Antipodean Beauties: My Favourite Lipstick

I wasn't sure if I'd get to do this, but today is the last day and I've decided to ignore the paperwork that has to be done before 11pm tonight (!) and do this first. :-)

As I mentioned a few days ago, this is part of a makeup challenge. It was started by Omega, from Fashion Adjacent, who I chatted with briefly at IMATS last year after she complimented me on my shoes. It's a small world!

Anyway, moving right along, the first theme is My favourite lipstick. For me, the choice of type of lipstick was easy, but I had to stop and think about my favourite colour.

Over the years, I've tried all sorts of lipsticks. I found very early on that I prefer long lasting lipsticks, because the need to add moisturiser over colour occasionally is far less of an inconvenience to me than having to re-apply colour every few hours. The best long lasting lipsticks that I've found are the Procter & Gamble twins, Max Factor LipFinity and Covergirl Outlast. Surprisingly, in spite of considerable difference in retail price, these are actually just different shades of the same product in similar but different packaging.

When I thought about my favourite colour, I first thought of the several brown and orange shades that I wear with most of my normal clothes, then realised that no, none of them are my favourite. Without a doubt, my favourite is a colour that is part of the whole Retro 1950s style that I love to wear, but wear far too rarely.

So the answer is, Covergirl Lipfinity in 507, ever red-dy.

Here's the blog hop to the other bloggers who took part in this week's challenge (note that you need Javascript enabled for this to work).

Bump

Things have been rather hectic for me recently, particularly with work. Add in having the flu for over a week, replacing my office computer, and using a toner that has turned my face into a peeling mess, and I haven't had any opportunity to even do a makeup trial to see if I can make contouring and highlighting using foundation work for me.

I'm actually starting to wonder if I've lost the confidence I used to have in my makeup skills. I'm not sure whether things are really getting in my way as much as they seem, or whether I'm letting opportunities go by when I could have ignored the apparent needs of others and made the time to practice my makeup.

I now have less than a fortnight to decide whether I am going to IMATS, and if so, whether I'm going for one day or both. After last year, I really wanted to go both days, but with how things have been over the last year or so, I don't even know if I'll get there at all now. The ticket prices go up on 22nd August, so unless I want to pay extra for my indecision, I need to make a decision very soon! In a lot of ways I'd like to do the 2 days, travel down Friday night, stay in the city and come home Sunday evening but I don't know if I'm up to sorting out accommodation and doing my hair and makeup away from home, let alone the time that I'd lose being away from home and work!

Also, I've recently been invited to join in a makeup blogging challenge, which involves posting makeup posts on pre-determined themes. There's a theme every week, and the idea is to post on the Monday. It's not compulsory to post every week, but I suspect that many of the participants will do so. I'm not sure yet, but I might manage to do this week's challenge in the next day or two (okay, it's a long way past Monday but I figure in the first week of the challenge, if I do it at all it's better late than never. :-)

Red and orange nail reactions

As I mentioned last Sunday, I went to a conference the Friday before that. One of the other attendees offhandedly commented "Oh, red today" in reference to my nails. Nobody else commented, but most if not all of the attendees have met me before, and my nails don't go unnoticed. :)

As I also mentioned last Sunday, a client passed away unexpectedly last week, and his funeral was Wednesday this week. As I had already planned on having my nails done that day, I hadn't booked any clients, so rearranging my schedule was fairly easy. I was able to move my nail appointment to Thursday afternoon. Done.

While I'm quite sure that my client knew about me, out of respect for him and his family, I did the traditional thing ~ I wore a suit to the funeral. I also braided my hair and tucked the plaited tail up under the braid. With a copious quantity of hair spray to keep it in place, the result was that from most angles aside from the back, it's not obvious that the hair is long, and even from the back you can't tell how long it is. Mind you, when I used to do my hair this way, I used to just tuck the tail straight up inside the braid, but my hair is now so much longer that I had to fold it half way down and the fold ended up peeking out the top of the braid.

About the only thing that I didn't change was my nails, which were still bright red.

It was a large funeral. Larger than I think anybody had anticipated. I knew a lot of the people there, and there were really no reactions to my nails because I'm infamous enough that it wasn't a surprise to anybody. The children at the wake were a different story though. One girl in particular spent a considerable time staring at my nails, giggling and whispering to her friends.

On the way home, I needed to drop in to the local Building Society branch to deposit a cheque. I was served by one of the same staff who saw me at Halloween. I think that she was almost as shocked by me in a suit as she was when I wore the Tinkerbell costume. ;)

When I got my nails done on Thursday, I decided to go with the orange polish that I bought at the same time as the China Red. I walked from home to my appointment, and on the way home, I saw my son's school friend and his mother, whose birthday party I went to last year. The boy waved enthusiastically, so I walked over to them and said hello before continuing home. I'm not sure if he just wanted me to come closer so that they could get a better look at my nails or not, but I suspect that that may have been the case. :)

Yesterday, when I went to Charlestown Square to get a foundation sample, I also decided to have lunch there. While I sat eating, a group of 4 girls spent a considerable amount of time staring at my nails.

I am often amused by people's reactions. They brighten up my days. :)

Contour and highlight using foundation

For years now, I've been using different shades of powder to do highlighting and contouring, and have always found that while my Estee Lauder foundation will hang in there for 13 hours or more, the powder generally fades away before the first time that I need to blot and re-powder.

Having seen a few mentions of doing the contouring and highlighting using foundation instead of powder, I decided that I'd like to try it. While I use a cheap foundation on my neck, my face is so oily that the Estee Lauder Double Wear is the only foundation that I've ever found that actually lasts and doesn't oxidise, so I don't want to use different types of foundation on my face ~ I'd prefer to stick with the one that I know works for me, but get the extra lighter and darker shades. The problem with that is that I didn't want to go out and buy 2 more bottles of expensive foundation in case the colours weren't going to work or I wasn't going to be able to get the hang of it.

The solution came this week in the form of a Facebook promotion by Estee Lauder Australia. The competition prize is a one year supply of Double Wear foundation, with the bonus that they were offering a free foundation sample (nominally enough for 10 days) for entering. All you have to do is go to the Estee Lauder counter at Myer or David Jones and ask...

The reality is that giving away sample quantities is a fairly normal thing. In fact, I've been given one before. I could probably have walked up to an Estee Lauder counter and got a foundation sample or two at any time. It just hadn't occurred to me to ask until I saw the promotion. The obvious thing to do was to go and see if I could get shades of foundation suitable for contouring and highlighting.

Today, I went to Myer in Charlestown Square (in boy mode). The sales assistant had no idea. I really don't think that she understood highlighting and contouring. She commented that I was making things too complicated and that I should be making it simpler instead, and insisted on applying some of the foundation that was intended to be highlight, trying to show me that it was too pale for me. In spite of my telling her that I was after a lighter shade relative to the 2N1 (darkness 2, neutral) Desert Beige that I use, she gave me a cool shade for highlighting, which will inevitably clash with my neutral base. I didn't bother asking if she would also give me a contouring sample.

I just about gave up in disgust, but on my way out of Charlestown I decided to try the Estee Lauder counter at David Jones in Kotara.

I'm glad I did, as the sales assistant was excellent. She clearly understood highlighting and contouring, and what I was trying to achieve. She volunteered the fact that they all had to be neutral shades, as mixing cool or warm with neutral would make them clash. She happily showed me a drop each of my base colour and the darker contour colour side-by-side on the back of her hand. They looked way too different to each other until she blended them a little to show how well they actually worked, and happily gave me the right neutral shades for both highlight and contour relative to my base shade.

I'm not sure when I'll get a chance to try it, but I'm hoping that it will be soon. If it works as hoped and I win the one year supply, I might have to try to get mixed batch of the 3 shades. :)

Down but not out

I've been fairly depressed recently.

A couple of weeks ago, the regional police media liaison officer, Tony Tamplin, died. This was a guy who had been the media face of the NSW Police Force in the Newcastle/Hunter Region for many years. He got to work one morning, collapsed and couldn't be revived. He was very well known in the local area, and a lot of people mourned his passing. The funeral was so big that it was held at Newcastle City Hall.

I realised that, when I die, there simply won't be that sort of level of interest. There won't be that many people who care. I'm just one of those people in the background.

Then, on Tuesday this week, I spoke to a work client on the phone. He's about the same age as me, and is a well liked and respected person. He died in his sleep that night. I don't know if he had a known medical condition but I'm still trying to come to terms with the fact that someone my age died in his sleep.

I'm still at the I can't actually believe that he is dead stage of grieving. I've re-scheduled my nail appointment next week so that I can attend his funeral. It is going to be a difficult day for me, and for many other people who knew him.

I've also had a few other time consuming things happen recently, including attending a day long work related conference in Sydney, which meant getting up at 5:30am, catching 2 trains and a bus to the venue, then reversing that process to get home around 7:30pm. While the conference went very well and was very productive, I didn't get to sleep until after 2am, leaving me completely wiped out on Saturday.

As a consequence, I've fallen a long way behind with emails, paperwork, etc., and that makes me even more depressed. The pressure that it creates makes me less likely to spend time transforming myself to go out en femme, because I feel that I can't afford that time. Re-scheduling my nail appointment also guarantees that I won't be able to get to that appointment en femme, because I'll be working in the morning then finishing work at lunch time to go to the appointment.

To top it all off, today is Mothers Day in Australia. I rang my mother and unfortunately, as usual, she made a negative remark my nails. Even if I do manage to get some productive work done in what little is left of today, it's likely that there will be some comfort eating happening too. :(

China Red

After Wednesday's disappointment of discovering that the red nail polish that I'd bought the previous Saturday was not the same shade as the one that I'm wearing, I finally managed to get back to the pharmacy to have another look for the "China Red" colour that I wanted.

I wasn't sure what time they closed, so before I went I thought I'd best look up their web site to find out. I then discovered that they have another outlet a little closer to me, but in a different direction. The closer one was open until 4:30pm and the other one was open until 6pm.

Since I didn't remember there being very many bottles of red polish where I'd gone before, I decided to try the closer one, and if I found nothing there, I'd then go back to the other one.

They had a stand the same as the first one had ~ the nail polish bottles jumbled in a hemispherical clear plastic bowl on a stand. I worked my way through and found a different shade of red again, but I'm pretty sure that it was darker than the one that I was looking for so I left it.

While there, I realised that the shop next door was a party supply place, and had some fancy dress costumes, so I wandered in and had a look around. There was a blood-spattered Alice-in-wonderland costume that seemed a little more expensive than I thought it should have been, and an angel outfit that seemed reasonably priced until I realised that it only included the dress itself ~ no halo or wings. Mind you, the cut of the dress was such that I suspect that my 1950s style petticoat that I wore to the Kurri Kurri Nostalgia Festival would probably work with it. If I find wings and a halo that I'm happy with, it could be an option for Halloween this year if I decide not to wear the Tinkerbell outfit again and can't fit into the Red Riding Hood costume that I bought last year. :)

Having finished there, I headed back to the first pharmacy where I'd bought the wrong shade in the first place. The traffic between the to places was abnormally bad, and they were having a problem with a malfunctioning automatic door, but I managed to get in and made my way back to the nail polish stand.

Having lucked out at the other store, I didn't have much hope of finding the shade that I was after, but looked anyway. I found a bright orange metallic colour that I liked the look of and decided that I'd get regardless. Then, just as I was about to give up, I fished a bottle of red up from the bottom of the bowl, turned it over and read the label ~ China Red. Yay. :)

Fluke fail

Well, the theory was great. I thought that the bottle of red nail polish that I bought the other day was the same colour as the one that I've been wearing for the past 8 weeks or so...

Even with the two bottles side by side, they looked the same. On the nails was a different story, though. The one I bought was distinctly pink. Too pink that a second coat would bring it back to the orangey shade that I was after.

Looking at the labels revealed that the one that I like is called "China Red", while the other one is labelled "Red door red".

So my nails were again done from the nearly empty bottle at the salon, and I don't have a new bottle the same. At least I didn't waste too much money on it. :)

It's now got me wondering if I should donate the colours that I won't ever wear to the salon so that at least someone can get some use out of them...

Confused

Okay. Now I'm confused.

I mentioned yesterday that I'd contacted someone who had apparently unfriended me on Facebook some time ago. On the basis that he appeared to have implied that he hadn't unfriended me, I sent him another friend request.

It appears that he has since deleted the friend request.

Either that, or Facebook is so screwed up that it has deleted the request for him.

Which puts me back to square one. I still don't know whether there really is a glitch in Facebook that unfriends people, or whether it's just a convenient excuse...

Or maybe its just me. :-/

Facebook auto-unfriend revisited

Back in January, I wrote about my suspicion that there is a bug in Facebook that causes it to unfriend people with no input from the people involved.

Judging by the fact that that post is currently the 4th most read post of all time on my blog, and the number of variations in search terms relating to Facebook auto-unfriending that show up in the statistics for my blog, a lot of people are clearly asking the same question.

With that in mind, I decided to contact one of the people who "unfriended" me several months ago, leading me to write that blog post in January. This is someone who I have known for a few years, and it genuinely surprised me when my girl profile was unfriended by him, particularly as he is still friends with my boy profile and his wife and several other friends remain friends with both. I even spoke with him at the Kurri Kurri Nostalgia festival, where I was obviously in girl mode...

Knowing that there could have been a genuine reason why he might have needed to unfriend my girl profile because of other people, I sent him a message firstly stating that I would be fine with the answer either way, briefly explaining the whole "is Facebook doing this?" issue, then asking if he had unfriended my girl profile.

In his answer, he not only said that he hasn't unfriended anybody in quite some time, but that other people have asked him the same question!

In reply, I said:

I hate to think how many people have had friendships damaged by this screw-up on Facebook's part!

I think that the message here is that if someone appears to have unfriended you on Facebook and you can't see a reason why they would have done so, it would probably be a good idea to contact them to see whether it was deliberate or whether Facebook has decided to randomly discard your friendship.

I'm yet to work out whether this means that C's unfriending of me was deliberate or not. Her political antagonism would tend to suggest that she would have done it deliberately, but her claim not to have a problem with me suggests that it might have been a Facebook glitch. If it was a Facebook glitch, that glitch may well have been the difference between going back to the cafe nights, at least occasionally, and not going since September last year.

I have read a few newspaper articles about being unfriended on Facebook having lead to assault and murder. I have to wonder not only whether this apparent Facebook glitch has actually caused assaults and perhaps murder, but also how many people who suffer from depression (as I do) it has affected, and whether it may even have led to suicide. That's a lot of real world implications for a computer glitch!

A $2.50 fluke

I've been wearing the same orangey red nail polish for about 5 weeks now. I started wearing it recently for the Kurri Kurri Nostalgia festival because it works well with 1950s style outfits, and continued wearing it because I quite enjoy the reactions...

Not that I get a lot of reactions, but when they do happen they can be quite funny. Yesterday, I had a 90 minute meeting with a work client who had never met me before. He didn't say anything about them, but I lost count of how many times he glanced at my nails. :)

This nail polish was one from a random selection that the salon has, and with me using it frequently their bottle is now close to empty. I was starting to think that I'd soon have to choose something else.

Today, I went to a pharmacy that I rarely go to, because I was after a box of Blackmore's Radiance, a skin and hair supplement that I've been using for years. The place I used to get it from most often no longer carries it, and it's generally overpriced at Priceline where I can get it if I really have to.

While at the pharmacy, I decided to browse the beauty section. As I gave up looking and headed towards the registers, I spotted a stand of cheap nail polish with a familiar looking bottle shape. I only saw one bottle of my favourite red, but at $2.50 I probably would have grabbed more if I'd seen them. I might have to go back again soon and have a more thorough look. :)

Cafe, not quite yet

It seems that I'm not as ready to go back to a cafe night as I thought I was.

I couldn't get there last week because I'd already booked work for Tuesday that prevented me finishing early enough to get there.

I knew that I would finish early enough today, so I did my usual preparatory work last night including epilating my face, shaping my brows and shaving around my hairline.

I finished work early, as expected. I was so convinced that I was going to go that I took off my shoes and socks to allow the sock marks to dissipate shortly after I finished work. Around 4pm, while waiting for my son to finish with the bathroom so that I could straighten my hair and start getting ready, I went onto facebook. Big mistake!

While looking through my news feed, I found a photo that had been posted to encourage people to come along to the cafe night, with a comment of "you never know who will show up". Unfortunately, the photo contained both C and the central person from the sub-group who went out of their way to reject me.

The idea of going to a cafe night and both of them being there was too much for me to cope with. I simply shut down.

Cafe, perhaps

Following a couple of recent posts, about trying to work out where to go out, and clarifying things that have happened at the cafe nights in the past, I've been told by one of the regular attendees that C claims not to have a problem with me.

Based on her previous behaviour, I have some reservations about the accuracy of that, but I'm now giving consideration to trying to go to a cafe night and see what happens.

I'm a little nervous about trying to go back, because if all goes well, I may go more often again, but if things turn pear shaped it could make it impossible to ever go back.

I guess I'll have to decide whether to do the full retro outfit, something more modern and mundane or something in between ~ with 5 to 6" stilettos of course. :-P

Bright red nails at work - revisited

In a couple of days time, my blog post about the first time I wore bright red nail polish at work (in boy mode) will be 2 years old. The second anniversary of the actual event slipped by last Saturday without me realising it.

I've come a long way since then. Now, I think nothing of wearing bright red on my nails at work all the time.

Yesterday, I had a funny little incident at work. I was with a client whose girlfriend is visiting from overseas. She saw my nails from the cab of his truck and decided that she wanted to see them up close. When the client and I were heading into my office, his girlfriend came into the office with us, and wanted to play with my hands! It took about 20 seconds of her holding onto my hand and admiring my nails before he could convince her to let go so that I could use the mouse on my computer. When they left, she made a comment that I didn't catch, and he said that she wanted to my long fingers and long nails.

Still no negative or confrontational responses, but certainly some funny ones!

Cafe nights - a clarification

In my last post, I mentioned that I no longer feel welcome at the local cafe nights. This generated several responses both here and on Facebook, and I thought that I should clarify the situation.

The short summary is that I have several ongoing personal issues and I don't want them to impact on the group, because I believe that what the group was created to do is a good idea and I don't want it to fail.

Stephanie suggested that I take my girl friends to the same place and let the others see that they weren't needed to have a good time. There are two problems with that.

1. That's not the sort of person I am ~ I get on okay with most of the members of the group and, even if I didn't, I wouldn't want to be nasty to them like that, because I know how it feels, because,
2. That is exactly what was done to me once by others to show that they rejected me. I sat alone at the reserved table for most of a night, only to discover that 3 or 4 others (including someone I thought was a friend for over 20 years) had deliberately sat elsewhere in the restaurant just out of my sight. It was an incredibly hurtful thing to have done to me, and it achieved nothing except hurt, as to this day I still don't know what I was supposed to have done to cause their behaviour.

That sub-group (who seem to have since disappeared) went out of their way to make it clear that they rejected me but were happy to socialise with the rest of the group at the time. It was made very clear that I was the problem.

In spite of that, I wanted to ensure that the nights would continue and the only way to do that at the time was to continue going regularly while a core group of regulars was established.

Late in 2011, ahead of changes to my work circumstances, I got very busy for a while, working over 80 hours per week for several weeks. I stopped going to the cafe nights, not only because I was too physically exhausted but also because of ongoing political antagonism from one other member of the group (who I'll call C) and a frequent feeling that I was being sidelined.

I don't think that I've ever mentioned the feeling of being sidelined before, in part because I have never been able to work out whether it was entirely in my head or whether it really was happening. It is a hard feeling to explain, but I often felt that others in the group would turn away from me to converse, ignoring me and leaving me on my own in the corner. That feeling was present for part of the night almost every time that I went to a cafe night, and while I know that it did physically happen, I don't think that it was intentional on the part of most of the people who attended.

The political antagonism was harder to deal with. For a long time, I didn't mention it either. At one point, I considered C to be a friend. Over time, however, the fact that we had different political opinions seemed to become more and more of an issue to her, and while I was prepared to accept that she was a socialist and just try to avoid talking about politics, she seemed to increasingly feel the need to attack my moderate opinions and beliefs.

After my work circumstances changed, I found myself taking forced holidays. The combination of stress, depression and exhaustion flattened me. I did virtually nothing for a few months. My weight went up, my interest in doing anything went down. I went to cafe nights infrequently, and even after I started working again I struggled to do anything except work and basic day-to-day necessities.

When I did make the effort to go out to a cafe night, I didn't enjoy it. The political antagonism happened every time C was there, the feeling of being sidelined was there every time and I couldn't bring myself to leave before the group photos at the end of the night. The latter was a problem because I needed to get my sleep patterns sorted out by getting to bed earlier than I was, but others in the group wanted the evenings to end as late as possible.

As far as I can figure out, none of the other members of the group have a problem with each other or with me, except C, who is still there almost every week.

The main thing that is stopping me from going back at present is the fact that there's a real possibility that if C is there and starts up about politics, I may snap, throw something at her or pour something over her head and storm out. I don't want to cause dramas for the group or for the restaurant, so I simply haven't gone there.

What to do, where to go

I have a bit of a quandary at the moment.

I want to go out more often, but with the whole drama with not feeling welcome at the cafe nights any more (the person who convinced me to stop going no longer speaks to me and has since, fairly unsurprisingly, un-friended me on facebook), I'm at a loss as to where to go for outings other than occasional special occasions such as IMATS, Halloween and the Kurri Kurri Nostalgia festival.

I want to make more effort to try to get to my nail appointments en femme, but even that seems to be difficult a lot of the time because of work and not getting to sleep early enough.

I'd also like to get out shopping occasionally, but recently it just feels like too much effort to get dressed up just to go out shopping for an hour or two. That's silly, really, because I used to do exactly that, and I enjoyed it!

I'd also like to get to meet-ups with other members of Beauty Heaven, but there haven't been any that I know of recently in Newcastle or Sydney.

Very out on Facebook

On the Thursday night between getting my nails done and going to the Kurri Kurri Nostalgia Festival, I went shopping with my family and noticed an unusual number of people do double takes at my bright red nails, which led me to post this joking comment on my boy profile on facebook:

Guys, looking for a way to get reactions from people?

Tattoos not doing the trick?

Piercings all over your face not doing the trick?

Outrageous t-shirts not doing the trick?

Try long fingernails painted bright red. Even guys with tatts and a face full of piercings react. :-P

Enough people know that I really do have long nails and know that I'm a crossdresser that there was a long series of joking comments in response to that.

I followed that up with a post about the fact that I was planning on going to Kurri Kurri, and another after I got back, both without any detail about how I was dressed. One of my comments on the latter post was:

I'm not sure how people would react if I posted a photo. ;-)

Several of the comments in response to that came from people who are also friends with my girl profile, and one even made reference to Alice. Sometime around 1am Saturday, I decided to post the full length photo, albeit without the link to my blog. Trying to be a little bit subtle, I originally uploaded it visible only to me, then set the date and time of the photo to the previous Sunday afternoon when it was taken so that's where it would show up on my timeline instead of when it was uploaded. I later made it visible to about a quarter of my friends, all of them people who already knew about me and probably would have seen the photo elsewhere. Some time later, I changed the setting to be visible to all of my facebook friends.

There have been a number of comments on the photo, including one referring to Alice, which I replied to from my girl profile... Almost immediately, my girl profile got a friend request from one of my work clients... Considering that my friends on Facebook include one of my neighbours who has never said anything, my father in law and many other friends, relatives and work clients, I guess you could say that I'm now very out on Facebook, and there have been no directly hostile responses and so far just one unfriending, by one of my wife's relatives, which may or may not be related to the posting of this photo.

I don't think I'll start looking at rationalising my profiles down to one just yet, though. I now see that as a possibility, but probably not any time soon.

Kurri Kurri - a day out

After all of the dramas getting ready, I ended up arriving around 2pm, knowing that the Best Dressed Parade that I had intended to enter wasn't until 3pm. What I didn't know was that they closed entries for it just before 2pm. :(

After finding a parking spot a couple of blocks from the event, I found my way to the Miskonduct stall and said hello. I then went in search of a few other people I know, starting amongst the market stalls on the grass of the park. After saying hello to a couple of other people, I was told where some friends' cars were parked, and I set off in search of them.

I caught up with Heather, who I went to school with, and who had been in the best dressed parade last year. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that she caught up with me, as she saw me and came up behind me. I changed from my flat shoes to my heels while standing in the shade chatting to her, and a guy wandering past asked if he could take our photo, which we agreed to. I haven't seen that photo on line anywhere so far, but I have to wonder if he had any idea that I wasn't the woman that I appeared to be. :)

Because of where I had been told some of my friends were parked, I did a loop of much of the area, in heels, looking for them. Sadly, because it was such a hot day, many of the people that I had hoped to see had already left by the time I arrived.

Because it was so hot and sunny, I ended up returning to Miskonduct's stall, changing back to my flats and getting only fleeting glances of the best dressed parade from the shade of their pop-up gazebo.

After that, I wandered around a bit more in my flat shoes, including walking past the stall of a guy that I know but wasn't intending to approach. I made the silly mistake of looking towards him, saw him looking at me and worried that he would recognise me, all in the space of a few seconds. Obviously, the fact that I looked at him and he saw my reaction meant that he looked closely enough to recognise me. He then followed me to the stall next to his and said hello. :)

I left around 5pm, while most of the market stalls were packing up. On the down side, aside from the random guy who took the photo of Heather and me, I don't think that any other photos were taken of me while I was there. On the up side, when I got back to my car, the sun had shifted and my car was fully in the shade of a large tree. Yay! :)

The day out also included another new experience for me. Driving in a full petticoat. I'd never done that before! It was awkward getting into the car and getting comfortable, but getting out was as easy as climbing out in the usual ladylike manner then swishing the skirt and petticoat back and forth a few times to get everything settled into place.

After I got home, I got my wife to snap a few full length photos against a backdrop of a dilapidated wall with peeling paint, and I snapped a few other photos myself. I need to remember to get photos while I'm out and about, as I have a bad habit of forgetting!

Yes, I do plan to go to the Kurri Kurri Nostalgia Festival next year. Not only am I hoping to be better organised, but a major new freeway will open later this year that will reduce the time it takes to get from here to there by almost half compared to the heavy, slow traffic that I experienced on Sunday. I might even get there both days! :)

Kurri Kurri - Preparations - on the day

Sunday started later than planned. As usual, I got to bed later than intended and consequently got up later than planned.

I was committed to going. I was going to get there no matter what.

Which was fortunate given the number of things that went wrong. If I hadn't been so committed to going, there were several things that went wrong through my preparations that would have had me give up in disgust.

I was standing in the bathroom wearing little more than a lightweight dressing gown, dripping with perspiration while trying to do my hair. I struggled to get the rolls rolled and pinned right. I think that I had at least 3 goes at each roll, including re-doing the centre one after doing the third one. I also couldn't get the back to take a curl, and in desperation saturated it with setting lotion, twisted it in a spiral and clipped it up out of the way in a loop on the back of my head using a sectioning clip. I also pulled my fringe up out of the way using a sectioning clip while I did my makeup, then used my straightener to fix it afterwards. The result was frizzy, particularly the rolls, but I was beyond caring! When I unclipped the back, it was set in a tight spiral that I really should have brushed out a bit, but I was so worried that it would lose all of its curl that I decided to leave it as it was.

Makeup want fairly smoothly aside from the considerable time that it took to get the eyeliner right.

The "one size fits most" pantihose that I mentioned getting turned out to be "one size doesn't fit someone my size". I was clearly too tall for them and had to work them up my legs enough to get the crotch seam and waistband into place, and the faux seams which were supposed to start at the heel ended up starting several centimetres (an inch and a half to 2 inches) above the back of my shoes. Aside from that, the legs looked okay, but the top tore on one side just below the waistband and the material pulled along the crotch seam, making a row of holes.

I can usually make pantihose last for dozens of wearings, so this disintegration was somewhat upsetting for me. Realising that the parts that would be seen were still okay, I decided not to pull them off and throw them in the bin. They've now been washed and I still haven't decided whether to chuck them or not ~ I know I should but I probably won't until I have some that fit properly.

I ended up using a crotchet handbag that I've had for many years. It is the closest to 1950s style of any bag that I have, but by the time I put my purse, keys, phone and high heels in it, I needed a separate bag for my brush, makeup, etc to leave in the car.

The red bangle worked well with the dress, as did a pair of earrings that my wife gave me for Christmas.

I wore a pair of flats that didn't really go all that well with the outfit, and carried my high heels so that I could put them on and wear them for part of the time while I was there. I'd initially thought that the dress would require a choice between three pairs of Tony Biancos ~ orange suede, sand suede and nude patent, but in the end it turned out that the orangey red Siren heels were the best colour for the dress.

Kurri Kurri - Preparations - Saturday

Having ended up with 2 separate outfits (the skirt that I got on Saturday and the dress that I got on Wednesday), I decided sometime around Friday night that I'd do a trial run of hair and makeup on Saturday, and if it all worked well I'd go to Kurri in the skirt and top outfit Saturday and save the dress for Sunday. If the trial run didn't work, at least I'd be in a better position to get things to work on Sunday.

2012

With that plan in mind, I started trying to do my hair in hot rollers. I had made an attempt on Friday night and it just didn't work. I had a couple of attempts at it on Saturday and became increasingly frustrated because it just didn't work. I didn't even get as far as attempting makeup.

My hair was heavy with setting lotion and hairspray by the time I decided to attempt the 1940s three roll style that I had worn home from the Lindy Charm School last year. I struggled because I hadn't practised and my hair is so long that starting the curls basically has me reaching straight up at the limit of my arm length.

Saturday's attempt wasn't great but it convinced me that at least I could do that style. I also figured that the majority of people would either not know or not care that I was mixing a 1940s hairstyle with a 1950s outfit, 1900s style parasol and 2010s high heels. :)

Kurri Kurri - Preparations - Wednesday

On the Wednesday before Kurri Kurri, I had my regular nail appointment, and as planned, got my nails done the same slightly orangey red colour as I had them done for the Lindy Charm School last year. Note that the photo here was taken on Friday, 9 days after they were done. I'm fairly impressed with how long this polish lasts!

Unfortunately, for a number of reasons mostly relating to working far too late the night before, I didn't get to the nail appointment in girl mode. That meant that I also didn't go to try on the cream and green dress that I had seen on the previous Sunday.

What did happen, however, was that on the Tuesday, Miskonduct posted a photo of a new dress that had just arrived. I loved the look of it, and immediately realised that the dominant orangey red and cream colours of the dress would work well with my colouring and with the lace parasol. While some of my jewellery such as the earrings and bracelet that my wife had made would be the wrong shade of red for it, some of my other jewellery including the bangle that I bought on Sunday would work with it.

And so it came to pass that, after my nail appointment, I again drove to Miskonduct. I tried the dress and loved it. Even with only the foam travel forms, I could tell that it would work for me, so I got it. :)

Kurri Kurri - Preparations - Sunday

Oops.

It's taken me a week longer than intended to get to a follow-up of last Sunday's post.

Now I have to try to remember where I was up to.

After my trip to Miskonduct the previous Saturday, I went looking for a white parasol on the Sunday because the cream lace one that I got from Tree of Life last year simply wouldn't have looked right with the outfit. I managed to find a cheap chinese style one that should work okay with the skirt.

I also spotted a cream and green dress in another shop that looked like it might work well for me and go with the cream parasol, but trying it on in boy mode with foam travel breast forms, no body shaper and no hip padding was a bit inconclusive, particularly in a dressing room with no mirror. I decided that I'd try to get back there in girl mode on the Wednesday ~ if I managed to get to my nail appointment in girl mode, I'd go there afterwards.

While I was out and about, I also found a narrow red and brass bangle in an antiques shop. The colours looked like they would work so I picked it up too.

In the meantime, my wife made me some earrings and a bracelet inspired by 1950s style jewellery. The bracelet was partly my idea, inspired by daisy chains.

Kurri Kurri Nostalgia Festival

I'm too tired to write much, so here's a photo of the outfit I ended up wearing, which is not the skirt that I mentioned last weekend. I'll explain when I'm awake. :)

Yes, I was squinting. I was standing in the shade but made the mistake of facing towards an area lit by bright sunlight. D'oh.

Not happy, Google!

Apparently in an effort to force more people to use Google Pus err Plus, they've decided to shut down Google Reader.

As far as I can figure out, that's the blog list displayed on your blogger home page, meaning that it will soon vanish from that page.

I'm not a fan of Google Plus and I have no idea how it is supposed to replace this, so I've moved across to using Bloglovin, which I also know very little about.

The good thing about Bloglovin is that, at least until Google Reader goes away, you can import your blog list so that the feed in Bloglovin is the same as the feed that you had in Google Reader, except that the images appear to be scaled larger.

Click here to find my blog on Bloglovin...

A long break

I finally went out en femme yesterday to do some shopping. The Kurri Kurri Nostalgia Festival is next weekend and I still needed to get an outfit together. I've been so busy with work while struggling with depression, sleep and my weight that I've been trying quite literally for months to find the time to do this, but reached the point where I realised that if I didn't get it done this weekend, I simply wouldn't get there!

It's now over 5 months since my last outing en femme. In that time, I've had about 10 infills on my acrylic nails, and kept them painted in a variety of conspicuously bright colours. I've also managed to get back down from 77kg to about 73kg over the past few weeks.

Having finally got myself organised, I headed over to MisKonduct Klothing,where I tried on 3 dresses and a skirt and top combination. The top wasn't quite right but, after going down a size on the skirt, I loved the skirt and petticoat and bought them. While I was at it, I added 2 pairs of pantihose to my vast collection of hosiery. For all of the patterns and styles of tights and pantihose that I had, I didn't have 1950s style seamed plain pantihose. Not being sure which will work best with the outfit, I got nude with black seams and Cuban heels, and nude with nude seams.

After I got home I tried on a few different tops with the skirt and petticoat to find something that will work. The mock wrap top that I chose isn't really "right" for the era but should be okay.

Annoyingly, while I have the top and a pair of shoes that will go with the outfit, the cream lace parasol that I bought last year is entirely the wrong colour for the outfit that I've put together and none of my existing jewellery really works with it either, so over the course of this week I need to try to find a few more suitable accessories as well as finding time to have a few goes at hair and makeup. I'll get my nails done on Wednesday, and the colour for this fortnight will be a simple solid red, which is of course a 1950s colour.

Later, my wife indicated that she didn't want to have to cook, and that she'd like me to go and get Subway for dinner. As usual, a few things needed to be picked up at the supermarket while I was there. I put the outfit I'd worn out earlier back on, brushed my hair and blotted my face and headed back out. Nobody looked twice in the supermarket. The woman who served me at Subway was one who has served me many times before in male mode and didn't even blink at how I was dressed. I'm pretty certain she knew, but said nothing.

As is so often the case, I didn't even think to take photos until after I got home, hours after applying my makeup. It wasn't until later still, when I was about to remove my makeup, that I realised that I'd forgotten to apply white eyeliner to my waterlines, which I usually do.

I'm too big. :(

As I mentioned last week, I rediscovered the Saris that Su gave me when we met up to farewell her last year ahead of her relocation to England.

The Saris each came with a matching top. The design is plain on the front and ornate around the back of the neckline, which I assume is related to how the top is covered by the Sari. The tops also had provision for adjustment for different sizes, by way of multiple runs of stitching down the side seams, which run from the underside of the sleeve to the bottom edge.

I had tried one top on just after I got them, and it was clear that it was nowhere nearly big enough for me. Yesterday, I finally decided to make an effort and take some of the extra rows of stitching out to see if it would fit me. I took the rows of stitching out in matching pairs left and right and tried it after each row or two were removed and it got closer and closer to fitting until, after removing the second last pair (leaving the last row holding each side together), it would just barely do up with no bra or breast forms, with the shaping of the top leaving some room for breasts, but probably not enough for mine.

There no adjustment for the length of the top from shoulder to underbust, and I'm really not sure that even if I lose enough weight for the top to go from far-too-tight to wearable, the underbust position may well still be too high for me to wear.

The only way I'm going to find out is to lose some weight and try it again. Starting back at work today and the corresponding increase in stress level and comfort eating, however, means that the chance of losing weight any time soon is not very good.

Facebook auto-unfriend?

From time to time, I notice that someone on Facebook has unfriended one or other of my boy and girl profiles. Sometimes it is clearly someone who has either taken offence at a difference of opinion and sometimes it is someone I barely knew, who has obviously decided to do a clean-out and remove people that they barely know. I've done the latter a fair few times over the years, and the former on a very small number of occasions.

Other times, though, they are people who I know well enough to be genuinely surprised that they have unfriended me. Because I'm not good at dealing with confrontation, most of the time I simply let it slide but it still leaves me feeling that somehow I've done something that they've been offended by, but I don't know what or why. I really don't like that feeling!

It's reached the point where I genuinely wonder if there is a glitch in Facebook that causes people to be unfriended at random. Particularly when a married couple somehow ceased to be friends with each other and are both adamant that they didn't do it!

Clearly I'm not the only one who this has happened to. A quick web search turns up numerous references to an unfriending glitch, such as this one on Yahoo Answers.

If this really is a facebook glitch, I'm left with another disturbing thought ~ that the person who I am no longer friends with thinks that I unfriended them!

PS If you're wondering about the Friend Tracker image at the top right, it's one of the features of Social Fixer, a handy browser extension that allows you to customise Facebook to some extent.

The Spoon Theory and Depression

Some time ago, someone I know who is living with a chronic physical illness pointed me to The Spoon Theory. It's an interesting read, and not only does it help to provide an understanding of what people living with chronic illness are going through, but what I'm going to say in the rest of this post is based on it, so if you haven't read it before, you'll probably want to do so now, or the rest of this post probably won't make any sense.

I hope that the author  and fans of The Spoon Theory won't be offended by my interpretation of how it relates to depression.

In many ways, depression is like a chronic physical illnesses. The main difference is that both the pain and the struggle to do things are emotional rather than physical. Like other chronic illnesses, the daily allocation of spoons varies ~ the deeper the depression, the smaller your allocation of spoons.

Anything stressful costs spoons. For me, going into the office every morning costs a spoon because I am about to check my emails and that's the main method by which bureaucrats deliver threats to my livelihood. Often. Not checking my email costs more spoons than checking, because it creates the stress of uncertainty. In spite of the fact that they are usually completely wrong, it's up to me to respond to their bullying messages and prove that I haven't done something that would justifying them effectively shutting down my business. Just seeing one of these sorts of messages in my inbox can cost me all of the spoons that I had left that day and force me to borrow some of tomorrow's. A particularly bad one can cost me several spoons every day while I try to get together enough spoons to deal with it.

An interruption such as a phone call or a client turning up uninvited while trying to concentrate on writing something will usually cost at least one spoon. Even walking into the house while my wife is shouting at our son usually costs at least one spoon.

Borrowing too many spoons from tomorrow can mean not being able to see a way of having a tomorrow. I've been close to suicidal a few times in the past, and in the context of the spoon theory, I'd describe the downward spiral towards it as reaching the point where you thought that you had borrowed many of tomorrow's spoons, except that when tomorrow arrived you discovered that you actually only got a tiny fraction of the number of spoons that you expected, so yesterday's borrowing of spoons means that you've borrowed all of the spoons that you can see yourself getting. Ever. At that point, it's not that you can see nothing left to live for. It's that you can't conceive of there being any way forward except death. A suicidal person's cry for help is an attempt to get someone to help them see that, no matter how small, there is always a future supply of spoons.

The less depressed you are, the more spoons you get each day, so the best way to increase the number of spoons that you have is to do something that you really enjoy. A lift in mood raises your daily allocation, but the effect tapers off over time, as you gradually slide back to your default mood. Sometimes, you can get such a lift in mood that you can feel almost normal, for a while at least.

The catch is that, more often than not, it takes a lot of spoons to prepare to do something that you will enjoy. Often, a series of little things such as someone being in your way at the wrong time, something not working how it should, etc, can cost so many spoons that you can't continue preparing for the activity that would have given you that emotional lift that would have taken several days to wear off, and given you more spoons in the process.

There are also costs of spoons if an activity that was supposed to be enjoyable turns out to badly, and the fear of such an outcome before or while preparing. If the fear that the outcome will be bad is large enough, it can cost enough spoons to stop you from even trying, or combine with the little things going wrong to convince you to stop preparing. Eventually you stop even considering doing some things because the thought of it costs you spoons.

I describe myself as a social femulator (from fem·u·late (fem´ya-lat´) v., To imitate, copy, or try to be like a female) or social crossdresser. As a term, I much prefer femulator because I feel that it more accurately describes what and who I am, but not enough people know the term, so crossdresser is a fall-back term that more people understand. I prefix it with social to emphasise the fact that it is about socialisation for me. It is not about sex or whatever other motivation people might assume. To be able to present myself (hopefully reasonably convincingly) as a woman and have people around me interact with me as the woman that I present myself as is generally an enjoyable experience that lifts my mood and gains me spoons.

As I mentioned recently, I no longer feel welcome at the local cafe nights. That means that, even though I might enjoy time out en femme, the overall spoon cost of getting there exceeds the spoons gained from going. The other events that I did manage to get to last year each had a clearly positive result in spoon terms.

Similarly, in spoon terms my observation that having my nails long and painted relieves my need to go out en femme is because having them like that is worth at least one spoon to me every day. Positive comments and various non-verbal responses to them often lift my mood enough to give me more spoons.

Implausible deniability

In response to my last post, Sarah posed the chicken and egg question:

Is it possible that they have not said anything to you because you have not said anything to them?

It's an interesting conundrum. We've been dancing around this for over a decade now. Several of my wife's and my friends and relatives are friends with me on Facebook. Others know and some of them acknowledge that they know.

There have been unsubtle conversations. I think that it's really implausible that my inlaws don't know, and yet, I say nothing and they say nothing. I think that we're at an impasse, and have been for years. Having reached that conclusion, I guess I have to decide what, if anything, I do next.

Bite my tongue!

I probably should point out that this is a lighthearted reflection of an offhanded comment that amused me, and is not a reflection upon any of the people concerned.

 

I've mentioned before that my inlaws know about me but say nothing. I respect their right to maintain plausible deniability, even if I do find if somewhat frustrating at times.

 

We go to my inlaws' place for dinner once a week most weeks, and last night was no exception.

I had to bite my tongue when, over dinner, my mother-in-law made a definitive statement about 6" heels "that nobody can walk in". My wife agreed with her, stating that she also cannot walk in heels that high.

I immediately thought of the 6" Tony Biancos I wore at IMATS, the 5" Sirens I wore to The Lindy Charm School and my well-worn 5" Tony Biancos that I wore to Sydney to farewell Su last year.

No, nobody can walk in 5 to 6 inch heels.

Not only did I have to bit my tongue, I also had to make an effort not to start counting how many pairs of 5 to 6" stilettos I own, in case someone guessed what I was thinking. ;)

 

Great theory...

I mentioned on Thursday that I wanted to get out en femme at least once before returning to work on Monday next week.

After a very hot day last Wednesday, I thought that I'd better check the weather forecast before making a decision. A prediction of Friday and Saturday being very hot meant that I ruled out both days and I set my sights on going out on Sunday.

I got to bed around midnight Saturday and up at 8:20 on Sunday, then wasted time online while waiting for my wife to get up. She got up around 10:30, by which time I was in a foul mood and felt that it was simply too late to bother.

Knowing that we're expected to go to the inlaws' place for dinner on Monday night, I decided that I'd go out Tuesday. That idea was blown to bits when I overheard my wife telling our son that her parents were going to come and take them to the movies on Tuesday. I don't know how long she had known about this plan, but she hadn't bothered to mention it to me.

So Tuesday is out. Wednesday and Thursday are probably already out too, because of other commitments, and it's predicted that Friday will be hot again! I also have to start preparing to return to work next week, and could easily spend all of this week doing so. I'm no longer expecting to get out en femme before I return to work, which also means no progress on dress shopping for the Kurri Kurri Nostalgia Festival, which is  getting closer. I'm going to be very disappointed if I don't get an outfit together in time. :(

The highlight of the past few days is that I've been working on rearranging things and may soon have enough space to be able to get everything that I'll need out of the bedroom the night before. I've sort of done this before such as for the The Lindy Charm School and IMATS, but in a far more crowded way of stacking it all over the floor and on the chair and around the keyboard of the computer that I'm using to type this.

I've also rediscovered (under a pile of stuff belonging to my son) the Indian Saris and matching tops that Su gave to me last year before she moved to the UK. I need to adjust the tops to fit me and try to figure out how to put a Sari on. I have no idea where I'll ever wear them, but working out how to wear them is a challenge in itself!

Oh, weight. I'm sleepy

Reading where I was up to last January and comparing it to now is a bit depressing. I ended 2010 at 72.5kg and ended 2011 at 83.5kg. I ended 2012 at 87kg, having peaked at 88kg between Christmas and New Year.

On a more positive note, around the same time as my weight peaked, I began making an effort to try to get my sleep pattern under control. I have managed to get to bed by midnight every night except for New Years Eve, when I got to bed just after midnight. To tie in with that, I've been getting up most days around 8am. If I can keep getting to bed by midnight until I return to work on the 21st, I hope to be able to keep doing it indefinitely.

One odd thing is that I still feel tired even though I've been in bed for 8 hours. For the first few days, I put this down to a jetlag type of effect from changing my sleep schedule, comparable to changing timezone by 2 or 3 hours. Since I've been married, I've woken a few times through the night most nights, but I think that it happening more often for the first few nights and then started settling back down.

Because I'm making an effort to get to sleep around midnight, my wife has also begun getting to bed closer to midnight, although she tends to read in bed for a while (which makes it harder for me to go to sleep, but I do eventually), so she's still getting to sleep later than I am. The odd thing is that apparently she is so accustomed to only getting about 4 or 5 hours sleep that she is getting up at about 5am because she wakes up and can't go back to sleep!

Which left me wondering if my trying to get about 8 hours sleep per night is actually leaving me tired due to too much sleep! I've been waking between 6:30 and 7am, thinking that I haven't been in bed long enough and trying to go back to sleep. After reading several conflicting web sites from various sources, the explanation that fits my experience best is that I'm actually staying in bed too long, which is contributing to my disturbed sleep.

Between 6.5 and 7.5 hours may be enough, so I need to get to bed by midnight but get up when I wake around 7am and see if I feel more tired or less. I've also noticed a few suggestions about taking a 20 minute nap around mid afternoon, because it's normal to feel tired then and a nap is the best solution. I'm not sure if I'll be able to do that once I return to work but I can try.

Interestingly, a couple of the other consequences I've found mentioned for too much sleep are depression and weight gain. Hopefully if I can sort out how much sleep I actually need, it may help with those problems as well.

I'm also thinking that I should push myself to go out en femme at least once before I return to work, too. I've been putting it off because I was hoping to get some weight off, but I need to find a 1950s style dress for the Kurri Kurri Nostalgia Festival, and I'm not going to find one in time if I don't start looking soon!

2012 - Very out but not very often

You may have noticed that I didn't post much last year. Like the year before, I have been feeling rather out of sorts and just not with it. I've finally come to acknowledge that I'm living continuously on the verge of a complete breakdown. I think that I've known it for a long time but not wanted to face it.

My living is dependant upon a government bureaucracy that, since I returned to work after Easter last year, is supposed to audit me at least once a year. I now suffer from anxiety with all of my work because there is no clear definition of what will be audited and what will be considered right or wrong. To say that my work output is down would be a massive understatement!

On top of that, due to family issues and a total failure to make progress on plans for house extensions and renovations that I hoped would make it easier to organise myself and get out more often, my life has basically ground to a halt and going out en femme has become a chore.

Given that going out en femme helps to lift my mood, I'm caught in a catch-22 situation of being too depressed to make the effort to overcome the other obstacles to going out, even though I know that I would enjoy going out and that it would help to relieve my depression. In recent times I've only managed to get out if I've made a significant investment in what I was doing, such as paying for a ticket or buying a costume in advance.

Consequently, I got out only a total of 13 times in 2012. Considering that I managed to get out a total of 73 times during 2010, last year's total is fairly sad.

I may not have been out often, but I managed to go to some events that I really enjoyed, including the The Lindy Charm School at MisKonduct Klothing, Halloween, IMATS, my trip to Sydney to farewell Su and the first Newcastle Beauty Heaven meet-up.

Sadly, I have been made to feel consistently unwelcome at the local cafe nights. A few years ago, one of the then regulars decided that she didn't like me and to this day I don't know why. She also convinced someone who used to be a friend of mine many years ago to also turn her back on me, which still hurts me to this day. In spite of that, I made an effort to keep going.

I am a political moderate (Libertarian), but I generally make an effort not to talk about politics en femme either on line or in person. Unfortunately, one of the other regulars at the cafe nights whose political position can only be described as far left persisted in making snide political comments in an effort to draw me into political arguments every time I went to the cafe. On top of everything else that was making it difficult for me to go out, it was the straw that broke the camel's back. My cafe night outings became sporadic but every time I went back and she was there, it happened again until I finally gave up. I have no idea if I will go to a cafe night again. :(

On the upside, I've come to realise that having long painted nails is a continuous form of self expression and declaration of non-conformance that relieves my need to go out en femme. I still want to go out, but having my nails done reduces the pain of not spending time en femme.