Monday, September 29, 2008

Boston


So I am in the Boston area again. For a variety of reasons, I could not fly dressed this time and so made the trip “drab”. (My wife hates it when I use the term “drab”)
I have done so much of my flying dressed these days that I had forgotten how much easier it was to go drab. No make-up, jewelry, heels, nerves – it was easy!
I tried to eat lunch in the Austin airport while I was waiting for my flight. I say I tried because as I’m sitting there stuffing this Schlotsky’s sandwich in my mouth, I start to notice all of the young ladies walking down the airport. You know, the young ladies with the perfect figures, and the tiny waists? So there I sit with this sandwich in my face when this drop dead gorgeous woman walks by me. I looked at her waist, then I looked at mine (or lack thereof) , then I looked at hers, then I threw over half my sandwich in the trash can and spent the next hour feeling guilty about the half I’d already eaten.
Got to Boston where it was raining, but I’m drab, so who cares if I get wet. Got my luggage and rental car, and headed north to my hotel. On the way, I called Sally to let her know I was on the way, because she and her daughter were going to join me for dinner!
I tried a few new things and was not terribly pleased with them. I had bought this red top months ago but never worn it. I don’t think it is terribly flattering. It hugs my “hips” a bit tight, sort of highlighting my hip pads. I also tried slightly different make-up. I wanted to try different shades to practice for my upcoming formal at SCC and so I tried a VERY dark blue eye shadow and a red lipstick. Much like the top, I don’t think this was very flattering and so will probably just stick with my usual when it comes to SCC.



 

Sally and her daughter met me at the hotel and then we went to dinner. Sally’s daughter is one of the nicest young ladies I have met. She works with children, providing day care and also working as a substitute teacher. I just can’t imagine the kind of patience that this would take. I adore my 5 year old daughter with all my heart, but just trying to keep up with that one little critter can exhaust me, just imagine trying to keep up with a class full of ‘em! I think it must be neat to have a job where you are making a difference in the world though. We had a very pleasant dinner and chatted a lot about this and that. Having a daughter who I will someday have to talk to about these things, I tried to pick their brains about how they approached and dealt with the TG issues together. They seem to be perfectly comfortable with it, and I can only hope that things go so well with my daughter someday.


Saturday, September 27, 2008

Second Day in Chicago

Well, not much of interest to write about for my next day in Chicago. Nothing terribly exciting, good, or bad occurred. I repaired the machine I was here to fix by about 2PM and then decided to go shopping and maybe hit up a Casino that was supposed to be close.
Today I wore a new outfit. It's a lot like some others I have, but hey, I like the style and think it looks good on me. I actually would have never put this top and skirt together if my wife hadn't suggested it. I tend to think colors have to be alike to work as an outfit, but she thinks "outside the box". When she recommended I put these two together I looked at her like she was crazy.
"Are you SURE?" I asked her.
"Yep! The white strips in the skirt will pick up the pink from the top - it will look great," she assured me. I kept looking at her like she was nuts.
"I don't think so," I told her, and kept looking through my closet for something to wear.
"I'm telling you, it will look great," she insisted. Then she looked at me and sort of paused for a second. After so many years of marriage, I've come to recognize this as the "maybe I shouldn't say this to him" look.
"What?", I said, still looking through my closet. "Out with it!"
"Well," she said, "Your really kind of mono chromatic, aren't you?" She said this with the sort of tone you would use when explaining to a dim wit that "maybe you aren't quite as smart as the other kids". Hard to argue though, as she is 100% correct!


I went shopping at the Oak Brook mall and it was freaking HUGE! Unlike most malls, it was not 100% in doors either, you have to walk outside to go from store to store. Fortunatly it was well designed, and even walking outside in 85 degrees, it was reasonably cool. You know, I have to hand it to the ladies there, I was not the best dressed woman there by a long shot. I'd say at least half of the women I saw there were in dresses and skirts. Did a little shopping there but ran out of steam fairly quickly and decided to head for a town called Aurora where there is a Casino called "Hollywood Casino". This turned out to be a fairly bad mistake as it was rush hour. I spent at least half an hour driving 2 MPH on a four lane freeway. Oh, add to that the fact that despite my having it configured to AVOID Toll Roads, my GPS took me onto one, and I had no change, and there were no manned booths . . .







Finally got to the Casino, lost my $40 in about half an hour, and so decided to take advantage of their buffet restaurant. Had a unremarkable dinner and headed back for the hotel. Thought about going to Hunters (A local TG favorite night club) but according to their web page they were having male strippers that night. Ummmm . . . no thanks . . .not in to guys . . .

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Chicago


So today I flew to Chicago for work.
I started today off feeling fairly confident, but for some reason my confidence fled as the day progressed. One of the down sides of traveling “dressed” is that there is no “out”. If your confidence falters, or you change your mind, that’s entirely too bad – you are stuck until you get where your going.

As usual, I got ready and took a few pictures at home before heading for the airport.
I rather like the one sitting on the steps. The only down side is it shows the awful bruises on my leg – ugly, ugly, ugly.
As I checked in at the airport, the lady behind the Delta counter once again recognized and greeted me warmly.
Later, as I’m taking my shoes off and putting them in the bins to go through the X-ray machine, one of the TSA guys calls to me from about 15 feet away.
“Hey rock star! Your on the road again huh?”
“You betcha!” I replied.
“You must feel like you spend all of your time in the airport,” he said with a smile.
“You know, sometimes I feel like I live here.” I told him. We both laughed and I continued on. The odd thing is, I had never interacted with this man before, but clearly he had noticed me on my many trips.

As usual, I had two or three women take the time to compliment my shoes. I don’t know if women do this with each other, or if this is just the way women strike up conversations with cross dressers.

I don’t know why, but I just felt exhausted and had no desire to go anywhere, so I just washed up and called it a night. Trying to “be good” and loose weight, so all I ate all day was a smoothie for lunch and half a hamburger for dinner. Right now I’m STARVING! I have to keep reminding myself that if the women I see with nice figures have the will power to watch what they eat, then I should be able to do it to!
Did I mention that I’m starving?

Monday, September 22, 2008

Working on My 1967 Mustang

So I’ve been working on my 1967 Mustang again. It has sat idle for about a year while I took care of other priorities. I’ve got the engine compartment pretty much done. I’ve been working on it for so long that I’d forgotten how bad it looked when I started. I was kind of shocked when I was going through the pictures I took while we were taking the engine out and saw how bad it had been before all my work.

Here is the “before”:









    



And here is the “after”:





    

Wow – talk about an improvement!

Monday, September 15, 2008

Today Sucks

Today sucks, and it sucks bad . . .
About a week ago, my daughter was sick.
A few days after that, my wife was sick.
I returned from a trip for work a few days ago and, you guessed it, I am now sick.
This in and of itself is not the worst part of the day though, it just sort of amplifies every thing else. No, the really terrible part about today is that my wife and I had to take our 19 year old cat “Jack Frost” to the Vet today where we all concluded it was time to put the old boy to sleep. Hold on a sec, having a lot of trouble seeing my PC screen . . .
I remember when we first brought him home. He was this little puff ball about the color of dirty snow – hence my wife naming him “Jack Frost”. At first, he sort of adopted me. I’m nit sure why, as I’ve always considered myself sort of an a$$hole. He used to come to bed when I did and curl up on the pillow, often wrapped around my head, and purr while we both went to sleep. Damn it, I can’t see the screen again . . .
Well, the Army took me to Korea for a year with out my family, and when I had returned Jack was 100% my wife’s cat, curling up on her pillow every night, purring more often than not at the slightest touch or movement.
When my son, now 19, was only 2 or 3, we caught him pulling the cat across the table by his head, and trying to suck on the cats ear. You know that cat didn’t scratch or bite him?
When my daughter was still sleeping in a crib, he used to jump in her crib and sleep with her. I’m sure he didn’t realize we were concerned about it, but he never slept right at her face so we didn’t worry about her suffocating or anything.
Hold on, got something in my eye again . . .
He was the only pacifistic cat I’ve ever seen. I literally never saw him hurt anything, and certainly never killed a mouse. One of the best laughs we had was watching him laying on the couch while watching a mouse run around in circles on the floor below him. I guess he had no idea that we might expect him to take care of that mouse for us.
He also had impeccable table manners for a cat. I know you will think I am exaggerating but he would not eat anything that didn’t come out of a cat food can. We offered him meat, chicken, turkey, etc, and he would NOT eat it. If he managed to get on the table at dinner, he would walk right past the plates and try and lay down on any empty spot.
His manner weren’t so good when it came to library etiquette. He figured that any book that was open was fair game. If it was laying open on the table, he would lay across it. If you were holding it in front of you trying to read, it was his mission to get between you and the book, apparently feeling that your time would be better spent paying attention to him rather than the book.
Well, about 4 months ago he started going to the bathroom all over the house. He had been house broken for more than 15 years and all of a sudden couldn’t be bothered to go outside to go to the bathroom. Add to that the fact that he was eating twice as much as normal but still loosing weight, and we thought it best to take him to the vet. Turns out his kidneys were probably failing, but the doc thought we should give him some antibiotics and see if that would help. It did, but just a little. He stopped loosing weight, but got worse about going to the bathroom all over the house. We tried getting a cat box, thinking that maybe it hurt him too much to go through the pet door, but that didn’t help – he wouldn’t use it. Eventually we had to make him a 100% out door cat. In the last few weeks we noticed that had stopped grooming and was getting very thin again. The last straw was yesterday when I found him laying under the dryer exhaust. It was in the mid 90’s and the poor old man was laying under the exhaust of the dryer with the hot air blowing on him.
Took him to the vet who told us it was time. His gums were blue from lack of oxygen, and his temperature was below normal . . damn it . . can’t see again . . . which pretty much means that his organs are shutting down. We could have dragged it out a little longer, but it wouldn’t have been a kindness to him.
You know, I’m 43 years old and he’s the first pet I’ve ever lost?
So good bye Jack Frost. Thanks for watching over my children, and thank you so much for the gift of your purrs and the laughter you brought. These were gifts more precious than gold and far more precious than we knew.

Saturday, September 13, 2008

Indianapolis Once Again


This trip I could not take the chance of flying femme as my manager and another engineer were also going to be in the Indianapolis airport at the same time I was going to be there. I kept trying to convince myself that I could get away with it as they were on a different airline and leaving Austin much later than I was, but they had a direct flight which put them in the Indy airport only 8 minutes from my own flight. No way I could take that risk.
My first day there I got there at around 630PM. Considering my daughter was sick and had kept us up all night, I was way too tired to get dressed up and go out. Instead, I headed out shopping in drab.
I found what I thought might be a good gown for the Southern Comfort Conference on sale at Von Maur! It’s made by Calvin Klein and is long, black, with multiple floaty layers. It’s a gorgeous dress like those you see the actresses wearing on the red carpet, now the only question is how will a 43 year old (<sob>) male look in it? I’ve never tried clothes on in a store before but decided that I darn well would this time before I spent that kind of money, and so I decided I would wait for the next day and come in dressed to try it on. I also stepped in to a shoe store and admired some pretty shoes but saw nothing I couldn’t live with out. The amusing thing is that even though I was in boy mode the SA told me to let her know if there was anything I wanted to try on.







The following day I finished work, got dressed and returned to the mall to try the gown on. I started at Macy’s, my favorite store, and found a KILLER set of Mary Jane pumps and snatched ‘em up!






I then headed for Von Maur to put my courage to the test and try that gown on. Walking through the mall, the owner of one of the Kiosks more or less stalked me. As I’m walking by, he does the usual pitch.
“Excuse me, can I ask you a question?”, he says. I’ve learned to give short answers to these Kiosk types and then ignore them.
“No thank you,” I said. “I’m not interested,” and I kept walking. The man starts to follow me, gets quite a bit louder, and is very insistent!
“Why don’t you stop at my Kiosk? I have a chemical cream that works like botox that you will love!”
“No thank you!” I repeated, and continued walking. He does not give up. We are now at least 30 yards from his kiosk and he is following me down the mall walking next to me.
“Can I ask you a personal question?” he says with a huge smile on his face, clearly enjoying this very uncomfortable situation. I’m not amused any more and get blunt.
“No!” I said. He completely ignored the fact that I said no, and continues talking.
“Are you a lady?” he asks. His accent makes it clear that he is from the middle east somewhere, I suspect some place like Saudi Arabia or a similar country in that region. I don’t claim to know much about their culture, but I do know that crossdressing there would go over like a lead balloon, so I don’t know what his motivation is. Now I’m getting very nervous
“No, I am not” I said, still trying to be nice.
“Well you look like a lady to me. A very beautiful lady. I’ve always wanted to go to bed with a girly boy!” he confided.
“Well thank you very much but I’m afraid your going to have to keep looking because I’m married,” I replied while holding my wedding ring up for him to see. We did a little more back and forth and at last he walked away.

I got to Von Maur and picked out the size 12 and the size 14 versions of the dress, and with my heart in my throat, I approached the counter.
“Can I help you?” The SA askes with a genuine smile on her face.
“Do you mind if I try these on?” I asked her, my stomach flip flopping and heart still pounding.
“Of course,” she said, taking the gowns from me. “Please follow me!” She led me into the changing area, gave me a stall, and told me she would check on my in a moment. This was when I discovered that you have to be an acrobat and contortionist to put on a gown that has straps that cross behind your back! I tried both on and decided to go with the size 12. It is a little tight but I think a gown like this is supposed to be a bit snug.
As I was purchasing the dress, the SA asked if I had an event I was going to and I sort of giggled.
“Yes ma’am I do. Let’s just say that if you don’t like crossdressers you don’t want to be in Atlanta Georgia in a couple of weeks!”
As I was walking back up the mall to get to my car, the same guy started yelling across the way to me, and I do mean yelling.
"Hey! Hey pretty lady! Why don't you come to my store?" I more or less ignored him and kept walking. I don't think I care for this new trend of having insistent guys chasing me around - creepy.

The next day not much of interest happened. I dropped a skirt off for the hotel laundry and when I got off work around 6PM, I checked back for it and was told that the laundry wasn’t back yet. I got dressed up, went to dinner, and returned around 10PM to find a new girl behind the hotel counter. I told her I was checking to see if my skirt was back yet and she told me that no laundry had come in that day, but that she would leave a note for the next shift. Well the following morning I returned to the counter in boy mode to find another clerk there.
“Good morning,” I said, “I think y’all lost my laundry and I need to know what to do about it.” As I was saying this to him, the same lady I spoke to last night about it when I was “dressed” walked up behind him. He walked off to look and discovered my laundry bag and skirt were still there – they had never even been sent it off. As he handed me the bag, the lady from the night before started to laugh.
“Oh,” she said, “It’s a good thing you stopped by because I’d have sworn the woman that asked me for it last night said it was a skirt!”
I was so relieved that they hadn’t lost my new skirt, and also angry that they hadn’t sent it off to be cleaned, that it didn’t strike me until after I’d walked away. The young lady behind the counter had not realized that I WAS the woman that had asked for the laundry the night before. Cool!

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

I found a gown for SCC

<Cue the fanfare and trumpets in true Walt Disney style and an announcer with a deep baritone voice>
"Ladies and Gentlemen, boy's and T'girls of all ages! Kimberly has found a gown!"
<Cue Mini mouse, Cinderella, Snow White, Belle, and assorted other princesses twirling by in grand style!>
"Brought to you by Calvin Klein courtesy of Von Maur (on serious sale), Kimberly has purchased a floaty long black dress that is sure to bring visions of Hollywood Starlets dancing down the red carpet to your mind!"
Hah! ok, it's 10 minutes to 1AM, and I have to be up at 5AM to jog and get to work so this post will be short! I bored y'all with my tales of fear concerning my lack of a formal gown for SCC so I thought I'd let you know that I found a long, modern, and glamorous black dress on sale at Von Maur today. I tried it on in the store (A personal first for me!) and snatched it! There was a cute moment i will share later when I have time. I bought it and now only hope I can do it justice! I also bought a really cute pair of Mary Jane pumps that are awesome and y'all will love!
I'll share the whole story when I get time ti write it up! G'night y'all!

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Indianapolis

Going to Indianapolis again tomorrow. The only problem is that my manager is too, at least for the first day. He is getting a much later flight than I am, with a different airline, and staying at a hotel 40 miles from mine and so at first I thought I could still travel Femme. Looked into it a bit more and discovered that HIS flight is direct, so despite leaving hours after me, his flight lands at the Indy airport only 8 minutes from mine. Looks like I'm flying drab!
Good news though - HE is leaving the next afternoon so I will still get Wed and Thu to go out! Hmmm . . . might search for a gown for SCC while I'm there!

Saturday, September 6, 2008

Such a Nerd

So I found out two days ago that I get to spend a couple of days at the Southern Comfort Conference in few weeks. Problem is, since the day I found out I was going, I can't sleep. I mean I literally can't sleep at night. My brain just goes around in circles.
"I don't have a gown for the formal dinner!"
"Can I find one before then that fits and looks good and I can afford?"
"Should I spend the money on that when there are things my family could use? Well it IS a once in a life time thing and where else are you gonna get the chance to wear a gown??!!"
"What am I gonna wear the rest of the time? Every one has seen all of my out fits! Does that matter? If it doesn't matter, which outfits should I wear so that I feel pretty, don't look like a tramp, and might fool people into thinking I have a little bit of class?"
"Maybe I should TRY and look like a tramp! After all, where else am I gonna get the chance to get away with that??!!"
"All the girls will be wearing super short dresses and skirts, should I do the opposite to be different?"
"Some people have an idealized view of me based on my posts and blogs. When I meet them am I gonna ruin that image and show them that I'm just an ignorant red neck who doesn't know her head from her backside?"
"What if I make an ass outta myself?"
"I'm fat. I've GOT to stop eating until after the conference!"
"Will jogging half an hour every day help me look better in time?"
'WHAT WILL SUZY THINK OF ME?" lol
And when I get to the bottom of this list, to include dozens of other things that cross my mind, I start over at the beginning. And then I do it over, and over, and over <long intake of breath> and over, and over, and over . . .
Every night since I found out I was going, I've woke up at 3AM and can't get back to sleep because of this.
Well, I gotta get! The treadmill is yelling at me that I am fat and need to exercise. Oh, and you know I don't have a gown for the formal?!
I wonder if I can get a gown that fits and that I can afford in time?
I have no idea what I should wear during the day! Every one has seen all of my favorites!
Maybe I should try my mini skirt. Nah, ALL the girls will be wearing mini skirts, especially those young ones with perfect faces and figures, that have been taking hormones all their lives. I think I'm gonna haul off and slap the first young and pretty Tgirl I see there!
What I should I wear on the plane? Will my outfit and makeup still look good enough when I get there or will I have to change?
What about . . . .ARRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!