Monday, December 15, 2003

Phasers set to shock

I’m tired. It was a busy weekend and I feel like someone cut the line to the brakes. The bad thing is that I still have a ways to go before I can take a break.

Last week I picked Brooke up on my way to electro because we had to take care of some TGSF business. So, I called in her dinner order to the restaurant as well. Her and I then hung out at the bar while waiting for our food. As luck would have it, Brandon (I was finally able to see his name tag) was working the bar and took care of me as soon as I walked up there.

“Good to see you again, my man!” he says to me, saying my name first though. OK, I could do without the “man” part, but I appreciate that he notices me. Yeah, sure, he sees me as a guy...I know that....but after my surgery imposed 3.5 month absence from electro, he might meet my “sister.” :)

Brooke just laughed at my little infatuation with the guy. I mean, jeez, nice looking women that walk by still cause me to lose my concentration. Later, she was also humored by my “drunkenness” after taking the pain killer for the 2 hour session of weed pulling.

After staying at her place again, we then ventured back over for our morning sessions. We stopped at Starbucks on the way over to pick up some fuel for my electrologist. I’ve noticed one of the young women behind the counter looks extremely like a female version of Brooke, had she been born a GG. Brooke doesn’t really think so, but it’s too bad, because the woman behind the counter is really cute.

After the weed pulling session, I was off to San Francisco to hang out at Claire’s place for a while and keep her company during her recovery. She was alone when I arrived, but was soon visited by her ex....so I sneaked out for awhile while the two of them shared some personal time. It was the first time her ex had seen her since she came out to her. “Piggy,” as Claire calls her, was still working on getting through Claire’s disclosure and subsequent surgery. Seeing someone you love going through transition is hard enough while seeing them right after FFS. It’s just not a pretty sight. I sneaked out a little later on to pick Claire up a Jamba Juice Berry something-or-another. I’ll definitely have to have my mom pick one of those up for me while I’m recovering, as well. I also ran another errand and picked up some Saline Nasal Spray and ScarGuard for Claire to manage her way to a successful recovery. I think I’ll be picking up a bunch of that stuff before I head out for my FFS. I’m also thinking about getting my mom a spray bottle full of water for my first night in the hospital after surgery. With proper aim, I think it will be a much better way of getting a little water in my throat.

OK, so after visiting Claire, I went over to a little party some of my friends were having. It was me, Kathy, Julie and her new beau, Diana, Erika, and Kristen. Yep, mainly women. Somehow during the night, they made their way to talking about how Julie’s beau wouldn’t go into Asia SF or something and how Gia (my TS friend) had visited the bar that Julie works at. They made their way through terms like transvestite and transgender, and did pretty good with most of the terminology while staying away from insulting anyone. I was very impressed. I turned to Kathy and said, “What do you think?”

She looked back knowing what I was thinking...”should I tell them?” She says, “I don’t know....maybe.” After a few minutes, Kathy then said, “Oh wait. NO!” She then softly told me that Julie’s beau would probably not be OK with any of that.

So, I sat there for a few more hours in the hopes that Julie’s beau would leave before me. He did...somewhere around 11:30pm...but he left with Julie as well...who I was also hoping to disclose to. So I decided to tell them. “So, you guys want to hear a funny story?”

“Sure,” they said.

“You know Gia the transsexual that visited the bar? She’s actually a friend of mine.”

“How do you know Gia?” asks Kristen.

“I’m also a transsexual.” It was so incredible....they weren’t even phased. Diana just kinda goes, “Ohhh-kay.” Throughout all of my transition, no one has hardly noticed anything at all. Sure, some see the shaved legs, or the shaved arms, or the long hair....but no one even thinks that I’m stuck in the wrong body. T-dar, similar to gay-dar, just does not exist for anyone that has not had a friend or loved one go through a transition before. Kathy prodded me to answer a few questions that might be on their minds, but they all were pretty nonchalant about the entire thing. They even picked back up some other conversations right after that. Totally cool.

Kathy called me on her way home after the party to say they all seemed pretty OK with me. She does think they have some other questions to ask me, but that they’ll do fine with all of it.

I think I went to bed around 1am then woke up sometime just after 6am. I’d set my alarm for pretty early that morning, but I woke up freaking before it went off. Believe it or not, I went to work on Sunday. I have so little vacation time right now, that I needed to put in some extra hours to make up for time I’ll need over the upcoming vacation and facility closure over the holidays.

So, I spent a nice Sunday at work working on some FDA paperwork for a new project. I’m so busy with regular production stuff, that this FDA thing has created a ton of work to do. Right now, I’m worried that I won’t be able to finish a majority of the work while also taking three weeks off for FFS. I can’t even warn them about it yet, since I don’t have the face-to-face until January 12th. I’m thinking I will come out to Robi and Y (my boss) while we are at a conference in early January. I think they deserve to be told first since they are the ones who have to work with me. I’d like to tell Pete at the same time, but he won’t be attending with us. I don’t think Robi will have a problem with my transition, and I think Y should do OK since he’s fairly laid back....but, he is also ex-military, so he’s sort of a wild card. I think Pete will be a little freaked initially, but he’ll come around in the end.

OK, so I left work a little before 4 and went to see if I could get my hair straightened at a local hair salon. They didn’t think they could do it, especially inside an hour. Dang...and people wonder why I can’t do it on my own. It’s almost impossible with my curly frizzy hair. I have got to look further into this hair straightening method, but I’d really like to see how the straight hair is going to look on me first. It’s been almost 11 months since I last had it straight for a night, and it’s much longer now.

So, instead of straight hair, I wore my curly side bangs, with the rest put up into a twist for the Holiday Party in the South Bay. I wore the black dress that Tyler had helped me pick out a few weeks ago, along with a black sheer top that I had from another dress. It was chilly outside and inside the restaurant, so the covering really came in handy. I had a nice dinner consisting of salmon, cooked veggies, and some rice stuff. Dessert really rocked as it tasted and looked like a glass full of whipped cream. Yum. Unfortunately, I was one of only three female people at the party who was under the age of 40. Michelle and Danielle were the only other two. I think I am about done with the T-social events for now. Yes, this group was mainly transsexual based, but I just do not connect with many of them.
So, I cruised home after that, and whamo, it’s already Monday. What a short weekend. I am so far behind right now, and I haven’t even started Christmas shopping. Soon....I promise.

That time of the month.

Yesterday, I just felt a little moodier than normal....kinda pissy actually. My fantasy football team was crushed, knocking me out of any chance of winning any type of money. I was at work. My facial hair is really depressing me since it still continues to reside on my face. The drivers were really bad on my drive to the South Bay (and we know that I just hate driving with assholes all around). And to top it all off, it felt like I was going through the Leonid meteor shower on the drive. I swear I had three huge rocks smack into my car on the freeway. One sounded like it took out half of Manhattan, making a sound as though metal had surrendered to the power of kinetic energy. One half M, V squared = dent. I haven’t even looked today as I probably just don’t want to see it. There’s already a lot of dings on the front anyway.

Business as usual.

Last Friday, Pete and I visited our supplier for a little conference meeting. During the meeting, one of the vendors hands me a bunch of business cards from my old employer in Missouri. They’d visited. I looked through them spotting numerous old friends and coworkers. I instantly became nervous as they had totally caught me off guard. One of the other vendors asked if I knew a few people he’d met, and I’d mention brief little stories about them. I disclosed over the phone to Susan a while back on a Friday evening. She was the only one that knew, and who said she would watch for anything during their visit. She said my name was passed around a little, but that my old employer didn’t say anything about my transition...which I was quite relieved to hear. I still wonder if anyone told or not, because it’s so hard to judge a person if they have or haven't heard.

Susan invited me to lunch, and since Pete was off to some other affair, it was just the two of us which made things awesome. We were able to chat a little about what I was doing, as well as how their whole visit went. Like I said, they seemed to stay quiet on the whole affair. I told Susan that I thought one of the guys in her company might have trouble with me, but she said that they’d had a TS visit before who was a customer of theirs, and the guy never flinched during the entire meeting. Most people truly do not care. So cool.

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