A six outing month

In amongst the goals I set myself for this year, there was the aim of getting out on average more often than once every 5 days for the year, with at least 6 outings, including at least one daytime outing, every month.

April has been the first month this year where I've achieved the monthly average including a daytime outing. I spent 3 days over the Easter long weekend doing some work around the yard, which did damage to the acrylic overlays on my nails, to the point that I was worried that if I didn't get them fixed up I might break the real nails underneath. Ironically, it was the damaged nails that led to my daytime outing on Wednesday.

I've been getting my nails done every 3 weeks, and had planned on going to get them done next Wednesday, between the Tuesday Newcastle and Wednesday Central Coast cafe nights, and going en femme as I did at the beginning of March. When I got up on Wednesday morning, though, I looked at my nails and realised that they were worse than I had realised the previous night, with one nail having lost a large piece from the side after I'd done the nail polish that I wore out Tuesday night. I rang the salon and was able to move my appointment forward a week, as there had been cancellations. At about 9:30, I'd made a 1pm appointment then fairly suddenly realised that it should be possible to go along en femme. With my wife still in bed asleep, I was somewhat limited on what I could do about choosing an outfit for the day, and effectively lost about half an hour. In the end, I wore a casual top that I hadn't worn since Easter a couple of years ago, cream jeans and mustard joggers with short socks.

I did my makeup in about 50 minutes, which is a fairly good time for me. Then, having heard a weather prediction of rain, I drove to my appointment instead of walking as I had intended. Parking was a big problem, but I ended up getting to the salon about 5 minutes early. After my nails were done, I wandered around the local op shops (including getting rained on) then headed up to Charlestown Square for a while.

In addition to the 5 cafe night outings, Wednesday made 6 outings for the month. I don't really expect to achieve the same every month, nor do I expect to catch up the outings I missed in the previous 3 months, but I'll be really happy (and fairly surprised) if I can maintain that 6 outings per month for the rest of the year.

All in all, it was a fairly uneventful day but it was an outing en femme, and when I stop and think about it now, I didn't even pause heading out of the house, getting out of the car or even getting into the lift from the carpark into the shopping centre. I know that I've come a long way in recent years. :)

Seeing the optometrist

I had a slightly funny visit to the optometrist today.

One of the machines that I had to rest my chin on had little tear-off paper pieces on the chin rest, while another had space for them but had none. I queried whether it should have had them, and she assured me that it didn't really matter as she cleans it with alcohol occasionally instead. I remarked, sort-of jokingly, that it was okay as I wasn't wearing makeup today anyway, and she responded that that was good as I wouldn't leave marks on the machine.

I wear contact lenses, and have done so for several years. As part of the consultation, I went in wearing contacts so that the optometrist could check my eyes with them in, take them out before another part of the eye test and then put them back in at the end of the consultation.

When I was putting the lenses in at the end of the consultation, she asked me if I have trouble getting the lenses in and out with such long nails. I said no, I just put the lens onto the tip of a finger to put it in and the nails make no difference.

That was it. A bit of an anti-climax. I would assume that she knows, but neither of us felt the need to say it outright. I have to get a pair of different lenses to trial in a few weeks, and then go back for another consultation when I've worn them for a couple of weeks.

I have no idea whether either of us will say any more on the subject. I'm also contemplating dropping in en femme to collect the trial lenses in a couple of weeks time...

Reassessing goals

I mentioned back in February that I was falling short of my goal of getting out an average of at least every 5 days and at least 6 times a month.

Things really haven't improved, and don't look like they will any time soon. I'm getting to the cafe nights more consistently than I had been, but I have a few new priorities getting in the way. We are in the midst of organising to do some long overdue building work on our house, and I'm having to spend time cleaning up, sorting things and getting rid of things that we don't want or need. Add in work that seems to be growing exponentially in spite of my trying to keep some sort of control over it, and I'm simply not able to find or make time to get out en femme at any time other than the cafe nights.

By my quick count, I've been out 14 times so far this year, for an average of a little over once every 7 days. With the weekly Newcastle cafe nights and the monthly Central Coast cafe nights, I'm confident that I can achieve an average of once every 7 days over the whole year, but I'm now thinking that instead of having a goal of getting out an average of every 5 days, I'll aim to achieve an average of 7 and a "would like" rate of once every 6 days. If I don't achieve this, I'm not going to beat myself up about it.

If the building work gets sorted out as planned, it will not only reduce the amount of time I have to spend doing other things around the place, but will result in my being much more organised for preparing to go out, which should translate to short term pain for long term gain.

Future wiglessness

I've mentioned going out en femme without a wig before, and I recently mentioned that I bought a hair straightener. I wasn't happy with how my hair framed my face when I went out en femme with my hair tied back, so my plan is that, given that my hair is longer than most of my wigs, I intend to try to style my hair to be similar to the wigs that I prefer, but with a centre part instead of offset.

I had a brief try of the straightener the day after I bought it, without a great deal of success. I decided that the risk of damaging my hair made it worthwhile buying a heat protection spray, which I bought a few days later. Sadly, with work and family issues having overwhelmed me, the straightener and spray have stayed untouched for several weeks.

Hopefully sometime soon, I'll get a chance to try out the straightener a few times and work out how to get worthwhile results.

Fizzled Wednesday

I mentioned on Tuesday that I had a nail appointment and had to go and see a client on Wednesday. In the end it was a fairly uneventful and I supposed a little disappointing outcome. I got to bed very late after the cafe outing on Tuesday night and woke up with a bad headache. I consequently got up so late that I barely had time to do all the usual boy-mode morning things while answering phone calls, plus checking email etc before heading off to my nail appointment.

As it turned out, in spite of being school holidays, the daughter of the woman who does my nails wasn't there, so I didn't feel that I was letting her down by not going en femme.

I also wimped out on nail colour, going with my current preferred drab beige colour after having my infills done. I ducked home for lunch, then out to the client. Nothing more was said about last week's nail colour, but my re-iterating that Wednesdays are not really convenient resulted in them suggesting that they'll try for Tuesdays from now on.

That probably means that once I get past the existing bookings on Tuesdays, I'll start having to write off Tuesday early afternoons to go out to this client, which might mean doing my nails at lunch time for the Tuesday cafe nights and wearing that colour to this client to give it time to harden before I get ready to go out. :)

Being outed and not caring

Back in early January, a client, who I'll call "B", informed me via Facebook that he knew about my alter ego, and sent me a friend request, which I accepted. That in itself isn't all that odd, as I have come out to a few clients in recent times, and currently have about 9 clients as friends on facebook.

What was a little surprising, though, was that a client from a small country town hundreds of kilometres away came to me a few weeks ago, and near the end of a 2 hour meeting, made 2 comments that took me by surprise. The first related to a piece of information that is only on my male Wikipedia user page. The second was that they knew about my alter ego, and had seen my profile on Facebook (including photos) because they had been told about me by B. I can only guess that they spent some time doing a web search on my male name after being told about my crossdressing, and that's how they found my Wikipedia page.

Ironically, I'm not upset about this turn of events. I've come to realise that my attitude now is

As long as it does not adversely affect my family or me, I don't care who knows.

I'm a little concerned about B though. Apparently one of my friends, who doesn't know B but does know about me, overheard a conversation a few weeks ago where B was telling someone else all about me, quite loudly, in a crowded public place. The impression that I got was that my friend was quite offended by the tone of what was said about me and that if the circumstances had been a little different, things could have become quite heated or even violent. Eek!

Working on Wednesday again

Following on from yesterday's post, I got another email from the same client as I went to last Wednesday, asking me to go there again this Wednesday. The problem is that this Wednesday I have a nail appointment at noon, and it's school holidays so the daughter of the woman who runs the salon is likely to be there. I had been considering going for my appointment en femme because I think that she'd enjoy it (as her mother did), but I don't think that I'm quite up to going to see the client en femme just yet.

I was intending to go to the salon wearing whatever nail colour I wear to the cafe on Tuesday night, and go back to a drab colour after the infills are done. Louise commented on yesterday's post to the effect that her favourite nail colour is gold and now I'm giving some consideration to going with the gold that I wore out at the beginning of last month as my drab colour for the next week. :)

The final option would be to go to the nail appointment en femme, then home, change, scrub off all the makeup then go out to the client. If I'm really enthusiastic about going to the nail appointment en femme, that might be the best option. If I'm organised early enough, I might even be able to wander around the local op shops for a while before my nail appointment.

Bright red nails at work

I went out for dinner on both Tuesday and Wednesday night last week. I made a decision ahead of time that I would apply my rather bright orangey red nail polish (the same one as I wore to last month's Wednesday cafe night) on Tuesday afternoon and leave it on until after the Wednesday outing. To tie in with that, I decided to wear the same shoes and top both nights, but put together quite different outfits. The results can be see in the photos at the right.

There was, however, a little glitch in the plans. I had planned to spend Wednesday working on paperwork in the office and not to see any clients. One of my regular local clients had other ideas, and sent me an email a few days before asking me to go and see him on Wednesday. While I've never directly said anything to him, I've said some very obvious indirect things, and he knows that I am friends with one of his suppliers, who is currently transitioning.

The obvious solution was to simply go out to see him on Wednesday in boy mode, with my bright red nails. When I mentioned this at the cafe on Tuesday night, it was jokingly suggested that I should not do things by half, and should instead go to the client en femme. At this point, that's just not going to happen.

So on Wednesday, I did as I intended and went there in boy mode. The client didn't say anything about them, but he has another guy come in to help him a few days a week, This other guy made a comment something like

That red's a bit bright. Lucky I'm wearing sunnies.

Nothing more was said. Just as I was preparing to leave, a woman arrived to ask my client about something, and as it turned out, I was the one who could answer her questions, so I spent several minutes talking to her including shuffling through some paperwork she had with her. She didn't say anything about my nails. :)

New shoes

When I wrote yesterday's post, I was racking my brain trying to remember what else I did between my nail appointment and going out to the cafe on the Wednesday night. It wasn't until I looked at photos from a few days later that I finally realised what I'd forgotten.

The week before, I spotted an orangey red stiletto in the window of the Wanted Shoes shop in Charlestown Square while out shopping with the family. It was a colour that I thought would go really well with a few tops that I have, but I didn't have time to do anything about it at the time. I also spotted a similar but more reddish shoe in another shop, which was entirely covered in tiny sequins. I wanted to try both, and the Wednesday afternoon was an excellent opportunity to do so.

I wore the top that I thought that the shoes would match best, and when I held one of the Siren brand shoes at Wanted Shoes up to the top, it was almost a perfect match. I tried the shoes on and they fitted very well, but I wasn't entirely happy that there were some barbed wire marks on the leather. Obviously, the manufacturer had used hides that had marks, and some inevitably ended up on the shoes, albeit towards the back of the sides. I was also a bit unsure about the price and wanted to try the sequinned shoes before making a decision, so I went to the other shop and tried those, finding that they didn't have my size but had the next size up. After trying them and looking at them closely, I realised that they were far too fancy and I couldn't see myself wearing them often, so decided not to buy them.

Besides, the sequinned shoes were nowhere nearly as high as the 13cm heels of the Siren shoes, which also have a hidden 3cm platform in the front. :)

By the Friday, I decided that I wanted the Siren shoes, but preferably not the marked pair at Charlestown. I had to drive to Gosford, so I stopped in at Westfield Tuggerah on the way back, expecting that there would be a Wanted Shoes outlet there, but there wasn't.

The complication here was that my wife had gone away for a few days with her parents, and I had to take my son to and from school on the Friday, which meant that I didn't have time to search for the same brand in other shoe shops at Tuggerah, or to go to other centres.

On the Saturday, in male mode with my son in tow, I drove to Charlestown and asked whether they had more than one pair of those shoes in that size and colour, because of the scratches. The answer was no. While there, I also went to Price Attack and bought myself a Diva brand hair straightener, chosen on the basis of recommendations of other members of the Beauty Heaven web site.

Realising that I was also getting short on foundation (for which I had the colour code written down), we drove from Charlestown to Westfield Kotara, where there is another Wanted Shoes outlet as well as a David Jones (aka DJs) store, where I usually buy my foundation. The shoes at Wanted had a couple of barbed wire marks, but not as bad or as obvious as on the pair in Charlestown, so I bought them plus went to DJs to get the foundation. The Estee Lauder rep there went out of her way to compliment my son on how well behaved he was.

As a reward for putting up with being dragged around the shopping centres, I was going to buy my son an ice cream at the Cold Rock icecreamery at Kotara, but when we went downstairs to where it used to be, it was gone. It looks like they might have closed down at Kotara when they opened up the new outlet in Charlestown, so we drove from Kotara back to Charlestown for icecream before going home!

Getting back on track

As I mentioned in my last post, I've been a bit out of sorts recently. I had no intention of stopping blogging for over a month, but that's what has happened. For those who are interested and enjoy following my inane ramblings, I apologise.

The migraines have continued, and they create a form of writers block, which combined with the amount of paperwork that I'm expected to do for work, has left me with a massive backlog of work to be done. Much as I'd like to say that blogging is more important than work, the truth is the other way around. People rely upon me to provide a service which is critical for many of them, and there are a very limited number of other people available to do it in the local area, or indeed in the state. I also have to make a living and to support my family.

Anyway, while there is at least a weeks worth of paperwork backlog sitting on my desk, I've decided to ignore it for a while and try to get back into blogging.

In my last post, I mentioned that I intended to go out to cafe nights both Tuesday and Wednesday nights, and that I hoped to go to my nail appointment on the Wednesday en femme. The good news is that all of the above happened. :)

On both the Tuesday and Wednesday, I went with autumn colours, so the gold nail polish from the Tuesday night wasn't out of place with the outfit I wore to my nail appointment, but I took a completely different colour, an orangey red, along to get on my nails once the infills were done.

I had previously suggested that I might turn up for the nail appointment en femme. When I arrived, I sat down in the waiting area until the woman doing my nails was free. When she came into the room, she looked at me, realised who I was and broke out in a huge smile and emphatically complimented me on my makeup and presentation.

Sadly, having to work on the Thursday meant having to return to a bland nail colour Wednesday night, including staying up late waiting for it to dry. The bland beige that I'm wearing regularly now is a little more obvious than the ones I've used before...

Incidently, these 3 photos are all on the same backdrop using a flash. I have no idea why one turned out so completely different to the others!