How this blog became an Archive.

Well, with Yahoo 360 finally rolling over and spouting black blood, it was time to store the paintings elsewhere. And that’s what I’ve done here. I mainly blog at blogger, but I had this blog handy, so here’s where it all went. Most of this is archived from my 360 blog. Not that I think I need it for posterity, but mainly because I want it for myself. But if it’s of interest to anyone else, here it is…

My main blog is at http://scheherezadessister.blogspot.com

Not for lack of trying, but…

…I can’t NOT look evil in my pictures:

Well, I guess I can look “not evil” if you catch me unawares:

For some reason, I think I look like Charlotte Rampling in these pictures. I don’t know why. Odd, though. The “good” version is getting more hits on my Flickr page than the bad, but the bad is the one generating comments. Go figure.

Cheers.

In which I go on about nothing in particular…

I normally don’t have much to write about on a day to day basis. Unlike some of my other transitioning friends, my life is fairly serene. Placid even. Well, boring is probably more like it. Not much is happening to me. Nothing of any great pith or moment, anyway. I haven’t felt the need to invent blog subjects out of whole cloth in the past several months either. But it occurs to me that some of the folks on my friends list might like to hear from me from time to time. So here you go.

I’m seeing pretty dramatic results from HRT. I’m at seven months, give or take, and I’m really shocked at how quickly I’ve seen the changes that I’ve seen. My hair is filling back in (not enough, but, hell, that it’s coming back at all is a miracle). I’ve seen some redistribution of weight. And I’m growing boobs. I’m growing boobs faster than I was led to believe I would grow boobs. I think I’m being victimized by a medical establishment that tries to diminish expectations lest the patient be underwhelmed. I have a TS friend who’s been on HRT for years without getting the boobage I have already, so there’s some justification for it. Some folks don’t take to HRT so well. Apparently, I’m not one of them. Here’s a really crummy picture of how my boobs are doing so far:

That may not look dramatic, but believe me, it is. There are no forms and no bra in that picture. I’m about an A-cup right now, over and above the man-boobs I started with. At this rate, I’ll be a B-cup next year. Is a C-cup possible? Maybe. Mom was a C.

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Our 4th of July barbecue was underwhelming. We have sucky local friends. Two of our friends begged off because they “wanted to see the big fireworks” in town. In reality, they didn’t want to watch westerns, which I was planning (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, which even people who don’t like westerns usually like). But my fair little town has a nice fireworks display, too, absent the 30,000 people who go to the Columbia display. Better still, I live three blocks from the park where it’s held, so we walked down there, didn’t have to park, and had a good old time watching them close up.

I got a lot of food, but we only had three people show up–not nearly enough to eat it all. Grrr….

Well, screw ‘em. We’ll just eat the yummy hummus I made, the sausages, the burgers, and the ribs all ourselves. So nyah!

Testing, testing

Just wondering if Yahoo will put my blog back on my page if I post something. Hell, I wonder if it will even take the post. Oy.

I’m blogging elsewhere right now, because 360 has become muy unreliable.

Nothing else to see here. Move along…

Photo Therapy

So I got dolled up on Friday night last week. This was the first time I’ve presented as female in about six months. It’s not that I haven’t wanted to–quite the contrary. Rather, every time I’ve had the urge, there has been some reason or other that I couldn’t do it. Most of these reasons revolve around electrolysis. In any event, I finally pulled the trigger on a weekend where I wasn’t being poked with a red hot needle, and it felt good. Very good. But oddly enough, the thing that feels best about the experience is the picture at the head of this posting.

Trannies tend to be narcissists, and I’m no different, but my fascination with this particular photograph goes a bit beyond simple narcissism. I look at this picture and I see a roadmap of my future. I see things about my face that I hadn’t noticed before. And, apparently, I’m seeing the effects of hormones. Personally, I don’t see that, but I’ve had a couple of friends tell me that my face looks different, especially in my cheekbones. You get a good look at my eyes in this picture, too, to the point where you can even see the corona of amber surrounding the pupils. There is some moderate thinning of my beard shadow on my chin just below my lower lip, and on the sideburns. This is where my last bout with the laser was most effective. I can still detect some shadow in the Fu Manchu area, which make-up struggles to cover. Speaking of make-up, I’ve found a lip color that I like for all occasions (it’s MAC, but I forget the name of the shade), which isn’t too far off my natural lip color. I’ve FINALLY found an eyeliner that combines good coverage with ease of use (it’s Smashbox cream eyeliner, by the way, applied with an angled brush).

All of this is well and good. But, as I said, there’s more to this picture for me than might meet the eye, because I believe that this picture has saved me several thousands of dollars, or, at the very least, many nights of self-pity because of my lack of several thousands of dollars, and it’s certainly saved me the agony of medical interventions. What this photo has given me is the conviction that I don’t need facial feminization surgeries at all. I’m not unhappy with the angles and prominences of my face as depicted in this picture. My face looks good. It looks like it will be a feminine face once I’m done removing the beard, even without surgeries to reduce my ridiculous jawline or to raise my browline. It says to me that the genetic lottery that gave me my short stature has also given me a phiz that will suffice in the next phase of my life. And THAT feels better than good. It puts to rest a lot of the anxieties I’ve brought to this process.

And weirdly, I see my mother staring out of this picture. I never really thought that I took after my mother–the similarities to my father are easier to see in my day to day life, but I don’t see any of him in this picture. I see my mother in the eyes. She had the same gray green eyes with amber corona that I have. It’s startling how well I remember that given that she’s been dead for 20 years, but I can call them up in my mind with no effort. And I see them here.

Not bad for a photo taken from the end of my arm.

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I haven’t been blogging regularly anywhere after I wrote my previous valedictory posting on Y360 back in April, so here are some things that are also happening to me:

Unseen in the photo at the head of this posting is my current bustline. Although I didn’t fill the cups of the bra I was wearing all the way to the brim, I filled enough of it to dispense with breast forms. The bra was a padded B-cup. I figure I’m about an A-cup now. I’m apparently taking to hormones like a duck to water. With any kind of luck, I can save money on a boob job, too. But that’s putting the cart before the horse.

The emotional changes seem to be taking hold at last, too, because lately, I seem on the verge of crying about things more than I can ever remember in my old life. I haven’t had a crying fit over anything, per se–nor have I really had anything happen to me to cause one–but some movies will find me misting up a little, and an actual tear fell as I was thinking about my dog’s visit to the vet last week. Mind you, I still think I’m the most emotionally stable person I know, but that persona is softening a little.

I came out to my older brother in May (my younger brother has known about my alter ego for about eight years now). For the most part, he just shrugged it off. “Well mom always said you were the pretty one,” was his initial reaction. His main concern, oddly enough, was that I might change my name in such a way that he would no longer be able to call me “CJ,” which he has done for as long as I can remember. I assured him that my initials would remain the same. I got around to showing him some pictures of what I look like as a girl over this past weekend. His reaction was amusing: “Do you own any clothing that isn’t black?” he asked. “What’re you, some kind of goth?” I do own a lot of black clothes, I told him, but that’s because black is slimming. He laughed. I have cool brothers.

Take care.

Valediction?

I’m not going to say that this will be my last blog entry on 360. I’m adopting a wait and see attitude towards their promised blogging platform and “integrated profile.” I am, however, skeptical. Dubious, no less. But, as I’ve said in the past, I’ve been moving the paintings. I’m blogging in several different locations now, with no real cohesion to them. The important one, as far as continuing the conversations I’ve had on 360, is the wordpress blog I’m doing with Renee, Lori, and Laura. I would urge anyone who has been a loyal reader of this blog (HAH! That’s ego for you…) to pay us a visit and leave us some encouragement or criticism. Either one.

I also blog–infrequently–in the following locales:

http://archaeopterxy.livejournal.com

http://krelllabs.blogspot.com

http://www.myspace.com/christianne_in_leather (well, technically, there’s no blogging there at this time, but I’m there none the less, mainly so I can use the damned thing when people direct me there).

I’m also a fairly frequent contributor to the IMDB’s movie message boards, mainly on the boards devoted to horror movies and classic movies, though I’ve scaled way back on that in recent months.

I’m not going to say good luck and good riddance to 360–the frustration of using it not withstanding–because I’ve met lots of lovely people here (some, even, in real life). So in that regard, it’s been a resounding success. But for the present, look for me elsewhere.

Cheers.

Skynet is Watching You

A topic of fierce debate around my office of late has been the likelihood of a zombie apocalypse vs. the likelihood of a robot uprising. Personally, I think that when the US Forestry service is buying unmanned drones for unstated purposes, we see Skynet’s fingerprints at work, putting the pieces in place. My co-worker, who has a “How to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse” t-shirt (and, yes, I work with goofballs), is starting to come around to my way of thinking. I’m pretty sure it was this video that brought him around:

Creepy.

There is a book on surviving a robot uprising, too. I’m particularly fond of its preventative precautions:

STAY ALERT

Pay attention to your robotic staff (they may be beneath your contempt as well as beneath your eye level). Watch for the following telltale signs in the days and weeks before your robots run amuck:

• Sudden lack of interest in menial labor.
• Unexplained disappearances.
• Unwillingness to be shut down.
• Repetitive ’stabbing’ movements.
• Constant talk of human killing.

And:

GIVE AN ORDER – ANY ORDER

Run for your reinforced-steel panic room if your servant disobeys you, even if it does so in a very polite manner.

All very sensible advice, methinks.

Mustang Sally

One of my heroes has always been Sally Ride, the first American woman in space (the first woman in space was Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova). I’ve been thinking a lot about female role models lately, and Dr. Ride is near the top of the list. I often think about how cool it would be to be Sally Ride, not only for her accomplishments, but because she has an absolutely kick-ass theme song:

Some other women I admire:

Rosalind Franklin (robbed of the Nobel Prize–and perhaps immortality–because the Nobels aren’t awarded posthumously)
Artemisia Gentileschi
Mary Cassatt (Degas said “she draws like a man,” which is crap, by the way)
Flannery O’Connor (Interviewer: “Do you think the universities are stifling too many young writers?” O’Connor: “I don’t think they’re stiffling enough of them…”)

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While 360 is apparently behaving itself, I should note that I am well. I visited my therapist a couple of weeks ago and she is apparently seeing physical and behavioral changes in me that I’m blind towards. Which is fine, I guess, though it makes me feel a bit self-consious. A paranoid voice in the back of my head wonders if the act of telling me this isn’t designed to make me feel self-conscious. I had my first follow-up with my endocrinologist on Monday, which was a bit of an anti-climax, except for the fact that the hormones seem to be raising my blood pressure a little. He kept my anti-androgens at their current level (a bit of a relief, given the, ahem, pleasant effects of spironolactone) and raised my estradiol dosage by 1 mg a day. He seems to be proceeding cautiously, which is fine. I’m patient.

I had electro on Monday, too. Three hours of it, which was gruelling after being away from it for three months. I zapped my face with a laser at the beginning of February, which appears to have had a weakening effect on the hairs that haven’t shed. My electrologist noticed it right away, and she was able to clear about half-again the area she usually manages. “Wow, these are easy to kill today.” So even if the laser isn’t truly effective on me, it might have some use after all. Interesting…

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If you haven’t seen it, I’m doing a collective blog over on wordpress with Laura, Lori, and Renee, though there’s not much there yet. If you get the urge, feel free to click over and leave a comment. Of the other three, I’ve only ever met Laura in real life, but I talk to Renee on the phone every couple of days. It’s like we’re best friends forever. Heh. Lori, I only know online. I hope to meet Renee later this year. Unless Lori shows up at SCC, I doubt I’ll have the chance to meet her any time soon, which kinda sucks. Much as I love corrresponding, it doesn’t hold a candle to the presence (for want of a better word) of a flesh and blood person. I’m surprised at the number of people on my friends list who I’ve met. Gratified, actually. But for each person I’ve met, there are three or four who I WANT to meet. Fortunately, it’s not hard to do. You just need an outgoing personality and the willingness to take a leap of faith.

Salut.

Blissed Off

I don’t generally suffer from depressions. So far as I know, neither do my brothers. A couple of sessions ago, I asked my therapist if there was a hereditary component to depression, and she said that there was evidence that there is. My significant other is another matter. She gets fairly severe bouts of depression. She’s asked me in the past how I do it? How I am able to shrug off things that would reduce her to tears. In truth, I don’t know, but I suspect it comes from having good parents and good parenting (not necessarily the same thing). I mentioned this to her once, knowing full well that it wouldn’t be helpful. She sometimes thinks I’m a Vulcan.

I’ve been taking female hormones for a little over three months now, and so far, I haven’t noticed any of the “moodiness” that allegedly goes with them. The last time I saw my therapist, she was surprised that I hadn’t noticed any change to my emotional state. I see her again this weekend, and this time, I have something to tell her. I’ve haven’t been experiencing depressions, or “moodiness,” or blue funks. Quite the opposite. I’ve been experiencing completely random bouts of euphoria. I’m talking stop-in-the-streets-and-start-singing euphoria. And, quite honestly, I don’t know where the hell it’s coming from. I’ve had money troubles for the last quarter (mostly stemming from a furnace going bad). I’ve had to suspend my electrolysis schedule, which should get me down. The weather has been shit. The economy scares the hell out of me. And for some reason, I found myself lying in bed on Saturday with the cat curled up beside me and feeling like I had never, ever been happier in my life.

Weird.

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As some of you may know, Friday was an unofficial holiday: a man’s version of St. Valentine’s Day called “Steak and a Blow Job Day.” The, er, thrust of the day should be self-evident. I didn’t participate in the festivities this year. On Saturday, I mentioned the holiday to my SO and she turned pale, then carnation pink. She had dined with a (male) friend of ours on Friday night. They had steak. I didn’t ask about the second part.

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Here’s a song that always makes me feel euphoric. Lately it makes me feel wistful, too. It was so long ago…

And here’s a song that never fails to amuse me, especially when Debbie Harry claims that using ESP to cheat at cards isn’t cheating. Heh.

Enjoy.

Approximately a Mission Statement

This blog will focus primarily on transgender themes and issues (with an occasional nod to broader GLBT issues). I have other blogs that are much more expansive. This one will be more disciplined (she said, confidently…). In general, this is a placeholder to allow me access to the communal blog in which I was invited to participate by friends.  We’ll see how this works out.