Crossdressing and politics part 2

Back in August last year, I posed the question Is Australia ready for a crossdressing politician?

My conclusion back then was that if I was ever going to get directly involved in politics, I would have to be completely out about my crossdressing. My position remains the same today.

For those who hadn't guessed it, I am a member of a political party, but I'm not out to any members of that party. I'm a political moderate with slightly liberal (left) social and slightly conservative (right) economic leanings, which puts me neatly in the overlap between the two major political parties in Australia, the Labor Party (left) and the Liberal Party (right).

I got an email on Saturday morning, advertising a State Council and Annual General Meeting, which is to be held in a few weeks time. The venue is literally about 10 minutes walk from my home (maybe 15 minutes in heels :) ), in a club that I am a lapsed member of.

Some people will guess what I'm considering doing. I doubt that it will happen, but the idea of renewing my club membership (so that I can simply walk in the door, flash the card and keep walking), and pre-registering for the meeting (and requesting that the name tag have my first and second initials and my surname instead of my boy first name - my boy and girl initials match), then turning up en femme is quite an appealing idea in a funny sort of way.

In spite of how out I am to many, many people now, the thought of turning up to a meeting such as this one en femme makes me incredibly nervous. At this point, it's a case of "I'd love to, but I'm probably not ready for that just yet." Will I ever be ready for that? I don't know.

In the next few days, I'll have to decide whether to start preparing for this. Done the right way, I'll always have the option of wimping out and going in boy mode instead of in girl mode. The big question is whether I want to go at all or not, as these events can be rather boring...

Of course, if I did go, the local branch members would finally get to find out why I never go to their meetings when they're scheduled for Tuesday nights. :)

Cafe nights

I was looking at some of my recent blog posts, and realised that some people reading this might not have any idea why I go out to cafe nights every Tuesday night, and one Wednesday night every month.

I've mentioned plenty of times that it happens, but I think that the closest to explaining why was probably the post I've been tagged in March last year.

As far as I know, the cafe night concept originated in Brisbane, being organised by someone I've never met, and I only know as Bernie.

The idea is to have a group outing that happens consistently, on a regular basis, in the same location. The purpose of this is twofold. It is to provide an outlet for those of us who are out enough to want to get out regularly, and by doing so make the events happen at all. Far more importantly, it provides a known safe destination for inexperienced and infrequent crossdressers and timid transsexuals, some of whom are taking their first steps out in public.

The Brisbane group go out every Wednesday night, while our Newcastle group go out every Tuesday night. The Central Coast group go out on the first Wednesday night of each month. There are other groups, including a group in Western Sydney who go out every second Monday night and a group in Sydney who go out on the final Friday night of every month. I'm told that in the early days of the Brisbane cafe nights, Bernie often dined alone, just to ensure that if anybody else turned up, there was someone for them to meet.

Back in February 2008, I was one of those infrequent crossdressers. I had been to monthly meetings held by the support group Seahorse NSW, and to a couple of their restaurant nights between 2001 and about 2004 but the meetings were in suburban Sydney, over 2 hours drive each way from our home. The distance was an effort at first, but add in a young child and rudeness from some of the other members and I simply stopped going. Between 2004 and early 2008, I dressed rarely and went out even less.

I was involved in a work related court case in 2008, and the stress had me almost suicidal at Easter. I spent a lot of time that Easter with my son, reminding myself that I had to be here for him. Whenever I was up to it, I went to the cafe nights to escape for a while. I also went out a few other times, to local shopping centres etc.

Without the cafe nights, and the people who started them, I would probably still be hiding in my closet, getting out furtively a handful of times each year. For that, I feel that I need to make a special mention of two very special people. The first is Pip, who, as previously mentioned, passed away early last year and is sadly missed. The other was a great friend to Pip in her last few years, and was the other of the two instigators of the cafe nights. Her name name is Linda Karen (aka LK), and even though she always says that starting a cafe night in Newcastle was Pip's idea, her role in starting and establishing them was also very important. It was Pip and LK who dined together and tried different restaurants before settling upon the one that the cafe nights have been at for over 3 years now.

Somewhere along the line, and I'm not sure that I could identify exactly when, I changed from being one of the infrequent crossdressers who was venturing out into the scary world outside to being one of the core group that keep the cafe nights going. I set myself a goal at the beginning of this year to get out on average no less than once every 5 days, and an underlying assumption in that was that I intended to get to every Newcastle cafe night. So far, I have been to every cafe night even if my average hasn't quite met my goal.

I believe that the cafe night concept is an important one, being a form of support group that doesn't require incorporation, committees etc. It is also important because it gets transgender people out into the community, not only helping them to get out, but also allowing others in the community to see and interact with us.

From personal experience and from talking to others, I know that most crossdressers who are in the closet are paranoid, believing that they will be ridiculed by other people if they dare to go out. The experience from going out to cafe nights over the past few years is the exact opposite. We have had people strike up conversations for all sorts of reasons. One of the best conversation starters has been my lace patterned tights, which I wear from time to time. I've lost count of the number of times women have complimented me on them.

I'd love to see similar groups start elsewhere, and I'd also love to know if any similar groups already exist elsewhere. While I think that there is a place for traditional support groups that meet in private, I feel that cafe groups are far more effective at getting people out of the closet and accepted in the wider community.

Churchianity

I had started this post with an observation that showed that a couple of people have quietly rejected me, but by the time I composed the next few paragraphs, I realised that anybody reading it who knows me and the people concerned might read this as a personal attack on them. It isn't, so I've removed the original first few sentences and will just say that the observations I've made here are quite generic. They could be applied to people I know, or to some of the people involved in this story about a boy who went to preschool in a girl Halloween costume.

It's interesting to note that the least accepting people are consistently active in a church. I'm heading into walking on eggshell territory again here, but I'm going to make a comment that is something that I've been aware of in some churches for over 20 years now. I see a big difference between what I call Churchianity and Christianity. While Christianity means thinking "what would Christ do?", Churchianity means thinking "what does the church tell me I should do?"

Even an atheist can understand the principles of loving your fellow man and such, that Christ was supposed to have preached, even if they don't believe that the man ever existed. A Churchian, in contrast, seems to have lost sight of the underlying principles behind Christ's teachings.

So I'll continue to turn the other cheek and hope that one day they will see that they have failed to follow the teachings of Christ and will mend their ways, or that they at least won't harass other people merely for being different.

Hopefully before people start sending me hateful messages for attacking churches, they'll stop to ask themselves whether the guidance given by their church, and every other church that claims to be Christian, faithfully follows the teachings of Jesus Christ. Really? Every church?

Melbourne Cup day evening

Yes, this post is quite overdue, since the outing was on Tuesday night, and it's now Friday.

Work has somewhat overrun my entire life recently, and I'm typing this when I know that I should be madly typing work related stuff.

Tuesday night was something that I'd been planning literally for months. The dress is pure silk, and I bought it at an op shop back in early August for $15. At the time, I commented on Facebook that I needed to lose some more weight so that it fits better. I've lost 5kg since then, and the dress now fits much better. Since it is sleeveless, I planned to wear it once the weather warmed up, and the Melbourne Cup evening in early November seemed like the perfect time, as August is early spring while November is early Summer here.

Great theory. The weather was cold and threatened rain.

Since the dress is quite light coloured, I decided that I would avoid black everywhere except my lashes and eyeliner. As planned, I also wore my new blonde wig, with the fascinator that I bought a couple of weeks ago.

On Monday night, I trimmed the fringe of the wig a bit more, and found a blush and eye shadow set that had never been used, from a much larger set that I've been using for some time. I was happy that the shades complemented the dress and decided to use them, along with a light grey and a white that I've used before. Having had no time to try them out, I discovered that the blush was very soft, and my blush brush consistently picked up too much. It took quite some effort to get the blush from looking like a clown to something close to what I intended!

My plan for accessories changed while I was getting ready. I had already decided that I wouldn't wear a necklace, as I had only black cord types rather than silver chain. I was going to wear silver spiral earrings but my wife had recently made some delicate long beaded earrings that were in colours that went beautifully with the dress, and I ended up borrowing them instead. I had a brief panic about finding a handbag, until my wife mentioned that we had some stuff that we got recently and hadn't really sorted, which included some handbags. I quick look through turned up a red and maroon handbag that was a little small but went quite well with the outfit.

I didn't end up buying grey shoes to go with the dress, but instead wore some synthetic maroon shoes that I bought from Payless shoes a few years ago, as they were a good match to the darkest of the pink shades in the dress. Looking at the photos afterwards, I think that that is probably the thing that I'd most like to change about the outfit. I think that a pair of light grey kid leather or suede heels would have complimented the dress better than the slightly too shiny maroon. I'm also thinking that finding a grey bag to match the shoes would be a good idea.

Unlike the last couple of years, the restaurant where we were was fairly quiet, like a normal Tuesday night rather than being crowded and busy as it usually is. Something of an anti-climax. I felt a little bit silly being essentially the only one there dressed up in something resembling a day at the races outfit, but it was the right day for it and nobody else seemed to care.

If I was invited to a summer wedding, I'd probably put this dress at the top of my list of options, particularly with grey shoes and bag. So far, I've never been invited to a wedding en femme. That's something that I know others have done and I'd like to but I'll just have to wait and see if I ever get invited.

I'd love to be a bridesmaid, but I don't think that will ever happen! :)

So near and yet so far

It seems like only yesterday that it was the beginning of the year and I set myself the goal of getting out en femme on average at least every 5 days. It's amazing to realise that 10 months have now gone by, and that while I haven't quite made that goal, I'm not as far behind it as I could have been.

As at today, it's the 305th day of the year and I have had 57 outings. That means that I need 16 more outings in the next 61 days to make par. I need to average more often than every 4 days for the rest of the year. There are 11 cafe nights over the 2 months, so I need at least 5 other outings. With my other commitments, it's a big ask, but not impossible.

As expected, October was a rather difficult time, but as mentioned, I did get out shopping on the 21st as well as getting to the 5 cafe nights during the month. That means that I didn't quite make average for the month, but I was fairly close.

The 2-day work trip to Mudgee finished up being a rather long one day trip on Thursday instead, and I took some time on the Friday to recover and try to get some paperwork done. The latter was a dismal failure, as was the plan of spending a fair bit of the weekend on paperwork. It just didn't happen. In fact, Sunday virtually didn't happen for me. I got distracted with a computer issue and wasted almost the entire day.

Sadly, that wasted day also means that I didn't do a makeup trial for my Melbourne Cup outfit, or do the final trimming of the wig that I plan to wear. I'll probably try to trim the wig and choose the makeup colours tonight, but I'm disappointed with myself for not being organised enough to do a makeup trial as this wig is a shade I've never worn before and I really don't know whether I'll be able to get it all right, or whether I'll abandon it at the last minute, pencil over my pale brows in black and change to my new brunette wig, which also needs a little more trimming, as can be seen in the photo from the once that I've worn it so far.

A taxing time

It's almost the end of October, and I'm happy to say that I finished my tax return today. I'm not so happy to know that, after tax bills of a few hundred dollars each year for past few years, this years is shaping up to be thousands, and it'll be due before Christmas. :(

Even though I posted a photo of my eye makeup from the day when contemplating getting my lashes tinted, I neglected to mention that I went out en femme on Thursday last week. As well as my birthday, it was the opening of the main part of a massive extension of Charlestown Square. I got to blend into the crowds, much like I did when the bottom floor reopened a few weeks ago. This time, I wandered in and out of almost every dress and accessory shop in a quest to find the fascinator that I mentioned that I was looking for a few weeks ago.

Unfortunately, the flat shoes that I wore were new and quite uncomfortable. I don't know why it's so easy to buy comfortable black flats but impossible to buy anything as good in mid to dark brown. Over a week later, I've still got a sore spot on top of one toe where the skin rubbed in the shoe. The shoes limited my enjoyment of the day, and having noticed quite a few women in heels, I came to the conclusion that my 12cm (4 3/4") stilettos would have been a much better choice even though they take me up to over 6'3".

It's funny how, after shying away from wearing heels in shopping centres for years in order to blend in better, I'm now thinking that they would have been the best option. I don't know whether I'm just getting more accustomed to being out en femme and more people accept me for who I present myself as, whether I'm just getting less observant and am not noticing when people read me, or perhaps a bit of each.

Ironically, I bought the fascinator for next Tuesday at Charlestown Square on Thursday, but not during the day en femme. In the evening, after changing back to boy mode, I did the usual family Thursday night shopping outing, and dropped into one of the shops to get my wife's opinion of one of the fasinators that I was considering. She spotted a similar one that was much less complicated and had better colours, then I found one that was between the two for complexity, but the same colours as the one that she had found. Hopefully, other people will think that it's understated but elegant, as I do.

Now that I've got my tax out of the way, I have to catch up on sleep and on paperwork. Sadly, getting out en femme is probably not an option this weekend. I'd like to do a makeup trial for the new blonde wig that I plan to wear on Tuesday, but I doubt that I'll have time for that, either.

The facebook fun continues

Since my recent post about a private message on facebook, a couple of other things have happened.

One was that I was informed that there was more to the story than the message on facebook indicated. Apparently his partner (who I don't think that I've ever met or even communicated with) had worked out who I am some time ago through facebook and reacted negatively. Hence, the message was not so much a response to a recent realisation but a way of letting me know that he already knew and that he wasn't being negative about it.

The other, more surprising thing, was that I got two friend requests that day from male customers who are also friends with the guy who sent the private message. Nothing specific has been said by either of them about who I am, but I think it's fairly safe to assume that what they're implying by their actions is that they know about me and they accept me.

A pessimistic interpretation would be that they are setting me up so that they can expose and embarrass me. If that was their intent, it would backfire and be a positive for me, as I am already being gradually more and more open about who I am. Being outed in an uncontrolled way would simply me a small bump on the road of life. :)

Facebook never forgets!

I recently got a facebook friend request from someone who removed me as a friend quite some time ago. I'll call her D for convenience. I was friends with D way back when we were on Yahoo 360. Back then, I had added a few people almost at random, just to get a few non-transgender friends on there.

One of them was D, who lives in a small town in country New South Wales, the same state as me. I figured that she was far enough away that I was unlikely to ever have direct contact, but close enough to feel like I was somehow connected with her because it's only a few hours drive from my home. Imagine how I felt when I realised that my next-door neighbour (who I'll call N for neighbour) was one of D's other friends! For months, I sweated about whether to say anything, and eventually sent N a friend request. She didn't accept, but still talked to me, albeit probably less than before.

Looking back on it all, I suspect that N thought that I was stalking her and had befriended D to get to her. When I moved to Facebook, so did D. When she started, I think that she might have used Facebook's friend finder to find people she knew. The result was that she sent an email to my Yahoo account inviting me to join Facebook. Because I was already on Facebook, but hadn't used my Yahoo email address to sign up, I sent her a friend request and she accepted.

Sometime later, D removed me as a friend and I noticed fairly soon afterwards. Having no idea whether it was deliberate or a Facebook glitch, I sent her a private message apologising if I had done something to offend her. In response, she sent me a friend request, which I accepted. Around that time, N told me that one of her other friends was from the same town and had met D and told her who I was relative to my neighbour. Not much later, D removed me as a friend and I decided that I was just going to leave it at that.

Imagine my surprise, then, when out of the blue a few weeks ago, I got a friend request from D. It seemed extraordinary, but I thought that if she had decided to reach out to me, I'd accept. I posted a comment on her wall, saying Long time, no see. :) but she didn't respond to it. I just left it at that.

A few days went by. I liked one of her status updates one day, and the next day she was no longer on my friends list. She had obviously removed me again. From her behaviour, it was fairly obvious that she had no intention of sending me that friend request. My first thought was that perhaps she had recently used friend finder and had sent me a request without realising it.

While thinking about composing this post, the penny suddenly dropped. It wasn't something that D had done recently that had generated the friend request, it was something that I did! A few weeks ago, I added my yahoo email address to my facebook profile, so that if someone searched for me using that email address, they'd find my profile. Within a few days, Facebook matched D's friend request from two and a half years ago to my profile through that email address and automatically sent me a friend request from her!

The net result is that D and N probably both think that I hacked something to get back onto D's friend list, and by accepting the friend request, rather than mending fences, I've probably made things worse through no deliberate action on the part of anybody involved. D and N, if you read this, I sincerely apologise for what happened, I haven't been stalking you and I bear you no ill will. If you ever want to be friends with me, let me know but otherwise I will leave you alone.

more egg shells

I've finally decided to post something that I almost posted in my recent walking on egg shells post but cut out at the last minute.

I mentioned last year that I sent Facebook friend requests to a few of my wife's relatives. I haven't written about the result of one of those before. Some time later, my wife said something online that this particular person objected to. In a private message, they had a dummy spit at my wife, and at the end of it also dummy spat about me, making it very clear that they had worked out who I am and did not approve. Perhaps getting it out of their system was good, because their behaviour directly towards me has not changed appreciably. They have never said anything directly to me about my crossdressing. Whether their behaviour towards me will change if they read this post, I don't know. That's their decision. I don't plan to change my behaviour towards them.

In contrast, one of my wife's female cousins that I sent a friend request to last year almost immediately accepted, then sent me a friend suggestion to me for one of her other crossdresser friends. :)

Lashing out

Back in May, I jokingly commented about considering going back to having my lashes tinted, which I used to do years ago but stopped because I felt that it was too feminine. At that stage, I was trying to increase the difference between my male and female appearances.

Frankly, I don't really care that much any more. I don't think that I would look worse as a male because of having my lashes tinted dark brown. I've had my lashes tinted both black and dark brown at different times and found that black was too harsh but dark brown was okay.

One reason in particular that I'm now seriously looking at getting it done again is that I always have trouble getting mascara onto the base of the top side of my top lashes, as can be seen in the accompanying photo. Tinting my lashes would really help with this.

There is a catch, however. I've been using the L'Oreal lash grown serum, which is basically white and is applied not only around the roots of the lashes but also on the entire length of the lashes as a conditioner. If I got my lashes tinted, I think that the lash growth serum would be a lot more obvious, and I don't want to change to using the mascara version in boy mode. That would be too obvious! About the only option, if it comes to it, would be to try to apply the lash growth serum to only the roots, then, once it has dried, take it off the rest of the lashes at the end of my morning beauty routine.

Hmm. Might have to look into beauticians close to home. I'm sick of traipsing all the way into the inner city for waxing etc, and the recent waxing I've had done has been distinctly, err, patchy. :p

More facebook fun

I did something the other day that resulted in my male and female photos being seen side-by-side by a male customer who is friends with my male profile on Facebook. The result was a private message, in which he commented:

lol, your an ugly bloke [male name] but you dont look half bad as a sheila,

i am guessing you realise that yours and Alice's pics are side by side i am also guessing it was meant to be that way.

The fact that he saw the photos side-by-side means that every friend of my male profile could also have seen the photos side-by-side. How many of them made the connection I don't know, but it seems that what has been a rather open secret for quite some time has become quite a bit more open. :)

Accessories

From time to time, I realise that I don't have the accessories that I want to set off an outfit perfectly. I like to wear charm bracelets on both wrists, a pendant and earrings. Because of the style of wig that I prefer, I tend to use a pair of clips or pins to hold the sides of the wig off my face. The only ring that I wear is my wedding ring. Because I have quite a few pairs of earrings without reasonably matched pendants, I often go without a pendant, particularly if I'm dressing down to go out shopping.

When I stop to think about it, I suppose it's odd that I want the pendant and earrings to match not only in colour but also in style, but when it comes to charm bracelets, I like them to complement the outfit and the other jewellery but to be different to each other.

Finding earrings and pendants that go together can be difficult, and finding charm bracelets, let alone ones big enough for my wrists, is always a challenge. One thing that has made it easier is that my wife does beading and jewellery as a hobby, and is able to make, alter and repair a lot of the sorts of costume jewellery that I wear.

For example, the necklace and earring shown in this post are from a set that my wife made for me. The photos are from the long lost photos from an outing in 2008, when they were new. These days, I often look at them and feel sad that they've tarnished, presumably because of a reaction with my skin. I've had the same problem with most metallic jewellery. I also find that cheap hair clips that have fake gemstones glued into them inevitably have some of the stones fall out.

In addition to the usual accessories, I'm currently looking for a fascinator for Melbourne Cup day on 2nd November. For those readers outside Australia, the Melbourne Cup is a horse race that is described as The race that stops a nation. People all over Australia have Melbourne Cup parties, including in many workplaces. A lot of people continue to party into the evening by going out for dinner.

Seeing as it's a Tuesday night and I'll be out for dinner anyway, I'm hoping to put together a suitable day at the races style outfit. I've got my eyes on a sterling silver pendant and earrings at Tree of Life that I might get in time for the event. I may also need to try to find some grey shoes to go with the pink and grey dress I want to wear, as I suspect that the bright pink shoes that I have are likely to be a bit too loud to really work with it. If all goes well, it will also be the first outing in my new blonde wig, so it could be a new (for me) dress, wig, fascinator, shoes and perhaps earrings and pendant.

I've reached a point where, to be honest, I have more dresses than I probably should have. I have also recently realised that I have several tops that I don't have skirts to go with, because I often buy dresses and tops in op shops in boy mode, but prefer to buy skirts when in girl mode so that I know if they fit properly with my hip and buttock padding. It might seem as if I would need the padding to try dresses, but in practice if a dress fits from the waist up, it's going to be the right size at the bottom as well. So, as of now I'm going to try to remind myself to look at accessories and skirts in op shops, not dresses and tops. I also plan to make more effort to look at accessories when I'm wandering around shopping centres en femme.

New wig, new dress, out with the girls

A few days ago, I finally got around to trimming the fringes of a couple of the wigs that I bought a few months ago. Since wigs obviously don't grow back if you cut them too short, I prefer to leave it a bit longer than I'm aiming for, and do the final fine trimming after I've taken it off and on a couple of times to make sure that it's sitting right and I don't cut too much off.

Having got this one to what I thought was fairly close, I wore it to our regular Tuesday night cafe night this week, teaming it with one of the dresses that I bought in Cessnock a few weeks ago. Looking at the photo, I think that I'll be taking a little more off the fringe yet. :)

Walking on egg shells

I realised recently that my blog has been gradually getting more and more vague when it comes to some of the people close to me. I'm not a spiteful or vindictive person, and I try to avoid saying things that might upset people around me. The result, unfortunately, is that I feel limited in what I write about, as if I'm walking on egg shells, afraid to put a foot wrong and make a mess.

Something that was said to me in an anonymous comment on one of my blog posts some time ago, which I mistakenly deleted when I intended to prepare a response to it before approving it, was that my blog was insulting to the people that I talk about. I've tried to understand the logic of that for quite a while, but haven't succeeded so far.

If I was naming people and saying negative things about them, I would certainly be insulting them. I don't think that I've ever said anything insulting about anybody in my blog. I've always tried to be objective and to simply describe things as they happen. The only way that someone reading my blog can know who I'm talking about is if the reader knows me and knows the people around me well enough to make the connection. If someone would be insulted by my describing their behaviour, does that mean that they feel guilty about that behaviour?

Perhaps the anonymous comment came from someone who felt guilty about their own attitudes. If someone can explain to me just why they think that I'm insulting people that I've written about in my blog, I'd love to know. I guess I might never know, and I'm not going to lose any more sleep over it.

I have an aunt who has chosen to estrange herself from one of my brothers and his family for over a decade, and seemed to have included me in that estrangement by deciding that I had taken their side. I went out of my way to try to reconcile with her around the time that I was considering getting involved in politics. After I decided that I wasn't going to get involved in politics unless I was open about my crossdressing, I visited her and told her about it. At the time, her response was basically that she didn't want to know, but as long as I didn't discuss it I could still talk to her.

Afterwards, I was very indirectly informed that I was never to visit her again, with a threat of violence if I did. Later still, I was told by my mother that my aunt was of the opinion that I had been lecturing her about accepting crossdressing. I've had no contact since, and it will probably stay that way for the rest of her life. While I'm not saying that I'm happy about that, I'm also not unhappy about it. We were estranged, I made an effort to try to fix it and she made a choice to reject me.

I think that I'm a realist. Not everybody is going to accept me for who I am, but if someone chooses to reject me, I see that as their problem, not mine.

Sliptember and Blerktober

September was a 2-steps forward, one step back sort of month for me, and I expect that October won't be much (if any) better. A couple of weeks ago, I noted that I'd dropped 10kg in the 12 weeks to mid September. Over 2 weeks later, I'm 76kg, the same weight as I was back then, having fluctuated up and down between 76 and 77kg.

Being busy with work meant that frequency of outings also suffered during September. There were 4 Tuesdays in the month, so combined with the one monthly Central Coast cafe night, I had a total of 5 cafe night outings for the month. Sadly, I didn't have any other outings aside from those, which means 5 outings in 30 days, putting me one more outing behind my target for the year. Interestingly, 7th September was the 250th day of the year, so for a target of once every 5 days, I would have needed 50 outings by then but had 48. That's really not far behind.

Right now, I'm about 4 outings short of my target, but have an even more hectic month work wise. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I had planned to take a day off in mid September, but work got in the way. I planned another Friday off yesterday, and I did take the day off. Sadly, it was more a case of taking it easy to recover a bit from the exhaustion and sleep deprivation that I was suffering, and getting out en femme didn't come into the equation. Having not got out Friday, I had hoped that I might have got out today, but I got to bed so late that by the time I got up, it was too late.

For those readers not in Australia, the end of October is when tax returns are due. Because I run a business and we own (or at least have a large mortgage on) an investment property, my tax return is rather complicated. The tax software works only on Windows XP or newer, which I don't have, so I may yet have to do it on paper forms, which would make it even harder. Add in a quarterly tax Business Activity Statement that is due on 28th October, lots of work including a 2-day work trip to Mudgee late in the month and a local council Bulk Waste Collection in the final weekend of the month and I can see this month disappearing without me getting all my work done, let alone any extra outings. With only 5 cafe nights in a 31 day month, I'll still be further behind by the end of the month even if I get out one other time.

I've already scheduled one day off later in the month. Time will tell whether it ends up being a day out en femme or a day spent working feverishly on paperwork.

Leaving the girl at home

I previously blogged about wondering about packing my girly stuff to travel, because I was going to Canberra for a few days with family. Sadly, work got very hectic and before I had a chance to even choose outfits for the trip, it was time to go. Consequently, I didn't even end up attempting to pack my girly stuff. When we'd packed the car, there was a little discussion about how empty the back of the car was, and I jokingly remarked that it was because I hadn't packed Alice's stuff.

Our first night in Canberra was Friday. We went out for dinner and to do some grocery shopping in Gungahlin. While we were in the supermarket, a comment was made about the back of our car being fairly empty, and our son took it upon himself to inform my mother in law that it was because we hadn't brought Alice's stuff. She didn't say anything at all in response, and the topic of conversation soon changed to something unrelated.

While in Canberra, I finished up having 2 days where I had most of the day to myself and could have dressed and gone out, if I had had the stuff with me to do so. It wasn't supposed to have happened like that, but our son was sick in the car on the way there, and decided that he didn't want to go in my car for the first couple of days there because the car smelt, so he went with my wife and inlaws instead, leaving me on my own.

I knew where a few of the op shops in Canberra were, thanks to the handy web site opshop.org, which not only provides a list of op shops in Australia, but also provides the locations on a google map. While in Gungahlin on the Friday night, we drove past the local Vinnies op shop, which was where I started on the Saturday morning. After finding nothing of interest on the dress rack, I had a look at tops. An orange top caught my eye, so I tried on and, being happy with the fit, bought it.

I then drove to Belconnen, where I visited a Salvos store and another Vinnies store. While I didn't find anything of interest in either, I was struck by how busy these stores were. Where a typical store around Newcastle might have up to about 10 shoppers at any given time, these had 20 or more people in each!

Because I started my outing rather late, I decided that it was close enough to lunch time, when most op shops generally close on a Saturday, and since there was no usable internet service where we were staying, I decided to instead go and find a shopping centre food court where I could access free wifi. By the time I'd caught up on facebook, blogs and emails, it was too late to go to any other op shops, so I made my way back to our accommodation.

On the Sunday, I did some chores including cleaning the back seat, windows and lights of the car, and doing a little bit of the rather large pile of work that I'd taken with me.

Our final full day in Canberra was a public holiday Monday. I spent the day with my son, visiting a couple of tourist attractions, with a brief stop in between at the food court at Belconnen to again use the free wifi.

By Tuesday morning, I was several hours short on sleep due to the fact that I wasn't sleeping well, and was being woken consistently around 6:30am. The drive home was fairly uneventful, but by the time we'd unpacked the car, I was exhausted. I lay down on the bed intending to get about half an hour of rest before preparing to go out for dinner. Over an hour later, I woke up and thought that there was no way that I was going to go out for dinner. I was simply too late getting started. In spite of that, I started getting myself organised and just kept plodding along. In the end, I arrived at the restaurant right on time. I was really glad that I did go, because not only does it mean that I haven't missed a week this year, but several other people came along including one who I've known on line for a few years but I'd never met in person before.

An odd dream

I had a fairly short dream last night. I don't remember all that much of it, including where it was set, but I guess it's relevant to my upcoming trip to Canberra.

In the dream, I arrived somewhere whilst en femme, knowing that my inlaws, who had never met me en femme, were there. I walked in and my father in law began a conversation with me as if I was un homme (that's what google translate says is the male equivalent of en femme), without even a raised eyebrow about my appearance from anybody present.

I wonder if my subconscious is trying to tell me something... :)

Long lost photos

Way back in January, I mentioned having been out and the staff at the local Lifeline op shop having taken photos of me. The second photo attached to that blog post was the one taken using my phone. I didn't get copies of the other photos back then.

With the aid of a powered USB hub that I bought from that same op shop last week, I was able to connect the memory card from Bev's camera to my internet tablet and download the photo that she had taken with her camera. It's only a 640x480 image, but after auto-adjusting the colours with GIMP, I think that it's a far better photo than the one taken with my phone.

Sadly, it appears that the photos taken using Brenda's phone have been deleted by someone else while playing with her phone. I'm still happy to have got the above photo.

I find it interesting looking back at that earlier blog post and realising that in less than 10 months, I've gone from referring to the shops and staff very generically to using the names of the shops and the names of the staff that I know. Also, I subsequently found out that one of the ladies in the Samaritans op shop that I went to first did recognise me, but didn't say anything.

Coincidently, a couple of days ago I was looking through work related photos when I stumbled upon a series of photos that I've obviously taken after a cafe night in 2008. I've since moved them into my personal photos. I guess since I counted outings based in photos, I've underestimated how many times I got out in 2008 by one.

I might have to spend some time scanning through my work photos in case there are any more long lost photos in there.

Not that it makes a lot of difference. I still aim to average once every 5 days this year, and right now I'm about 3 or 4 outings short.

I have a waist!

While I've been losing weight, in spite of losing 10kg (22lbs) in 12 weeks, I haven't really seen myself as having changed all that much. I still have a spare tyre fat roll around my waist, so I've still got more weight to lose.

On Tuesday night, however, I wore a skirt that I hadn't been able to fit into for about 18 months. Not only was the waistband actually loose on me rather than just fitting, but when I looked at the group photo from the night and got past the wind having blown most of the fringe of my wig back over my head and actually looked at myself, I was amazed to realise that I'm finally able to see myself as having a waistline.

While most people would probably look at this photo and think that I don't need to lose any more weight, the reality is that I use hip and buttock padding to give the illusion of feminine curves including making my waist look smaller, plus a body shaper to slim my waist even more. While I'm actually fairly happy with how my body looks en femme now, I know that I can do better, and that if I get to where I want to be, I might be able to shed the body shaper in time for summer. For those in the Northern Hemisphere who might not realise it, the seasons are opposite between the Northern and Southern hemispheres, so summer here is December to February. With any luck, I'll be able to wear halter tops and dresses for the first time this summer.

And no, I'm not going to have some chocolate to celebrate. :p

I'm actually curious as to whether my weight loss will slow as the weight comes off. If I don't weigh as much, surely it doesn't take as much energy to walk, run, etc, so I should have to eat even less to keep losing weight at the same rate. I guess I'll find that out over the next few months.

Not so weighty, but oh so sleepy

Back at the beginning of August, I mentioned that I was starting to make an effort to get my weight under control, and that I needed to work on my sleep pattern.

12 weeks after starting a very simple diet of replacing lunch with a skim milk shake and cutting out all food between meals, I've lost 10kg! I get some exercise throughout the day at work, and I knew that I didn't have time to exercise specifically, so I made the conscious decision that I wanted a diet that was the minimum possible change to my routine and didn't rely upon exercise that I inevitably wouldn't get.

There have been a couple of setbacks during that time, and last night when I stepped onto the scales, I really didn't expect to see that I was down to 76kg. My goal is to get rid of the spare tyre fat roll around my waist, or down to about 65kg, whichever occurs first. Starting at 86kg, that means that I might already be past half way, but I won't know that until I get to the weight or shape that I'm after.

I'll have to go through my wardrobe and see what fits again. I'm sure that there are things there that I haven't worn for a few years that will again fit. I'm looking forward to getting to my target weight. :)

Sadly, my sleep pattern hasn't improved much. I made an effort and got to bed before 1am for about a week or so, then there was work waiting and it all gradually went back to how it was before. Sadly, that means that I'm short on sleep again, and less productive at work, which means that I'm staying up late trying to catch up... It's a vicious circle that I'm finding remarkably hard to break. :(

Op shop consolation

As I mentioned on Thursday, I missed out on getting out on Friday due to having to work, and had hoped that a shopping trip on Saturday might still go ahead. Sadly, it wasn't to be. The friend that I had hoped to go out shopping with isn't well, and I was exhausted yet ended up not getting to bed until after 3am. Add in a large work paperwork backlog and I know that I won't be getting out en femme on Sunday either.

After a rather late start, I went out op shopping at local op shops in boy mode, to try on things that I'd seen on Friday but hadn't been in the mood to try. At one shop, the dress that I had spotted was no longer there, so I proceeded to the next shop, where I wanted to try on 3 halter neck tops. When I arrived, the 2 sales assistants were women I'd chatted with and shown photos to several weeks ago.

As soon as I arrived, one of them showed me a dress that she thought that I'd like. I found the 3 tops that I wanted to try, and took them plus the dress to a dressing room. Before I'd even had a chance to try anything on, she'd brought another dress and another top. As I tried things on, she continued to bring more for me to try. I ended up giving her some of the ones that I'd already tried, so that she could return them to the racks and make space on the hooks in the dressing room.

In spite of being an unpaid volunteer, she is enthusiastic about finding clothes that people might want to buy, and it makes shopping a lot more enjoyable. When I said that I was looking for tops, she wanted to know if I also wanted to try some skirts. Without hip and buttock padding, it would really have been pointless so I declined.

I lost count somewhere along the line, but finished up trying on 2 dresses and about 9 tops. I bought 3 tops, including 2 halter necks, one of which was one of the 3 that I went there to try.

I'm thinking that within the next few weeks, I'm really going to have to try to get to that op shop en femme on a Saturday. :)

Packing girly stuff to travel

After my recent blog post about travelling with family, I stopped and thought about the practicality of what I'd like to do and realised that I haven't even considered how I would pack everything that I would need to go out en femme while away from home.

I've done this only once ever before, when I went to the Seahorse Ball back in 2001. On that occasion, both my wife and I wore wigs and I don't remember how we organised them. We probably left them on foam heads and covered them with satin while travelling to avoid messing them up. I'm not sure if that would work amongst all of the other luggage that we'd have in the car, and even though I've looked around for years, I've never found a suitable box to convert into a wig box, like RuPaul's converted drum case.

For now, rather than concentrating on whether I'm going to go out en femme while I'm away, I think I'll start by trying to figure out how to pack all of the things that I would need. Clothing including shoes and undergarments are obviously fairly straight forward (aside from deciding which ones to take!), I have a cosmetics case that should be right for all of my makeup, cleansers, moisturisers, etc. My breast forms and adhesive bra are in packaging that would probably be okay if correctly packed into a suitcase amongst the clothes.

This leaves just 2 things to sort out properly, my wig and hip and buttock padding. Both could be packed into a suitcase, but the wig would need extra effort to prepare before I could wear it and the padding could be damaged, as I have discovered the hard way in the past.

Packing a wig in a bag with some padding inside the cap to prevent it from folding and damaging the skin top, and taking a travel wig stand would certainly be the most space efficient way, but the wig may get creases in the fibres that take time hanging on a stand to disappear, and the travel stand is nowhere nearly as good as a foam head for brushing the wig, which is going to be needed after unpacking and after wearing.

The sponge foam that I use to make hip and buttock padding is the sort of stuff used in furniture such as lounges. It's easy to shape but is also quite easily damaged. Just getting it on and off several dozen times will see some little bits being torn out of the edges, making them wavy. Years ago, when I needed to transport some padding, I rolled it up tightly and rolled a trouser sock over it to keep it rolled up. I only did that a few times, as the tight rolling rubbed and damaged the surfaces inside and out and getting the sock on and off did even more damage. Ruling out rolling up leaves a couple of options. Either way, I'm thinking about putting the padding into some satin pyjama pants first. If a suitcase was big enough, I could put one end of the padding in, pack clothes on top then fold the other end over the pile.

The other option for the padding is to buy or make a round case suitable for fixing a wig head into the middle, then placing the padding around the inside of the perimeter of the box. To fit one of my normal length wigs, the box would need to be about 60cm tall and 30cm diameter. Ideally, it should have the top and sides as one piece that attaches somehow to the base. I guess I'll have to start looking at how I'm going to make it because I don't see myself finding something like that pre-made!

Not so happy Friday, maybe Saturday

I had planned to take this Friday off, like I did 3 weeks ago, to go out and do some op shopping and generally take it easy because I've been pushing myself too hard at work and am having problems with headaches and exhaustion. Spending time en femme helps me to relax, which relieves the headaches.

I put it in my diary just after the last day that I took off, and was really looking forward to it, until I had a call from a customer this afternoon basically demanding that I go to look at something for him on Friday before 1pm. Well, that's the end of the day off. I've done the usual family Thursday night shopping outing, have a migraine and am so tired that I am having trouble concentrating. There's no way that I can get some paperwork done as I had planned tonight, so Friday is now a complete write off.

I have also tentatively organised with one of my friends to go out shopping at Morisset Mega Markets on Saturday. I'm still waiting to see how my family will out manoeuvre me to make that one impossible...

Debuting yet another dress

I wore a new dress for the first time on Tuesday night, and nobody noticed!

I bought it from an op shop several weeks ago, but hadn't worn it because it has short sleeves and the weather is still a little cool (it's early spring here in the Southern Hemisphere).

A few weeks ago, I realised that I had a light wrap jacket that I also hadn't worn before, and I wore it over another dress that I've worn several times. I have worn that combination of dress and jacket a couple of times, as shown in the photo from the Happy Friday shopping trip that I blogged about a couple of weeks ago.

On Tuesday afternoon, I looked at the new dress and realised that it would go well with the jacket, so that's what I wore. The dress also went well with the brown shoes that I blogged about in September last year. While I was unhappy about the scratches in those shoes when I bought them, they polished up okay (and I've polished them again recently), and they're now the second most worn shoes in my femme wardrobe behind the sandals that I wear when I drive.

The dress that I wore is Tightrope brand, the same as three others that I've had for some time and have worn many times. They are all wrap dresses, and this one is a size 14, which fits better around the bust than the other three, which are all size 12.

When I commented that it was the first time that I'd worn this particular dress, one of the other girls that I was dining with assured me that this one was familiar, and that I had worn it before! Evidently it looks so much like my other dresses that nobody realised that it was a new one. I'm not sure whether that means that I'm getting into a rut or whether it just fits my clothing style so well that it looks right on me.

Travelling with family

In a few weeks, I will be taking my wife and son to Canberra for a few days to allow my wife to compete in sport. While there, we'll meet up with my wife's parents who, as I've noted before, I'm certain know about me but have never said anything. My role is primarily as chauffeur for the trip there and back and child minder for my son for most of the time while my wife and her parents are busy competing. On other occasions when my wife and son have travelled with her parents, I have stayed home and they've kept him occupied without me so realistically, the only part of the trip that I'm really required for is the driving, because my wife will not drive through road debacle that is Sydney. Her parents are going to be there for several days longer than we will, meaning that travelling with them isn't an option.

I'm not aware of there being any specific events that would be suitable opportunities for me to go out en femme, but I'd like to get out while I'm there. I've come to realise that I've been thinking the same thing year after year. We'll go away somewhere so that my wife can compete, and I'll wish that I could go out en femme but not really have any idea about what I'd do or where I'd go while I was there. The result is that all my femme stuff stays home while I spend the entire time away in boy mode. Sadly, at this point I expect that to be the case for this trip, too.

The only time I've ever been even close to crossdressed in Canberra was going to a Seahorse NSW meeting in Sydney years ago, cleaning off most of my makeup and changing before leaving the meeting, stashing my clothes and wig in the car for the duration, and having a shower in Canberra upon arrival (at about 2am) to remove the last traces of perfume and makeup.

I'm still considering my options, but suspect that when the time comes, I'll leave all my femme stuff at home and spend the time twiddling my thumbs in Canberra. Given that we're supposed to be travelling home on a Tuesday, I hope that I'll be home early enough and feeling well enough to make it to the regular Newcastle cafe night.

Attitude adjustment

My work took me to the nearby city of Cessnock today. I didn't have a lot of time to spare, but stopped to look in op shops between jobs. Obviously, that means browsing dress racks in boy mode.

I walked into an op shop and went straight to the dress rack, which happened to be close to the front counter. One of the 2 women at the counter asked "are you going to a fancy dress party?" I smiled and looked at her somewhat quizzically, which confused her a little, and she repeated the question, adding a comment about the fact that I was looking at the dress rack.

I smiled again, and got my internet tablet out of my bag and said "I'll show you something." While I was waiting for it to boot up, the other woman noticed my nails and commented "Look at his nails! They're beautiful." I loaded up the above photo, which was from last week's Central Coast cafe night, and showed it to them. It took a couple of seconds for the penny to drop, but they suddenly realised that the photo was of me, and asked a few of the usual questions like did I do drag shows (no), how did I get that cleavage? (an adhesive bra and mastectomy breast forms), was I homosexual or heterosexual (heterosexual and married). I mentioned that most of the crossdressers that I know are heterosexual and many are married.

There was more conversation along the same lines, during which I showed them a few older photos in which I was wearing auburn wigs. Both women complimented me on my appearance. When I got to a photo in a black wig (the one in my earlier blog post My holy grail of bras), the woman who had started it all asked if the photo was of my wife. "No, that's me." She apologised for her original quip several times during the conversation and made it clear that until then, she had assumed that all crossdressers were gay.

So in the space of a few minutes, I'd not only outed myself to a couple of shop staff but I'd educated them about crossdressers. When a customer brought something to the counter to pay, I alerted the women to her arrival and went to browse the dress rack. As I worked my way along, I found 8 dresses that I wanted to try on. Knowing that the normal rules for this chain of shops was a limit of 3 items in the change room, I told the woman at the counter that I had found 8 dresses that I'd like to try and would it be okay if I took all of them into the dressing room. She again apologised for her earlier comment, and assured me that it would be fine to take the 8 dresses in and try them.

Obviously, it took me a little while to try them all on, and some were good and others no good. By the time I'd finished, I'd decided that I'd like to get 4 dresses including a halter neck evening gown that I have no idea when I'll get an opportunity to wear it. It was tagged $10, while the other 3 were all tagged $7. Without me asking, the now quite chatty and friendly woman put them all through for $5 each.

Having spent so much time in that one shop, I didn't have any time left to look at the other 3 op shops nearby. I returned to my car and continued with my work day. When I got home, I showed the dresses to my wife, who was uncommital about the first 3 that I showed her, and quite interested in the final one. That probably means that she'll be trying it on soon and if it fits her, she'll borrow it from time to time or it will find its way into her wardrobe and I'll have to borrow it back. :)

As a follow-up to my last post (Frankening), I bought a cheap pearl white nail polish tonight, so I'll be doing some more Frankening and re-doing my nails very soon (probably tomorrow night).

Frankening

I learned a new neologism a few days ago. I have been looking for a nail polish that is very close to the natural colour of my nails, but opaque enough that it would reduce the contrast between the tips and the part on the nail bed. Something that I can wear as an everyday polish, in girl mode and in boy mode without being too obvious. Very few people say anything about my long nails, so maybe, like getting my ears pierced, I'll eventually find that people don't care and I'll wear bright colours all of the time but I'm just not ready to try that yet! I want to work my way up to it.

To that end, I bought a cheap light pink nail polish last Thursday night. I tried it on Friday and was disappointed to not only find the polish didn't flow or apply well (poor consistency and a poor quality brush), but that it was too bright and pale to look natural, as can be seen in the above photo.

I then looked at an orange nail polish that I bought some time ago, that is far too orange to look natural, and too transparent. It flowed and applied really well, but gave my nails an orange tinge that reminded me of the stained nails of a smoker. Yuck!

What I really want is a shade between the two, that goes on as well as the orange one but is more opaque. Now, if I was to add some of the pink to the orange...

Since the orange polish had only been used a few times, the bottle was still fairly full. I added pink until the bottle was full to the bottom of the neck, shook it up and found that it was a more apricot shade and looked more opaque in the bottle than it had been, so I tried applying it and found that it's still a bit too orange and a lot too transparent.

Tonight, I topped up the bottle with a little bit more pink and applied it again. It's still too orange and far too transparent, although not as bad as before.

One of my friends on Facebook suggested adding some pearl white polish to the bottle to make it more opaque. Guess what I'll be looking for when I'm out shopping tomorrow night. :)

When I made a comment on the Beauty Heaven forums about having experimented with mixing nail polishes to try to get the result that I am after, one of the other posters responded by pointing out that mixing nail polishes is called frankening. A quick google search indicates that the term is derived from Frankenstein, in reference to putting bits and pieces together to make a monster. :)

Online shopping and chopping

Shopping

Back in January, I commented that I was looking at buying some more wigs. A few weeks ago, I finally did it. I bought 3 wigs from internationalwig.com/. They are all the same style and length, Alicia by New Look, in the standard length the same as the two red ones that I already had. One is actually a replacement for my favourite wig, which is getting old and the net is stretching out of shape. The others are replacements for the black and blonde wigs that I previously mentioned that I wasn't happy with. All three need their fringes trimmed to length, so I haven't worn them yet, but the purchase was quite straight forward and they arrived within about 3 weeks, which was the timeframe predicted on their web site.

Encouraged by the good results of buying wigs on line, I decided that I really wanted to get some lace patterned tights in colours other than black. I've searched locally over and over again without success, but not found what I was looking for. Google, however, turned up a brand called Jonathan Aston, in a style called Sweet Roses.

The first site that I looked at buying these from was a little strange. In spite of them being in the UK and me being in Australia, the site insisted in showing prices in US dollars. They also didn't have what I wanted in stock, and indicated that it would take a couple of weeks to get them in. The colour options shown were black, chocolate (the one I wanted) and ivory.

I subsequently found a different site, uktights.com that not only showed their prices in UK pounds, indicated that they had what I wanted in stock, and had an additional colour, shark grey. While browsing their site, I spotted some cute tattoo print tights, so I ended up ordering 2 pairs of the chocolate brown tights, one pair in shark grey and 2 pairs of the tattoo print, and getting a free pair of (obviously rather cheap) plain pantihose thrown in. The order shipped the same day, but showed as "part shipped". Several days later, I got a refund because apparently they didn't include one of the pairs of chocolate brown tights! I wasn't very happy about that, but the order was shipped within literally a few hours of ordering, and only took about 10 days from the UK to Australia.

Delivery was a problem, though. The sender had marked it as signature required, and instead of trying to deliver it, I watched the postal parcel delivery contractor put a card in the letterbox, which told me that I had to go to the post office to collect it! I rang Australia Post and told them what had happened and that I wasn't happy, and I told the woman at the post office when I went to collect it and she assured me that she'd let the delivery manager know.

I've had a look at the tights and I'm absolutely rapt. They look beautiful, and as soon as I post this, I'm off to get ready to go out. I'll be wearing the chocolate brown tights tonight. :)

Chopping

I've been active on quite a few online sites, and up until recently that included flickr. Not long after I joined flickr, I had a few experiences that made me very dubious about the site. I made comments about it, and other people encouraged me to stay. I did, but to make it more tolerable, I started blocking people whose photos or behaviour was offensive to me. That included people who added me as a contact or favourited my photos, but whose photos showed genitals, profile indicated that they were tranny chasers, etc. The last straw came a couple of weeks ago, when I got an abusive message from a tranny chaser who was livid that I had dared to block him after he favourited a couple of my photos. He apparently had at least 2 accounts, and when I blocked him on one, he used a different account to send the abusive message.

I've now virtually departed from flickr. I haven't deleted my account, but I've deleted many of my photos (mostly close-ups) and those that remain are visible only to my friends. At some point in the future, I may decide to return, or I may decide to delete my account entirely but for now it's effectively inactive. Having made the decision to do that, I've realised that I can feel some relief from stress that I wasn't aware that I was experiencing.

Happy Friday

I did something last Friday that I've never done before. I took a day off work, as flexitime and went out to a few op shops and a couple of shopping centres. Visiting shops where the staff already knew me was fun, including Lifeline Cardiff where one of the staff realised who I was and sent another who didn't to have a look at me. When I turned around, there was a surprised exclamation of Oh, it's you! I was just admiring your hair. :)

I also wandered around the newly reopened (refurbished) bottom floor of Charlestown Square, as it opened on Friday. I remember when I used to be scared of going out, but now I'm finding it easier and easier to just blend into crowds and have virtually nobody take the slightest notice of me. Probably the only place that worries me now is near my home and work, for fear of harm that could occur to my family or to my work if someone particularly negative was to make a fuss.

As I was leaving Charlestown, I remembered that I was getting low on the apple tea that I can only get at Kotara, so I went there too. On the way back to the car, there were a couple of people (a man and a woman) with a little stall in the middle of the shopping centre, trying to sell skincare products or some such, and offering samples. The woman stepped forwards as I approached and I smiled and shook my head, and she stepped back. The man then started to move towards me, but I think that the woman said something to him and he also stopped. As I walked past, he complimented me on my hair. Even if it was just a sales ploy, the seemingly random compliment was quite welcome. :)

As I mentioned in my last blog post, there were 6 cafe nights in August. Adding the outing on Friday means that my average for the month was better than one in 5 days, so my overall average for the year has improved. Of course, with there will only be 5 cafe nights in September, including the Central Coast one that I plan to go to tonight. It's a 30 day month, so one more outing would make for an average of once every 5 days, but my goal is to get to all of the cafe nights and at least 2 other outings, as I'm still behind my target for the year. I'm already planning another day off.

Not quite par, but the tea is nice

As I noted last month, there were only 5 cafe nights in July. I got out only one other day during the month, and that was shopping on Sunday, 18th. So, another month on, I'm slightly further behind my goal, with my average having slipped because I got out only 6 times in 31 days. At least August again has 6 cafe nights, so assuming that I make it to all the cafe nights, one extra outing would improve my average. Sadly, other commitments guarantee no weekend outings for the next couple of weeks, and work makes it virtually impossible on weekdays.

The shopping outing was somewhat odd, as I went to 4 different shopping centres and bought something at each, but none were really girly things. The first was Charlestown Square, where I bought a L'Oreal Lash growth serum to replace the one that I've now finished. Having wandered around a bit, I didn't find anything else that I wanted to buy, and continued on to Westfield Kotara. There, I remembered some comments that my friends Christina and Linda had made about a shop that specialises in tea. Hundreds of varieties of tea from all over the world.

Years ago, I used to go to a Turkish restaurant (which has long since closed) and had found the apple tea there very nice. So, when I saw the tea shop in Kotara, I went in and asked about Turkish apple tea. It turns out that they had it in stock. I've been having some almost every day since, and my wife has been having some too, although I'm not certain how often. The only downside is that when I drink the tea, I keep wanting a pidda (turkish pizza) to go with it. :)

On the way home from Kotara, I decided that I'd drop by the new Woolworths at Cardiff and grab some groceries. I got a few things, but one of the main things that I was after was out of stock. When I got home, I was informed that we needed some more stuff from Woolies, so I went out to Woolies Glendale to do yet more shopping.

I was amazed how busy Glendale was at about 5pm Sunday! Woolies there was far busier than the newer one at Cardiff. I got the handful of items that I was after and headed back home.

I had a very nice op shop find in boy mode on Wednesday, 28th. I bought a 3/4 sleeve wrap dress at the local Samaritans store. It's dark brown with thick squiggly lighter brown writing all over it. It was $7, with the original (new) tag being still on it. I expect to wear it to a cafe night within the next week or two. :)

I had hoped to go out again on Saturday, 31st. I even did my nails in a dark chocolate brown polish on Friday night in preparation. My plan was to go to a few of the better stocked local op shops then to Charlestown Square, but the combination of a few things prevented that.

The main problem is that over the past few years, I have developed a sleep pattern problem. At different times in my life, I've managed to operate everywhere between getting to bed by 10pm and getting up at 6am and, mostly during uni holidays, getting to bed after 4am and getting up at noon. Sadly, my current pattern is closer to the latter than I'd like. If I get to bed before 1am I consider it to be an early night. Between 2 and 3 is more typical. Some weekends that even slips to 4am occasionally. During the week, I have to push myself to get up with sufficient time to prepare for work but at weekends I tend to sleep in well into the morning. Getting up at 10am or later doesn't really work for going out shopping when it takes over 2 hours for breakfast, makeup and getting dressed.

The rest of the problems with getting out on Saturday related to my inability to find an outfit that I was entirely happy with that would be convenient for trying other clothes on at op shops, and normal household things that demanded my time, which I would have ignored if I had been actually preparing to go out.

In late June, I began a diet experiment. Having seen my weight gradually climb from about 74kg when I was dieting and exercising conscientiously a few years ago to 86kg in June, I decided that I'd maintain a normal cereal breakfast and usual dinner, but cut out all snacks between meals and replace lunch with a diet drink powder in skim milk. Drinks between meals are either water, skim milk, carbonated fruit juice or the apple tea that I mentioned above. After 5 weeks, I am down to 81kg, an average loss of 1kg per week. This has been achieved without any extra exercise, because I simply don't have time to fit it in.

So, in addition to my goal of averaging getting out once every 5 days, I'm also working on my weight and thinking about how I'm going to reform my sleep pattern. I really should at least aim to be in bed by about 11:30pm, which could be very difficult on cafe nights!

Just average

June was a disappointing month for me. I worked virtually every day, finishing early only to go out to cafe nights. Because there were 5 Tuesdays, I got out to the local cafe nights 5 times, and once to the Central Coast cafe night.

Sadly, with work being so hectic, I simply didn't get any other opportunities to go out. In a 30 day month, I got out a total of 6 times. That means that I achieved an average of once every 5 days for that month, but I'm still behind for my goal for the year so far.

July is going to be worse. There will only be 5 cafe nights in a 31 day month, so unless I get out at least twice aside from the cafe nights, I'll be further behind by the end of the month. Looking at my work schedule so far, I'll be lucky to get a day off to relax, let alone going out. :(

In Heaven. Beauty Heaven, that is!

I've had a relatively good month this month. I got out a total of 7 times, so the month averaged once every 4.4 days. I had hoped to go out again yesterday, but was too tired and got up too late to be able to.

The highlight of this month was a day in Sydney last Saturday. After spending about 3 hours getting myself ready, I drove to the Balmain offices of the website Beauty Heaven as one of about 18 guests for an open day. The unusual thing was that it was an organised event where I was the only transgender person there. Normally, I'd either go out shopping alone, or I'd go to an event with other TG people.

As far as I know, everybody else present was a cisgender female. I've been active on that site for quite some time, which is how I came to get the invite. I've also been open about myself, so everybody present knew about me. Because of that, I didn't pass, but it didn't matter. Within minutes of meeting, people who I'd talked to online became friends who I felt like I'd known for years.

It started literally from when I parked my car. The woman who had parked next to me only a few seconds earlier was one of the other guests, so we walked from the carpark to the building together. Being the first two to arrive, we were immediately sat down at the manicurists' tables and given manicures using Orly products. The photo above shows the beautiful job that my manicurist did. Almost as soon as I'd finished there, someone dragged me off to do a brief video blog, which I'm praying never sees the light of day!

There were so many brands and so many products, I don't really remember them all. Looking back, I think that the highlight of the day wasn't the pampering or the products given to me during the day, or even the remarkably heavy goodies bag given to me at the end of the day, but getting to sit and chat with a group of girls including members and staff from Beauty Heaven, and the acceptance that was part of that. I was told by one of the staff that I was courageous (which I've never really thought I am), and another appeared genuinely shocked when I mentioned that I am 40. I'm still wondering how old she thought that I was. :)

After the open day, I drove to a friend's place in Hornsby to visit for the first time. After parking in the street around the corner from her apartment building, I realised that I couldn't find the piece of paper that I'd written the instructions on. Fortunately, I'd already used google maps to wok out which building it was, and the only possible problem was whether I remembered the unit number correctly or not. Happily, I did get it right, because I punched the number into the keypad and she buzzed me in without any drama. We sat and chatted for several hours, catching up on many years. I finally left around 10pm, arriving home at 11:30pm, a full 12 hours after I left home.

Obviously, there was no way that I was going to take that beautifully applied nail polish off, so it stayed on Saturday night and most of Sunday. I had an unexpected visitor on Sunday afternoon. My brother, who I mentioned back in February 2008, didn't speak to me for 9 months after he found out that I was a crossdresser. It was somewhat funny making an effort to keep him from seeing my nails, because I have no idea how he would have reacted if he had seen them. If he did see them, he didn't say anything, so the "don't ask, don't tell" status quo was maintained.

Sadly, the impending return to work on Monday meant that the nail polish had to come off Sunday night.

More out than I know?

Woo Hoo. Another blog post less than a day after the last. :)

A couple of interesting things happened last night, which make me wonder about how people perceive me in boy mode.

Yesterday, I had some private messages back and forth with a woman I met last year through work. She informed me that she guessed back then, based upon certain details of my appearance, that I was a crossdresser. She didn't say anything at the time, or indeed since, until I sent her a friend request on Facebook from my femme profile.

The other interesting thing happened when I went to put fuel in the car last night. When I went to pay, the female console operator commented something like "I wish I could grow nails like that. Mine are crap." It wasn't the first time I've had someone comment about my nails when I was in boy mode, but I think that it was the first time I've had a comment from someone who didn't already know me.

It's got me thinking about just how obvious it is to people who see me in boy mode, that I'm a CD. Do I care, and do I want to make changes to make it less obvious? I'm still thinking about that.

Given that my receded hairline means that I always wear a wig when en femme, I'm wondering if I'm being silly letting my hair grow long. After all, the longer my hair, the harder it is to hide under a wig. I'm wondering if I should cut my hair shorter, or make an effort to try one of the topical applications that are supposed to re-grow hair so that I can go without a wig.

Actually, now that I think about it, I'm wondering if what I want to do is make changes that might make it more obvious, like going back to having my lashes tinted? :)

Three times in four days

Yes, I've done it again. I've been so busy that I've missed out on blogging things as they happen and now have to go back and try to cover a few weeks in a catch-up post.

I've now worn the black and white long sleeved dress that I mentioned in my last post. It's nice and warm and fits beautifully. Sadly, it didn't fit my wife, so that's one that we won't be sharing.

I finally decided to make an effort to get some weight off. The best way I can find to do that is to walk for about an hour every day. With how much I have to cram into my days, I decided I'd try to do it at night instead. Great theory. I managed to walk a few nights, missing Tuesday nights when I went out for dinner. Work got the better of me, and it all fell apart. I'm going to keep trying, because I know that it's the only way I've ever managed to lose a reasonable amount of weight.

I've managed to pick up another nice wrap dress and a brown cord jacket in the past few weeks. The dress is a Tightrope brand, similar to two other dresses that I have that I really like.

Last Sunday was interesting. My friend Christina suggested a few weeks ago that we might go to the Maitland markets, and last Sunday was the day. I got up at 6:30am, which is very unusual for me, particularly on a Sunday. Up at 6:30, out of the house en femme around 9:15. Christina drove us to Maitland, where we spent a few hours walking around the markets, then drove to Morpeth for morning tea.

Tuesday night, I went to the Newcastle cafe night as usual, and wore the dress that I picked up the week before.

Wednesday night was the first cafe night at Norah Head, on the Central Coast. Christina came to my place and I drove us there and back. It was a great night, and it was hopefully the first of many, as it is planned to be a monthly event.

So, between Sunday and Wednesday, I went out en femme 3 times in 4 days. That's certainly helped my average, but it's still well below my target of once every 5 days.

While out shopping with the family on Thursday night, I decided to put a $20 Tree of Life voucher I'd won towards buying a smaller silver pendant than the rose that I often wear. After looking at a couple, I chose one that was $35. There was a 20% off sale, so it cost me just $8! I plan to wear that sometime very soon. :)