7, 2014
HRT And Breast Growth...
As always I cannot speak for every trans-woman, or for that matter any trans-woman other than myself. That being said, I do think that I'm far from the only trans-woman who was interested in what changes might/would occur with my breasts once I started HRT.
It's not like I obsessed and spent hours on end researching HRT and breast growth, but I did spent a little bit of time poking around. What I seemed to find was that basically it's probably not a whole lot different for a trans-woman than a cis-woman - nobody really knows how breasts will turn out; which I suppose should not have been a surprise. There are plenty of "theories" out there such as "you'll turn out one size smaller than the '(cis)-women' in your family" or "the earlier you start HRT the more growth you'll have" and so on, but personally I didn't really find anything definitive on the subject.
Now, I will say even though I didn't spend a whole lot of time on the subject, that's not to imply that I didn't have a fairly significant interest in the subject. Part of that was simply vanity I suppose as at least for me breasts are a definite visual cue when I conjure up an image of a woman in my mind. But the bigger part for me is that my breasts, especially my nipples, have always been a major erogenous zone for me. With minimal effort, extreme arousal could be obtained via my nipples - and on occasions orgasm could be achieved with nothing more than nipple stimulation.
Right after my divorce from M was finalized, I went and had my nipples pierced (ironically enough M took me). It was an interesting experience as the first nipple went quickly and truthfully didn't hurt. The second one on the other hand was very painful, in fact I said more than a few choice words and in hindsight if the first one had hurt that bad I would not have done the second one. This only served to make them more sensitive, in fact there is nothing quite like having your toddler niece grab/squeeze newly pierced nipples. As to why I did it, it was a lot of things. Part of it was that I always wanted them pierced since I really wasn't in a position to have my ears pierced. Part of it was that I had always been the kind of person with short hair, no piercings, no tattoos, and so on, and this was a chance to sort of "revolt" against that person. Part of it was sort of to mark the end of M and I's marriage - maybe that's silly, but it seemed like the thing to do at the time. And I won't lie, part of it was that by then I knew how much I enjoyed the sensations my nipples/breasts provided and I believe this would amplify that (and it did to an extent). Overall, I was happy with the piercings and they provided some entertainment over time when my family found out, and even more when some co-workers found out. I had a one infection over the years but that was quickly cleared up. In fact the only regret I had is that I kept the original captive bead rings for the first 9+ years, including the first several months of HRT - but let me get back on track now.
When I first started HRT, I had very low expectations of what it could/would do for me especially when it came to breast growth. It was apparently a good thing I did as early on I saw no noticeable changes with my breasts. I didn't even seem to get the typical tenderness that most trans-women seem to report. Again, I won't lie, even though my expectations were low I was frustrated as I read so many accounts of other trans-women - including some my age or older - that were reporting significant growth - in some cases C/D/bigger. Now thinking about that now, I suspect some of that was not reality - perhaps in some cases it was people simply wanting to believe they had more growth than they did, in some cases it may have been as simple as them over-estimating what size they really were. I'm not trying to say that lots of trans-women haven't seen a lot more growth than I did, I'm sure they did, I'm simply saying that perhaps at least some accounts are overblown.
It got to the point that it did start to bother me enough that I got a pair (actually two) of silicon breast forms. Up until then I had been using a pair of the "add a cup" silicon inserts - the ones that everybody seems to call "chicken cutlets", along with padded bras. The forms themselves - Dreamform forms - one size 10 and one size 9 - gave me a nice sized set of breasts. Looking back, more than I needed/wanted as it's hard to be my age (43 at the time) to suddenly have basically "d cups" after not having anything all my life. Simple things like eating out became more of a challenge as now I had an extra few inches between myself and the table, and it seemed like they were attracting glances and at the time I was really trying to avoid any attention.
Things started to change when my Estradiol dosage went up to 4mg/day. I still really didn't notice much of anything, but one day M said something about them. I still at the time had a bad habit of wearing just shorts around the house without a shirt on. Her comment was along the lines that perhaps I should consider wearing a top or at least a bra now that I had "boobs". I sort of blew her off, but a few days later I was getting dressed and went to get a bra and my forms when J said something about the growth. It wasn't a huge amount, but when we went into the bathroom and looked at my profile in the mirror there was some there. Perhaps a nice "a cup" worth. Definitely not something to write home about, but there was enough that was noticeable.
Since that time I've grown some more including my nipples. It got to the point that the aforementioned captive bead rings became an issue so I finally swapped them out for a set of barbells. A few months after that I had to get a longer set of barbells. I was agitated at first that I had to pay for another set of barbells, but as J pointed it that was a visible indication that I was still growing so I decided it was a small price to pay for my piece of mind. By now I had lost about 40lbs or so and could fit into a band size of 42 comfortably and you can far more easily find 42B bras than 46a/b or 48a/b bras. By now I would say I was probably a "small b cup" and with the cutlets I was easily a full B, maybe a small "c" with the right bra. Now as large as I still am, they still looked smallish on me, but the forms were now definitely too big so I decided to err on the small size and retired the forms.
I also gave some thought to the fact that I really hadn't noticed any tenderness along the way. I think that perhaps it had to do with the piercings. I think that perhaps they were probably at least a little tender, but I simply ignored it as I was used to tenderness from having had the piercings and I also had learned over the years to be careful with my breasts due to those piercings. But regardless of that, they had grown some and that made me happy. Even if they hadn't, I'd still be happy as my transition has went far better than I expected, but having some tangible growth definitely added to that happiness.
The other thing I started giving though to was getting rid of my "nipple jewelry". The downside of having barbells versus the rings is that the rings were easy to rotate side to side to clean, but the barbells really had to be removed and I'm too squeamish to do that myself. The other issue I've ran into is that I'd lost two of the balls of off the end of the barbells. The first time we found it, the second time we didn't and had to go buy a replacement. Not to mention that the reasons I had gotten the piercings in the first place no longer really mattered to me. I'm happily married to J now, I have my ears double pierced, and so on. Not to mention that unlike the rings, the barbells seem to catch on things all the time such as my bath/shower poof, my clothes on occasion, and so on.
Well, my recent hospital stay finally made the decision for me. My right nipple was very sore to start with, I had gotten a little bit of an infection from the barbell anyway so it was tender, but that wasn't the issue as that was getting better. The issue was when they took me down for my echocardiogram. At one point the technician performing it managed to get something (his lab coat maybe?) caught on the barbell and trying to get loose from me pulled it really good. It made things sore enough that later on that day when J was visiting I had her remove it and we simply never put it back in. Over the last couple of months the piercing seems to have closed up and I guess I'll let it be. At some point I suppose that I should go ahead and have J remove the left one to so I "match".
As things sit today, I probably have what would be considered a "regular b cup". I'm not sure if I'll see anymore growth, but I can live with that. I'm not sure how my further weight loss will impact things as so far I'm down 45-50lbs (depending upon the day) and I've gotten the growth I've gotten. Perhaps when/if - well when - I refuse to believe I won't lose the rest of the weight I've set out to lose - I might lose some of my breast growth; but even if I do then so be it. If I don't then even better as if the rest of me is smaller then what I have should look bigger. :)
But regardless of what growth I have, what I may end up with, or if I had never had any - I've come to learn that breasts, nor any other physical characteristics define me as a woman. Yes I want to look nice, but even if I'm feeling frumpy around the house I'm as much of a woman as anyone else and I can no longer be convinced differently.
- M
It's not like I obsessed and spent hours on end researching HRT and breast growth, but I did spent a little bit of time poking around. What I seemed to find was that basically it's probably not a whole lot different for a trans-woman than a cis-woman - nobody really knows how breasts will turn out; which I suppose should not have been a surprise. There are plenty of "theories" out there such as "you'll turn out one size smaller than the '(cis)-women' in your family" or "the earlier you start HRT the more growth you'll have" and so on, but personally I didn't really find anything definitive on the subject.
Now, I will say even though I didn't spend a whole lot of time on the subject, that's not to imply that I didn't have a fairly significant interest in the subject. Part of that was simply vanity I suppose as at least for me breasts are a definite visual cue when I conjure up an image of a woman in my mind. But the bigger part for me is that my breasts, especially my nipples, have always been a major erogenous zone for me. With minimal effort, extreme arousal could be obtained via my nipples - and on occasions orgasm could be achieved with nothing more than nipple stimulation.
Right after my divorce from M was finalized, I went and had my nipples pierced (ironically enough M took me). It was an interesting experience as the first nipple went quickly and truthfully didn't hurt. The second one on the other hand was very painful, in fact I said more than a few choice words and in hindsight if the first one had hurt that bad I would not have done the second one. This only served to make them more sensitive, in fact there is nothing quite like having your toddler niece grab/squeeze newly pierced nipples. As to why I did it, it was a lot of things. Part of it was that I always wanted them pierced since I really wasn't in a position to have my ears pierced. Part of it was that I had always been the kind of person with short hair, no piercings, no tattoos, and so on, and this was a chance to sort of "revolt" against that person. Part of it was sort of to mark the end of M and I's marriage - maybe that's silly, but it seemed like the thing to do at the time. And I won't lie, part of it was that by then I knew how much I enjoyed the sensations my nipples/breasts provided and I believe this would amplify that (and it did to an extent). Overall, I was happy with the piercings and they provided some entertainment over time when my family found out, and even more when some co-workers found out. I had a one infection over the years but that was quickly cleared up. In fact the only regret I had is that I kept the original captive bead rings for the first 9+ years, including the first several months of HRT - but let me get back on track now.
When I first started HRT, I had very low expectations of what it could/would do for me especially when it came to breast growth. It was apparently a good thing I did as early on I saw no noticeable changes with my breasts. I didn't even seem to get the typical tenderness that most trans-women seem to report. Again, I won't lie, even though my expectations were low I was frustrated as I read so many accounts of other trans-women - including some my age or older - that were reporting significant growth - in some cases C/D/bigger. Now thinking about that now, I suspect some of that was not reality - perhaps in some cases it was people simply wanting to believe they had more growth than they did, in some cases it may have been as simple as them over-estimating what size they really were. I'm not trying to say that lots of trans-women haven't seen a lot more growth than I did, I'm sure they did, I'm simply saying that perhaps at least some accounts are overblown.
It got to the point that it did start to bother me enough that I got a pair (actually two) of silicon breast forms. Up until then I had been using a pair of the "add a cup" silicon inserts - the ones that everybody seems to call "chicken cutlets", along with padded bras. The forms themselves - Dreamform forms - one size 10 and one size 9 - gave me a nice sized set of breasts. Looking back, more than I needed/wanted as it's hard to be my age (43 at the time) to suddenly have basically "d cups" after not having anything all my life. Simple things like eating out became more of a challenge as now I had an extra few inches between myself and the table, and it seemed like they were attracting glances and at the time I was really trying to avoid any attention.
Things started to change when my Estradiol dosage went up to 4mg/day. I still really didn't notice much of anything, but one day M said something about them. I still at the time had a bad habit of wearing just shorts around the house without a shirt on. Her comment was along the lines that perhaps I should consider wearing a top or at least a bra now that I had "boobs". I sort of blew her off, but a few days later I was getting dressed and went to get a bra and my forms when J said something about the growth. It wasn't a huge amount, but when we went into the bathroom and looked at my profile in the mirror there was some there. Perhaps a nice "a cup" worth. Definitely not something to write home about, but there was enough that was noticeable.
Since that time I've grown some more including my nipples. It got to the point that the aforementioned captive bead rings became an issue so I finally swapped them out for a set of barbells. A few months after that I had to get a longer set of barbells. I was agitated at first that I had to pay for another set of barbells, but as J pointed it that was a visible indication that I was still growing so I decided it was a small price to pay for my piece of mind. By now I had lost about 40lbs or so and could fit into a band size of 42 comfortably and you can far more easily find 42B bras than 46a/b or 48a/b bras. By now I would say I was probably a "small b cup" and with the cutlets I was easily a full B, maybe a small "c" with the right bra. Now as large as I still am, they still looked smallish on me, but the forms were now definitely too big so I decided to err on the small size and retired the forms.
I also gave some thought to the fact that I really hadn't noticed any tenderness along the way. I think that perhaps it had to do with the piercings. I think that perhaps they were probably at least a little tender, but I simply ignored it as I was used to tenderness from having had the piercings and I also had learned over the years to be careful with my breasts due to those piercings. But regardless of that, they had grown some and that made me happy. Even if they hadn't, I'd still be happy as my transition has went far better than I expected, but having some tangible growth definitely added to that happiness.
The other thing I started giving though to was getting rid of my "nipple jewelry". The downside of having barbells versus the rings is that the rings were easy to rotate side to side to clean, but the barbells really had to be removed and I'm too squeamish to do that myself. The other issue I've ran into is that I'd lost two of the balls of off the end of the barbells. The first time we found it, the second time we didn't and had to go buy a replacement. Not to mention that the reasons I had gotten the piercings in the first place no longer really mattered to me. I'm happily married to J now, I have my ears double pierced, and so on. Not to mention that unlike the rings, the barbells seem to catch on things all the time such as my bath/shower poof, my clothes on occasion, and so on.
Well, my recent hospital stay finally made the decision for me. My right nipple was very sore to start with, I had gotten a little bit of an infection from the barbell anyway so it was tender, but that wasn't the issue as that was getting better. The issue was when they took me down for my echocardiogram. At one point the technician performing it managed to get something (his lab coat maybe?) caught on the barbell and trying to get loose from me pulled it really good. It made things sore enough that later on that day when J was visiting I had her remove it and we simply never put it back in. Over the last couple of months the piercing seems to have closed up and I guess I'll let it be. At some point I suppose that I should go ahead and have J remove the left one to so I "match".
As things sit today, I probably have what would be considered a "regular b cup". I'm not sure if I'll see anymore growth, but I can live with that. I'm not sure how my further weight loss will impact things as so far I'm down 45-50lbs (depending upon the day) and I've gotten the growth I've gotten. Perhaps when/if - well when - I refuse to believe I won't lose the rest of the weight I've set out to lose - I might lose some of my breast growth; but even if I do then so be it. If I don't then even better as if the rest of me is smaller then what I have should look bigger. :)
But regardless of what growth I have, what I may end up with, or if I had never had any - I've come to learn that breasts, nor any other physical characteristics define me as a woman. Yes I want to look nice, but even if I'm feeling frumpy around the house I'm as much of a woman as anyone else and I can no longer be convinced differently.
- M
Sunday, August 3, 2014
Transitioning And The Bathroom
There are plenty of challenges for a trans-woman starting her transition - and many similar ones for a trans-man, but as I'm a trans-woman I feel more comfortable talking about those. Some of these challenges include such things as family, friends, employment, school, and so on. Not to mention learning how to present as desired - be that hair, makeup, clothing, mannerisms, voice, and the like. I'm by no means going to minimize any of those, or any others, but among the biggest challenges for me (and I'm assuming many others) is something very simple. The bathroom.
I cannot speak for any other trans-woman out there, but for me early on this was a very difficult issue to deal with. The first couple of months weren't all that bad as I simply managed to keep my outings short for the most part and could avoid the bathroom until I got home, or in a pinch we - and I say "we" because my early outings were always with J, M, or both - would find somewhere that had a "family" bathroom such as a Wal-Mart. It's not that I didn't want to use the women's bathroom, but I just wasn't comfortable doing so, mainly due to my appearance. I may or may not be "passable" these days - but looking back at my older photos I definitely *was not* back when I chose to transition or even when I made the decision to live as Madison full time. I was deathly afraid of having some sort of "incident" if I were to try and use the women's bathroom so I simply avoided it as I said.
Sometimes this presented a rather large challenge as I've been on blood pressure medicine for a *long* time and it made me use the bathroom quite a bit. Once I went on Spiro the issue became even worse as it's a diuretic as well and between the two I used the bathroom *a lot*. In fact it was such an issue that if we had planned in advance to go out, then I'd alter my schedule for my medicine to either take it well before we left or wait until we were home for the evening depending upon when we were going out. Not a great solution, but it's the one I went with at the time.
Over time I became more confident in my appearance, and I'd like to think that the pictures I've shared here and elsewhere would indicate that, but I still wasn't comfortable in the "ladies room". I convinced myself that no matter how good I did (or didn't) look, there still might be an issue and as my drivers license had my male name, photo, and gender on it I was scared of a possible issue. This was despite the fact that Kelly my therapist had written me a very nice "carry letter" at the same time she wrote my HRT letter. I did carry it with me, but I just wasn't confident that it would be enough to prevent a real issue if somebody took exception to me being in the women's bathroom. I did briefly looked into getting my license changed, but the statute in the state of Missouri regarding legally changing gender - specifically 193.215(9) - said at the time (and currently still does):
Over time I relented a bit, partially by necessity as the first time was at Dr. Swenson's office in Columbia - for those that aren't familiar with this blog, she's the GP supervising my HRT and is about 90 minutes from here. I happened to go up there alone which isn't normal, but J was working and M had an appointment and couldn't go. When I went to head home from my appointment I knew I wouldn't make it the 90 minutes home without stopping and I was wearing a particularly feminine outfit that day so even if I were to take off the wig and clean off the makeup I would look out of place in a men's room. So I decided to use the women's bathroom there before I headed home. I figured they deal with enough trans-women that if I had an issue they hopefully could/would help defuse it. Turned out to be much worry over nothing, the bathroom was empty anyway and I was able to use it without incident.
After that I did use the women's room on occasion when we were out, but I always had either J or M go with me - I guess that's one privilege of presenting female - that doesn't necessarily seem out of place. However, I was still not comfortable going by myself. Finally about a year ago, I read on Susan's Place that a trans-woman (Jamie Glistenburg) had been able to basically "circumvent" the above mentioned statute and get her gender marker changed on her birth certificate, license, etc., in Missouri via the courts without having had SRS. I traded emails with her and decided to pursue it myself. My day in court and such is documented elsewhere in this blog - specifically HERE - so I won't go into that here as it's not really the point anyway. Even though I walked out of court that day with Madison as officially my name, and a bit over a month later, I had the court order for my gender change in hand, I still wasn't confident about things. I did get my name changed on my license right away, but when I got the gender change court order I held off on getting that done for a few months for specific reasons that aren't really relevant here.
Now after getting the court order for my gender change, but before I got my license gender/photo changed, I was a little more confident in using the women's room. I still went with J and/or M, but I didn't avoid it like I used to. Part of it was again, I felt I was more "passable" by now, but the bigger thing was the court order, but still without the license being changed I wasn't willing to brave that on my own. Finally at the end of March my license was eligible to be renewed - Missouri allows it six months early - and I finally got my gender marker and photo changed (as detailed HERE), but again that's not really the point. But what is the point is that when I finally got this done it did wonders for me as far as being confident enough to use the women's room. Now, by the time this occurred I already had went and had my orchiectomy, which also helped alleviate my "concerns" as even though I had gotten my gender legally changed, it was a bit of a "stretch" to do so. Now, an "orchi" may not necessarily meet the requirement in the above statute, but at least the argument could be made that it does and that made me feel better.
Now that my license has been changed I am much more confident about using the women's bathroom and even do so on my own quite a bit. I won't say that I still don't give it at least some thought before I do - there are places I still might choose not to; although most of those places are places that I generally don't frequent anyway - but it's definitely no longer the trauma for me that it once was. That all being said, it would be nice if bathroom usage wasn't an issue for so many trans-women (and trans-men for that matter).
- M
I cannot speak for any other trans-woman out there, but for me early on this was a very difficult issue to deal with. The first couple of months weren't all that bad as I simply managed to keep my outings short for the most part and could avoid the bathroom until I got home, or in a pinch we - and I say "we" because my early outings were always with J, M, or both - would find somewhere that had a "family" bathroom such as a Wal-Mart. It's not that I didn't want to use the women's bathroom, but I just wasn't comfortable doing so, mainly due to my appearance. I may or may not be "passable" these days - but looking back at my older photos I definitely *was not* back when I chose to transition or even when I made the decision to live as Madison full time. I was deathly afraid of having some sort of "incident" if I were to try and use the women's bathroom so I simply avoided it as I said.
Sometimes this presented a rather large challenge as I've been on blood pressure medicine for a *long* time and it made me use the bathroom quite a bit. Once I went on Spiro the issue became even worse as it's a diuretic as well and between the two I used the bathroom *a lot*. In fact it was such an issue that if we had planned in advance to go out, then I'd alter my schedule for my medicine to either take it well before we left or wait until we were home for the evening depending upon when we were going out. Not a great solution, but it's the one I went with at the time.
Over time I became more confident in my appearance, and I'd like to think that the pictures I've shared here and elsewhere would indicate that, but I still wasn't comfortable in the "ladies room". I convinced myself that no matter how good I did (or didn't) look, there still might be an issue and as my drivers license had my male name, photo, and gender on it I was scared of a possible issue. This was despite the fact that Kelly my therapist had written me a very nice "carry letter" at the same time she wrote my HRT letter. I did carry it with me, but I just wasn't confident that it would be enough to prevent a real issue if somebody took exception to me being in the women's bathroom. I did briefly looked into getting my license changed, but the statute in the state of Missouri regarding legally changing gender - specifically 193.215(9) - said at the time (and currently still does):
Upon receipt of a certified copy of an order of a court of competent jurisdiction indicating the sex of an individual born in this state has been changed by surgical procedure and that such individual's name has been changed, the certificate of birth of such individual shall be amended.Well, that meant I'd need to get my name changed - which at the time I wasn't prepared to do; *AND* have SRS, which I wasn't in a position to do for various reasons. Because of that, I simply continued to avoid using the women's bathroom.
Over time I relented a bit, partially by necessity as the first time was at Dr. Swenson's office in Columbia - for those that aren't familiar with this blog, she's the GP supervising my HRT and is about 90 minutes from here. I happened to go up there alone which isn't normal, but J was working and M had an appointment and couldn't go. When I went to head home from my appointment I knew I wouldn't make it the 90 minutes home without stopping and I was wearing a particularly feminine outfit that day so even if I were to take off the wig and clean off the makeup I would look out of place in a men's room. So I decided to use the women's bathroom there before I headed home. I figured they deal with enough trans-women that if I had an issue they hopefully could/would help defuse it. Turned out to be much worry over nothing, the bathroom was empty anyway and I was able to use it without incident.
After that I did use the women's room on occasion when we were out, but I always had either J or M go with me - I guess that's one privilege of presenting female - that doesn't necessarily seem out of place. However, I was still not comfortable going by myself. Finally about a year ago, I read on Susan's Place that a trans-woman (Jamie Glistenburg) had been able to basically "circumvent" the above mentioned statute and get her gender marker changed on her birth certificate, license, etc., in Missouri via the courts without having had SRS. I traded emails with her and decided to pursue it myself. My day in court and such is documented elsewhere in this blog - specifically HERE - so I won't go into that here as it's not really the point anyway. Even though I walked out of court that day with Madison as officially my name, and a bit over a month later, I had the court order for my gender change in hand, I still wasn't confident about things. I did get my name changed on my license right away, but when I got the gender change court order I held off on getting that done for a few months for specific reasons that aren't really relevant here.
Now after getting the court order for my gender change, but before I got my license gender/photo changed, I was a little more confident in using the women's room. I still went with J and/or M, but I didn't avoid it like I used to. Part of it was again, I felt I was more "passable" by now, but the bigger thing was the court order, but still without the license being changed I wasn't willing to brave that on my own. Finally at the end of March my license was eligible to be renewed - Missouri allows it six months early - and I finally got my gender marker and photo changed (as detailed HERE), but again that's not really the point. But what is the point is that when I finally got this done it did wonders for me as far as being confident enough to use the women's room. Now, by the time this occurred I already had went and had my orchiectomy, which also helped alleviate my "concerns" as even though I had gotten my gender legally changed, it was a bit of a "stretch" to do so. Now, an "orchi" may not necessarily meet the requirement in the above statute, but at least the argument could be made that it does and that made me feel better.
Now that my license has been changed I am much more confident about using the women's bathroom and even do so on my own quite a bit. I won't say that I still don't give it at least some thought before I do - there are places I still might choose not to; although most of those places are places that I generally don't frequent anyway - but it's definitely no longer the trauma for me that it once was. That all being said, it would be nice if bathroom usage wasn't an issue for so many trans-women (and trans-men for that matter).
- M
Saturday, August 2, 2014
Laser Hair Removal Frustrations....
As I've talked about here off and on I've been having laser hair removal (LHR) done on my face and front of my neck for a good while. I've lost count, but I believe I'm at 14 or 15 sessions so far and while the vast majority of the dark hairs are gone, I do still have some concentrations of it on the side of my chin and some sporadic hairs elsewhere - primarily on my upper cheeks, sort of where the bottom of the eye socket is.
But still having some dark hairs isn't even really the biggest frustration at the moment. What is really bothering me is the money that's been spent so far - I believe without adding it up, it's in excess of $2500, but rather the amount of white hairs I now seem to have on my face. While some have speculated that I always had those, I really question that - I think I *might* have had some, but the amount I have now really seems to indicate to me that in at least some cases - perhaps a lot - that instead of completely killing the hair(s), they've simply been damaged to the point where there is no pigment. Now from an appearance standpoint it's not as big a deal as having the dark hairs as these aren't visible unless someone is *really close*. However, *I* know they are there and that's really frustrating in general, but especially with the amount of money that has been invested. Perhaps it's partially my fault as my pain tolerance isn't great and as such she probably hasn't upped the power on the laser as much or as quickly as she could have. It's frustrating enough that I've considered stopping the laser and moving to electrolysis, but I haven't pulled the trigger on that decision yet, partially because of what I'm going to talk about in the next paragraph.
This has left me in a bit of a quandary as I feel that I should get my "parts" done sooner rather than later as the couple of SRS surgeons I'm looking at strongly suggest it. Now, I haven't even discussed with the current LHR place if they can/will do the area, but I assume they can/will as they do list that area for "females" so I don't see why they wouldn't - I suppose I'll inquire the next time I'm there (next month I believe). However, even if they do I'm not sure if I want them to do that area based upon the experience I've had with my face. Don't get me wrong I really like the place I'm going and I really like the technician. However, I'm not sure if it's the machine they are using, the technique, my pain tolerance (as I mentioned above), or what, but if I'm going to have that area done I want to get it done "right" and not have the kind of issue I seem to be having with my face.
I can't say how much of a rush this is/isn't. I'm hopeful that our insurance (via J's job) will cover SRS in the next two years (I'd like to think for 2015, but 2016 is my best guess). Now perhaps I'm reading the tea leaves incorrectly, but if not, once they do I'd like to be able to move forward ASAP. I'm going to see Kelly my therapist at the end of the month for my "check in" - for those that normally read the blog, I keep in touch with her about every three months. I plan on confirming she's willing to write a letter for SRS - I have to assume she is - she wrote one for my HRT and then for my Orchi - and I'm also going to see if she has a suggestion for someone to see for the second letter. I'm not going to actually get the letters yet, but I want to be sure she's ready and willing to write one and if she has somebody she recommends - if not I need to start looking for someone to write that second letter. I'd like to have the LHR for my "parts" at least in progress as well, if not already done (if we're talking 2016).
Now if I am misreading things about J's insurance and we'd have to pay for the full thing out of pocket, I'd like to think that 2016 is a reasonable target for me to get SRS anyway, so really that's the target either way - although if her company surprises me and chooses to cover it and chooses to do so for 2015 then that would be even better. Of course this all assumes that my employment situation doesn't change which is always a possibility but since that's out of my control I will worry about that when/if that occurs.
I guess I'll cut this off now, I just wanted to vent a bit and I thought it might be nice to get back to a topic more related to transitioning.
- M
But still having some dark hairs isn't even really the biggest frustration at the moment. What is really bothering me is the money that's been spent so far - I believe without adding it up, it's in excess of $2500, but rather the amount of white hairs I now seem to have on my face. While some have speculated that I always had those, I really question that - I think I *might* have had some, but the amount I have now really seems to indicate to me that in at least some cases - perhaps a lot - that instead of completely killing the hair(s), they've simply been damaged to the point where there is no pigment. Now from an appearance standpoint it's not as big a deal as having the dark hairs as these aren't visible unless someone is *really close*. However, *I* know they are there and that's really frustrating in general, but especially with the amount of money that has been invested. Perhaps it's partially my fault as my pain tolerance isn't great and as such she probably hasn't upped the power on the laser as much or as quickly as she could have. It's frustrating enough that I've considered stopping the laser and moving to electrolysis, but I haven't pulled the trigger on that decision yet, partially because of what I'm going to talk about in the next paragraph.
This has left me in a bit of a quandary as I feel that I should get my "parts" done sooner rather than later as the couple of SRS surgeons I'm looking at strongly suggest it. Now, I haven't even discussed with the current LHR place if they can/will do the area, but I assume they can/will as they do list that area for "females" so I don't see why they wouldn't - I suppose I'll inquire the next time I'm there (next month I believe). However, even if they do I'm not sure if I want them to do that area based upon the experience I've had with my face. Don't get me wrong I really like the place I'm going and I really like the technician. However, I'm not sure if it's the machine they are using, the technique, my pain tolerance (as I mentioned above), or what, but if I'm going to have that area done I want to get it done "right" and not have the kind of issue I seem to be having with my face.
I can't say how much of a rush this is/isn't. I'm hopeful that our insurance (via J's job) will cover SRS in the next two years (I'd like to think for 2015, but 2016 is my best guess). Now perhaps I'm reading the tea leaves incorrectly, but if not, once they do I'd like to be able to move forward ASAP. I'm going to see Kelly my therapist at the end of the month for my "check in" - for those that normally read the blog, I keep in touch with her about every three months. I plan on confirming she's willing to write a letter for SRS - I have to assume she is - she wrote one for my HRT and then for my Orchi - and I'm also going to see if she has a suggestion for someone to see for the second letter. I'm not going to actually get the letters yet, but I want to be sure she's ready and willing to write one and if she has somebody she recommends - if not I need to start looking for someone to write that second letter. I'd like to have the LHR for my "parts" at least in progress as well, if not already done (if we're talking 2016).
Now if I am misreading things about J's insurance and we'd have to pay for the full thing out of pocket, I'd like to think that 2016 is a reasonable target for me to get SRS anyway, so really that's the target either way - although if her company surprises me and chooses to cover it and chooses to do so for 2015 then that would be even better. Of course this all assumes that my employment situation doesn't change which is always a possibility but since that's out of my control I will worry about that when/if that occurs.
I guess I'll cut this off now, I just wanted to vent a bit and I thought it might be nice to get back to a topic more related to transitioning.
- M
Friday, August 1, 2014
Review: Edgerunner Software's Multiplicity
I've used a lot of really good (and some not so good) pieces of software over the years, but there are a few that really stand out for me. Among them is Edgerunner's Multiplicity - specifically the Multiplicity Pro KVM version. With that being said, a little bit about the software and why I like it so much.
I've had multiple PC's on my desk at home for probably 15+ years by now. Originally it was simply two PC's with two KB's, two mice, two monitors, and two sets of speakers. Initially I went with a hardware KVM solution and that worked well enough, but eventually I upgraded my hardware and my existing KVM hardware would no longer work (it used PS/2 connectors for KB/Mouse and VGA for the video). At that time I found Multiplicity from Stardock Software. I was familiar with Stardock from their OS/2 days and had used their Object Desktop for Windows at one point, although I no longer did/do. While Multiplicity wouldn't remove the need to have a monitor for each PC, it would allow me to have one KB/Mouse. Basically you configure the setup with your monitor layout and when the mouse moves off of one monitor to another it switches control to that PC. I'm probably not doing a very good job describing how it works, the website linked about has a better explanation, but suffice it to say it quickly became a "must have" application for me and I purchased it after only a couple of hours of evaluating it.
Over time I ended up with a second monitor for one of the PC's and added Ultramon (which I'll review another time) to the mix and Multiplicity continued to work wonderfully. At some point - I believe 2.x they added support for audio sharing which was greatly appreciated as I was able to go to a single set of speakers and have the audio from whatever PC I was working with routed to a single set of speakers. At some point I upgraded to the "Pro" version as it had a couple of features that the regular version didn't have. I seem to recall that one of them was clipboard sharing. Now the features I'm describing, including the clipboard sharing can be done with other software - and probably free software at that, but I've always thought highly of Stardock and Multiplicity worked well for me so I've never given a thought to switching away from it.
With the release of v3.x, a new company is handling it - Edgerunner - I'm not entirely sure of their relationship with Stardock, but for me it's been a seamless transition. I recently upgraded to v3 and chose to go to the "KVM PRO version". I still use the traditional methods for the three PC's (and 5 monitors) on my desktop, but I can also KVM into other PC's such as my J or P's computers. It's not a true KVM in that I can't access BIOS for example - it's more like "Remote Desktop" melded with say VNC since I can control their PC's with a couple of clicks, but it doesn't kick them off like RDP will normally do. I also just love the option to darken the screens of my PC's that I'm not currently controlling. I'm used to the three PC's and five monitors so I don't tend to have issues, but if I have to have my wife get on my setup for something for example it makes it each for her to see what PC she's on without having to hunt for the mouse for example.
I'm not sure that my little review here has done justice to the product, but I cannot say enough great things about it and strongly recommend anyone who has multiple PC's to deal with to take a look at the product. And not that I've ever needed actual support, but when I have had an occasional question such as if I could use the newest version as I always have, but still use the KVM mode as needed, I've always gotten quick responses and always accurate and clear responses and that's not something I can say about all software companies. I would easily rank Multiplicity as one of the 5 apps I simply cannot live without.
- M
Edit: Corrected the version that I currently use - it's Multiplicity v3 KVM PRO.
I've had multiple PC's on my desk at home for probably 15+ years by now. Originally it was simply two PC's with two KB's, two mice, two monitors, and two sets of speakers. Initially I went with a hardware KVM solution and that worked well enough, but eventually I upgraded my hardware and my existing KVM hardware would no longer work (it used PS/2 connectors for KB/Mouse and VGA for the video). At that time I found Multiplicity from Stardock Software. I was familiar with Stardock from their OS/2 days and had used their Object Desktop for Windows at one point, although I no longer did/do. While Multiplicity wouldn't remove the need to have a monitor for each PC, it would allow me to have one KB/Mouse. Basically you configure the setup with your monitor layout and when the mouse moves off of one monitor to another it switches control to that PC. I'm probably not doing a very good job describing how it works, the website linked about has a better explanation, but suffice it to say it quickly became a "must have" application for me and I purchased it after only a couple of hours of evaluating it.
Over time I ended up with a second monitor for one of the PC's and added Ultramon (which I'll review another time) to the mix and Multiplicity continued to work wonderfully. At some point - I believe 2.x they added support for audio sharing which was greatly appreciated as I was able to go to a single set of speakers and have the audio from whatever PC I was working with routed to a single set of speakers. At some point I upgraded to the "Pro" version as it had a couple of features that the regular version didn't have. I seem to recall that one of them was clipboard sharing. Now the features I'm describing, including the clipboard sharing can be done with other software - and probably free software at that, but I've always thought highly of Stardock and Multiplicity worked well for me so I've never given a thought to switching away from it.
With the release of v3.x, a new company is handling it - Edgerunner - I'm not entirely sure of their relationship with Stardock, but for me it's been a seamless transition. I recently upgraded to v3 and chose to go to the "KVM PRO version". I still use the traditional methods for the three PC's (and 5 monitors) on my desktop, but I can also KVM into other PC's such as my J or P's computers. It's not a true KVM in that I can't access BIOS for example - it's more like "Remote Desktop" melded with say VNC since I can control their PC's with a couple of clicks, but it doesn't kick them off like RDP will normally do. I also just love the option to darken the screens of my PC's that I'm not currently controlling. I'm used to the three PC's and five monitors so I don't tend to have issues, but if I have to have my wife get on my setup for something for example it makes it each for her to see what PC she's on without having to hunt for the mouse for example.
I'm not sure that my little review here has done justice to the product, but I cannot say enough great things about it and strongly recommend anyone who has multiple PC's to deal with to take a look at the product. And not that I've ever needed actual support, but when I have had an occasional question such as if I could use the newest version as I always have, but still use the KVM mode as needed, I've always gotten quick responses and always accurate and clear responses and that's not something I can say about all software companies. I would easily rank Multiplicity as one of the 5 apps I simply cannot live without.
- M
Edit: Corrected the version that I currently use - it's Multiplicity v3 KVM PRO.
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