Sunday at Kurri Kurri Nostalgia Festival 2014

I managed to make it to Kurri Kurri again today, as planned.

I got a lot of compliments on this outfit and quite a few people took photos. :-)

Aside from having some difficulty pinning it into place, I'm really happy with the hat! There is a small loop that I put 2 bobby pins through to secure it, and the bobby pins kept slipping in my hair so I put a plastic comb under the hat, then pushed the bobby pin under it, in much the same way as I secured the snood yesterday. I'm thinking about stitching a small comb to the loop to make it easier.

Unfortunately, I haven't managed to get a pair of red flat shoes to go with this outfit, so I wore my heels from when I got out of the car to when I got back to it, which proved to be a bad plan and shortened the time I spent there. I find that these Siren shoes are just not as comfortable as my many pairs of Tony Biancos, including the ones I wore yesterday. I have to remember to put gel front half liners in them before I wear them again!

I caught up with a few people, including one who is adamant that I should go to another event called Krankit next weekend. It's actually closer to home, but I'm not sure that it's as focussed on the '50s clothing, etc as cars in general. At this stage, I have no idea whether I'll go, or whether I'll still be catching up from taking this weekend off!

Continuing on from last year, I've posted both of the full length photos on my facebook "boy" profile. :-)

Saturday at Kurri Kurri Nostalgia Festival 2014

I made it to Kurri Kurri as planned, and also went to my local Subway restaurant to get dinner afterwards, dressed the same. The young woman who often comments about my nails was quite impressed. :-)

I didn't realise until I went to put them on that my nude Tony Bianco stilettos still have glitter on them that looks like it's from my Halloween Tinkerbell outing almost 18 months ago!

Tomorrow, I'm planning on going again, in a dress that I got from Miskonduct Klothing last year but haven't worn yet, the red seamed tights and red stilettos that I wore to The Lindy Charm School in October last year and a custom made 1940s style teardrop hat from The Lindy Charm School.

I'm really hoping that the rain holds off!

Kurri Kurri Nostalgia Festival 2014

It's that time of year again. The Kurri Kurri Nostalgia Festival 2014 is on this weekend, and I'm hoping to get there both days ~ in different outfits.

Happily, the new freeway that was supposed to open late last year finally opened last weekend, so I'm planning on going on both Saturday and Sunday. Provided that they fit, Saturday's outfit will be based on the dress that I wore last year, but with some different accessories while Sunday's outfit will be a new dress with the shoes that I wore last year.

Annoyingly, it's been raining for the past few days so the ground will be wet at Kurri Kurri even if it clears up enough not to actually rain over the weekend. I've had to plan options for dry and wet weather, mostly affecting whether I carry an umbrella or a parasol, and whether I wear suede shoes or patent leather on Saturday.

I've attempted to experiment with hairstyles recently, and not been happy with the results. I haven't worn makeup at all since I went to the Lindy Charm School in October last year, so I have no idea how my hair and makeup will turn out!

I know that I will see a lot of people who know me through my work, including a lot of clients. Having posted the photo of last year's outfit on my boy facebook profile, it's pretty clear that most people know how I'll be dressed this year, and I haven't seen any negative comments. If people are saying disparaging things, they're not saying them to me. :-)

Infamy

"Infamy! Infamy! They've all got it in for me!"

Kenneth Williams as Julius Caesar - Carry On Cleo (1964)

No, actually it's nothing like that. :-)

I went to get my waist-down waxing done today, as I do about every 6 weeks.

Chrissy, who does my waxing most of that time, told me a funny little story.

It seems that she and a female friend were at a bar, and her friend was chatting with 2 guys that she knew but Chrissy didn't. She wasn't paying much attention until the guys started talking about something unusual that they'd seen. This engineer came to their place to inspect a job, and he had long, bright red nails...

When one of them mentioned my male first name, she responded with both my first name and my surname, and confirmed that yes, they were talking about me.

So it seems that, while many people don't say anything directly to me about them, they certainly notice, then gossip about me later. I'm comfortable with that. If there is negativity, I'm not aware of it so it doesn't count. :-)

More on sex and gender

After thinking about my last post a bit more, I realised that there were a few things that I should have mentioned in my essay but didn't.

What I stated as fact about brain sex being determined before birth is the leading current theory, which has come from extensive research. It's not just something that I've plucked out of the air. If you're interested, I'm sure that your favourite search engine could turn up links to such research.

What I call brain sex is often called gender identity. Because physical sex and brain sex are both fixed before birth but gender is a social construct, I much prefer the clearer distinction created by using one term for the two fixed characteristics and a different term for the social construct. I don't think that the term gender identity provides the same level of clarity, as it associates a brain trait established before birth with a social construct in a way that could be used by some anti-transgender (generally churchianity) groups who tend to claim that being transgender is a choice.

Clearly, the research indicates that it is not.

There is another thing that is also established in the brain prior to birth, which hate groups tend to also try to claim is a choice. Sexual orientation.

Like brain sex, sexual orientation is a continuum from being attracted only to males through being equally attracted to both sexes to being only attracted to females, with a sizeable area of attraction to various transgender or intersex people that makes it impossible to illustrate it as a line.

Sexual orientation is completely separate from brain sex. Yes, you probably read that right. Who you are sexually attracted to is completely independent of the sex that you identify as.

The theory of brain sex and sexual orientation being independent but both being determined before birth explains not only heterosexuality, homosexuality and bisexuality in cisgender people (people whose brain sex and hence gender role matches their physical sex), but also explains the same range of sexual orientation variations in transgender people.

The part about the relationship between brain sex and sexual orientation that most people struggle with is the fact that most people think in terms of heterosexual and homosexual. A person whose position on the gender spectrum shifts, whether temporarily or permanently, throws that whole concept into disarray.

Fortunately, there are a couple of concepts that solve this problem quite neatly, and can also be viably applied to cisgender people. They are gynephilia and androphilia. These two terms define who a person is attracted to without reference to who they are. Gynephilia is attraction to females, while androphilia is attraction to males. There are also, of course, bisexual, asexual (not sexually attracted to anybody) and narcissistic (sexually attracted to themselves ~ I'd say "eww" here but I'd probably offend someone :-P ).

So, for example, my gender role tends to vary between male and female, but I always remain gynephilic.

Occasionally, people claim to have changed their sexual orientation at the same time as changing gender role. In practise, in the long term most will admit that they are in fact revealing their true sexual orientation, having pretended otherwise to fit into social expectations.

I believe that western societies are gradually becoming more accepting of both gender variations and variations in sexual orientation, and provided that we don't experience any radical social lurches towards religious fundamentalism, I foresee a time when children will be comfortable being open and honest about who they are and who they are attracted to, instead of having to waste years struggling to be someone who others expect them to be. The benefits to the individuals and to the community as a whole are enormous.

An essay on sex and gender

I've been trying to complete this post for several weeks. I come to it, change a little, feel unable to complete it, save it and go off and do something else.

A few weeks ago, I exchanged a series of private messages with a cisgender woman who is struggling to understand how my transgenderism fits into my family, in which I am essentially a male ~ a husband and father, and whether my expression of femininity ~ hair, makeup, dresses, high heels, etc somehow implies that she is less female than I am!

I sent her what was essentially an essay. I originally intended to re-write it to fit the normal tone of my blog posts, but I've come to the conclusion that rather than trying to re-write it, I'll just quote what I wrote to her, with minimal editing to clarify things that she would have understood but others might not. I'm not sure how she took it...

To provide context to part of what I wrote later, I've included part of an earlier message, where I observed that:

The problem is that I know what the solution to my depression is. Spending time socialising "as female" is effectively the anti-depressant that I need, but like using a drug, the frequency has to be high enough to avoid bouts of depression between the doses. The Catch-22 problem is that if I get too depressed, I can't push myself to get organised and go out and it becomes a downward spiral of depression.

It really is as simple as that.

That led on to the main essay:

I do understand when people intend to be considerate, understanding etc but struggle to do so. As a child, my father (like many people in that era) was extremely homophobic, to the point that I feel that I have some homophobia ingrained into me, even though I consciously reject it. To make it even more complicated, that extreme homophobia effectively incorporated transphobia, because at that time all transgender behaviour was seen by most people as being a variety of homosexuality. The presumption of a connection persists to this day, and is perhaps one of the most difficult aspects of dealing with other people's ideas of who I am.

If you think that it is difficult for you to understand, I assure you that you're not alone! Plenty of people who live it every day don't understand it either.

The first thing to try to get your head around (and it is difficult) is to separate the concepts of physical sex, brain sex and gender. Physical sex is an immutable biological fact ~ it's part of the DNA. Brain sex is a function of how the person perceives themselves, which is determined by hormonal "programming" that happens during foetal development. Like physical sex, it is immutable ~ it's what was programmed into the brain before birth. Gender is a social construct ~ it's generally what a society considers normal for people of a physical sex, but some societies have a category for "third gender", which basically recognises the existence of transgender people.

None of the three are binary male/female. Like intersex people who have a range of positions along the continuum between male and female, the brain sex can be ambiguous or even variable. The latter is how it is for me ~ it varies with context. Gender has an unlimited number of positions on a spectrum. When you look at someone and think "that's a male" or "that's a female", it is a gender attribution that you are making.

Crossdressing is seeking to temporarily align the gender role with the brain sex. In a social setting, it allows the person to behave in a manner congruent to how they think. That's where I'm at.

Transsexualism takes it a huge step further, involving hormones and surgery to alter the brain and body to approximate that of the opposite physical sex. I know quite a few people who have gone that way, including one who I've known for several years as "just" a crossdresser (their self-description), who has just started transitioning.

I can't see that in my future. At some point at the end of a day or night out, it is a relief to strip off that gender role because my mood has shifted away from feminine and I've satisfied the craving ~ I've got my hit, and I'm ready to do something else. To transition would be to trap myself in something that I don't want all of the time.

If you can get your head around all of that, you'll realise that "femininity" is a gender construct, and is quite separate from being a woman. If you ask yourself the question "am I a man or a woman" and you confidently answer that you are a woman, then that is what you are because that's what your brain sex is, regardless of physical sex and gender. If I ask myself the same question, my answer is either "yes" or "no" depending how much emphasis I put on the "or". I admire transsexuals for the fact that they are able to answer that question one way or the other, and that they have the courage to choose to adjust their entire life including their bodies to fit that.

Being a woman does not come down to makeup, fancy hair styles and dresses. For most women, other people will see you as a woman unless you go out of your way to look male. For someone whose body says male but their brain says (or screams) female, there is a need to alter the appearance so that most other people will see them as female. Because there are gender cues in hair styles, skin colour and texture, facial bone structure, body proportions and many other physical aspects, a crossdresser has to over compensate to some extent, drawing attention towards constructed feminine features to distract from masculine features. Likewise for mannerisms.

For transsexuals who use hormones and have had their body and face surgically altered, this becomes less and less of an issue, as the masculine features are removed or obscured, meaning that many tend to move more and more to living just like every other woman ~ little or no makeup, simple hairstyles and loose fitting comfortable clothes.

While I have, at times, made an effort to make my makeup subtle and dress down to fit in such as when shopping, it's not why I dress. My recent move towards 1950s "pinup" style is because it is "a bit out there" but there are enough women getting around day-to-day dressed that way that it's not completely out of place. It generates attention, but it is good attention because people tend to admire or at least respect the effort and results. If I didn't have confidence in my presentation, I couldn't pull that look off. I needed practice dressing down and fitting in to build my confidence when I first went out, but with that confidence established, I now tend to want to express my individuality ~ by dressing like all of those other pinup girls. :-P

Note (added 13 March 2014) ~ A follow-up post can be found here.

Rearranging

I realised a couple of hours ago that we're now a month into 2014, and the only girly things I've done so far this year were to practice 1940s/1950s hair styling on a couple of nights while my family were away, and buy a couple of snoods.

One snood is black, which is a colour that I doubt I'd ever wear out but it was in an op shop for $2.50, so I bought it to practice with to see if I thought I could make a snood work for me before buying a new one. After the first night, I thought that I could make it work, so I went and bought a red one to go with some of my red dresses. The second night, I tried to put the red one on and couldn't get it to sit right. As you'll see in the photo, I've also discovered that quite a few of the artificial flowers that I converted for use as hair accessories probably aren't going to work ~ in general, they need to be fully open flat flowers so that the back can't be seen from any angle, or they need to be placed inside or under something, such as putting buds inside rolls.

I need to practice again, but I have come to the realisation that I don't feel comfortable in my own home when my wife and son are home, and tend to retreat to my office, which is in a separate shed. I'm yet to work out how I'm going to resolve that.

We still haven't heard back from the engineers about our house extension plans, but in the meantime I've begun a fairly major restructure of where things are stored in our house, including moving my breast forms and virtually all of my hair stuff (rollers, straightener, clips, accessories, sprays, etc) from the bedroom to a cupboard near the bathroom. I've also organised space for my makeup, but haven't moved it yet.
 
I'm also spending quite a bit of time at present creating an attic in our ceiling. It's something that I planned years ago and started by installing an attic stair unit, then didn't get much further with until a few weeks ago. We're fortunate that the ceiling space is quite open because it's a pitched roof. Of course, the ceiling gets quite dusty, so everything has to be either covered in drop sheets or stored in plastic storage boxes. So far, I've laid about 30% of the final floor area that I expect to be able to do, and filled it. That means that I've now got space in the house to rearrange a couple of rooms so that hopefully I will soon be able to have a wardrobe outside our bedroom in which to hang clothes that I plan to wear out, as well as somewhere to store jewellery.

I'm hoping that all of this work will mean that eventually, I'll be able to do my hair and makeup and get dressed in the morning while my wife is still in bed asleep, without having to spend an hour or more getting things out of our bedroom before I go to bed, stacking them wherever I can find space such that it adds considerably to the time taken in the morning, and still having to sneak back into the bedroom in the morning to find things that I've forgotten.

2013 - a year of disappointment

Clearly, Something has got to change in my life. Back in 2010, I managed to average an outing every 5 days over the year. In 2011, that fell to a total of 51 outings, or an average of less than once a week. With some major work related stress issues, the total for 2012 was down to 13 (about once per fortnight), and I didn't think that it could get any worse.

But it did! In 2013, I managed a total of just 5 outings for the entire year, including IMATS and The Lindy Charm School, that I pushed myself to attend because I'd paid in advance, and the Kurri Kurri Nostalgia Festival, that I planned months in advance for, because I didn't get there last year!

My sleep patterns are no better than they were last year, or the year before, or any of the dozen or so years before that. :-(

At around 85kg, my weight is still far too high. It's a couple of kilos better than last year, but about the same as 2 years ago. I have recently taken to having this old postcard photo of Betty Brosmer as the background on my computer, to remind me that I need to eat less so that I can have a smaller waist. Realistically, the thing that helped me the most to lose weight was going out frequently wearing a body shaper.

I'm still having a lot of trouble with disorganisation at home making it difficult if not impossible to get organised enough to go out en femme. The most recent example was that I seriously considered going to the New Years Eve cafe night, and got as far as straightening my hair and getting my red wiggle dress out, but couldn't get to the ironing board to press the dress.

We made progress with revising the plans for our house extensions, but we have to wait for approval from the civil engineers before we can submit them to council. I'm really hopeful that we'll actually get started on construction this year. To some extent, it worries me that I'm pinning my hopes on the house extensions making a big difference to my organisation and hence my ability to get out more often. I don't know how I'll cope if we put in a huge amount of time, effort and money and it doesn't help!

Perhaps the most troubling thing is the Catch 22 of outings and depression. Going out en femme helps to alleviate my depression. Not getting out means that the depression gets worse, to the point that I'm too depressed to fight all of the obstacles that make it difficult to go out.

Not like a character from a Jane Austen novel

The following has been saved as a draft blog post for over a year. I knew part of what I wanted to say, but not all of it. It occurred to me today that I now know the answer, and can can complete the post...

I have been pondering a line from the character Elizabeth Bennet in the Jane Austen novel, Pride and Prejudice on and off for quite a while now.

I cannot bear to think that he is alive in the world and thinking ill of me.

While she was saying it in regards to the man that she was in love with (but didn't realise it at the time) and ended up marrying, I see a generic parallel in my life in general.

I know that I shouldn't care about the opinions of negative people, but I have a tendency not to want anybody to think ill of me.

I've finally realised where my whole thinking was wrong.

Elizabeth Bennet cared about Mr Darcy's opinion of her because it actually mattered to her, even though she wasn't aware of why at the time that she made the statement. In stark contrast, the attitudes and opinions of people who think ill of me must no longer matter to me.

For years, even when I knew that I was being rejected, I sought approval and acceptance from people whose opinion I should never have cared about. That includes a wide variety of people, including family members who have chosen to reject me because I was honest about who I am. It even includes some members of the trans community who have gone out of their way to hurt me. The apparent reasons range from political differences to jealousy, but I've finally come to realise that the reason is entirely irrelevant, and I shouldn't even try to work it out. I simply have to disconnect myself from anybody who has chosen to reject me, irrespective of their reasons.

As a scientifically educated political moderate, I've been rejected by radical socialists and deeply conservative pseudo-religious people alike. At the same time, I have genuine friends including some at both ends of the political spectrum. We might not see eye to eye on many issues, but we are still able to not only be civil but to be friends. Hence, a political difference doesn't have to be a reason why someone would reject me, unless they are too narrow minded to be able to accept a difference of opinion. 

So, from now on I am going to make an effort to ignore people who choose to reject me. I'm going to try not to even think about why they are rejecting me, but simply accept that they have successfully argued for their limitations. I'm not even going to bother feeling sorry for them any more.

The best laid schemes...

Because of Christmas, I had to arrange my nail appointments around the public holidays and my nail technician's holidays. That means that I have only one nail appointment during my 3 weeks of holidays, and that is tomorrow. I actually arranged this appointment about 6 months ago, when the salon got its new financial year (July to June) diary.

Like so many times before, I planned to go to my nail appointment en femme. This time, I planned to wear the same outfit as I wore to The Lindy Charm School last month. In anticipation of that, I've been keeping up with all of the usual hair removal, etc.. I straightened my fringe for Christmas day, and planned on straightening all of my hair and having a go at putting it up tonight.

I figured that if I had success with my hair tonight, I should be able to get up around 9am and be easily able to make a 1pm appointment.

Tonight, I was informed that, without any consultation, it has been arranged that my son will be picked up at about 9am tomorrow by my father-in-law, and that we are to pick him up from my inlaws' place after having dinner there.

So now, I have to work out whether I'm going to go to my appointment en femme as planned, then rush to change back and risk damaging my nails before they have time to harden, turn up to the inlaws' place for dinner en femme, or, after weeks of anticipation, not do girl mode at all.

An observation about nail colour choice

I'm very aware that I haven't been out much this year. It's over 2 years since I stopped going to the cafe nights regularly, and over a year since I went there at all. Other outings have also been infrequent.

While outings have been infrequent, the desire to go out has not. At least once every day, I think about when I might next have an opportunity to go out en femme. Most of the time, particularly when I consult my work diary, I don't actually know when there will next be an opportunity.

For example, I have work booked after 3pm on the next three Tuesday afternoons, and when I went to cafe nights, I aimed to finish my scheduled work at 3pm so that I could actually finish by about 4:30. Of those three, there is only one that has a moderate chance of taking little enough time that I could finish by 4:30. The only other chance would be if I had a cancellation.

Sometimes, I find an opportunity and start planning an outfit and outing, only to have work or family wipe out the opportunity entirely. Sometimes, I try to push past the obstacles but it rarely works. The Halloween Tinkerbell plan this year is an example of this ~ I originally planned to do it, then it appeared that I was going to be in Sydney for the weekend. While my family went to Sydney, I stayed home but not to go out as Tinkerbell but because I had two lots of tax paperwork that had to be completed. I did one lot on the Saturday (missing out on Halloween) and the other on the Sunday (missing out on wearing a '50s outfit to Chromefest). I've had several people comment about the fact that I didn't turn up at Halloween, particularly those who saw me last year or had heard about it.

In spite of all of this, I choose my nail colours based not on coordinating with my regular male apparel but on what I hope to wear. I choose red, orange or bronze, because I've decided what outfit I want to wear next time I go out, or I've chosen something specific such as a pair of earrings that I want to build an outfit around.

So, in effect, by continuing to choose bold colours, I'm declaring that I still hope to go out en femme before (or to) my next nail appointment. I guess if I go back to neutrals that disappear into my hands or regular clothes, that will be an indication that I've given up hope.

Hair accessories

Yet again, I've been so over-run with work that I haven't had a chance to post. Then again, until yesterday I didn't have much to write about.

After going to the Lindy Charm School last month, I decided that I wanted some red imitation roses to go with the dress and skirt that I haven't worn yet, both of which have a red rose print on them. The right shade for those should also go well with the dress that I wore to the Lindy Charm School.

The imitation flowers that I got from the Lindy Charm School this year and last year started off as ordinary stemmed decorative flowers. The stems on most of these imitation flowers are glued into a socket on the back of the flower. It's quite easy to pull the stem out, pierce a hole across the socket then push a bobby pin through that hole. That's what had been done to the ones from last year. The ones from this year had had the stems removed but (possibly an oversight) hadn't been pierced, so they had to be pinned on using bobby pins on the outer petals.

On Tuesday, I was walking past an op shop, and decided to have a look for curtains for the house that we bought recently. While I didn't find any curtains, I spotted a bucket of artificial flowers, including one rose of the sort of shade of red that I was looking for and a rather large, almost white rose. At $1 each, I grabbed them both. :-)

On Saturday morning, I decided to have a look around a few other op shops. At one, I found a bunch of 7 bright orange artificial roses with no price label. When I asked the price, the woman first said 50c, then immediately changed her mind and said 20c. That was a price I just couldn't refuse!

After I got home, I got enthusiastic about removing the stems and putting bobby pins onto them. As luck would have it, a small metal spike to make the hole, followed by a bead reamer that my wife uses to clean up the holes in beads for making jewellery worked beautifully for making the holes.

Mind you, there is one flower in this photo that doesn't have a bobby pin. The one at the right end of the 2nd row, which I wore to the Kurri Kurri Nostalgia Festival, was actually made as a hair clip, and has a spring clip on it, making it a little less usable than the others. The middle and right ones in the bottom row came from the Lindy Charm School last year and the rest I converted yesterday.

I've now got quite a few hair flowers, so I'll need to try to find time amongst my currently insane work schedule to wear some of them. That's if I can get back down to a weight that works for any of my clothes ~ I've been comfort eating and I'm currently around 86kg. :-(

Lindy Charm School revisited

This post is now almost a fortnight overdue. Life got busy, and having a dramatic increase in our level of debt (to the highest it's ever been) combined with a high level of demand for my work as encouraged me to concentrate on that work because it has the potential to help reduce the debt!

On Sunday, 20th October, I went to the Lindy Charm School again, as I had mentioned a few weeks ago that I had hoped to do.

In preparation, on the Friday night I drove my son to Sydney to visit my wife's relatives, as planned. I then spent an inordinate amount of Saturday evening preparing myself for the outing on Sunday. I think that by the time I got to bed, it was only about 4 hours until my alarm was due to go off.

This has become a noticeable pattern for me. Like IMATS, the fact that I've bought a ticket to the event is ultimately what makes the difference between giving up before I get organised and actually following through.

Sunday's outfit consisted of the dress that I got from Miskonduct at the end of August, my red Siren stilettos, a pair of red seamed nude tights that I bought directly from the UK a few months ago (which I thought worked very well with the dress and shoes), a pair of red fabric covered button style earings that I got from Miskonduct last year (which look like a miniature version of the buttons on the dress), and a bright red handbag that I got from Miskonduct in early October.

I gained quite a bit from the day at Lindy Charm School, including many details that I didn't remember at all from last year. Being very conscious that I could remember so little from last year, I made an effort to pay attention to a lot of details. I know that I need to practice soon, but I'm more confident that when I do, I will be able to remember the necessary details.

A little trim and...

As I mentioned last week, I needed to get my hair trimmed before I go to the Lindy Charm School workshop later this month.

Today, like every second Wednesday, was a nail appointment day. As is so often the case, by the time I got to bed on Tuesday night, I was so exhausted that even though I had epilated my face, trimmed my hairline and arm hair, going to my nail appointment in girl mode ceased to be an option because I really needed the extra sleep!

Knowing that the Lindy Charm School workshop isn't until after my next nail appointment, I decided to go with bronze on my nails this time and go red next time. Sadly, this was the end of my favourite bottle of Face of Australia limited edition Molten Metallic Bronze polish.

After getting my nails done, I went to the Building Society then, as I was walking back to my car, decided to stop in at the hair salon that my wife and son go to, to see if I could get an appointment. It turned out that I was able to get an appointment later in the afternoon. In the process of making the appointment, she knew who I was relative to my wife and son, which became quite relevant later on...

The first thing that she did was take my hair out of the plait, brush it out and show me the 75mm (3") or so that she wanted to take off, pointing out that the ends were thin and scraggly. I agreed with her ~ the length that she removed was about the length that I knew needed removing last year!

When she asked if I always wore my hair tied back, I answered "not always". In conversation, I offhandedly mentioned that the length that was coming off had been making it difficult to do things such a 1940s 3-roll. No reaction. I took that to mean that she had realised from the painted nails, pierced ears, long hair and lack of facial hair that I was a crossdresser, but as the conversation continued it became obvious that she had not.

When she went to trim my fringe, I mentioned that the biggest problem that I have with my fringe is that some hair is sometimes in the fringe and sometimes not, and that I often end up with some hair that is too long for the fringe but too short to tie back.

In the ensuing discussion about the fact that the shape of my hairline meant that the sides could not be brought forward into the fringe, I commented that I trim the hairline and when I wear makeup, I shade the hairline to make it more rounded. She asked why I wear makeup!

"Because I'm a crossdresser."

As has been the case so many times before, she had no idea until then. Apparently when I made the remark about the 1940s 3-roll, she just didn't believe that she'd heard straight and ignored it.

Of course, this led to many of the usual questions. How did my wife feel about it, did I dress in front of my son, etc..

As usual, there was no negativity, just genuine interest because she hadn't had the opportunity to ask these questions of someone who is openly a crossdresser.

Coincidentally, the hairdresser is the mother of one of the women at Price Attack in Charlestown, where I bought the hair donuts and green nail polish for my Tinkerbell outfit last year. The daughter has certainly seen me in girl mode before, and I think that she has also seen my Tinkerbell photos from last year.

Were you at IMATS?

If I go to get Subway for dinner, I often also go to the Woolworths supermarket in the same building while I'm there. The vast majority of the time, I'm in boy mode ~ including tonight.

And so it came about that tonight I grabbed a few things and took them through a self-service checkout. After realising that there was nobody minding the self-service area, I walked around to the service counter and asked if they had the Aussie Animals cards that they are currently giving away with purchases, as my son is collecting them.

As she handed me the cards, the woman behind the counter asked me "Were you at IMATS?"

It's not something that I expected to be asked, and it seemed like it took about a second for my brain to process the question.

After I confirmed that yes, I had indeed been there, we had a brief conversation about it.

She complimented me on my presentation, and seemed quite genuine in her compliment. Considering how unhappy I was with my presentation, I was quite happy with the compliment. :)

It turned out that it had her first time at IMATS. She recognised me from the supermarket, but she was with a friend who didn't even read me. She was surprised that I was there mostly for the presentations, as she had apparently spent up big while she was there and wasn't really aware of the presentations.

It was apparently her first time there, and she seemed surprised (possibly even impressed) that it was my third time there.

I guess I tend to sound like a broken record on this point, but I find it interesting to note that, contrary to the claims of many crossdressers who won't even set foot outside their door in girl mode, there is once again no negativity at all in a relative stranger's response to me.

No Tinkerbell this year

This morning, I looked at my diary and realised that I have a nail appointment on Wednesday 16th October, ahead of the Lindy Charm School on Sunday 20th. The obvious thing to do is to get my nails done red.

A conundrum arose, in that I planned to go to Halloween in Cardiff on Saturday 26th in essentially the same outfit as last year, including having my nails done in the same glitter green polish. That would be in the same fortnight between nail appointments as the LCS. Okay, so I'd have to change the polish myself between appointments.

Except that I was also considering going to Chromefest on Sunday 27th, and that would definitely be a 1950s outfit event, for which I'd want my nails red again.

So I began considering options such as applying Magic Tape (special sticky tape that is designed to be removed without damaging whatever is underneath it) to my nails, and painting it green so that it could be peeled off to reveal the red for the Sunday.

So far, so good.

Then the wheels fell off.

It doesn't appear that I'll be doing Halloween or Chromefest this year.

Instead, I'll be helping my wife's relatives who will be moving house that weekend ~ into the house that we're buying to rent to them!

You can't hide with Google around

I mentioned a few days ago that I had chatted to a makeup artist who stopped me at IMATS to tell me that she read my blog, and joked that she was stalking me on my blog.

Out of curiosity, I wondered if I could find her using Google search. The first search turned up a web site that I suspected was hers, so the second search was an image search for the name of the owner of that site, and the very first photo result was her.

It took around 2 minutes to go from "I wonder if I can find her" to "Yes, that's her", while looking at her Facebook profile photo! Of course, I sent her a friend request. :-)

While it's good that you can easily find something or someone that you're looking for, the downside is that someone else can do the same to you. For example, I postulated that if I can find someone that easily, surely with the right search terms (probably a very small number of words), it would be trivial to work backwards from my female online persona to my real world life.

The answer is yes, it is. Then again, with how out I am on facebook, and in real life (particularly with my nails), I don't greatly care if people join the dots.

Lindy Charm School again?

It appears that the Lindy Charm School will be coming to Newcastle again in October. They are down on numbers and may have to cancel if they don't get more takers, but if the numbers are good enough for it to go ahead, I'm hoping to be there like last year.

It's basically the same course again (except that the afternoon seems to be listed as only 2 hours instead of the 3 hours that it was last year), but after the mess I made of the 1940s 3-roll last weekend, I'm convinced that I need to do the course again because I just don't remember much of what was covered. If I had practised regularly starting straight afterwards, I would probably have been fine but having had so much else happening in my life, that simply didn't happen.

I will try to see if I can further boost the numbers, as the woman who does my nails expressed interest in doing this course when I was talking to her about it last year, and her daughter did a mini version of the same sort of thing run by Miskonduct earlier this year. If I can convince one or both of them to go, it might be the difference between it going ahead and being cancelled. Sadly, the daughter is doing her Higher School Certificate this year and the date may be in the middle of her exams so she's unlikely to be able to go.

A small complication that arose with the date of this year's workshop is that my wife will be away, and I'd normally be doing the solo parent routine for a few days. I don't want to take my 10yo son to Miskonduct, as that would either mean that he would be hanging around in the LCS workshop or downstairs in the shop. Either way, I don't want to impose him on either the LCS presenters and the other participants, or on the Miskonduct staff. Fortunately, I may have solved that problem but the solution will probably mean about 4 hours driving on either the Friday evening or the Saturday so that he can stay with my wife's relatives in Sydney and be brought home by my wife on her way home on the Sunday night.

A small side effect of that arrangement, or indeed any arrangement involving my going to LCS on the Sunday is that I'm likely to be in full 1950s girl mode when my parents in law deliver my wife and son home...

I also need to get my hair trimmed before I do the LCS workshop. I just realised that, aside from doing the fringe myself and getting my wife to trim the hair on the nape of my neck occasionally, I haven't had it trimmed since just before IMATS last year. That's about a year ago!

IMATS Sydney 2013

I made it to IMATS. There were a number of things that I intended to mention in this post, but having had a rather big weekend, I'm not sure that I'll remember them all!

As planned, I drove to Wahroonga, caught a train to Town Hall station and walked to Darling Harbour. I didn't wear a 1950s style outfit because I haven't yet bought a suitable handbag. I did, however, decide to do a vaguely 1950s eyeliner and a 1940s 3-roll hairdo (the same style as I wore to the Kurri Kurri Nostalgia Festival but unfortunately it didn't turn out anywhere nearly as well as it did last time).

In spite of the fact that I didn't get out between the last outing that I posted about and IMATS, I didn't have a confidence problem. In fact, if anything, Saturday's outing to IMATS showed me that I have my inner f... you, as Linda Karen calls it, in spades.

Quite a bit of the time, I knew that I wasn't passing and I really didn't care. Nobody confronted me, and beyond some laughter in the background at Town Hall station that I have no idea if it was even directed at me, I wasn't even aware of anything more overt than people looking at me funny.

The only person that I bumped into who I already knew from Beauty Heaven and Facebook was Caitlin, who I first met at the First (and so far only) Newcastle Beauty Heaven Meet-up.

I also had an interesting conversation with a makeup artist from Mayfield (a suburb of Newcastle) whose opening words to me were "I read your blog!" She then went on to joke that she had been stalking me on my blog, reading the various stories and, in particular, mentioning that she thought that I was talking about the Mayfield Subway restaurant in my posts about going to Subway en femme. I informed her that no, I was actually talking about the Cardiff one (yes, this is the first time I've mentioned which one it is). My memory for names is shocking and unfortunately I've forgotten her name but I'm hoping that she'll contact me and let me know. The photo above was taken by stalker. :-P

The shoes I wore while travelling were the mustard joggers that I wore when a group of us went to the Estee Lauder staff shop back in 2011. I also wore ankle socks over my pantihose because those shoes really don't suit wearing without socks. The heels that I took with me and wore while I was in the venue were the orange suede Tony Bianco stilettos that I bought at about the same time as the dress, and have worn with the same outfit before.

Remembering last year, I took both a knitted lap rug and a cardigan. I also read the program before the event and planned which presentations I wanted to see. Because I decided to get up at 4:45 (45 minutes later than 2011 but 15 minutes earlier than last year) and took longer getting ready than I had anticipated, I arrived part way through the Eliza Campagna / Dana Nye presentation and decided to skip it and wander around the stands instead. I went to the Rae Morris presentation, which was on the main stage.

After grabbing some lunch, I had just about decided to give up and head home. I changed my shoes back, and then decided to do something that I've avoided on all previous outings. With all of the underwear that I wear to achieve a reasonable simulation of a female shape, I basically have to strip below my bra to use the toilet, then dress again afterwards. As you might imagine, that can be a time consuming process. As it turned out, many of the exhibition halls were empty, so there were a group of toilets far enough away from IMATS to be quite quiet, which included a disabled toilet. Using my wheeled case as a table, I stripped off, did what I had to, and dressed again as quickly as I could while still taking time to make sure that everything was how it should be.

I then changed my mind about heading home, and went back in. I sat down to watch Eve Pearl's presentation on the open forum stage, and realised that this was where the cardigan and lap rug were needed. The main stage has partition walls most of the way around, which help to control the cold air that blows through, whereas the open forum is cold and draughty as I noted last year.

I stayed to watch the presentation of the student competition, wandered around the stands a final time then headed home.

On the way home, I decided to put fuel in my car before I drove home, as I didn't want to have to get off the freeway on the trip home and knew that I didn't have enough fuel. Big mistake, and one I won't make again. It was only a couple of kilometres to the service station, but when I got there, there were cars queued 3 to 4 deep for every bowser. Because my car runs on LPG, I was able to be very cheeky and, when the car in front finally made it to the petrol bowser, I was able to park within about 20cm (8 inches) of that car and use the LPG bowser at the same time. I'd already parked and was opening the fuel door on my car when the guy got out, walked to the back of his car, realised that he couldn't walk between them and walked around the front instead. Once I'd paid for the fuel (using my male credit card with no issue), I had to drive around several back streets to get back to the highway just a few metres the other side of the service station.

On the plus side, I was very aware that I really didn't care what others at the service station might have thought. On the minus side, the whole fuel exercise added over 30 minutes to my trip, whereas getting fuel on the way out of Newcastle would have added 10 minutes at most.

Saturday outing

With all of the things that are going on around me at present, I didn't expect to be able to get out until at least my nail appointment on Wednesday. An issue with a web site that I have to use for much of my work left me rather limited on what I could do for the last 3 days of the month, which culminated in my making the decision to not even try to work on Saturday.

So, for the first time in 5 months (yes, Kurri Kurri was 5 months ago!), I did my makeup, dressed to coordinate with my orange nails and went out shopping. It was also my first time trying to use different shades of foundation for highlighting and contouring. The contrast between the shades seemed to be so subtle that I wasn't sure whether it actually worked at all or not. I'll have to try it again and make more effort not to put the base colour over the highlighted or contoured areas. I'm thinking that next time, I might do the base colour first, instead of doing it last and trying to fill in between the other shades and running over the edges of them too much.

My outing on Saturday was largely a direct result of seeing a dress advertised as a clearance item on Miskonduct Klothing's facebook page. The one that I most wanted sold before I could get to try it, but there was another one that looked like it might also work for me. The reason for wanting another dress even though I'm yet to wear the last one that I bought is that if I wear a 1950s style outfit to IMATS, it's probably going to have to be a straight skirt, as I don't think that I'd want to try to do the full skirt on trains and walking from Town Hall station to Darling Harbour and back. The fullness could also be an issue in IMATS, both in crowds and sitting in seminars.

At Miskonduct, I tried the dress that I was hoping to try, and decided to get it. I have realised, though, that I need a suitable handbag and some flat shoes to go with my red and orangey red 1950s outfits, and to that end my next stop was Charlestown Square to look for shoes. It may have been my lack of practice, but I felt that I didn't pass as well as I used to. I visited Sharon at the Tree of Life store, had a look at a few shoe shops and on the way past looked at a few other shops. I found a red lace parasol at one shop for $50 but wasn't sure if the shade would be right. I also spotted a temporary clearance store that had a white lace parasol which I think was $30. I'll probably have another look next time I'm there.

Having felt that my presentation wasn't as good as it should have been, I was inclined to change back into male mode to go to Subway to get dinner. In the end, I did go in girl mode because it would have taken too long to change and there was a risk that the shop would be shut by the time I got there. While the staff have changed since I last went there en femme, I go there often enough that I know most of the current staff. When I got there, there were 2 people working, including a friendly petite young brunette girl and a nervous young male trainee. When I queued up, the girl looked over, obviously recognised me, smiled and then continued serving the person she was already serving.

By a subtle shift in process at the register, the girl made sure that the guy served the person in front of me, so that she got to serve me. I didn't catch exactly what she said the first time, but I think it was "You look different tonight." The subsequent several times, it was "You look really good tonight." :) That helped to make up for the odd glances that I got at Charlestown Square.

Unfortunately, Sunday was back to the reality of work. I have been so busy that I didn't even have time to type this post until now, and even now I didn't really have the time. I considered going to the cafe night tonight, but by last night I knew that I had work that I simply had to do this afternoon and tonight (much of which I'm yet to do), so the cafe night simply wasn't an option.

I also hoped to go to my nail appointment tomorrow en femme, but the same client who I met with in between my meeting with our architect and my nail appointment a fortnight ago insisted on an appointment on Wednesday afternoon this week. Having that already screw up my plans meant that working out that I'm going to have to do several other work related errands before my nail appointment isn't as big a blow as it might otherwise have been.

We have an election coming up on Saturday and, for various reasons, that means that I won't be getting out en femme. If I get a lot of work done over the next few days, there's a remote chance that I might get out again on Sunday but I'm not really all that hopeful of that. Ideally, I'd like to try to get out at least twice before IMATS, to get myself more organised and more confident than I am at present.

About turn

After posting a link to last night's blog post on Facebook, one of my friends (the guy who recognised me at Kurri Kurri) asked what IMATS was.

I went to the IMATS web site to get the URL to copy to Facebook, and for some reason clicked through to ticket prices. In spite of saying that the price should have gone up on Thursday, the the early pre-sale prices were still showing.

I asked my wife for her opinion, and she said it was up to me.

After realising that it wanted me to log into the site to pay for the ticket, I realised that the password for my account was not on my Android tablet or the computer I use in the house, so I decided that if the price was still down when I got into the office in the morning, I'd buy a ticket.

You guessed it. The price was still down when I got into the office, so I've bought myself a one-day (Saturday) ticket. One way or another, I'm going to IMATS. :)

In response to my time to decide post, GlossQueen suggested that I go in boy mode. At the time, my answer to that was that I'd prefer not to go than to go in boy mode. I've moderated my position a little now that I've bought the ticket. I'm planning on being there no matter what, and boy mode is my worst case fall-back.

I'm yet to decide how I'll be dressing for IMATS. It'll probably be a drive to Wahroonga, catch a train to Town Hall, walk to Darling Harbour deal again like last year. I'm tempted to wear a retro (1950s) outfit with full petticoat, but that's probably not going to be practical for pushing through crowds or sitting at presentations...

Priorities

Sometimes you have to rearrange your priorities. The past week has involved a temporary change in priorities that ended my plan to challenge myself to get out en femme before the price of IMATS tickets went up.

As expected, we had a meeting with our architect on Wednesday morning, meaning that I had no chance of getting to my nail appointment en femme. As it turns out, the architect made a suggestion that should make our plans considerably cheaper and faster to build, and I also had a brief but productive meeting with a work client between finishing with the architect and going to the nail appointment, so I was fairly happy with the day overall. Oh, and I've gone with orange nails again this time. ;)

By elimination, that meant that the only day that I could possibly have got out en femme before the IMATS deadline was last Sunday.

To explain what happened on Sunday, I have to first explain my work circumstances. In spite of having described a typical work day back in 2009, I don't think that I've ever actually mentioned that I'm self employed. Instead of paying into superannuation, my wife and I bought an investment property back in 2008. The place was badly overgrown and under maintained when we bought it, and we spent several months getting it up to a rent-able condition. That's where the conversation about eyeliner happened in January 2009. After the work involved in fixing the place up, my wife said that if we ever bought another property, it had to be one that didn't need work!

More recently, the money that we had saved up in an offset account to do our planned house extensions and renovations had reached the point that our investment property was no longer negatively geared, meaning that it was actually making my income tax worse rather than better.

As strange as it might sound, I've been working too much (because the demand won't decrease) and we now need to either get stuck into the house extensions (which we can't do until the plans are approved by council) or we need to buy another investment property so that we owe more money!

This led to a discussion last year with one of my wife's relatives about the idea that we would buy a house in the area of Sydney that they live in, for them to rent from us. They and we have been looking at potential houses since December, but we hadn't found anything suitable.

Last Saturday, I got a message to say that, for the first time, they had looked at a house that they really liked. I had two phone calls from a real estate agent at about 10:30 Sunday morning and ended up organising to go to look at the house on Sunday afternoon! It was a case of drop everything and go, and plans for an outing en femme went by the wayside. We went, we saw, we made an offer. Afterwards, we stopped at the relatives' place for a while, and by the time we left, the offer had been accepted.

So for the past week, between work, I've been organising all the things that have to be done to buy a house. It's mostly in place now, but we'll have several days wait for the loan approval. As long as it is approved, we'll have a few more hours here and there of running around organising things over about 7 weeks, then it will be just the occasional few minutes here and there.

We're still trying to get the plans for our house sorted out as well, and if it all falls into place, the money spent on buying the investment property will mean that we'll probably be building a bit more slowly than originally planned, but we're planning on staging the work, and once we complete stage 1, we'll be able to move into it and slow down or possibly completely stop work for a while.

So, unless someone gives me an IMATS ticket, I'm not planning on going this year. My head is still spinning too much with all of the other things that are happening for me to work out how I feel about that...

A decision being made for me

It seems that my challenging myself might not work all that well. It's as if the decision is being made for me...

We have been having intermittent trouble with the electricity that comes into our house since at least 2007. There's an autotransformer near us, and it plays up quite badly from time to time. The current problem with it is that sometimes when it steps to adjust the voltage as the load varies on one phase, it arcs and causes a spike. It just so happens that some of our computers are on that phase, and the batteries in two UPSes had failed (without any error to indicate that there was a problem!), meaning that those computers, including the file server, crashed every day for the past few days. Today, it happened mid morning.

Obviously there was no point trying to work if the server was likely to crash and lose whatever work had been done, so I went and bought new batteries for one UPS, so that I could check if it really was a battery problem before buying batteries for the other one. After installing the new batteries, I tested it by plugging 2 spotlights into the output then turning off the power point powering the UPS. Having satisfied myself that the UPS was in fact going to work properly again, I moved it back into place, shut the computers down and moved them across to that UPS. By the time all of that was done I was exhausted and had a headache.

At this point, I doubt very much that I'll get the work done that I was aiming to do today, so I'll probably spend tomorrow working on it...

Monday is work, then dinner with the inlaws.

Tuesday is work then a work related meeting in the evening.

Wednesday is looking like being a meeting with the architect to work on the revised plans for our house extensions and renovations in the morning before my nail appointment. I don't think that I want to do makeup before that meeting, and that's the only way I'd be able to get to my nail appointment en femme!

So, unless the weather improves, my headache clears and I get out tomorrow, it looks as if the decision on whether or not I go to IMATS will be made by tomorrow night.

Time to decide about IMATS

As I said last week, the price of IMATS Sydney tickets goes up next Thursday. I've decided that I have to make a decision before that, but as I continue to be drowned in work, I know that it's simply not going to be possible to go for both days.

The decision now is whether to go on the Saturday or not. I've come up with a way to help myself decide ~ if I can't get out between now and Wednesday, then what hope do I have of getting to IMATS even if I buy the ticket?

So I've set myself a challenge. If I can manage to get out en femme between now and Wednesday, I'll buy myself a ticket to IMATS. If I don't manage to get out, then I would probably not make it to IMATS either.

It occurred to me that if I somehow manage to get out twice between now and Wednesday, I should buy a 2-day ticket to IMATS, but I'm not likely to organise accommodation in Sydney, and I really don't think that I could do 4am starts (to travel to Sydney and back) both days then head back to work on Monday morning!


After I post this, I'm off to have a lie down until dinner. It's been a long week and I'm exhausted. Even if I manage to do all the preparations that I need to do tonight, I'm not likely to be up early enough tomorrow to go out, and I'll be working Monday and Tuesday, so Sunday and my nail appointment on Wednesday are really the only chances I've got. The odds aren't good, but they're not zero ~ yet.

Antipodean Beauties: My Favourite Lipstick

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bump

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

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

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

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

Red and orange nail reactions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Contour and highlight using foundation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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