Resolution at last

When I was in 1st class, a girl moved to my school. She was the most attractive girl I'd ever seen, and we were in the same classes all the way through infants and primary school. Because we were both in the top classes for most subjects, we remained in some of the same classes all the way through high school. I started to take an interest in girls around the end of primary school and this turned into an infatuation with the girl who I thought was the most exquisitely beautiful girl on the planet. Yes, I really did think of her like that.

Unfortunately, around the age of 5, when I was in kindergarten, I realised that I was different. I was weird. I was a freak. I wanted to dress up, look and behave like a girl, and I was absolutely certain that I was the only one in the world who was such a screwed up freak. Hence, I was a social misfit. I was also a geek. In 1978, my father built a microcomputer around a Signetics 2650 CPU evaluation kit. By about 1980 (age 11) I knew how to load programs either by hand from printouts, or using the cassette recorder that plugged into the computer.

So what happens when an extremely self conscious geek who is paranoid that someone will discover his dark secret of wanting to cross dress is infatuated with one of the most popular, attractive girls in the school?

Of course, I did things to try to make her notice me. Of course it all went wrong.

Virtually everybody who knew me knew that I was infatuated with her, but I could barely even talk to her. She was out of my league and I knew it. About the only thing that I was successful at was hiding my crossdressing from everybody except my mother (who didn't let on that she knew until years later). I later came to believe that I caused that girl a great deal of embarrassment over the 6 years of high school.

The last time I saw her was about 8 years ago, when my then pregnant wife and I got up and danced with belly dancers in a Turkish restaurant which has long since closed. I saw her, but didn't know whether she realised who I was or not. My feeling at the time was that she recognised me and looked away.

Today, I was looking through "people you might know" from high school on my male facebook profile and realised that she has recently joined facebook. I wasn't entirely sure how she'd react, and I sent her a friend request with a message attached, in part saying:

One of my biggest regrets in life is the embarrassment that I caused you in High School, and I'll understand entirely if you don't want to add me as a friend.

A few hours later, I went back on facebook to find that she had accepted my friend request, and had sent me a message in response, in part saying:

Please don't worry about high school that was such a long time ago. Happy to accept you as a friend.

It's incredible how those few words have lifted a feeling of guilt that has been in the back of my mind for over 20 years.

Now I have to decide whether to send her a friend request from my female profile or not. Perhaps not straight away. :)

Opportunity lost

Because I've been struggling to get work done, due to a combination of way too much of it and ongoing headache problems, I decided yesterday that if I was able to get a particular job completed, I'd go to my nail appointment today en femme, and if I didn't, I'd go in boy mode.

Sadly, by the time I got home from the cafe night last night, organised myself and showered, I got to bed after 1am without touching the paperwork. I slept poorly and ended up sleeping in a bit, which helped my head a bit, but meant no girl mode outing today.

While I was at the salon, several things happened that made me regret the decision. Firstly, unlike the time I went there en femme last month during school holidays, the daughter of the woman who does my nails was there because she was off school sick. I think that seeing me en femme would have cheered her up. The second thing that happened is that a woman who I have spoken to a few times before because she often has her appointment after mine on a Wednesday afternoon was there, and she still hasn't seen me in girl mode yet, either. One of the staff who had been in hospital recently was back, and she also missed out on the twice that I went there en femme...

The final thing was a little more complicated. The salon sub-lets a room to a remedial massage therapist, so a wide variety of people come to see her. Today, that included a client of mine from work, who I've only done one job for but it was fairly recently. If I had been in girl mode, he would have been very unlikely to recognise me but in boy mode, he almost certainly did. He didn't say anything to me, but given that I was sitting at the nail technicians' station waiting for my nails to dry, it's a fairly safe bet that he realised what I was there for.

I don't mind coming out to people on my own terms, but something beyond my control like that worries me a bit. Of course, there's nothing that I can do about it, so I'll just have to live with it.

The ultimate irony of my self imposed missing out on going out en femme is that I probably didn't get much (if any) more work done than if I had gone out en femme. Yes, I'm kicking myself!

Pushing boundaries

Yesterday, I did a few things that pushed my comfort zone. Surprisingly, things that I feared so much that I simply hadn't done them turned out to be remarkably easy.

On Thursday night, Su, one of my friends on Facebook who I originally knew from the forums on Beauty Heaven, asked who wanted to go to Fashion Weekend Sydney, on Sunday afternoon. My immediate reaction was that I'd love to go but wouldn't have time. After some lively discussion on Facebook, I decided that I'd try to get there. At least one of the other women that I met at the Beauty Heaven open day last year, Christine, was going, and another two of my online friends might also have been going.

I considered driving, catching a train or perhaps a combination of the two by driving part way then catching a train from there. Like my former fear of using lifts en femme, I had never used public transport en femme for fear of being abused or assaulted by somebody and being unable to get away from them. That's also why I still haven't managed to get to Sydney during the week for a shopping trip that I had planned to do in January!

By the time I went to bed on Saturday night, I had chosen my outfit and decided that if I went at all, I'd walk to my local railway station and catch the train to Central station in Sydney, then walk to the venue at Moore Park rather than try to figure out buses. It was less than 2.5km walk each way, which really isn't a problem for me in flat shoes. I set my alarm for 8am Sunday. The goal was to make a 10:50am train, which was supposed to get to Central at about 1:12pm. Walk a fairly flat route to meet up with the others around 1:45. Easy!

When I woke up and looked at the clock in the bedroom, it was 7:59. I turned off the alarm so that it wouldn't disturb my wife and got up. I started with the usual morning things of washing my face and having breakfast. I could have wimped out and gone back to bed, and seriously considered it several times. Fortunately, I continued instead. I did my makeup and dressed, and walked to the railway station with 6 minutes to spare. I took a seat on the surprisingly busy platform while I waited, and boarded the train when it arrived. I took a seat and was almost universally ignored. It was a bit of an anti-climax. On the way down, I had 2 women sit next to me at different times along the way. Neither spoke to me, but that's fairly normal for the majority of people on trains around here.

At Central, and on the walk from there to the event, it was the same story. Everybody was too busy with their own lives to take any notice of me.

When I arrived at the venue, I walked to the main gates wondering whether this was where to go in or not, and looked to see both Su and Christine standing waving to me. We went in and had a brief look around on the way to the 2pm fashion show, which I think was a first for all three of us. The tickets that Su had been given were for front row seats about half way along the catwalk, so I'm probably in the background of a lot of photos. :)

After the fashion show, we spent over an hour wandering around looking through all the stalls, and generally not spending money. Su bought one dress for $10 that was probably originally priced over $100. When she and I went up to the VIP lounge so that she could pay without queuing, we discovered that we were supposed to have received VIP goodies bags and could get complimentary mini-manicures (a new coat of nail polish). Even though I'd been slack and was still sporting my 18 day old nail polish from my last salon visit, I decided against the manicure since it would take a while and I'd have to clean it off and go back to boring beige before the morning anyway.

When we found Christine outside, we explained about the goodies bags and she went back in to get hers. There was a little mix up, and we stayed outside waiting for her to come back out, while she thought that we had gone back inside and waited for us just inside the door. While there, she bumped into Olivia, one of the staff from Beauty Heaven. We chatted briefly, got a few photos then Olivia headed back inside while we set off home.

After a little confusion trying to find the bus stop for Christine to get back to Central, I decided that it would be better to spend $2 to get a bus to Central with her than walking and risking missing my train and having to wait a full hour for the next one. We got a bus, and were very fortunate that the driver told us at a stop that this was the stop for Central, because we wouldn't have known and would both have missed our trains. As it was, I got the train with just a few minutes to spare. When I arrived, there was a large crowd on the platform as there was a 4-car train at the platform and another 4-car set was being shunted and coupled to form an 8-car train and nobody could get aboard until the coupling was completed. I waited in the crowd, again finding that nobody paid me any undue attention.

The trip home was as uneventful as the trip there, but it was a bit cold on the train, and even colder on the walk home. Because I had the VIP goodies bag on the seat next to me, nobody sat next to me on the way home.

While it was quite a long day, I accomplished several things. I met Su, who I'd known online for years but not met before, I took two quite long train trips totalling about 5 hours, and a bus trip of a few minutes in Sydney en femme, I sat in the front row at a fashion show, browsed a large fashion sale amongst hundreds of people and was treated as the woman I presented as for the whole time. I know that a few people looked at me funny from time to time, but there was no direct negativity and certainly no aggression aimed at me in the whole time.

I'm also finally starting to shake a feeling that I've experienced when I'm en femme with other people. I've often felt like I'm an amusement or a diversion to people, or that they are just humouring me. It's not something that I've ever put into words before, and I know that I don't get that feeling from some people, such as Marian, who works at the cafe where we go for dinner on Tuesday nights. With other people, I'm not so sure. I really didn't feel that way with Su and Christine. Instead, I felt like I was with real friends who accept me as I am. The part of my mind that has been telling me for years that I'm a freak is getting shouted down, and that's probably a bigger breakthrough for me than overcoming my fears. :)

There's already an indication that Su and I might meet up with Jasmine, one of the other girls who didn't make it on Sunday, to go shopping sometime in a few weeks. Don't worry, I'll be sure to post about it if it happens. :)

Some people just don't get it

I had an interesting little incident happen yesterday.

A couple of days ago, I attempted to enter an Estee Lauder competition on Facebook, only to find that in order to enter, you had to have picked up a free sample of their new lipsticks from David Jones or Myer first, as the competition requires you to enter a code from the packaging.

On Sunday, I was in boy mode taking my wife and son somewhere else, and on the way we stopped by David Jones at Kotara to visit the Estee Lauder counter so that I could pick up the free sample. This is the same place where I bought a bottle of foundation last month, but the Estee Lauder rep there was not one of the 3 that I've dealt with there before.

I walked straight up to the rep and told her that I was after a free sample of the lipstick. There were no samples on display at all, but she knew exactly what I was talking about and opened a drawer and got the sample out, only to turn to my wife and present it to her!

My wife immediately handed the sample to me. At this point, I still don't think that the rep had realised that it was for me. Perhaps having my nails about 10mm past the fingertips and painted, long hair with a fringe, both ears pierced, etc was too subtle for her.

I wasn't finished though, as there was something else that I needed to ask her, which left her in no doubt as to the fact that I was there for product for myself. I asked her whether there has been a problem with the Double Wear foundation, as the last bottle that I bought there recently is noticeably paler than the previous ones. When she assured me that nothing has changed with the product and that she was not aware of any problems with it, I informed her that I'd used 3 or 4 bottles of it over the past few years and that the current one is noticeably paler than the previous ones. I told her which shade it was, and when she suggested that perhaps my skin tone has changed, I said no, the foundation is different. Her response was to get a small sample bottle out and fill it from the bulk bottle of that shade that they use in the store.

After all of that, she appeared indifferent, as if she just wanted to give me the sample so that I'd go away. I got the impression that she didn't care about whether I wore makeup or not, her attitude appeared to be that I and my family didn't look posh enough to deserve to be at the Estee Lauder counter or to be served by her.

I'll try that sample against the bottle I'm using and see if they are the same or not. If it's different, I'll take the bottle back and see if they'll replace it. Whether I'll go in boy mode or girl mode, I don't know yet. :)

A six outing month

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

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

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

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

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

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

Seeing the optometrist

I had a slightly funny visit to the optometrist today.

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

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

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

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

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

Reassessing goals

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

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

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

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

Future wiglessness

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

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

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

Fizzled Wednesday

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

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

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

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

Being outed and not caring

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

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

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

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

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

Working on Wednesday again

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

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

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

Bright red nails at work

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

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

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

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

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

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

New shoes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Getting back on track

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Awful apart

I'm sad to say that things have really fallen apart this month. A combination of heat stroke and stress over a government department wanting to do things that could force me to close down the small business that I've run for over a decade translated into a bout of deep depression, the worst migraines I've experienced in years, a small amount of weight gain, almost constant exhaustion and a very disappointing total of one outing for the entire month.

That's right, I made it to just one cafe night. The first time I'd missed one since December 2009 and I managed to miss 3 of the 4 Newcastle nights plus the Central Coast one, all in the space of one month.

The depression is fluctuating wildly from day to day but the bottom of the cycles isn't as deep as it had been. The migraines haven't gone. They're not as bad as they were, but they're persisting, usually setting in around late afternoon, at about the time that I'd normally be preparing to go out to cafe nights.

I've decided to make a conscious effort to put this month behind me and try to get out on both Tuesday and Wednesday nights this coming week, I've also got a nail appointment on Wednesday afternoon, and I'm hoping to go to it en femme, and perhaps do some other shopping.

Recognition? Definitely not!

Back in November, I mentioned that I had been to an op shop where my sister-in-law's mother (I'll again call her E for convenience) volunteers. In December, I visited my brother and my sister-in-law, and no mention was made of E having recognised me.

While I was fairly sure that if E had recognised me, she would have said something to her daughter, I also thought that there might have been a small chance that she might have simply said nothing, so a lack of comment might have been inconclusive.

I visited my brother and his wife last night, and mentioned in conversation that I had seen E in the op shop and didn't think that she had recognised me. My brother jokingly said "you weren't in drag were you?", but I didn't get a chance to respond immediately, as my sister-in-law was telling me that it wasn't a bad thing that E hadn't recognised me, this being with the assumption that I'd been there as a male.

When I finally got a chance to mention that "I was wearing the wig that is closest to my natural hair colour", the conversation became somewhat comical, with everybody making jokes about it. I was not only reminded that St Vincent de Paul is a Catholic Church run organisation, but that E has some rather traditional views, and that if she had recognised me, my brother and his family "would have never heard the end of it." There was also a suggestion that my brother "would have been ex-communicated from the family" ... "with an axe" ... "or a chainsaw if she could work out how to start it."

While some of the comments were obviously a little exaggerated, I think that it's safe to say that if E had recognised me, my sister-in-law would definitely have known about it. Some of the people who know her best are quite confident that she would not have said nothing, so it's fairly safe to assume that she didn't recognise me. :)

Goal failures

Well, I failed in my goal of at least 6 outings in January including one daytime outing, and I'm well on the way to failing that goal for February too.

I took holidays until mid January, and as I mentioned about a fortnight ago, going back to work really put me off balance. My workload has been so bad that I haven't had time to sit down and write blog posts let alone getting out.

Another couple of weeks on and things have been even worse than I anticipated. A planned day off fell apart because a client had a vehicle break down and couldn't get to me until the following day. A paperwork backlog has forced me to spend many hours in the office, usually meaning that I'm so late getting to bed that I struggle to get up at a reasonable time in the morning. That's another goal failure - I've made no progress sorting out my sleep pattern.

Then there was this week. We had a fairly mild first half of summer, but the past few days have been more normal for here. Temperatures have been around 40C (about 105F) since about 26th January. On Tuesday this week, I had to drive to several places around town for work. Each time I parked the car, it got very hot inside. Each time I drove to the next place, there wasn't enough time for the car to cool down, so I got hotter and hotter through the day. By the time I got home, I had heatstroke and had to lie down in a cool room with the curtains closed to try to recover. A friend suggested that I should take a cold bath, but the water coming out of the cold tap was quite warm!

I'm sad to say that I missed my first Tuesday night cafe night in well over a year. Worse, I had to go to Sydney on Wednesday for work, meaning that I also missed the monthly Central Coast cafe night. We went by train there and back and I made the mistake of letting my travelling companion choose where we sat. It was about 2.5 hours each way and on both occasions he put me in a window seat on the sunny side of the train, which added to my feeling unwell.

After struggling though work on Thursday and Friday, I was looking forward to relaxing and recuperating on Saturday and perhaps trying to go out on Sunday. My mother has other plans for me, though. She rang me on Friday evening to tell me that they are doing a big clean-up at their place and that I have to go there over the weekend to sort some possessions of mine that have been at their place since I left home over a decade ago!

The weather won't be cool, and I can neither fit my car in their driveway nor park in front of their house, so I'll have to lug whatever I want to keep up the steep driveway and along the street in the heat to load it into my car. If I do that Saturday, I will probably spend the entire day Sunday trying to recover from heat stroke again. That makes 3 planned outings in a row down the drain. :(

On the upside, I may well soon be unemployed and have much more time to get out. :)

Wigless peers - 2

I'm really starting to feel like the odd one out at cafe nights!

Last night, there were 8 of us, including 3 crossdressers, 2 transsexuals, 2 hairdressers who did one of the CD's hair last week and this week, and one GG partner.

Last week, there were 2 of us wearing wigs. This week, I was the only one in a wig!

It was one of my favourite wigs which is getting a bit old and the net is a bit stretched. I had pinned the sides back off my face before I went out as usual, but when I arrived at the restaurant I found that the clips just weren't keeping it off my face how I wanted, and took about 10 attempts to get one of them to sit okay. For some reason, the wig also irritated my neck all night. I really regretted wearing it.

I had a chat with the hairdressers who came along, and will probably organise to get my hair cut by one of them soon. They assure me that they can come up with a style that will work much better en femme while still looking much the same as it does now in boy mode. I'm probably also going to have to read up on hair straighteners, as that's probably the solution to the way the ends of my hair go fluffy.

Going out en femme wigless to local events might not be as far off as I thought! If it really works out well, daytime outings might not be out of the question either. :)

Wigless peers

I haven't blogged for over a week, and I'm not happy about that. I'm not ill as such, but being back at work has really put me off balance.

At this week's cafe night, we had a total of 7 of us, including 5 crossdressers, one transsexual and one GG partner. Within the group, just 2 of us were wearing wigs. Two of the others who had worn wigs to the Central Coast cafe night when I went wigless were wigless this week, leaving me really wondering what is stopping me from doing likewise.

The restaurant that the Newcastle cafe nights are held at is a lot more public and a lot closer to home for me than where the Central Coast cafe nights are held. I have seen people both in the restaurant and walking past who know me, and I've been very happy hiding behind a wig, but am getting more and more comfortable coming out to people around me. I suspect that going there wigless is going to happen for me fairly soon. I'm not sure whether it'll be weeks or months, but I'm pretty certain that it will be this year.

Back to work blues

I mentioned on Tuesday that I've been feeling a bit flat, in part because of the sense of impending doom that comes from the knowledge that my 4 weeks off will come to an end on Monday, and I'll be flat out at work again. Combine that with the fact that I haven't been out this month aside from the cafe nights, and I look like I might fail to achieve my frequency of outings goal in the first month of the year!

On a brighter note, one of my nieces (the older sister of the one that I've mentioned before) and her partner joined us at the cafe night this week. Unfortunately, her partner developed a bad headache and needed to go home, so I arranged to drive my niece home. Finding that her partner had taken something for his headache and was in much better spirits, I visited them for a while, leaving after 12:30am! My niece is quite accomplished at sewing and has offered to help out with some repairs and alterations that my wife has been promising to do but just hasn't got to. For example, there are a few dresses that I've bought at op shops that I've later realised were a little too long for my liking, which I want taken up so that the hem is a little above the knee instead of below. With my recent weight loss, a few of my dresses also need taking in, particularly at the waist. Hopefully my wardrobe options will improve a little bit, fairly soon. :)

Feeling flat

I've been feeling a bit flat for the past few days. I made a big effort to get out several times in the last week of last year and went out to cafe nights twice last week, which was great but a little tiring due to my badly screwed up sleep patterns.

That is fairly minor compared to the big problem. I took 4 weeks holidays over Christmas and new year, as I have done in previous years. Unfortunately, they're holidays that aren't really relaxing because the emails and phone calls from customers won't stop even though I'm not answering them yet. There's also the stress of knowing that not only do I have to go back to work next week (with a considerable increase in workload compared to last year) but I really should start catching up on work this week because there's so much to be done.

I had hoped to take a trip to Sydney this week to do some shopping but one of the places that I planned to go to is effectively a wholesale outlet. You're expected to know the products that you're after before you go there, so I need to spend some time looking around locally and making myself a wish list. Given that it's already Tuesday, I'm a little doubtful that I'll get out, make my wish list and get to Sydney between now and Friday as well as getting a head start on work.

Rather than push myself and stress even more, I've decided that I'll do the wish list when I can, and plan the Sydney trip for a day off work later in the year. For the sake of my sanity (what little I have left), I am going to have to take days off work on a regular basis. I'm thinking probably one day per fortnight.

First things first, though. I'm off to decide what to wear to the cafe tonight so that I can work out what colour I want to put on my nails. :)

Recognition? Wigless, yes

One of the downsides of going out en femme wigless is that there is considerably less difference in my appearance between male and female, and hence a much increased probability of recognition compared to wearing a wig.

That was quite clearly confirmed yesterday, when I was shopping at Charlestown Square in boy mode. I had met a relative of one of the other crossdressers for the first time at the cafe night on Wednesday. When I saw her in Charlestown, she immediately recognised me, smiled and said hello. We chatted briefly then went our separate ways.

While it might not have been a problem if my sister-in-law's mother had recognised me, I'm not sure how things would have gone if my customer and her daughter had, and it could have been very awkward if my father-in-law had. Then again, perhaps they all did and just pretended not to and it's all irrelevant. I don't know.

I think that I much prefer the greater chance of anonymity that the combination of a wig and makeup provides. Wigs also provide the option of a radical change in hair colour, which I quite like.

Whether wearing a wig that frames my face better than my own hair makes me more passable, or my real hair looks more natural and hence more passable, I'm not sure. One thing that I am sure of is that, for now at least, going out wigless close to home is not likely to happen soon.

I guess I'm just not out enough yet.

Gone wigless - reactions

After I posted yesterday's post about going out without a wig for the first time ever en femme, I realised that I'd been interrupted and had only told half the story.

I think that a couple of the reactions on Wednesday night deserve a special mention.

Sue, the organiser of the Central Coast cafe nights and a regular at the Newcastle cafe nights, who has been wigless the past few times I've seen her, greeted me when I arrived, commented that "Alice has her hair tied back" and started to say that she hadn't seen that wig before, then realised that it wasn't a wig and complimented me on my hair.

The other notable response was from Linda Karen, the organiser of the Newcastle cafe nights. When she arrived, I was seated facing away from the door. With my hair tied up, it was obvious that it wasn't a wig, and she later said that she had no idea who I was from the back. It wasn't until she walked around to the other side of the table to take a seat that she realised it was me, and jokingly came out with "You look great you bitch. I hate you", which is quite a compliment from her. :)

Gone wigless

I have sort-of achieved one of the goals that I wrote about a few days ago. However, it was done with no hair on my widows peaks. Instead, it was done with a combination of makeup, a fringe combed over the bald spots and hair spray to keep it in place. I'm not sure how I feel about the comb-over bit an I'm not sure how things would go if I was out in the wind, but for the indoor venue of the Central Coast cafe night, it worked.

The idea of using makeup to disguise the widows peaks came about because I had noticed some time ago that the eyeshadow that I use to colour my brows when I'm wearing an auburn wig (because I can't find a brow pencil the right colour) is actually quite close to my hair colour. A few nights ago, I experimented by using that eyeshadow to colour in the widows peaks and create a more rounded hairline.

It wasn't great but it worked. I decided that I'd try it for Wednesday night's Central Coast cafe night, which is in a relatively private suburban restaurant. If I wasn't happy with the result, I could always put an auburn wig on instead.

On Tuesday morning, I went and bought a beaded hair comb gadget, which consists of 2 metal combs with bead covered elastic between them. Before I started doing my makeup for last night, I tied the top half of my hair up in a pony tail, then used a plastic gadget to pull the pony tail through underneath the tie that held it and up the back of my head, making it stick out more, then put the comb in to cover that. This is something that you simply can't do with a wig!

Instead of stopping my primer and foundation at about the edge of where a wig would come to, I carried it all the way up to the hairline, including fully covering the widows peaks to give the shadow something to stick to. I coloured in the widows peaks before doing contouring and highlighting, and feathered the edges a little when I powdered my face.

Once I was dressed, I brushed my fringe forward and, with a bit of fiddling, got it sitting just right to cover the widows peaks. I gave the fringe a light spray with hair spray to help keep it in place, added jewellery (including my only pair of real gold expensive earrings) and spent a few minutes looking in the mirror trying to work out if I was happy enough with the result and whether I was ready to do this. The fact that the venue is relatively private made it much easier to say yes.

If it had been somewhere more public or closer to home, I don't think that I would have been able to do it. There's a psychological barrier there that I'm yet to overcome. I'll have to work on that.

Off colour

No, it's not that I'm feeling ill (although the thought of going back to work is having that effect). I wore the beige (Revlon Putty) nail polish that I applied on Wednesday night last week until yesterday morning. While I've experienced a slight yellowing of nails from polish before, I really wasn't prepared for the colour that my natural nails had gone. In spite of having used a base coat, they were a brighter yellow than I was expecting in even my worst nightmare. In contrast, the two nails that were covered with gel were still nice and pale except up towards the cuticles where they'd grown out, and the ones overlaid with acrylic but not gel were a bit patchy.

So it looks like I'm stuck with something of a catch 22 situation. I have to wear nail polish to hide the yellow staining of my nails, but by wearing polish, I'll guarantee that they will continue to be stained, unless I have gel overlays done on my nails. Overlays also reinforce the nails, reducing the risk of breakage.

Add in that I'm still having trouble with the side of one nail cracking, in spite of having had an acrylic overlay over a patched edge, and I decided that it was time to head back to the salon to see about getting gel on all my nails. I dropped in yesterday afternoon and made an appointment for this morning, then went home to put some CoverGirl Fuchsia Girl on for last night's cafe night.

Goals - 2

Last night, I realised that there was a goal that I omitted from yesterday's list.

* I want to try to learn not to eat too much when out at parties or visiting people who habitually put out nibblies, and/or over cater. I need to learn that just because there is food available doesn't mean that I should partake of it in larger than normal quantities.

72.5kg on New Year's Eve, 73kg the next 2 nights, then 75kg after visiting some of my wife's relatives last night to catch up with one from Canberra who didn't make it to Newcastle over Christmas. :(

I'll be going out to cafe nights tonight and tomorrow nights. Hopefully I'll be able to do better with my diet than I did last night!

Goals

I didn't make any new year's resolutions, as that would just be setting myself up for failure. Instead, in addition to the ones I've already mentioned separately in the past few days, I have set myself a few my goals for 2011:

* I intend to continue to come out to the people around me, and aim to raise the profile and improve the public perception of transgender people. I'm still trying to work out whether to say anything to the people who know but want to pretend not to or whether to let things continue as they have so far.

* I know that my work commitments will increase significantly this year compared to last year, and to prevent that from swamping my girl time, I intend to delegate anything that I can. It might sound trivial, but I need to do things like paying someone to mow the grass so that I don't have to do it myself.

* I plan to get out on average more often than once every 5 days for the year, with at least 6 outings, including at least one daytime outing, every month. I don't want to be a long way behind in about October and have to push other things aside to catch up at the end of the year as happened last year.

In the back of my mind there is an even bigger goal of getting out no less than once every 4 days with 8 outings per month including 3 daytime outings but if I aim for that but fall short, I'll be happy as long as I make the easier goal.

* A few times last year, when I didn't know what I wanted to do or where I wanted to go, I wasted an opportunity and didn't crossdress at all. This year, I intend to try doing new things push my comfort zone en femme but I don't intend to place myself in danger.

For example, I will probably travel by train to the Sydney CBD and walk around shopping during the day. I had a very traumatic experience in the Sydney CBD a few years ago, and am not very comfortable being there even in boy mode. I've travelled by train in boy mode plenty of times but never en femme, but know that some of my friends in Sydney do so without any problems.

I'd also like to get back in touch with our belly dance teacher and see if we can arrange classes again. I miss them, and even though I only ever did one en femme, I really enjoyed it and would like to do it again.

* I want to sort out my sleep patterns so that I can get to bed and get up earlier instead of missing out on daytime outings because I'm too late getting up. It's something that I've mentioned several times before and made no real progress with.

One of the things that makes it difficult is that the cafe nights always end late and, with the Central Coast ones that can be almost midnight and I have about an hour drive home afterwards. I'm thinking that I may have to set an alarm for myself for around 10:00 as the time that I leave cafe nights, even if that means missing out on being in the group photos.

* I want to organise myself so that I can reduce the time that it takes for me to transform in both directions, as I have come to realise that the combination of this and getting up too late often prevents me from even starting to change.

* I need to make a decision one way or the other on buying a smaller pair of breast forms. The ones I have now make me a D cup, which is a little large for some outfits. Buying a smaller pair so that I have the option of being a C cup instead would make some of my clothing choices much easier, but for reasons that I'm not going into here, I have been unable to talk to my preferred supplier.

* I intend to wear halterneck tops and dresses for the first time. I bought several last year, but have never actually worn one out. To some extent this relates to problems with body shapers and breast size but hopefully I'll sort those problems out very soon.

* I intend to go out with my own hair instead of a wig. As I mentioned a while ago, my hair is longer than most of my wigs, but my receded widows peaks hairline discourages me from going out without a wig. I've been trying Minoxidil without discernible success, and will continue until I finish what I have. Unless it starts to show results, I'll consider hair transplantation after I finish the Minoxidil. I'm now also considering makeup techniques to make it less obvious without actually doing anything about the hair, or possibly getting an artificial fringe to clip in.

* I intend to organise myself so that I can pack my girl gear when I travel, and do so. I've been thinking about how to convert the cane basket that I bought recently and hope to start on it quite soon. At this stage, I have no suitable trips arranged this year but that's quite likely to change. While I didn't make it to Transformal last year, I might get there this year.

* I want to work on improving my female voice so that it fits my appearance. I have a recorder program on my internet tablet that should be quite suitable for recording and listening back, and will have to make myself spend time practising. I also need to get over the shyness that prevents me from comfortably practising my voice at home when anybody else is there. My wife and son both know about me, so there's no logical reason for the shyness and yet it persists.

* I intend to maintain my nails at an (un)reasonable length and wear nail polish virtually all of the time. I'm comfortable having about 8mm of overhang beyond the nail bed, and want to keep them at about that length. While I'd love to have them longer, I find that when they are longer than that, the rate of breakage and damage goes up noticeably. Even if I often wear a colour that is close to the natural colour of the nail bed to minimise attention, I intend to try to wear polish. Depending how things go through the year, I may wear increasingly obvious colours in boy mode.

I'm sure that there are more but I can't remember any others off hand.

Shape

I'm very happy to say that I finished 2010 weighing in at 72.5kg. After getting to that weight once a few weeks ago, I went back up, peaking at 75kg as a result of various Christmas parties. Annoyingly, I seemed to get very peckish yesterday afternoon and evening, weighing in at 73kg again last night. I'm starting to think that perhaps there is a correlation between crossdressing and weight loss! The days that I'm crossdressed, I eat less between meals and therefore lose weight. Then again, it might just be the fact that when I'm en femme, I'm usually also away from home and hence away from the temptation to snack.

I have decided that my goal in weight loss is to try to get rid of the (now much smaller) spare tyre around my waist, but not go below 65kg. If I get to 65kg and still have the spare tyre, I'll just have to put up with it. If the spare tyre is gone and I'm still above 65kg, I'll adopt the weight that gets rid of the flab to be my target weight and try to maintain it plus or minus 1kg.

I'd like to say that once I get to my target weight, I'll be able to stop wearing a body shaper, but until I get there, I simply won't know. In the meantime, I will continue using the best flexible, comfortable body shaper that I can find. I will not wear rigid corsets and the like, they just aren't me. If I can't wear it comfortably all day on a hot Australian summer day, it's no good to me.

As part of my time out shopping on Friday I went for a drive and bought the Bella Bodies strapless boxer body shaper that I intended to buy. As it turned out, between when I made the decision to go there and when I actually went, I did some more research online and discovered that the style that I have now is obsolete and that there is a new style with a new sizing scale. The one that I bought on Friday was of the old style, and is quite suitable to wear with anything that covers conventional bra straps adequately. Given that the current recommended price is $65, the normal price from this shop was $70 but, with a 20% off sale it came down to $56, I'm happy to have another old style one, and will buy a new style one when the opportunity arises, probably during a trip to Sydney in the next month or two.

The new style changes 2 things. Instead of having a detachable shoulder strap on each side, they apparently rely upon a pair of straps that loop around the sides of the bra above it, eliminating the need for additional straps and opening up the possibility of fitting with any style of bra including halter, crossover, etc. The other thing that has changed is that with the new sizing scale, I'm now towards the top of the scale for the M size, instead of firmly in the L-XL size in spite of my recent weight loss.

Interestingly, the sizing scale no longer has Large and eXtra Large names in the scale. The scale is now S, M, V and VV. Apparently V is for Voluptuous and VV is for Very Voluptuous. As a marketing strategy emphasising positive body image terminology, I think that the naming is a brilliant idea.

The Bella Bodies strapless boxer isn't the only body shaper that uses straps around the bra. A few months ago, I ordered a similar garment from Spanx in the USA. The Spanx one doesn't just use side straps, though. It uses 4 straps, with two at the middle of the front and back and two at the sides. The strap at the front turned out to be quite noticeable under even a moderately low cut top! On a whim, I also ordered an all-in-one version that has an integral bra. When they finally arrived, weeks after the expected delivery time, they were too big to the extent that they were virtually a perfect fit for my size without compressing anything anywhere. They were also made from very heavy material. I would probably collapse from heat stroke if I wore one of them outside on a hot Australian summer day. The Bella Bodies material is thinner and breathes quite well, making them much cooler to wear. The only advantage that the Spanx have over Bella Bodies is that they are seamless, whereas the Bella Bodies have seams down the front and back.

The bra part of the all-in-one Spanx was not specified as a cup size. There was just a "size large" with rather stretchy cups and underwires suitable for about a C cup. The cups provide vastly inadequate support for D cup breasts and have too high a centre height at the front for my liking. Unfortunately, the cost of posting them back to the USA for a refund would have been throwing good money after bad, so I didn't bother returning them. Hopefully I can find someone a few sizes larger to sell or give them to. Hmm. Perhaps I'll consider a give-away to blog followers. I'll have to think more about that.

Recognition? Probably not - part 3

I intend to do a wrap up of the year and set out my goals for next this year, but it will probably be spread across several posts over the next few days as I think of things that need wrapping up or that I want to mention. I think that there's just too much to fit in one post. First, I want to tie up and/or add to a few loose ends from the last week or so.

Just in case anybody is confused, the inlaws I am talking about most of the time are my wife's family. The sister-in-law whose mother volunteers in an op shop is the wife of one of my brothers.

After spending a few hours out shopping in the makeup-melting heat (which reminded me why I prefer air-conditioned centres with covered carparks over open air shopping centres with exposed carparks, such as Glendale Supercentre aka the smokers' shopping centre), I changed back into a frog and went out for dinner last night with my family, then drove to the inlaws' place. My sister-in-law almost immediately commented about the fact that I was no longer wearing the green and red nail polish that she commented on when I wore them on Christmas day, but didn't comment about the beige that I'm wearing now. Considering her earlier comments (which I mentioned in last year's wrap up post), I'm guessing that perhaps her attitude has softened a little, but I'm still not sure that I want to say anything.

In conversation, I also asked whether they had been at Charlestown Square on Wednesday, because I thought that I had seen my father-in-law there, pushing a pram. The answer was yes. I didn't mention how close to him I was at the time, or what I looked like. There was no indication that they had any idea, and I thought it best that I leave it that way for now.

Yay.

Happy new year. Well, it's almost here. :)

I think that I'm slightly in shock. I didn't expect to achieve my goal, but I did it. I got out shopping today, meaning that I averaged an outing every 5 days for the year 2010.

There's a lot more that I intended to say today, but time is against me, I'm expected elsewhere this evening (by some of my wife's relatives, in boy mode) so I have to go and turn back into a frog now. Hopefully I'll do an introspective year in review and plan for the one ahead tomorrow.

So close

As we get close to the end of the year, a couple of other things have also been close.

Yesterday, I got out for the 72nd time this year and unless I'm mistaken, I think that I came close to bumping into my father-in-law, mother-in-law, sister-in-law (and possibly her husband) and nephew while out shopping. I was walking along in Charlestown Square when an older guy pushing a pram looked over his shoulder and looked straight past me. I only glanced at him for the briefest moment, but I'm pretty certain it was my father-in-law. Given the direction that he was looking, it probably means that the rest of them were in a store behind me. I changed direction slightly and continued to a different part of the centre.

Given that they all know about me but don't talk about it, I thought it best to avoid creating a scene. I have no idea how any of them would behave towards me in that situation.

I only need one more to make my target of 73 outings and hence an average of once every 5 days over the whole year. That 73rd outing was going to be today. I asked my wife a few days ago if she had anything planned for this week and she said no, so I planned to change my nail colour from the green and red Christmas colours to something different, then go out to the cafe night Tuesday night, then shopping Wednesday and Thursday.

I had all of my nail polishes out on Monday, trying to find a suitable colour to go with some of my pink outfits. When my wife saw them all out, she got hers out as well, and I found a very suitable slightly purplish pink, which I applied on Tuesday afternoon. Sadly, it didn't harden properly so after getting home on Tuesday night, I re-did my nails with the same colour before going to bed. Again it didn't harden and the nails were a mess. My wife then informed me that she was given that nail polish in about 1988!

While I was out Wednesday, I bought a few new polishes including a similar shade, but I later decided to go with an entirely different colour for a few days, so I'm now sporting a Revlon beige colour called Putty. The 1988 polish will probably go in the bin today whether my wife approves or not!

When I mentioned last night that I intended to go out again today, my wife informed me that she was intending to go to a Zumba class today, meaning that I had to either have our son with me, or stay home with him. Given that I don't want to force him to go out with me, and that I will be expected to go out shopping with the family tonight in boy mode, it left me with too little time between her class and this evening to go out and do the errands that I wanted to do. instead, I took my beige nails out today and did some boy errands, making sure that I was back before my wife left for her class. Nobody appeared to notice the colour of my nails, but that was part of the reason for choosing the colour. It's a bit more subtle than the dark brown that I considered wearing in boy mode recently.

I also made a phone call to confirm that a Bella Bodies body shaper that I want to buy (to replace a worn out one the same) is in stock at a shop about half an hour's drive away. The lady confirmed that they have them, and when I asked about the price she also informed me that they are on special until the end of tomorrow. It looks like I'll be going out en femme tomorrow instead of today, which means I might make my goal after all.

If I was out crossdressed past midnight tomorrow night, would that count as an outing for next year as well? :p

PS don't ask me why I had my hand spread across my belly in the above photo. I don't know, and think that it looks silly but the photo shows a top that I hadn't worn before, which emphasises my relatively slim waist and I didn't get a photo without my hand there so I'm stuck with it.

PPS yes, I'm now making it a habit to watermark photos used on my blog and in forums because some have been used without permission.

A little problem

I have a little problem.

I've now spent 2 days in boy mode with my nails painted alternating bright green and bright red. Very Christmas colours, but on nails that are clearly too long and shaped for a guy. I've only been around people who I know - my wife's relatives one day, friends the other.

The problem? I've had a taste of having brightly coloured nails for a couple of days and don't want to go back to the drab pale pseudo-natural finger nail colour that I usually wear.

Yesterday, I considered that we will again see some of my wife's relatives on Monday night and I wondered about leaving my nails as they are until Tuesday. Then I considered taking the colours off and reversing them to see if anybody commented. :)

Last night, I even started looking at tops or dresses that would go with these nail colours so that I could leave them as they are and go out during the day on Monday and again for the Tuesday evening cafe outing. I found a couple of tops that didn't really match both colours but could work okay during the day. The only evening outfit I found was the one that I wore last Tuesday and a fortnight earlier, which I don't intend to wear again this week!

The most likely outcome is that I'll stay home during the day today, visit relatives tonight, change polish to something chosen to complement whatever I decide to wear tomorrow night, then have to try to convince myself to revert to a drab colour before we go shopping on Thursday night. I can see myself looking for a drab-ish but slightly brighter colour to replace the present drab colour...

Unfortunately, the likelihood of making my target number of outings for the year is looking less and less likely, as I'd have to get out at least 3 times between now and Friday and I'm not sure that I'm really up to that. Tuesday night is virtually a certainty but the rest of the week is quite uncertain. Part of my problem is that I don't actually have any specific places that I want to go to or things that I want to do, except that I want to do it wearing bright nail polish! :)

I like your nails. Very colourful

As I mentioned yesterday, I wasn't sure what sort of reception I'd get with my nails painted red and green. Even yesterday morning after my blog post, I was still considering taking the colour off and going back to neutral because I looked at them in the bathroom mirror and was worried that the colours really draw attention to how long they are.

I wandered around to hand out Christmas cards to my neighbours before driving to the inlaws' place, and the first couple pretended not to notice, the second couple chatted about them because they already knew from facebook, and the third said nothing but already knew because they'd seen them on Christmas eve.

I then drove the family to the inlaws' place, where only one person said anything. Interestingly, it was the person who made a rather strong unapproving remark some time ago. On this occasion, the comment was "I like your nails. Very colourful." I responded with a comment about them being Christmas colours and left it at that. My 2 year old nephew was quite entertained by them, particularly when I waved my fingers around.

In the evening, we went to a larger gathering of my wife's relatives, which included all of those who we had been with at lunch plus several more (including the cousin that I almost bumped into while out shopping at Easter last year), and none of them said anything at all.

Today is boxing day. I haven't taken the nail polish off yet, and am considering visiting a couple of friends today, as I did on boxing day 2008.

Christmas nails

Merry Christmas. :)

I'm planning on doing something today that I wimped out on last year. I've done my nails in alternating green and red, in colours approximating the traditional Holly leaf and berry colours, and I plan on going to my inlaws place for lunch, then to a larger gathering of more inlaws in the evening, in boy mode, with my nails like this.

I have approval from both my wife and son to do this, although my son preferred a lighter shade of green. I applied the red to one middle finger nail and the 2 greens to the nails either side of it and wore them like that for several hours yesterday while trying to choose which green to go with. When I put them against the shirts that I have to choose from, there was no contest as the lighter green simply didn't work with any of them.

If I survive the day, I plan to post a follow up tomorrow. :)

That's me

After Wednesday evening's outing to Charlestown Square, I noticed that I'd torn the edge of one of my nails over the nail bed, up past an acrylic patch that was done last week. When I removed the nail polish that I'd worn since Tuesday afternoon, I realised that I had tears on the edges of 3 nails, not just one. All were on nails that had been patched in the past 2 weeks, and when I went to use my nail glue on them, I discovered that the bottle was stuck shut.

Fortunately, I managed to make it to Thursday morning without making any of them any worse. I realised that my son had received some money with Christmas cards at my family get-together on Sunday, so I took his building society book with me when I went into town. I went to the salon first to see if I could get an appointment later in the day, and one of the women there had time to do full overlays on those 3 nails straight away. While there, I chatted with a couple of older women who were getting their nails and hair done. I got my internet tablet out and loaded the photo from Wednesday ready to show the woman next to me, just as she got up from the nails area and went back to the hairdresser's room.

When they were done, I left the salon feeling quite self conscious of my nails. They were all either bare or clear coated, the 2 extended nails were visibly different to the rest, and the lengths varied from 8mm to 10mm past the nail bed.

I walked into the building society branch, and one of the regular tellers was free. I got out my son's book and decided to add some more cash to the deposit. While I was getting the money out, the teller complimented me on my nails and asked how I managed to keep them looking so good. I replied "I make a lot of effort", then, remembering that I'd left the photo on the screen of my internet tablet, I pulled it out and showed it to her, saying "That's me." She smiled. I scrolled through a few previous photos. I think that she said something like "You'd never guess." We had a brief conversation about it. Some of the usual questions. Yes, I'm married and my wife knows and is fine with it, etc. I also asked something that I've been wondering for years, whether I could get a Visa debit card connected to my existing account, with a different name on it. The answer, sadly, was that years ago, I could have, but the recent APRA (Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority) regulatory changes have probably made it impossible.

Knowing what places like the building society branch are like, I expect that all of the staff will know fairly soon. I might soon be able to start doing my banking while I'm out en femme. :)