Detroit And Becki

Once again I was off to Detroit. I seem to be going there a lot lately, and that’s OK with me. I’m scared about my job again as I’ve spent a couple of weeks doing nothing but sitting at my desk answering technical support calls. Let’s just say I’m pleased to be going anywhere!

 

As I already mentioned on my last blog, I got off to a bit of rough start when I told my wife I wouldn’t be walking with her to take my daughter to school because I had to get ready for my flight. Already beat that one to death on the last blog so I wont rehash it all here again. Anyway, plans changed at the last second and instead of flying pretty I took a walk with the wife and daughter. The thing is, upsetting my wife just depressed the hell outta me for the entire rest of the day. Let me be clear on this for those of you that might think I am that spoiled and selfish – I was not depressed because I had to take a walk with my wife and daughter instead of flying pretty – I was depressed that I had upset my wife. My life absolutely sucked before my wife came along and brought joy and light in to it. As I consider my life and my world, it is clearly obvious to me that every good and decent thing in it stemmed from, and started with, my wife. To think that I cause her so much anxiety and resentment is very . . . distasteful and distressing to me. Anyway . . . had a quiet and uncomfortable walk to the school and back and then headed out for the airport.

 

I had to sort of smile when I got to the Avis lot to get my rental. A yard full of brand new cars, and they gave me a piece of garbage with dents on every quarter panel and door, and an interior with burn holes and filled with the smell of cigarette smoke. I had the gate guard walk around the car with me, documenting all of the dents so they wouldn’t get any bright ideas about blaming me for them. On the way to take it back to the airport when I was leaving, the “Check Engine” light came on, and considering my recent fiasco with them in Baton Rogue I was less than amused. For about 7 years now I have rented an average of one to two cars a week from them, and if you add that up, it comes out to a pretty good hunk of change. Despite the loyalty and business I have given them, they have taken to giving me unreliable and substandard cars the last month or two, and I can’t help but wonder if Avis is sending me a message that they no longer want my business? I’m a creature of habit – once I find a company or service that I’m comfortable with, I tend to stay there until pushed to change my habit. Well, I’d have to admit that Avis is pushing pretty hard right now . . .

 

I got to the hotel and setup my laptop and found an invitation from Becki to meet with her and her spouse for dinner (I didn’t ask if it was all right to use her name and so wont). I was still horribly bummed out, and the very idea of trying to be sociable sounded utterly unappealing, so begged off for the night, and suggested that if work went well the following day, maybe we could meet then. So there I sat, looking around the damned hotel room, at the dark TV I hadn’t bothered to turn on. Looking at the air conditioner that was far too loud as it kicked off and on. Looking at the computer that I had little or no interest in surfing. Looking at the huge, dirty, and worn out suitcase that I had no interest in opening. It didn’t take me long to figure out that I was gonna go nuts if I sat there much longer, so I headed to the movie theatre where I found “Inglorious Bastards” was playing. Hmmm . . . death, destruction, murder, and mayhem . . . sounded about right so I got a ticket. You know, I STILL haven’t decided if I liked the movie or not. It has some deeply sad and emotional parts, it had some really great belly laughs though you might be ashamed you had laughed at something so horrid, and of course it had some very graphic scenes. I think I’m still processing it . . .

 

The following day everything went quite well with my customer with the only drawback of the work day being that they were right across the street from a MAJOR land fill. Every time someone opened the darn door, the room I was working in would fill with a powerful stench that turned your stomach. Before I had realized where the smell was coming from, I kept checking the bottom of my shoes thinking that I must have stepped in something on my way in. Despite the horrid aroma of rot and decay, I revived the instrument, thoroughly checked it out, and after taking my customer to lunch, I was on my way to the hotel by around 3PM.

 

I had packed several new outfits, none of which I had worn before, and so I grabbed the first to see what it would look like. Thos one had a real cute skirt but for some reason I just wasn't happy with the look:




The next outfit I tried was so bad I didn't bother taking a pic - it was awful and too small. I grabbed the next and it was a decent enough outfit but it too was too small.

‘Oh great! SCC rolling around the corner and you have let yourself go to hell and gain weight!’ I admonished myself in the mirror. The next outfit I tried on was a T-shirt and jogging shorts, which I put to good use in the hotels fitness room for an hour. With my guilt over letting my weight get away from me temporarily held at bay by the exercise, I showered and tried the third outfit – a cute short white skirt with black stripes along with a black top I knew would fit me reasonably well.





I wasn’t thrilled with this outfit, but it was tolerable and I was running out of time, so it would have to do! I looked in the mirror and all I could see was an tired looking old guy in a wig. While I know that that is the reality, I HATE it when it seems so obvious and considered begging off from dinner but I couldn’t bring myself to be that rude and inconsiderate.

 

When I got to the restaurant (Maria’s in Ferndale), I was just sitting down when Becki and her wife entered. Becki was drab so I had no idea what she would look like, but as soon as we caught each others eyes she gave me a huge grin that made it clear these were indeed the folks I was to meet with.

Talk about a cute couple. He is a bit over six feet and she . . . isn’t. . .   J   Becki is one of those folks that amaze me by not being too hard on the eyes drab or dressed. I consider myself a fairly unattractive guy and it just strikes me as a bit unfair that some folks get to look great both ways. Becki’s wife is absolutely adorable, very petite, awesome hair and eyes, and just pretty as hell. I sort of got the impression that she might be one of those rare women that don’t really realize how very cute they are, which of course just makes her that much cuter. OK, so that’s the physical description, but even better are their personalities. These two were just so cheerful, full of humor, quick to laugh and joke, quick to smile, and very soon I found myself liking them immensely. While they have recently had a bit of a dry spell, it seems that they have been VERY active in the TG community – going to many SCC and Be All events and having a great time doing it together. I envy them the sharing as my wife used to join me from time to time, but that became all but impossible when we had our last two children. It was clear that they don’t take themselves too seriously and have made it a point to enjoy themselves. The neat thing is that you can’t help but smile and enjoy yourself when your around them and I plan to make it a point to look them up as soon as I get to SCC. I know for certain that if I’m hanging around with them I’m going to be having a good time.

Oh well . . .

One of the cost cutting measures my company has been taking is to force everyone to take a week off every two months or so. It doesn't matter if you have the vacation time saved, or have to take it unpaid, you must take the week off. Usually when they do this, at least a few people have to work and this last week I was one of them. Fortunately, my task was to man the tech support hotline, and this can be done from home using my cell phone, so last week I spent the entire week at home with my wife. Each morning we walk my 6 year old daughter to school about a mile and a half or so away. Well, today I have to fly to Detroit so I told my wife "Sorry, I've got to get ready for my flight and so won't be walking with you."
"Why not? You have plenty of time since your flight isn't until almost noon." she asked me. I have no idea why, but her tone was more than a little belligerent. Clearly she was angry that I didn't intend to walk with her. I started to explain that since I was gonna fly as Kimberly, it takes a bit longer to get ready, and she interrupted me.
"Oh, I get it. That's more important to you than we are!" and then she turned and walked out of the room. I sat there kind of stunned, because I really didn't think that I had deserved that. Most mornings I would have been on the way to work and she would have walked my daughter by herself anyway, but like I often tell people - we TG's have our head trips and our wives have theirs. Well, nothing to be done about it now, at this point I'd rather put my wet finger into a light socket than proceed with my plans to fly as Kim. She told me two or three times "I'm sorry" as I put my stuff away and put on my guy clothes, but now I feel like a freak again and am depressed as hell. I was hoping for an amusing day and am instead stuck with a long boring day in airports and airplanes, all the while knowing that my wife resents me. Did I mention that I'm seriously depressed?

A big gift in a small box

So my wifes aunt and uncle came up from San Antonio to spend Saturday with us as sort of a late Birthday party thing for me. Don’t ask me how old I am now because I just don’t feel like getting depressed. He has bought a bass guitar and I am trying to offer a little help in getting him up to speed on it, so we spent much of the day drinking beer, restringing guitars, and making noise. That night after we got my daughter to bed, he went out to their truck and returned with a small box.

“I really hope this isn’t going to offend you!” they both started talking almost at the same time, and then got kind of quiet as I opened it. I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed, but given their attitude and concern, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to have a clue what might be in that box. I opened it to find a cute little skirt and top hidden in there. It was a perfect casual outfit, very much what would be popular with women these days. They started talking over each other, talking about how they had chosen it, and how they had hoped I would get a good laugh out of it.

I wanted to laugh with them, but I just couldn’t. I was so very touched and grateful for everything that this little box represented. Only a month or so ago did I confide in them what I was, and here was proof positive that they were OK with it. Far more important than the outfit itself, the message that little box brought was huge and says so many things:

“It’s OK”

“We are reasonably comfortable with it”

“We are willing to laugh with you”

“We love you.”

How can you possibly say “Thank you” enough for a gift like that?  

Ebay photo shoot! :-)

Current mood:bouncy

I've got a closet full of things I have bought over the years, much of it NEVER worn because it was bought in a pink fog, with out trying it on, and when I got it home I found it just didn't fit very well.

So I have recently started trying to sell a few things on Ebay to get my closet cleaned out. It is stuffed so full it's about to reach critical mass, and when this baby blows it might take out my entire neighbor hood! So far I'm not having much luck and I figure at least part of the reason is that many of the things look plain as hell on a hanger hooked to the door. I was sitting there thinking "Damn! I wish I had some sort of dress form to hang these on for pics!" when my wife said something about she was gonna go grocery shopping. Somewhere along the way it struck me that I'd be my own damn dress form and thus started a few hours of lottsa fun. Put a dress on, fix the hair, go down the steps being careful to look out front and be sure my father-in-law wasn't parking, take a series of pics, then run back up the steps, rip the dress off and throw it on the bed. Grab the next gown and repeat . . . Even though I was rushed trying to get it all done before my wife returned, I was still thrilled with the way many of these pics turned out.

Oh - you should have seen the look on my wifes face when she saw the results of the "Kim Bomb" in the bedroom! Dresses every where!



This gown really requires someone with a great figure. You can hide corsets or pads under it due to the shear middle:







In doing my research to figure out about what the red gown below was worth, I've found that this gown may be something of a hidden or lost treasure. It was made by/for a high-fashion retail chain based in San Antonio Texas called Frost Bros. Frost Bros. was known for quality personal service, including name recognition, purchase preferences, and personal shoppers. Their customer service was on the same level as Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Nordstrom. Well, that department store went out of business about 20 years ago. The gown is very heavy, superbly made, high quality fabric, design, and workmanship. If I had to take a guess, I'd say it probably sold for several thousand dollars. All these years it's been sitting in my closet and I had no idea! lol






This purple one is nothing special. I probably bought it at a thrift store and it is most definetly used. I haven't yet decided it its even worth putting on Ebay - I may just chuck it:



A cute little number, but "little" is the operative word here. It claims to be a size 12 but it comes no where near fitting me. If you zoom in on the picture showing it's back, you will see it's not zipped up all of the way. If it fit, I'd keep it, but it doesn't so it's gotta go! :(





This white one is the gown everyone at Crossdressers.com and Flickr seems to like the most. The irony here is that it is not one of the better gowns in this phot shoot. It fits me very well and I do like it, but where the hell am I ever gonna wear it?








Like most of us, I have had a bit of a fascination with wedding dresses. There is pretty much nothing more feminine than a wedding dress and so I've collected a couple over the years. Again, where the hell would I wear it and I really need the closet space:






I don't know what it is, but something about this dress I just don't like. On top of that, it got the kiss of death when my wife told me that she doesn't like it and it doesn't flatter me. Once my wife tells me she doesn't like something, I might as well get rid of it because I will hear her words in my head every time I wear it if I don't:





This green dress is going no where! This was just the first chance I've had to try it on and see what the whole package deal looks like. I think it looks great and so it's a keeper!






The dress below is by far the sexiest dress I've ever worn. The irony is, it has sat in my closet for about 8 to 10 years because it didn't fit when I bought it. While taking these pics to get rid of it, I realized that since I've lost a lot of weight since then, it fits just fine thank you very much. Now I am terribly torn trying to decide if I should sell it or not. I may put it on Ebay, but if I do I'm not gonna give it away - it will go for a fair price or it will stay with me for the next time I get the urge to draw a lot of attention.  :-)






Nothing too special, but reasonably pretty:






The gown below is also a good quality. I bought it at Neiman Marcus Last Call years ago, back when my wife also had a job and we had that kind of money to spend on frivolous things. Sigh . . .
This is another one that didn't fit me when I put it away, but seems to fit fairly well today!







I always liked this suit, but it is too small AND my wife gave it the kiss of death.
And I quote her "I don't like that."  That's all it takes. She hates it so I can't bring myself to wear it anymore.




This was the first time I've ever done a photo shoot just for the photos and I had a great time. Wish I could spend more days playing fashion model!  :-)

Chicago and the Island Girls

Chicago and the Island Girls

This weeks trip was to Chicago, or to be precise, to Des Plaines just north of Chicago. My manager has been dropping not so subtle hints that I need to try and reduce my travel time and expenses, so I set this flight up for very early in the morning so that I could arrive and go to work the same day. Getting up at 3 AM, traveling, and then going to work with the customer makes for a VERY long day. Since I have to go right from the airport directly to my customer, I could not fly pretty so that was kind of a bummer.

My work day really sucked. The instrument I came to work on had multiple problems which makes it much harder to diagnose and repair it. After getting up at 3AM to get there, then working through lunch, I had still failed to resolve all of it’s issues by around 4PM, and it in fact appeared it would likely have to be returned to our factory. To compound things, my customer had three other instruments he asked me to look at and all three were suffering a slew of ailments, mostly boiling down to lack of maintenance.

At the end of the day, I had to throw up my hands and admit I could not possible get it all done, and so had to change my schedule to stay an additional day, thus costing my company even more in flight change fees and the like.  L

Tired and depressed from my inability to resolve any of the issues I had found, I headed for the hotel where I got ready to go and meet with Miranda from crossdressers.com.

 

After I got my makeup on, I tried on the gown I am leaning toward for the Southern Comfort Conference just to see what it looks like with the complete package of hair and makeup.  I liked it quite a bit so I took out my camera and looked for my little tripod . . . and looked . . . and looked . . .     Then I recalled that last week when I had forgotten the battery to my camera, I had taken all of that hardware out of my bag to reduce weight, and I had forgotten to put it back in. That’s OK, all hotels come with a camera stand, they just call it an ironing board.  I was a bit limited in my options due to not having a tripod, but I managed to take a few pics using the ironing board and the mirror.

When I started getting ready to go out, my intent had been to wear a cute little black miniskirt and an orange top I had just purchased. Imagine my surprise when I looked in the mirror and discovered that my top was completely see through. “Hmmm,” I thought “this just aint gonna work!”  I pulled it off and put on a red top I had also just purchased, and discovered that it too was see through. “Well shit!” I thought “I am not gonna go anywhere more or less naked from the waist up!”.  Time to back up and punt, so I pulled out a brown skirt and green top I had brought as a backup outfit. My wife had laughed at me as I packed so many outfits for a one day trip, but it looks like I get the last laugh. Between the one outfit bombing out, and my trip being extended a day, I had brought the perfect amount of clothes with me.

At about 7, I met Miranda at Hunters, a local friendly club. Due to my see through top wardrobe malfunctions, I was a little late. We had a really interesting conversation that I enjoyed very much. Miranda has many of the same interests that I have – Science, Nasa, etc. I wish very much that my day hadn’t started so early because I would have liked to have extended our visit and chatted longer. We spoke for a bit over an hour about a wide variety of things and I look forward to the next time I get to meet up with her. Miranda had to come “drab” and so no pics of the two of us together.  L

 

Well, the next morning I returned to my customer where despite my fears, I did manage to get all of his instruments up and running and was headed out the door by about 4PM feeling very pleased and satisfied with myself. On the way back to the hotel I hit up a Goodwill where I found a brand new blue/green skirt with a $60 department store tag on it for $5! I also found a Liz Claiborne pocket book that I think will go very well with the brown gown pictured above. Today I was gonna wear jeans – something that I very rarely do. The thing is, I have this beautiful floaty top that sort of needs pants to work. When paired with a skirt, this top is just a bit too much and looks over done, but it looks awesome with pants.

 

 

I hit up the internet and found a place called “Club Krave” that was doing Karaoke that night. As I was reading their Myspace page, I realized that the Island Girls, a local TG Group, was having their get together that very night! Well, pretty sure I knew what I was doing that night at 9PM, but it was now only 630, so I decided to go see a movie. I saw “District 9”, a story about aliens more or less stranded on Earth. I think it was a good movie, and they left it hanging, so I’m pretty sure there will be another. At 9, the movie got out and I started the 40 minute drive to Club Krave. At least twice on the way, I considered just calling it a night and heading back to the hotel, but ultimately decided to continue on to the club. When I got there, I had to circle twice trying to figure out where to park, but eventually even this hillbilly got it figured out, and in I went. When I opened the door, there was a Tgirl on the stage really hamming it up with the Karaoke. I paused right inside the door for my eyes to adjust, and as I looked around I realized that there were quite a few Tgirls there! After the two hour movie, and the 40 minute drive, my first priority was to head for the ladies room. On the way through the crowd, I got quite a few smiles making it clear that I was welcome – that’s a good start. After taking care of the necessities, I signed up for singing “Who’ll Stop the Rain” and headed to the bar where I got a drink and sat looking around. I don’t recall who approached me first, but in about five minutes someone walked up and asked me if this was my first night out. A natural question considering none of these folks had seen me there before, but considering how many places I have been out, all over the country, that one kind of gave me a real giggle. I assured her that I had been out quite a lot, and had in fact met some of the Island Girls several years ago on a previous visit to Chicago. For that matter, I was also a member of their Yahoo group as a result of that previous visit. We exchanged names and then she asked me where I was from. When I told her I was from Austin Texas you could see a light go off.

“Hold on, your Kimberly of Texas?! Girl, I read your blog all of the time!” The next thing I know, I’ve got at least half a dozen folks coming up to greet me, many of them having apparently wasted some of their valuable time reading my blog at some point or another. As we’re talking, and I’m desperately trying (and failing) to keep all of the names straight, Donna, apparently the ring leader here, got up on stage. To the sound of fan fair provided by the karaoke DJ, she states that she has an important visitor from out of town to introduce.

“Kimberly, why don’t you come on up?” she asked with a smile, while beckoning me up with a wave of her hand.

“Hell no!” I yelled back at her, while trying and failing to turn invisible.

“Your up next for Karaoke anyway, so get on up there!” the guy running the karaoke shouts to me. He sort of had a point there, so I headed up.

 

As I get on the stage next to her, she proceeds to tell everyone all about me.  She apparently has this silly idea that I’m doing great things for the TG community by being out and about and setting a (reasonably) good example. She said something along the lines of my giving people the confidence to try and do things, blah, blah, blah.  I was too busy blushing and trying to blend in to the walls to catch it all. You see, a few years ago, I had been awed reading the posts of another Tgirl by the name of Karen Hutton. She also traveled some for her job, but unlike me, she was taking advantage of her time on the road to be free to express herself. Here I was, spending most week days hundreds of miles from my home, in hotels and restaurants paid for by my company, and how was I spending this time? More often than not, I spent my nights drinking and playing my guitar in my room. What a horrific waste and more than a little depressing huh? So after months of reading Karen’s stories, and saying to myself “Damn, I wish I could do that!”, I had an epiphany and realized that the only thing stopping me was me. From that point on, I have plowed forward, trying to make the most of my time on the road, trying to take every chance to do all of the things I’d always dreamed of doing, and most of all, trying to keep my “Damn, I wish I had done that before I died” list as short as possible. My motivations were and are entirely selfish and are in no way deserving of admiration or respect. Knowing that my motivations have always been purely selfish and self centered, having people tell me that they admire me for furthering the TG cause sort of makes me feel like a fake, a poser, a phony. There are so many TG’s out there working their hearts out, and devoting huge amounts of their time and energy and soul to make a difference. Me? I’m just a hillbilly trying to make up for a lot of lost time.

 

Once she was done talking, Donna presented me with a Island Girls badge and made me an official member. Then everyone crowded up on the stage and we took a few group photo’s, but none using my camera. I’ll have to see if I can get some of those pics for my blog later. I sang a couple of songs that both sucked – I was just too self conscious.

I had a great time speaking with a lot of the ladies there, and I just felt very welcome, comfortable, and was clearly among friends, and want to thank the Island Girls for their hospitality, their friendship, and for allowing me to share their evening!

 

When I got back home the next evening, we packed the kids in to the car and took my almost 6 year old daughter to her schools open house and orientation night. My little critter starts kindergarten this Monday! As I’ve got a 20 year old son, I am well aware how quickly these early years go by, but still I find myself floundering, with my daughters growing up far outpacing my ability to keep up in my mind. Her teacher is a reasonably cute woman, half my age. What a concept – teachers younger than I am! At one point my daughter walked up to me and whispered in my ear.

“Daddy, I’m scared to start school.” She said, with a pensive look in her eyes.

“Sweetheart, everyone is scared their first day of school. I promise you will be just fine and you will probably really like school. You will have other children to play with, and they are going to teach you all kinds of neat things! Pretty soon you will be able to read your night time books to me!” I told her, trying to make it sound exciting.

“Or to my little brother!” she replied, getting in to the spirit of the thing.

I was holding and paying attention to my two month old son, and when I looked up again, my daughter was already playing with another little girl, so I think she’s off to a good start. I can STILL remember HATING the first day of school each year, but she has a lot more self confidence than I ever did. . .