A nine outing month

Today was my second nail appointment for the month. It was also the first time I'd had a morning appointment. I usually get early afternoon appointments but when I made this appointment, the afternoon was already booked out. That meant I had to make an effort to get up early to go to the appointment en femme.

Turning up en femme was a surprise to my nail technician, as I had mentioned last time that I usually get up late on the days when I get my nails done.

Interestingly, in spite of several days when I wanted to go out but had work that took priority, The nine outings that I had this month equals my record, which was set in December last year. One little difference is that this month I have been wigless for every outing.

Today's nail appointment then shopping was interesting in that I'm becoming increasingly comfortable going out without a wig, to places that I've been to many times in boy mode.

My average frequency of outings for the year hadn't been doing all that well, but after this month it's a lot better than it had been! There were 5 Tuesdays in the month, meaning 5 Newcastle cafe nights (and I didn't miss any), there were also 2 nail appointments (plus a bit of shopping afterwards each time), one Central Coast cafe night and one day in Sydney. In fact, my average is better than once ever 6 days, for the first time since early June.

Yeah, occasionally

A couple of weeks ago when I went for my nail appointment wigless, I decided to try out a white gold nail polish. I wasn't all that keen on it once it was applied and decided to wear it a while and see if it would grow on me. After about 11 days, I decided that I just didn't like it, stripped it off and applied the bronze that I wore over the weekend of the shopping trip in Sydney in June.

Unlike June when I took the bronze back off before work on Monday, this time the plan was to apply it for day to day wear, including at work. The bronze is a bit darker and more obvious than the gold that I wore recently, and has got a bit more response.

I had to go to see a dentist a couple of days ago, and on the way out of the surgery, a receptionist asked if they were my real nails and I turned my left hand over so that she could see the underside of the nails and said yes, they're my real nails, but I have acrylic over the top to stop them from breaking. The ensuing conversation with the 2 receptionists and a nurse would have been completely normal if you ignored the fact that I was presenting as male at the time!

The most notable incident was yesterday, when I took my son to a birthday party for one of his school friends. He and his friend quickly disappeared into a bedroom to play, and I chatted briefly with the parents. The father commented about my nails during the conversation, and later asked if I ever dressed up to go with them. My response was "Yeah, occasionally." Nothing more was said about it, and the conversation flowed onto other things. When I returned to collect my son a few hours later, we had another fairly long conversation while the boys continued to play, and the subject didn't come back up again.

I wasn't going to push it because I don't want to cause problems at school for my son, but if the conversation heads in that direction again, I'm not going to be dishonest. I've sent the mother a friend request on Facebook from my male profile, so I guess I'll just have to wait and see.

snippety snip

Work has been a bit busy for me again lately, but I'm still surprised that it's been almost a fortnight since my last post. Sorry about that!

I was going to write about something else, but I was just looking back through my last few blog posts and realised that I didn't mention anything about my haircut.

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I decided that it was really about time that I got my hair cut, so I made a phone call on the Thursday and got an appointment for a haircut on the Friday afternoon at Salon Lisa in Maitland, which is run by Ralf, who I met at a cafe night in January, and his sister Elke. Maitland is over 30km and over half an hour's drive from my home, but Ralf came so highly recommended that I decided that it was worth the drive. Better still, I had to drive over half the way there for a work appointment, so I organised my hair appointment for after my work appointment.

Ralf had a good look at my hair and suggested that we just do a slight trim and tidy up this time round, and consider whether I want to do some layering next time.

Interestingly, he was very impressed with the condition of my hair and couldn't even find any split ends in spite of it having not been cut in over 4 years! After Sharon's comments a couple of days earlier, I was very happy that the length taken off was only a few millimetres, rather than the 4 inches that Sharon had suggested.

I asked Ralf about adding a bit more hair to my fringe. He wasn't keen to do so, and showed me a few options, and in the end we settled upon adding what he described as a wafer thin bit to the fringe. Very Monty Pythonesque. :)

Aside from being a bit tidier, it's almost impossible to discern that anything has been removed. I'm very happy with that, as I'm enjoying the length that my hair is and would like to grow it a bit longer yet.

PS my spellchecker doesn't like the word Pythonesque and suggests Grotesqueness instead. It's remarkably accurate. :p

A day in Sydney

Melanie, one of my friends from Beauty Heaven, lives in Far North Queensland. She had to fly to Sydney for work over the weekend, and found out that she would have several hours to kill between booking out of her motel and booking in at the airport for her flight home on Sunday.

So what do you do when you've got a few hours to kill, a long way from home? You jump on Facebook and ask if any of your Beauty Heaven friends want to catch up, of course! A few of us were interested but with children to look after, illness, etc, it ended up being Su and Christine, who I went to Fashion Weekend Sydney with in May, Melanie and me.

In spite of staying up until after 1am getting things organised, I was up at 6:05am to get ready to catch a train at 8:48. As before, the train trips down and back were remarkably uneventful. At close quarters, even young children and teenagers paid me no particular attention. This was also the first time I've done an intercity trip without a wig. My last wigless train trip was a much shorter suburban one, while my previous intercity trip was done in my blonde wig.

I had a bit of a problem finding the others when I arrived in Sydney, but after a few phone calls, we found each other and headed off towards Haymarket to get some lunch. We then spent a while wandering around Paddys Markets.

As with my other recent daytime outings, virtually nobody appeared to pay me undue attention. Whether I pass better than I think that I do, people assume that I'm a transsexual or people just don't care, I don't know. I remember my paranoid past when I was convinced that everybody was looking at me, whispering and giggling. Whether it's my vastly improved confidence, an improvement in my presentation, my not being afraid of what people think of me (what Linda Karen calls my "inner f... you"), people generally not caring any more, or a combination of those, I don't know. What I do know is that going out en femme is getting to be so easy that I can't see how it could get much easier.

I'm now consistently enjoying life far more than I can remember ever having done before. Instead of my previous experience of having brief happy moments in a generally miserable existence, I have brief periods of exhaustion and moderate depression in a generally happy life. I have more genuine friends than I ever had before and I'm enjoying spending time with many of those friends. I am coping remarkably well with family problems and a bureaucratic rule change that threatens to destroy my small business. A few years ago, these circumstances would have had me close to suicidally depressed, but now I have the confidence to tackle my problems head on.

And just in case you're wondering about the photo, I was in joggers, so it seems that I'm a giant even in flats. ;)

Making it all worthwhile

As I've mentioned before, I suffer from depression. Sometimes it interferes with my going out en femme. I get depressed and just don't feel like doing anything. Very self centred!

In contrast, the regular cafe nights that I go to are an altruistic activity. Their primary purpose is not for a clique of regulars to hang out and chat, but for there to be a consistent, known safe place where inexperienced transgender people to come out to. If people want to step out of their closet for the first time, we want to provide them with a venue. If they're too shy to come out en femme the first time, that's okay too. The goal is to show people that they can come out in public and to help them overcome their fears.

Even though I enjoy getting out to cafe nights, I sometimes struggle to overcome my depression and remember why I'm doing it.

This week, we had a new guest at our regular Tuesday night cafe night. When she came to door of the restaurant, Linda Karen and I were debating whether she was in fact a crossdresser or a GG. We weren't certain until she approached our table and introduced herself as Evelyn. I have been friends with Evelyn for some time, on Facebook and on another Australian site, but she was far more passable in person than in any photo I'd ever seen of her.

Evelyn told us that Tuesday was her 4th outing ever, and that her first ever outing had been the Sunday a fortnight earlier. Not only were the cafe nights a large inspiration to her, but so was my blog. Apparently she reads every post and enjoys the fact that I post about real world things that happen to me and around me.

Thank you Evelyn. Thank you not only for gracing us with your presence, but for your kind words of support. Thank you for showing me that I am making a difference, and making it all worthwhile. I hope that I'll see you again soon. :)

Wigless close to home

As I mentioned last week, I had a nail appointment today. In spite of not expecting to do so, I pushed myself to do something that I didn't think I was ready for. In spite of my comments last month about going out wigless to Newcastle cafe nights, I really didn't think that I would be game to go to my nail appointment in my local suburb (literally a few minutes walk from home) wigless.

I was wrong. Today, I dressed in a fairly casual outfit without a wig, went to my nail appointment then to Charlestown Square to try on some shoes that I'd spotted in boy mode. I wandered around several stores, looked at various cheap jewellery and tried on a few pairs of shoes. The only thing that stopped me buying one pair was that they didn't feel quite right around the toes. I realised that I haven't trimmed my toenails recently, and that felt like the problem, so I need to do that and try them again soon. :)

I also dropped into Tree of Life and chatted with the manager, Sharon, who is a former hairdresser. She had never seen my hair out of a plait before, and immediately commented that I need to get about 4" cut off the ends because it's damaged (which I actually already knew because the ends go strange when straightened).

So now I need to try to figure out when I can get my hair cut, which I said I was going to do back in January.

Education Week

It's Education Week in schools around here this week, and my 8yo son's school had an open day for parents and grandparents yesterday. Remembering that younger children are reputed to be unusually observant of gender non-conforming things such as a guy with long nails, I was curious to see what sort of reactions I'd get.

My wife and I spent about an hour in my son's classroom, watching him do various normal classroom tasks. I don't think that very many of the people present even took any notice of my being there, and none appeared to notice my nails.

The second part of our visit was a school assembly, where various awards were given out, the choir sang a couple of songs and the principal made a speech. I ended up at the end of a row of seats, where many of the children (ranging in age from about 5 to 12) walked past on their way in and out of the school hall. In the whole time, I saw just one girl (about 9yo) who looked at my nails, looked at my face, looked back at my nails and then turned to whisper to the girl next to her without even breaking stride, I'm pretty sure that she didn't turn around to look back at me.

With the number of children who walked past me, I was genuinely surprised that only one appeared to have even noticed my nails. The paranoid assumption that everybody would notice has been well and truly disproven! :)

Hairy admiration

The building society branch that I often go to for work has recently had an almost complete change of staff. Apparently they've been shuffling staff amongst the branches. The teller that I showed my photo to last December doesn't appear to be there any more. In fact, I can only think of one of the staff from last year who is still there.

In boy mode, I almost always have my hair tied up in a ponytail and plaited to keep it from getting damaged, dirty, etc.

One day last week I was the only customer in the branch and I got into a conversation with three of the tellers who are there now but weren't before. One complimented me on how straight and even my plait was. All three of them agreed that they couldn't plaint their hair as well as I do mine.

I responded that my hair comes out a lot better now that I use a hair straightener. More agreement.

Afterwards, I was thinking that it's funny. Guys don't generally have conversations like that with women. I'm still trying to remember whether that happened a day or two before I changed my nails from brown to gold, or within the first few days afterwards. :)

Another client's nail comment

As mentioned, I've kept the gold nail polish on for over a week now. Yesterday I had another male client make a fairly off-handed remark something like "It takes a lot of effort to maintain nails like that."

I thought at first that it was a fairly neutral remark rather than being either positive or negative, but upon reflection I think that I should take it as a compliment that I manage to keep my nails looking how they do.

I commented that I thought that it might be a bit confrontational to some people. He shrugged and commented "To each their own" then we continued with the job at hand.

To some extent I'm tempted to tell the closeted people on forums to stop being negative because the bad things that they imagine happening (and often carry on about at length) just don't happen, but I fear that I'd jinx myself by doing so and end up having something bad happen! For now, I'll just keep relating the things that actually happen.

Real world experience trumps imagination. :)

Mediocre but improving

I haven't been all that well, so I didn't manage to have any outings en femme aside from the regular cafe nights last month. Having missed one Tuesday night at the beginning of the month, that means I've had a total of 4 outings for the month. I'm a bit disappointed at that, but it's still better than no outings at all!

I still don't expect my work to slow down and give me more me time this month, so I'm probably going to get out to most or all of the cafe nights but not much else. I've got a nail appointment next week, and if I keep to my 3-weekly schedule, I'll have another on the 31st. I might try to get to at least one in girl mode depending how I'm feeling.

My wife will be away for a few days including a weekend this month, leaving me with my son. That pretty much guarantees no time en femme while she's away.

Oh well, that's how it goes.

Nice err Gloves

I'm still wearing the gold nail polish that I applied for last Saturday's family Christmas in July get together.

I took my wife and son out for dinner last night, at a restaurant that we frequently go to. I've gone there many times with my nails painted light brown and once with them painted bronze and had no comments. Last night, as I paid the bill, the waitress (who we've seen there many times before) glanced at my hands. She said "Nice... err...", then paused. She glanced at my son, who was putting on gloves and said "Gloves".

I didn't laugh at the time, but I'm quite amused at the number of people who clearly see my nails but go out of their way to pretend not to have noticed. It's almost an "elephant in the room" type of effect. :)

To date, I've only ever had 2 comments that weren't complimentary of my nails. I mentioned one last month, but I don't think that I mentioned the other one. Neither was specifically negative or insulting, more just a comment to say that they had noticed.

When I decided to keep my nails long, I was genuinely expecting some negative comments. I'm really enjoying having my nails how they are, and even more so given the absence of those anticipated comments!

Fixed nail and a distinct lack of comments

I was able to get an appointment to get my broken nail fixed on Monday afternoon. The remains of the gel was buffed off so that the remains of the acrylic could be soaked off. A plastic false tip was glued on, then the acrylic and gel re-done, along with 2 coats of the same gold polish as I already had on the rest and a top coat.

The net result is that unless you look at the underside of the repaired nail, you can't tell the difference between it and the rest, so they're back to looking like they did on Saturday.

Which of course puts me back to having all of my nails quite long and painted a rather obvious shade of gold. Having had no comment or even any obvious sign of anybody paying undue attention to my nails while in boy mode, I've decided to leave them this colour until I feel like a change, or my next infill in 2 weeks time, whichever comes first. :)

Snap

Yesterday afternoon, I walked away from the computer part way through typing yesterday's blog post to help sort and put away some clothes. While I was hanging up a shirt, my wife handed me something gold that she'd found in the washing basket that I'd been taking the clothes out of...

BUGGER!

(For those of you not in Australia, that's a mild expletive, on par with oh crap or damn!, not an invitation. :p )

Realistically, with my work being so busy, unless I can get a late appointment today, it'll be at least Wednesday before I can get this fixed. I've stuck with the colour for work though... :)

Christmas in July

Have you ever tried to get an extended family group together at Christmas? Some of my relatives, and some of my wife's relatives try it every year. There are always people who can't make it, so last Christmas, someone suggested organising a Christmas in July get-together. This was for the same family group as we spent the evening with last Christmas, but with a different combination of people absent.

I gave some serious consideration to going to this event en femme, but knew that there was a lot of potential for problems if I did, so I compromised and went with a fairly subtle combination of jeans with yellow and orange tops and shoes chosen to complement my gold nail polish. As with Christmas, nobody said anything. Pretty much what I expected.

I've just about decided that I'll leave the gold polish on my nails until at least Tuesday for the cafe night. :)

Another thing about last week

I knew that there was something else that I intended to mention about last Tuesday night's cafe night. Because it was the 200th, and my wife had gone to the 100th with me, I had hoped that my inlaws would take our son overnight so that my wife could go with me. My wife appeared to also like the idea, and seemed to want to go.

On the Sunday before, my sister in law (wife's sister) came up from Sydney to visit her parents for a few days, bringing her toddler (our son's cousin) with her. While our son was welcome to go and visit during the day, we were assured that his presence would guarantee that his cousin would be too hyped up to go to sleep, and therefore the option of having him stay there overnight on the Tuesday night no longer existed.

I commented to my wife that every time I ask our son if he wants to go somewhere with me when I'm in girl mode, he says no. With nobody to take him for the night, the options were that she stay home with him as usual, or that they both go with me. It was school holidays, so it wouldn't matter too much if he was up late, but I didn't want to pressure him, so it was her decision.

My wife's decision was that we all went. She told our son of her decision, and he didn't argue. When it was time for him to get ready (when I was mostly ready), I told him that it was time to get ready and he changed clothes and got ready without any fuss.

Aside from being bored (I only remember one other person going out of her way to talk to him while we were there) and tired because we were out later than he was accustomed to, he coped quite well.

I'm not sure whether it was a good result in terms of him being more prepared to go out with me when I'm en femme in the future or not, but it didn't appear to be a bad result.

Bright red nails at work - part 2

A couple of months ago, I mentioned going to see a work client with bright red nail polish on my nails, which were, even then, quite a bit too long to be normal for a male.

Because last Tuesday night was the 200th Newcastle cafe night, we had a few girls from Sydney who hadn't been for some time make the trip up to for the special event. One of those was the friend that I mentioned that my client knows is transitioning. In conversation, I discovered that she had visited that client for a couple of hours, and that after about an hour and a half, he asked her directly what the story was with my nails. I think she said that he had described them as "very long and very red". Her answer was to tell him that she knows me as Alice.

While most people would see that as a betrayal of trust because she had outed me to someone I know, in this particular case it was not. I don't remember whether I had explicitly given her permission to do so, but I know that had certainly given her implicit permission. The client in question has known me for several years, but has known my friend for decades. She knows him better than I do, so when he asked that question of her rather than of me, she knew that the answer that she gave was the right thing to do.

She also mentioned to him that it isn't generally appropriate for her to tell him what she had, or for him to say anything to me about it unless I volunteer information myself. In this particular case, that wouldn't have bothered me.

The red nails incident occurred over 3 months ago, and I believe that her visit and conversation with him occurred within a few days afterwards. Not only has my client said nothing to me about it, there has not been the slightest indication of a change in his attitude towards me in that time.

Next time I see him I might mention that I had dinner with her and that she told me about their conversation. :)

frequent wiglessness

I forgot to mention in my last post that, following on from the outings on the Central Coast and in Sydney early last month, I wore my blonde wig for both of the outings closer to home, then, after missing out on a week, I decided to challenge myself and go out to a Newcastle cafe night sans wig.

I'm honestly not sure whether that's a bigger deal than using a lift in a shopping centre or catching a train to Sydney and back, but I know that until recently, I've always feared recognition. It wasn't until I was typing this blog post that I realised that the reason why going out locally in girl mode wigless doesn't bother me as much as it used to is that I no longer fear that recognition anywhere nearly as much as I used to.

Plenty of people (including quite a few work clients) know that I am a crossdresser even if they've never said anything or even seen photos. With my long nails, long hair with fringe, shaped brows, pierced ears and general lack of facial and body hair, I look somewhat feminine even as a guy. Even though few people comment, I'm fairly confident that a lot of people guess from just my nails.

After that one local cafe night outing, the obvious question was why would I bother with a wig unless I wanted to change my colouring. And so it was that the two outings so far this month have also been wigless. I expect that I'll probably go wigless again this Tuesday night, but I'm unsure whether I want to go wigless to my nail appointment that is so close to home. Then again, I might not even get there en femme. I'll have to make a decision before Wednesday.

Over run

I mentioned in January that I knew that my work commitments were going to get a lot busier than they were last year, but I underestimated the extent, because I had no way of knowing that there would be even fewer people available to do the work than there were even a couple of months ago.

With the massive influx of work has come a number of missed outings. Not only was there the Tuesday cafe night that I previously mentioned that I'd missed, but I got to one Tuesday cafe night then missed the following two and the Seahorse meeting, and my last nail appointment was done in boy mode. I'm happy to say that I did manage to get to the Central Coast cafe night on Wednesday last week and the 200th Newcastle Cafe night this week, so hopefully I'm getting back on track.

It remains to be seen whether I manage to keep my workload under control or whether I end up being over run again.

Instant recognition

Last week, I mentioned that I was wondering whether the new casual girl at Tree of Life in Charlestown Square would recognise me in boy mode. Well, the answer was yes. Unlike the manager, Sharon, the young woman (whose name I'm embarrassed to admit I still can't remember in spite of being told it about 10 times so far) did a double take the first time she looked at me when I went there in boy mode, and I thought that I saw a hint of amusement. When I spoke to her she confirmed that she had recognised me instantly.

Going from a blonde wig to male is about the biggest contrast in appearance that I do. If I had been there with my own hair in girl mode or with an auburn wig, recognition would not have surprised me so much.

Sharon, like my sister-in-law's mother, knew me in boy mode first and didn't recognise me in girl mode. If someone knows me but doesn't know about my crossdressing, there's a much larger mental leap to make to recognise me in girl mode. I suspect that seeing me in girl mode first (and probably reading me) makes it much easier to recognise me as a guy.

Snoozing and losing

Things fell apart somewhat for me again this week. We had a long weekend last weekend, and I spent most of it sorting out computer related issues that I had been putting off for far too long. In the back of my mind, I had wondered if I'd get what needed doing done in two days and have a chance of getting out on the holiday Monday. No, not a chance!

As it turned out, I was still sorting things out late Monday night, meaning that I got to bed fairly late in spite of having an early start Tuesday. By Tuesday afternoon, I was exhausted. I intended to lie down for a while before getting ready to go out for dinner, but the little while ended up being all of the time that I would have needed to get ready and then some. I got up briefly, had some dinner then went back to sleep, missing out on going out. :(

Some time after 9pm, I got up and got ready for bed, then sat down in front of a computer to check emails, facebook etc, and then realised that I'd blown it yet again as it was after midnight by the time I went to bed.

I'll just have to get myself organised and get out again as soon as I can. :)

More often than not

In my last post, I mentioned that I intended to go out on both Tuesday and Wednesday. It wasn't until Wednesday evening that I realised that I had been out 4 times in the first 8 days of the month. Then I realised that the last day of last month was Tuesday, and I'd been out to the cafe that night as well, making 5 outings in 9 days.

Of course, I didn't get out Thursday or today (Friday) and won't be getting out Saturday, so the frequency has dropped back a bit, but that little burst of activity was interesting.

On a side note, after getting my nails done on Wednesday afternoon, I went to Charlestown Square for a little while. I dropped into the Tree of Life store to say hello, and they had a new casual girl there in addition to the manager, Sharon, who didn't recognise me a couple of years ago. As far as Sharon and I know, the new girl didn't read me at all, so it will be interesting to see what happens next time she's working when I happen to be there in boy mode. :)

On Wednesday, I was also wearing the same pink top as I wore when I had my photo taken in the Tree of Life store in Charlestown last year. Do I look thinner as a blonde? :p

improved frequency

I noticed after Saturday's outing that my frequency of outings is finally better than once every 6 days for the first time since January, just before things fell apart.

This week, I plan to go out to the Tuesday cafe night, and to a nail appointment on Wednesday en femme (I forgot to mentioned it, but I promised last time that I'd go blonde this time). I've also applied to re-join Seahorse NSW, a support group that I was a member of up until a few years ago, when I chose to let my membership lapse because I didn't believe that I would ever go to their meetings again.

I've been out twice so far this month. If things work out, I may get to the Seahorse meeting late in the month, as well as all of the cafe nights and two nail appointments 3 weeks apart. That would total nine outings for the month. I don't really expect to get to all of those, but there's no harm in trying. :)

Daytime wigless shopping with the girls

Choosing a title for this post was quite difficult. I really wanted it to emphasise the fact that I had a really enjoyable day out with a great group of cisgender women who accept me as the woman that I present myself as, but I also wanted it to reflect the fact that I went on a daytime outing without a wig.

It was quite a long day for me, and as I mentioned yesterday, I painted my nails on Friday night in preparation for Saturday. Aside from that, I chose my outfit in advance, deciding to wear the same outfit as I had worn to a nail appointment a few weeks ago, but add a jacket because the weather is cooling down.

Getting up before 6am meant I was up before dawn, having had less than 5 hours sleep. I worked my way through all of the things that needed doing, including straightening my hair for only the third time. I'm happy to say that I'm starting to get the hang of it and it's taking less time than expected.

The only thing that I forgot to do while getting dressed was to put the shoulder straps onto my convertible strapless body shaper. Until yesterday, I had always worn the straps with this type of shaper because the previous ones that didn't have straps would inevitably roll down and bunch at the waist. While I did have to hitch the top edge up a few times during the day, it was nowhere nearly as bad as expected, and gives me hope that I might yet be able to use this shaper with halter neck tops and dresses once the weather warms up.

The plan was for a group of us who had met through Beauty Heaven to meet up at noon at the front of the Estee Lauder Staff Shop in the Sydney suburb of Rosebery, a few kilometres south of the city. Three of the girls live in the city area, and one of those, Jasmine, offered to collect me and another girl from Central railway station and drive us there. Unfortunately, the other girl who was to come by train from the south coast was unable to make it on the day, and as I mentioned a few days ago, there were trackworks planned, which would affect the Newcastle trains, so I decided to drive to Wahroonga, right near the end of the freeway and catch a train from there to Central.

That led to another little first for me. The first time putting fuel in my car en femme. I know that it's a trivial thing, but for whatever reason, I've always planned things such that the car was fuelled up before I went driving anywhere en femme.

The drive down, including putting fuel in the car and going into the shop to pay was uneventful, as was the train trip in (on the train before the one I planned to catch). There was a little confusion meeting up with Jasmine, as I was at a railway station exit at the acute intersection of 2 streets, expecting her to be on one street when she had stopped on the other, just out of sight of where I was standing. That was sorted out by SMS, and we set off for the shop. We drove along the street, spotting 2 other factory outlet shops and a church fete before finding the place in between the other 2 outlets. We were the first to arrive, and aside from Magda, who messaged to say that she was running late, the rest arrived within a few minutes of us. We went in, and shopped enthusiastically. :)

Both Su and Christine, who I went to Fashion Weekend Sydney with a few weeks ago, were in our group. Christine finished in the shop first and decided to check out the fete while waiting for the rest of us. She found that there was a table there with unopened cosmetics that had been donated, and bought a few. When the rest of us had finished at Estee Lauder, we walked up to the Swarovski outlet, which we found out is only open 10am to 2pm on the first Saturday of every month, so we fluked it! After admiring but not buying anything there, we wandered across the road to the fete, where Michelle found the bargain of the day, an unopened Dr Lewinns facial set. We all wandered back past the two shops that we'd already been to, to get to the final shop, which was on the next block. That shop was also only open 10am to 2pm on the first Saturday of each month! Several of us bought a few things there, then we wandered back to the front of the Estee Lauder shop to take a few photos while Michelle and Christine waited for their lift home. Jasmine gave Su, Magda and me a lift back to the city, dropping Su near her home then driving us to Central.

Just as I said goodbye to Magda and started to make my way to the platform to catch my train, an old asian man gesticulated wildly at me and shouted excitedly to his friends in a language I don't understand. I assumed he had read me and was telling his friends. Then again, maybe he thought that I was someone famous. Nicole Kidman, perhaps. Same height and hair colour. :p Once upon a time, this would have been a devastating blow to my self confidence. Instead, my reaction was to think that he was a rude, stupid so-and-so, ignore him and continue on my way.

The train trip back to my car was a bit delayed because the train was faulty, which meant standing for about 15 minutes on the platform waiting for it, then delays at several stations on the way. I wasn't aware of anybody taking undue notice of me in that whole time, including a boisterous mixed group of 6 teenagers who were standing right next to me on the platform.

In spite of my earlier concerns, the combination of makeup, straightened hair (including the fringe) and hair spray was successful in hiding my widows peaks even out in the wind. If anything, in spite of my hesitance to go wigless because of my widows peaks, I am now starting to feel that I actually pass better without a wig. Of course, passing is very much a state of mind, and being increasingly comfortable in public in all sorts of circumstances seems to be making more difference than more effort with my presentation ever could.

I made good time on the drive home, arriving home around 5:15pm. I immediately changed, had a quick shower and went out for dinner with my family in boy mode. We were sitting in the restaurant before 7pm. I did, however, choose to leave the nail polish on. I asked my wife if she would object and she said no, she didn't. Because it was cold, we all wore gloves outside, but my nails were visible while we were in the restaurant. Nobody said anything. I'm tempted to leave it on until my next nail appointment on Wednesday, but I don't think that I'm quite up to dealing with work clients for 2 days and my inlaws over dinner on Monday night, so it's probably going to come off tonight.

Nail clippers

After Wednesday night's cafe night outing, I decided that I had to take the nail colour off and I didn't have time to apply another colour and wait for it to dry before going to bed, because I had an early start Thursday. Given that my nails look fairly natural now that they just have gel overlays on real nails with no extensions, I decided that I could get away with just having them plain, so that's what I did from Wednesday night until Friday night, when I did my nails in preparation for Saturday's outing, which I'll write about tomorrow. I'm too tired to write it up tonight, but thought I'd share this little comment from Friday, by a long-term work client.

This particular guy was one of the very few who commented about my pierced ears, doing so every time I saw him for the first couple of years after I had them done. He insisted that I should have had more piercings one side or the other to identify whether I was "tough" or gay. I told him that I wanted them balanced because I was too unbalanced as it was. :p He also commented on my long hair many years ago.

While my nails were unpainted, I visited that same client. He noticed my nails, and made a passing remark about needing to get some nail clippers onto them. Knowing that he was kidding, I simply let it slide. While I've known him for well over a decade, I really don't know how he would react if I came out to him, and I don't see any benefit in doing so at present. Given the things that he has noticed, he may well have guessed but chosen not to say anything. In hindsight, I'm not sure whether it was a good thing or a bad thing that I had no colour on my nails!

More wiglessness

I finally had another go at using my hair straightener yesterday. I straightened my hair before 2pm, wrote yesterday's blog post, did my nails, did my makeup, etc before heading out for dinner. I don't think that I did that good a job with the straightener, but it was mostly okay. I'm sure that it will improve with practice! Sadly, by the time I left home, my hair was well on the way to frizzing again due to the humidity. :(

Regardless, I brushed my hair to give me a centre part and a fringe, similar to my wigs, and went out wigless for only the second time. Unlike last time, I was far more comfortable with how my hair framed my face, although I did find that the top was a bit flat and the back of my hair tended to annoy me a bit. In spite of using a heat protection spray, it felt a bit dry and straw-like from straightening (a lot like how some of my older wigs feel), and then as it frizzed, it became more bulky, and that's when it became annoying.

In spite of the fact that my wigless appearance is a lot like my male appearance because I have the same fringe both ways, I'm a lot more comfortable going wigless after last night than I was after the first time. In fact, I'm seriously considering going wigless for my trip to Sydney on Saturday. If it's cold, I might even break out the beanie with pom-pom on top that causes my wife to crack up every time I wear it. :)

A seven outing month

May ended up being an okay month for me. In spite of at the missed opportunity to get my nails done en femme plus one other day when I had planned a week in advance to go out but got too busy with work, I ended up getting out a total of 7 times including the train trip to Sydney.

The seventh outing was achieved because there were 5 Tuesdays in the month. I am still a long way behind my target for the whole year, but I've caught up a bit from where I was up to last month.

The coming month is looking promising, too. Tonight is a Central Coast cafe night, and I'm planning on another shopping trip to Sydney on Saturday with friends who I met through Beauty Heaven. Due to trackworks, I plan to drive to the northern side of Sydney and catch a suburban train into the city and back this time.

I have to keep this short or I'll run out of time to paint my nails before getting ready to go out tonight. I want to try out a Face of Australia limited edition molten metal nail polish. :)

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. :)