Jury Duty Sucks . . .

Monday I went in for jury duty, thinking that if I were selected to serve, it would be a few hours of my time over something like traffic tickets. Instead, I found myself doing something that I sincerely hope that none of you or I will EVER have to do again - serve on a jury in the trial of a 41 year old man that molested a 4 year old girl. 

 

In five minutes, Jose Arturo Alvarado destroyed so many lives, including his own.

 

The little girl is now five, cute as a button, and was so very brave, bold, and cheerful when she testified. She seems fine, but of course the scars are most likely on the inside (in her mind and soul) and will become more evident as she grows older.

 

The little girls mother is of course a basket case. The one and only time that she was forced by her work schedule to leave her daughter with her fiancé of two years, he molested her. Can you just imagine the guilt and anguish that this woman will have for the rest of her life? It's only human - as irrational as it is, she will always think that she should have magically known, that her ESP should have some how warned her. There will always be a voice in that mothers mind that whispers to her late at night "It was my fault".

 

Jose's children are model students, well on their way to scholarships. When his 16 or 17 year old son entered to testify, more or less as a character witness, the man broke down in tears and I damn near did too. Could you imagine having to look your son in the eyes after having just been found guilty of molesting a four year old? Can you imagine walking past your father to testify on his behalf, knowing that he had done this? Still, the young man did take the stand, did say that his father was a good man who had always been a kind and loving father.

 

His 14 year old daughter entering the courtroom carrying a stuffed animal and giggling for a solid five minutes from the shear nerves and mental anguish of it all. . .

 

His invalid mother sobbing that she had brought her son to the United States when he was ten to give him a better life. "He had always been such a good and decent man, how can this happen?"

 

Several life long friends of his came to testify as to his character, and even after learning what he had done, they were willing to stand with him and call him a good man that should not spend his entire life in prison for one horrendous act.

 

All of those people who's lives are shattered.

All of those families destroyed.

 

One thing I am SO thankful for - while he tried to recant it when the lawyers got involved, the man confessed on video and gave details making it clear it was a true and honest confession. At least I don't have to live with the fear and terror that I may have made a mistake and helped to send an innocent man to prison.

 

Sorry, time to go! I need to go hug my daughter . . .

Karaoke in Denver

Well let’s see, did anything really interesting happen on this trip? No, but I’ll write about it anyway.

I went to Colorado Springs via Salt Lake City and Denver. I would have liked to have gone “pretty” but my wife has been unhappy about things like this, and I have been kind of bummed for a host of reasons, and so I spent yet another 14 hour day traveling ugly and bored out of my mind, in airports, airplanes, and then rental cars.

The following day I worked with my customer on a system that I don’t work with often. My confidence and competence when working on equipment is in direct proportion to how often and how recently I have worked with it. Since I only see this type of system once every three years or so, I was a bit nervous starting out but was soon up to my elbows in the thing and got the job done.
I made one serious mistake while swapping out a component – I trusted my customer. The system I was working on creates Ozone and then mixes it with water. Since ozone attacks organics, this highly ozonated water is then used to clean semiconductor wafers. Well, the process of purging the system and depressurizing it is automated and several hours long, and so to save time I would be billing them for, we agreed that the customer would complete this process before I arrived. When I arrived, the customer assured me that they had performed the purge and drain, and I accepted his word for it – that was DUMB! I pulled a hose off of the component I was to replace and almost had a heart attack when ozonated water started to jet out of it! Fortunately I am the paranoid type and had a tub there to catch the water with, but that didn’t do anything at all for all of the ozone that I was letting loose into their factory. I sat there with my eyes bouncing back and forth between the water jetting in to the tub while being damn sure I didn’t get it on me or my customer, and reading the ozone safety monitor of the system that would evacuate their entire factory if the ozone levels went too high. After about two minutes, the water pressure started to drop and then fell off to a trickle, so now I was just staring at the safety monitor and watching it continue to climb toward the “Kim just evacuated the factory” alarm level. I was literally holding my breath to keep from burning my lungs with the ozone, and so it was with great relief that I started to breath again when the ozone level started to drop before it reached the alarm level.
“Umm, you told me that you purged and drained the system. What happened?” I asked the customer, trying to remain polite despite being deeply angry.
“Oh we did! We let it purge for at least twenty minutes before we shut it down.” He said with a smile, having no idea why I was upset.
The problem with that is that the automated process takes well over an hour and then shuts itself down after it drains the system. Ugh . . .

To avoid having to make a two hour drive to the airport at 3AM, I drove up to the Denver area and stayed the night there. After I arrived, I sat there in my hotel looking around at the walls, listening to the window air conditioner cycling off and on with a loud “clunk” every cycle, and decided I was going to go nuts if I stayed there. A short look on the internet and I found that there was a place called “BJ’s” in Denver that was doing karaoke tonight and so I started getting cleaned up, dressed up, and out the door.



It was still a bit early for karaoke when I was ready and so I decided to raid the mall. You see my wife and daughter-in-law both took a look at a retro dark blue with white polka dot dress I bought recently and both told me that I needed a red belt and red shoes to go with it. The more I thought about it, the more I thought they were right. The problem is, I don’t have any red shoes. I started off in Macy’s raiding their sales rack where I have often found killer shoes in the past. I didn’t find any red shoes on the sales rack that I liked, but I did find a red pair of Mary Janes that I really liked on the display floor and took them up to the counter. As I stood there waiting for the clerk to come back, I noticed a woman standing behind me and she keeps glancing up at me. With my heels on, I am a good foot or more taller than her and I felt like Big Foot by comparison. Finally the clerk returns.
“Do you have these in size nine and a half and size tens?” I asked her.
“Sure, hold on a moment and I’ll go take a look.” She gave me a smile and then looked at the woman behind me who was also holding a pair of shoes in her hands. “What size were you looking for?”
“Size eight and a half please.” The lady replied, handing the clerk the shoes. We waited and waited after the clerk left us, and given the rather long wait, I finally decided to start a conversation.
“You are SO lucky! I’d kill to be able to wear eight and a halfs.” I told her with a grin.
“Actually, I normally wear size eights, this brand just runs small.” She said with a smile of her own.
“Well then I’m even more jealous! Quite often shoes that are adorable in size 5 and 6 aren’t so cute when they get up to the size 9 and 10 areas.” I told her with a laugh.
“I know what you mean! I envy those who wear size 5 and 6 too!” she said.
“Well, at least you have the satisfaction of knowing that some of us envy you!” I told her and we both laughed.
Right about then the clerk returned and handed the other lady her shoes first. Then she informed me that her computer was wrong! They were supposed to have these shoes in the sizes I asked for, but she couldn’t find them anywhere.
“You know, I can look to see if one of other stores has them if you like?” she offered.
Long story short, she found another Macys not more than six miles away that had them, and so I made my way there and am now the owner of a cute pair of red mary janes. Bad news though, while they are red, they are suede and have multiple shades – they are not going to work with the dress I wanted them for.

At “BJ’s” I got settled in and was going through the song book when I noticed a couple of guys sitting at the bar and they keep glancing at me. After a couple of minutes I started a conversation up with them.
“Girl, we were just checking out your shoes!” the tall blond one tells me with an attitude and demeanor making it fairly clear that he is probably a cross dresser too. “They look great! Where did you get them?”
“Awe thanks! Would you believe I got them at JC Penny on the close out rack for about $10?!”
“No way!” he said, and then after a pause. “That IS your real hair isn’t it?”
“I’m afraid not. I have less hair than the gentleman at the end of the bar there.” I told him with a wave after I stopped laughing.
“Oh my God, that hair looks flawless. We were talking about you when you came in and we were just sure you were a woman.”
They had generously decided that I was female, but I was still trying to figure one of them out. The tall blond doing all of the talking had made it clear that he was a cross dresser, but the shorter Hispanic one he was sitting with was not as clear. He had the beginnings of a beard, but some fairly female features including the hint of breasts. Thinking that this was probably also a cross dresser that just wasn’t dressed at the moment, I settled on using the female pronouns to be safe – and was wrong. It turns out that he was a female to male cross dresser! I felt terrible that I had blown it and probably offended him, but my intentions had been the best if that counts for anything. . .

Oh, and the karaoke? It was freaking awesome! Most of the people that got up and sang were really, really good, and not one of them was bad. Way cool . . .

Here are a few video clips I made with my phone. Terribly sorry about the sound quality but I think it’s good enough that you can tell some of these folks were VERY good. The gentleman in this first video deeply impressed me. The quality of the recording doesn’t do him justice, because he literally left me speechless:

What a snob!

It’s been kind of a busy week this week! I wrote a few months ago about how my wifes aunt and uncle from San Antonio had told us that my mother-in-law had told them, and everyone else in my wifes family, that I was a cross dresser. I still have absolutely no idea how the mother-in-law knew anything about it, but I suppose that is a moot point and not really relevant to this. Anyway, the aunt and uncle had kept commenting on it every time we saw them, they eventually point blank asked me, and I told them the truth, That turned out well as they are pretty open minded about it, so I don’t have a lot of regrets on that score. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that their adult children had probably heard the same things about me. One of their sons, Josh, is married, has several children, also lives in San Antonio, and in the last few months my son and my future daughter-in-law, Becca, have become pretty close with them. They are all around the same age, don’t live too far from each other, and so have started to spend a lot of time together. A couple of weeks ago Becca came home from a visit and with a huge grin told me “Oh yeah, they know all about you!” In fact, it turns out that they have several TG friends and even prefer to hang out at one of the gay bars for dancing and karaoke. It seems they feel a lot more comfortable there, and apparently have just decided that the crowd there is more fun to hang out with. Becca repeatedly invited me to join and go out with all of them to celebrate her twenty first birthday, but my wife hated the idea, and I was worried that I would take away from her special birthday if I chose that time to come out to them. You only get one twenty first birthday and it would have been pretty shitty for me to risk taking attention away from her. Now on her twenty second birthday on the other hand  . . .

I got a bit of a reality check and a slap upside the head this morning. Someone had made a comment that I had blown them off and looked down my nose at them when they introduced themselves to me last year at the Southern Comfort Conference. Since I’ve never looked down my nose at anyone in my life, I had thought that they were kidding and just teasing, and so I had replied with something flippant and sarcastic. Well this morning I received a message from them making it quite clear that they were not kidding or teasing, and quite honestly felt that I had acted like a snob. What a concept! Me, the dirt poor, trailer park trash, desert rat being a snob. I sat there in the airport gate area reading this message and my heart kind of sank at the thought that I had actually hurt someone. That was their first time out, they had tried to talk to me, and I had apparently blown them off and in some way implied that they were not worthy of my time.
I had literally had a hundred or more people stop me to talk to me and so would have to be honest that I don’t recall this meeting. Actually that would be my one and only excuse for my behavior – I was fairly overwhelmed while I was there. As a result of my forum posts about traveling, my blog, and the hundreds of people that I have met in my travels, I literally had dozens of people stopping me every few feet.
“Hey, I know you . . .”
“I read your blog . . . “
“Aren’t you Kim from Texas?”
“We are on the same forum . . .  “
“Don’t you recognize me? I’m one of your facebook friends . . . “
Anyone that knows me will tell you that I have an exceptionally bad memory, but I’m pretty sure that even those with the best of memories can’t recall close to a thousand facebook and Myspace friends, and several thousand active forum members. I guess that I did reach the point where I just smiled and said “Hi, glad to meet you”, and then returned to what ever I was doing or who ever I was talking to. Looking back on it, I would have to agree that I was probably thoughtless and inconsiderate, perhaps even to the point of being unintentionally rude. If YOU were one of the people that I apparently snubbed when I grew overwhelmed, I really am so sorry, and I’m not trying to be sarcastic this time. Having said that, and if it’s all the same to you, if you wanna slam me, would you mind calling me a thoughtless and rude bitch rather than a snob? I HATE snobs . . . 
Now watch, the next time I go to SCC, everyone will avoid me like the plague. After all, we wouldn’t want to overwhelm the arrogant and snobby bitch, would we?!

I thought I was going to have at least a week in my office, but at around lunch time yesterday I got a call from a good customer of ours in Detroit. They have a lot of our Infrared Mass Specs, and a few months ago they put three of them in an environment that was much too hot for them, and the thermal expansion shifted the alignment of some of the optics. These things can be very temperamental when the alignment is not perfect and they are now running in to problems. I’ve made it clear that they really need to be returned to the factory where they can be aligned properly, but they are desperate to get at least one of them running in a hurry, and so off I go!


It’s funny the way that different people react to people like me. On the flight from Austin to Chicago, the two flight attendants were pushing the beverage cart down the isle. The tall blonde took one look at me and frowned like she had just sucked on a lemon. The other flight attendant grinned from ear to ear and chatted with me off and on through out the flight. The flight was half empty so she had time on her hands. She told me how much she liked my new butterfly bracelet and so I told her I got it at the Austin airport for only $15. Then she showed me a crochet key chain she was making. It seems that crocheting is her diet plan, as she said it was either that or eating. Then in the Chicago airport I stopped for a peanut smoothie and the guy behind the counter was falling all over himself, grinning from ear to ear, and offering me samples. Clearly he was tickled to death for some reason.


Arrrrrggghhhh . . . I can’t stop dwelling on the fact that someone thinks that I am a snob! Now I have to wonder if I am and just don’t know it? After all, it seems likely that a snob would be the last person to know that they’re a snob, now doesn’t it?

"Right this way miss . . . "

This week I went to Albany New York, but I really didn’t do anything much to talk about. As is usual, I had to get up at 4 AM to get ready and to get out of the house before everyone else is up and running. Since my flight didn’t leave until late morning I went ahead and went do Denny’s for breakfast again.

The waitress was fine, don’t get me wrong, but she way over did the “miss” thing.
“Right this way miss”
“Are you ready to order miss?”
“Do you want cream with the coffee miss?”
“Are you ready to order miss?”
“Is everything OK miss?”
She literally didn’t say a single thing to me with out tossing in the word “miss”. While her heart was in the right place, I think I’d rather have a grumpy old waitress that treated me exactly like she treats everyone else. You know, the type that walks up and asks “Yeah, what the hell do you wanna eat today?!”

Sitting in the Atlanta airport waiting for my connecting flight, I was watching people exiting the airplane that I would soon be boarding. One of them was an older African American woman wearing a royal blue skirt suite and the biggest and most elaborate hat I have ever seen. She was walking tall and proud and I just couldn’t help smiling as she walked by, thinking that here is a woman that knows how to make a fashion statement. As I watched her walk by, I noticed a young African American man sitting across from me. He is grinning at me as I was grinning at her.  I’m not sure if he was tickled by my reaction to the woman, or if he had “made” me. Either way, we both ended up grinning at each other. Funny – not a word was spoken but I felt like we had shared a conversation.

On the flight from Atlanta to Albany, I sat next to an older guy with a cane. He surprised me when he laughed and then pointed at the book I was reading: “The War After Armageddon”
“Is that written by Ralph Peters?” he asked. I had no idea who the author was and so closed it to see.
“I guess it is.” I told him with a smile, but still having no idea why he found that amusing.
“The Ralph Peters that was in the Army?” he asked. Again, I had no idea, and so turned to the back of the novel to see if it had an “about the author” page. It did, and he had indeed retired from the US Army.
“Yep, it looks like he’s your guy.” I told him.
“We were room mates and I knew him well. Good man but a little full of himself. He had a nasty habit of telling generals that he thought they were doing it all wrong.”
“By the time they achieve the rank of “General”, I think they’re pretty sure they have a clue and so sort of frown on that kind of thing.” I replied with a laugh. “I’ve got to tell you though, It really IS a good book!”
“I don’t doubt it. He started writing professionally even before he retired.” He replied. We talked a bit more, and it turns out that he had also retired from the Army but still worked in defense.
Later in the flight I had to ask him to let me up so that I could use the bathroom, and he moved slowly and awkwardly. When he finally got up, he looked at me apologetically.
“Sorry about that, but my leg is almost entirely titanium and so I’m a bit slow these days.”
“Nothing to apologize for sir. I feel guilty for asking you to stand up at all, but I’m kind of clumsy didn’t want to risk stepping on your foot.”
When I returned to my seat, he stayed seated and I worked my way around him. Once settled, I pointed at his bum leg.
“If you don’t mind my asking, is that the reason you retired?”
“Yes it is.” He said with a smile. “One day I stepped in the wrong place and found a land mine. You might say I was having kind of a bad day.” He said with a grin. He was trying to make light of it, so I grinned back at him.
“Yeah, I guess that would qualify as a pretty bad day at that, wouldn’t it.”
When the plane had landed and we were gathering our things, I stopped to talk to him again.
“For what little it may be worth to you, thank you for serving our country.”
I don’t recall him replying, but I couldn’t help noticing that cane and all, the man was making better time up the ramp than I was. After so many years in the Army, I tend to walk faster than most people, and so for some reason that really impressed me.

I have no idea why, but I spent the entire rest of my trip depressed and in a funk, so I didn’t bother getting pretty after work nor for the flight home. Of course that probably worked in my favor as my first flight was delayed, thus causing me to miss my second flight. By the time today is over, it will be another 20 hour day.

Oh, just got word that my soon to be daughter-in-law was in an accident and the van my son got just before he left for basic training is wrecked. At least now I have a good reason to be depressed . . .

Wanna Play Mario Brothers?

A week or so ago, my (almost) seven year old daughter once again asked me about all of the pretty clothes and shoes in my closet and I just couldn't take it anymore, so I sat down for a little bit of a talk with her.
"Tell me the truth, why do you think that I have pretty things in my closet?" I asked her.
"Ummm . . . because you like to admire them?" she said, clearly very serious and not joking. I thought that was kind of an odd phrase for a seven year old and wondered if that might be what her mother told her, but you never know with it comes to a critter that age.
My daughter has asked me over and over about the clothes in my closet lately and clearly doesn’t intend to drop it. So this leaves me with a choice – lie to my daughter or tell her the truth. I can’t stand the thought of lying to her, especially when it’s just a question of time until she knows I’ve lied to her, but I’m pretty sure my wife doesn’t want me to tell her. I felt trapped and in the end, I decided to do what I thought was the right thing – I told her the truth.

 "Would it bother you if daddy likes to wear pretty things once in a while?" I asked her.
She sat there quiet and looking embarrassed for a second.
"Well, I think you would look pretty silly. You would look like a boy!" she said.

'Well, if it comes down to looks, this ought to set her back a step!' I thought to myself as I pulled my all time favorite pic out of my wallet and showed it to her.
"This is daddy." I told her as I handed it to her. Her eyes got big as plates as she looked at it and then looked at me.
"I'm very surprised! You look very pretty Daddy!" she said and then handed it back to me.
"Do you have any other pictures?" she asked. I had one fairly recent pic on my cell phone and showed that to her also.
"I'm very surprised. You look very nice daddy!" she said again, still looking at the picture.
"Thank you baby!" I told her and gave her a hug.
"Now you have to be very careful not to tell your friends or teachers at school." I told her.
"Because they would be mean to me?" she asked.
"I'm afraid that they might be sweetheart. A lot of people really wouldn't like daddy if they knew I liked to wear pretty things sometimes and they might be mean to you because of it. Oh, and I wouldn't say anything to grandpa either." I told her.
"Because he doesn't know?" She asked.
"Right, he doesn't know and he wouldn't like it."
"Does Mommy know?"
"Yes dear, mommy knows all about it." I told her.
"OK." she said. "Wanna go play Mario Brothers?"
"Sure!"
Just like that, it was over. Almost over anyway, because I still have to screw up the courage to tell my wife.

This weeks service call was back to what is becoming my home away from home – Detroit MI. I couldn’t fly pretty because my flights didn’t leave until almost noon and I have to be out of the house before 6AM if I don’t want the neighbors seeing me. Sometimes it’s worth it to me even if I have to get up so early and waste so much time before a flight, but the very thought of getting up at 4AM for a flight that doesn’t leave until noon was just depressing the hell outta me. Instead, I got up with my wife and daughter and helped get her ready for school, and then walked her through a torrential down pour the one block to her school. As is typical these days, one of my flights was delayed and I didn’t get in to my hotel until 8PM.

I’ve noticed lately that I sometimes have my priorities in the wrong place and am trying to get a handle on that. Too often lately I am placing a higher priority on my cross dressing than on my job or time with my family. I had two customer to visit on this trip to Detroit, and this time instead of taking the rest of the day off to cross dress when I finished with the first, I called the next customer to see if they wanted to start today instead of tomorrow. They were delighted and quickly agreed and so I went directly from the one customer to the other, where I worked another five hours. At the end of a ten hour day, I wasn’t about to go anywhere, and so just called it a night.

The next day I had originally scheduled for the customer that I had already taken care of yesterday. To be honest, I would have normally just taken the free day to go play, but instead decided to contact a couple of other local customers to see if they wanted or needed any help. If anyone had any issues, I could help them out and do something on behalf of my company. If no one needed any help, I could take the day off with a clear conscience.
I called one of my very favorite customers first, who works for one the oldest and largest car manufacturers in the world. I would tell you the company name, but there is this little voice in the back of my head that says it may be inappropriate and might have the potential to get me in trouble if my company ever did find my blog. Anyway, this customer has been working with Infrared Mass Spectrometers since long before I’d ever heard of them, and so she really knows what she is doing. Since she has a clue, that means that I never get calls from her over silly things that they should know or silly things they have done. Anyway, she started to laugh as soon as she picked up the phone.
”Oh my God, you must have ESP! How in the world did you know I needed help?” she asked.
Long story short, I spent four hours working with her and THEN I took the rest of the day off to play!

My son’s fiancé has been living with my wife and I for a few months now. I guess her home life wasn’t all that you might hope for. My wife and I sure know what that feels like from personal experience, so when my son asked if she could stay with us, we had no hesitation.
Early on, my wife and I encouraged my son to let her know about me, because we thought it was the right thing to do. She has a baby and we figured the chances of her needing to come down stairs early some morning while I was getting dressed were just far too large to risk. Much like my son himself, it didn’t phase her in the least, and she easily and comfortably chats with me about makeup and clothes, and we have even gone shopping for makeup together.
Well, lately she has started to give me hell for sticking with only one look and not experimenting at all with my makeup. I can’t argue with her, because there is no question it is true. I know how to make one look, using the very same colors, and I never, ever, deviate from it. For my birthday, she gave me a little pallet of eye shadow and pointed out that there were instructions right on the back as to how to get the best look from it. When I went to get ready, I sat there looking at the eye shadow she had given me. To try or not to try, to go with the tried and true or to experiment? I figured ‘what the hell, I have the time and no one is waiting for me, so let’s give it a shot!”



You know, I couldn’t stop grinning like an idiot the whole time I was playing with it? It’s been a long time since I felt that way and I can’t help wondering if that’s why I’ve been feeling so “blah” about cross dressing lately – it’s become a rut with nothing new or exciting to it. So the moral of the story is, maybe I need to shake things up a bit and try more new things.










First of all I went to the Motor City Casino to donate some of my hard earned cash. I started with $20, got it up to almost $40, then down to less than $5. When it again climbed up to the $20 I had started with two hours later, I called it quites. More or less, I had two hours of entertainment for nothing.



Next I went to the movies.There was nothing playing that I was really dying to see, but “Machete” was about to start so I went for it. Talk about campy . . .
Clearly these folks are hoping it will become some sort of cult hit but I hope that they aren’t holding their breath while they wait. Much like “The Expendables”, this was full of very graphic blood and guts. About the only things I liked about it though was that it had some VERY hot women in it, and parts of it were apparently filmed in Austin! On the down side, it came off as pure propaganda for those that disagree with the stance Arizona is taking against illegals crossing the border from Mexico into the US. I seriously considered walking out of the movie, but I had nothing better to do and so stayed.







On the way back to my hotel I passed a mall, and the siren call of JC Penny and Macy’s just couldn’t be resisted. The first thing I saw as I entered JC Pennys was the shoe section and so I stopped to see if there was anything to die for there that I could afford. As I’m browsing, I see a group of three women about my own age, and it becomes clear that two of them are helping the third to pick out a set of heels.

“I look ridiculous!” the woman protested to the others, while looking down at her three inch wedged heels.
“You do not!” the other two assured her. “You look great!”
“This makes me way too tall! I’ll tower over all of the men.” She complained.
“Don’t be silly, you wont be too tall.”
“Yes I will! Just look around, I’m taller than all of the guys here.” She said, and all three women started looking around for a man to compare her height against.
“Damn it! There aren’t any men here!” the one said with a laugh.
“Yeah, but your no taller than she is!” the other one said and nodded in my direction.
‘Oh shit, just what I need – people paying attention and comparing themselves to me!” I thought as I turned away from them.
“In fact she’s taller than you are and she’s still wearing heels!”
I didn’t hear the rest of the conversation because that’s when I chose to get out of there before they decided to actually draw me in to the conversation.
I browsed through the 70% and 80% off racks and didn’t find a single thing I wanted, and so I headed to Macy’s to look at their sales racks there.
I was making my way through the dresses when a sales associate walked up to me.
“Do you need any help dear?” she asked me with grandmotherly smile.
“No thank you! I’m just looking for anything I can’t live without and that I can afford!” I told her with a laugh.
“Well then your at the right place.” She said, waving a hand at the sales rack in front of me. Right about then she got a look at my shoes.
“Your shoes are adorable!” she said. “We had those on a display manikin a while back and everyone just loved them.”
“I believe it, because I often get comments on them. Now that you mention it, I think I did get them at Macy’s!”

I could have flown home pretty, but the more I thought about it, the more it just didn’t seem to be worth the effort. As is typical when I fly boy mode these days, I spent the entire trip obsessing every time I saw a pretty woman in a cute outfit. Sometimes I wish I were “normal” . . .

The Never Ending Journey

                     

I might be wrong, but I’m pretty sure that this was the longest non-stop trip I’ve ever been on for my company. By the time I finally got around to starting to write my blog, I had to go back and look at the photos I’d taken just to remind myself where my trip had started off at and where I’d been! I have had some good times on this trip, but quite frankly I’m ready to go home.

As y’all know, because I keep telling ya over and over again, I’ve suddenly taken a liking to dresses. The good news is that they appear to flatter me for the first time in my life.
The bad news is, I’ve gone overboard and have been buying them everywhere I can find a good deal on them. I’ve found at least three of them in the last two weeks with price tags well over $100, but on sale for only $20 and $25. Each one, when taken on it’s own merits was a hell of a deal and you would no doubt be inclined to pat me on the back and say “What an awesome shopper you are!”, but when you add them all up, I’ve gone overboard and spent a lot more money recently than I should have.

As I was packing my suitcase, my six year old daughter shoves the bedroom door wide open and waltzes in like she owns the joint, and of course catching me just as I’m packing away a pink nightgown.
“Young’un, aren’t you supposed to knock if the door is closed?!” I asked her, trying to remind her that it was inappropriate to barge through a closed door, but also trying not to freak on her just because she has caught me doing something I’d rather she hadn’t.
“Oh, sorry daddy, I forgot.” She said, trying to look apologetic but failing miserably.
“Sorry my butt! Git on back out the door and knock this time!” I scolded her, while pointing back out to the hallway. With an almost teenager style huff, she spun around and closed the door behind her. In a second I hear the soft sound of little knuckles knocking on the door. By now I have closed the suitcase lid so she wont see any of the other interesting things that I have packed.
“Come in!” I called out to her.
With no hesitation at all, she walks in and immediately she verbally pins me to the wall.
“So why are you taking momma’s pretty night gown with you?” she asks me very calmly, much as she might speak if she were asking me what time it was. This is at least the fourth time my daughter has point blank asked me things like this, and I’m pretty sure that I’m gonna have to have a talk with her soon, but I aint ready just yet.
“Maybe I just want to have something of Momma’s with me when I’m all alone critter!” I told her.
“Oh! Hold on, I’ll be right back!” and off she sprints out the door, returning less than a minute later with one of her favorite stuffed animals.
“Here daddy, now you can have something of mine to cuddle with.” She tells me while holding it out to me. I picked her up and hugged her, and told her she was the sweetest person I know, and that I loved the idea, but that her stuffed animal was way too big for me to take with me. Not to be deterred, she went to her room again and brought back a little critter with pink and white stripes. THIS one would fit in my bag just fine . . .


At least according to the pics on my flickr site, my trip started off with my going to the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland to do preventative maintenance on three instruments there. For this flight, I chose one of my newest finds – a very 1970’s sort of hippie dress. I knew the moment that I saw this dress in Goodwill for about $10 that it just had to go home with me. I was sure it would look great on me and I was not disappointed! It occurred to me later though that I should have worn my piece sign ear rings – that would have just really topped off the whole 70’s concept! Oh well, maybe next time!
For shoes, I was wearing some serious platform sandals that I had just purchased a couple of days ago. I had actually been shopping with my wife, daughter, and future daughter-in-law when I found them. The cute thing is, my daughter in law found some that were very similar in appearance, and with a stiletto just as high as mine, so we spent the next couple of days threatening to steal each others shoes. When I was planning my outfits for this trip, she more or less dared me to wear them on the flight, and since I was leaning that way anyway . . .





On the first leg of my flight, I sat in coach. Coach or not, as a frequent flier I get to be one of the first people to board the aircraft, and so I was sitting there reading my book when a woman and her two daughters, toddler and infant, took the seats in front of me. The poor woman was really struggling trying to herd her toddler, carry the infant and their things, and get them all sorted and stored with out dropping anything critical, like, oh, say the baby for instance. I’ve long since become jaded enough that I no longer offer to help women that carry huge carry on bags on the aircraft, but this sort of thing is completely different. This is a woman struggling to do what has to be done to get her and her children from one point to another and not just a woman too silly to pack reasonably and in too big a hurry to check her bags. Anyway, I stood and helped her get her carry on stored away and soon she was seated.
“Thank you SO much!” she almost gasped, trying to turn around and look at me through the gap in the seats.
“Your very welcome! You know, you’re a very brave woman. I’ve traveled with one of my young children before – I just can’t imagine trying it with two of them!” I told her with a grin. She laughed and we spoke a couple of minutes, but of course her attention was soon entirely taken by trying to keep her children seated. About mid way through the boarding process, two older women stopped at the seats the mother and children were sitting in. They kept looking at their tickets, the seat marker, the mother and children, their tickets, over and over. I’d seen this dance enough to know what was coming next.
“Excuse me, but I think your in our seats.” One of the older women tells the mother. Of course this launches a flurry of ticket examinations and comparisons, and in a moment they agree that the mother and her children are in the wrong seats, and were supposed to be on the other side of the isle. Rather than simply agree to sit in each others assigned seats, the mother collects all of her things from under the seats, grabs the baby, herds the toddler, and after five minutes of effort she and her children are now seated in the same row, but on the other side of the isle. She caught me looking at her and shaking my head, and gave me the “what could I do?” shrug. Thing really got comical about 10 minutes later though, when the flight attendant comes up to the mother.
“Ma’am, I’m so sorry, but there aren’t enough oxygen masks on that side of the aircraft for all three of you.” She tells her. Then she looks across the isle at the two older women that had forced the poor woman to move.
“Ladies, I’m sorry but I’m going to have to ask you to please exchange seats with this lady and her children.” Having said this, the flight attendant then started helping them all to shuffle their things. It was all I could do to keep from laughing at the sheer silliness of it all. Just as they closed the door to the aircraft, I reached up and tapped the mother on the shoulder to get her attention.
“They were just kidding – you need to move back to the other side of the isle now!” I told her with a smile. To my surprise, three or four people seated around us busted up laughing – I thought I had spoken only loud enough for her to hear.

On the next leg of my trip, I had received an upgrade to first class, and I was pleased to find myself sitting next to an attractive and friendly woman about my own age. We chatted about everything and about nothing while people boarded the airplane.
“I’m just waiting for my boss to walk by, because boy is he gonna be pissed!” she said with delighted look.
“Oh, let me guess! You got an upgrade and he didn’t?” I asked her.
“Yup!” she said with a laugh.
I had fully intended to pay attention to see the fun as her boss had to walk past her to coach seats, but I got caught up in the movie on my IPOD and forgot all about it. I remembered it though, when the doors were closed and they tell you to turn off your electronics.
“So, did your boss see you?” I asked her with a grin.
“He sure did. I made sure he saw me!”
“And was he pissed?”
“He was, especially when he saw that I was sitting next to a hottie like you!”
I had taken a drink of my coffee as she was speaking, and I literally choked on it when she said this.
“Your sweet . .”  .. ..   “. . but I haven’t been even close to ‘hot’ in a long time.” I sputtered out between coughs and chokes from the coffee that had just filled my nose. Of course, that compliment made her my new best friend and we chatted about places where we had been for most of the flight.

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The following day was a long work day, and so all I did after work was to take my customer to dinner. It seems his wife was off visiting her sick mother and so he was also doing the bachelor thing.

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The next day I was done fairly early and so I got cleaned up and went out to see “The Expendables”. Oh my God . . .  
Talk about graphic and unapologetic violence! They pulled no punches and shied away from showing nothing. Gotta tell the truth though, it was a bit of fun. My only major disappointment was that Arnold played only a cameo roll – he was only on screen for about two minutes. 



Shortly after I got out of the movies I received a call from my manager telling me that one of our major customers in Manassas VA has a problem with a system I installed only a few weeks ago. It has a touch screen on it, and it appears that our system allows the user to calibrate the touch screen so badly that it can’t be used anymore. Brilliant! When you screw it up that bad, you can no longer enter the password that lets you calibrate it again. Oops. Anyway, the factory was sending the parts to the customer and he was gonna install them, but my boss wanted me to change my flights and stay reasonably local just in case I had to head that way and help them out. Well, when I started pricing things out, it turned out that I could save my company almost a thousand dollars by just staying the entire weekend in Philadelphia. You see I had a repair to do there the following week anyway, so I could save them the cost of an entire round trip flight bringing me back to the same area next week. I stayed in Maryland for the next day, just to be a couple of hours closer to Manassas in case I had to head that way. I was immensely relieved when I received notice that the customer had installed the new components and the system was up running. That meant that I got to head North to Philadelphia Friday!

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Just my luck, Friday morning I awoke to discover that I was sick with a cold. It wasn’t a complete shock as my customer had stated that he had just gotten over one, and his wife was still sick. Still, it just didn’t seem fair! I had plans to meet with my friends Sophie and Jennyand was sort of looking forward to an entire weekend to have fun in Philly as Kim, and now I was gonna spend it sick! I went ahead and made the drive “pretty” though, thinking that if I got any sicker as the days went on, this might be my last chance.



When I got to my hotel in King Of Prussia PA, it was still quite early and so I unpacked and headed across the street to the King of Prussia mall. For those of you that haven’t been there, it is a very nice and very large mall. I had only packed for a three day trip and now it was turning into a week and a half or more, so I looked for a couple of outfits and for some more sensible shoes. I did indeed find a couple of awesome deals on dresses – one at Macy’s and one at JC Penny. Both dresses had tags on them showing that had originally sold for over $100 and I got one for $20 and one for $27 – SCORE!  Next I started looking for some more reasonable shoes. Let’s face it, the 5 inch stilettos I had worn on a lark and a dare were not exactly what I had expected to be stuck wearing for a week and a half. I had brought a couple of other pairs, but they were almost as bad, one with 3.5 inch heels and the other with 4 inch stilettos. I often check the sales racks in Macy’s, but surprisingly, not only did I not find anything I could afford, but I didn’t even see anything I particularly liked, so I made my way through the rest of the mall. At the end of my shopping I entered the 9 West shoe store where I found two drop dead gorgeous young women working in an otherwise empty store. I looked around for a moment and didn’t see anything that I couldn’t live without, so I turned to leave.
“Thank you!” I tossed over my shoulder.
“Hey?!” one of them calls out to me, so I turned to look at her.
“We like your shoes!” she says with a huge grin.
“Thanks! So do I, but they aren’t exactly practical for mall walking huh?” I told them with a laugh.
“Maybe not, but they sure are cute!”
“And looking cute is what it’s all about, isn’t it?” I replied as I continued back out in to the mall with a wave.
I don’t know if it was just me, the fact that I was sick, or maybe the silly shoes I was wearing, but I just didn’t feel confident and felt like everyone was staring at me. Pretty quick, and long before I had explored the entire mall, I decided to call it a day and returned to my room and went back to being a caterpillar. I was just gonna lay around the room but I got a call from Sophie offering to meet for a coffee or a beer, and since there was a Hooters bar more or less in my hotels parking lot, the choice was a no brainer.

You know, most guys really like Hooters, but I’m not a huge fan. Pretty women, and let’s face it, Hooters doesn’t hire unattractive women, have always made me uncomfortable. I blush, I stutter, and I feel embarrassed. When I am in male mode, I have no idea how to relate to them or chat with them comfortably. When I’m presenting as female, I feel fat and ugly when next to pretty women. Oh well . . .
So Sophie and I sat there drinking a beer and chatting when two of the waitresses started hugging each other. Soon I see them both trying to convince the guy next to me to take their picture using their cell phone camera, but apparently it was beyond his skill set and he flubbed it up several times. It drove me nuts hearing them try and explain to this idiot over and over “Point it and push the button” and so I held my hand out for it. In a moment we had a couple of nice pics taken and the camera phone back in her possession.
“They look great! Thank you so much!” she told me with a great smile.
“Your welcome,” I said . . . blushing . . .
I can’t recall if it was Sophie or I, but one of us made a comment that I ought to take fairly good pictures given all of the practice that I get at it!

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Saturday turned out to be a pretty big day for me! There was going to be a local TG get together called “Angela’s Laptop Lounge” AND it turns out that Sophie and Jenny had bought me a makeover with Amanda Richards! As if that wasn’t enough on my plate, I also got the call from my manager that our customer in Manassas was in trouble again already. The new parts we had sent had fixed their problem, but only for one day! Now I was going to have to complete my repair in Philadelphia Monday and then drive all of the way to Manassas and spend the rest of the week there. My trip had started off to be a three day journey and was now up to two weeks. It sure is a good thing that I always seriously over pack! On the way to the make over at Amanda Richards “True Colors” salon, Sophie was kind enough to give me a guided tour through Valley Forge.










Having been born and raised in Southern California, most US history has seemed kind of like myths to me – things that happened far away and long ago. To actually be standing in the middle of such a historical place as Valley Forge was nothing less than awe inspiring, and had it not been for Sophie, I would have spent days only five minutes away from it and never known.

When we arrived at “True Colors” we were met by Amanda. It feels a little odd to use that name as he was in boy mode, but I have no idea what “his” name is. Sophie got her makeover first, which gave me the chance to walk around exploring things and looking at the wigs Amanda had on display. The first thing that caught my interest was an awesome full length green gown with lots of different layers in the skirts. I was sure that it would look killer on me and kept trying to convince Amanda that it would be ever so much happier in my closet, but she wasn’t having any of it. While we were each getting makeovers, we were all three chatting, laughing, and teasing, and just having a great time. I’d have to say that cutting up and having fun with the two of them was the most fun I had that night.
When it came time for my makeover, I told Amanda to make me look like someone else and she rose to the challenge. I did have a bad moment though when she put a wig cap on me and then started applying tape across the back of my neck. Then she put some above each eye and started tugging on it – hard! More or less, she had given me a face lift using tape! I laughed and asked her if she had any tape tricks for getting rid of the bags under my eyes, and she told me not to tempt or dare her! Having the tape pulling on my face was one of the oddest feelings, at first very uncomfortable, and then fading to a mere irritation. After a lot of work on Amanda’s part, I was all glamorous and it was time to play with wigs! 

The first one I tried was sort of a page boy, with the sides longer in the front than in the back. Noting how adorable the models looked wearing it, I’d been wanting to see what that style would look like on me for years and now I knew – HORRIBLE!




Next we tried a very long wig that I was actually thinking about buying since she was selling it so cheaply. It had curls upon curls and this of course appeals to me, but in the end I decided that it really wasn’t going to be appropriate on me. Twenty years ago, maybe, but not at 44 years old.



The next one I tried on, I actually thought looked fantastic, but only with this elaborate and glamorous makeup that Amanda had provided. I would have taken it for the night if that had been an option, but I knew darn well it wouldn’t look as good on me with my every day face, so I had to pass on it . . .




The last one that we played with was Amanda’s own wig, because it appeared to be exactly what I was looking for. Just to be sure that it was the right color and cut, Amanda styled it on me for a quick look. Convinced that this was in fact the exact wig I have been searching for, Amanda now knew exactly the make, model, and color and ordered it for me. Not only that, but while it retails for something like $500, she sold it to me for just a touch over $200! With so many places out there ready to take advantage of TG’s, it was kind of heartening to see someone give an honestly awesome deal and bargain.




Done playing with new wigs, Amanda put my own wig in order. Despite my telling her of all the things that I had done wrong with my wig, she took a look at it and told me that it was actually in very good shape, especially given that it was three years old and gets worn so much. It didn’t take her long to make my wig look presentable and there I stood looking in the mirror at her handy work and feeling astounded that the person looking back from the mirror was me!



I made one more failed attempt to get Amanda to sell the green gown to me, which Amanda deftly avoided, making some comment about people that get obsessed over odd things like, oh, say, long green gowns. Knowing that her humor would be a welcome and fun addition to Sophie and my sarcasm, we invited Amanda to join us for the evening, but she declined. Something about her having had a very long day working with a wedding party and then doing our makeovers.



Back in King of Prussia, we made our way to Angela’s Laptop Lounge where we met and socialized with about 20 other TG’s and their guests from all over the area. Angela’s Laptop Lounge is in a pub attached to the mall, and it was kind of weird to see the mall empty of everyone except us and the security guard that kept encouraging us to stay in the area of the pub. I think we drove that poor guy nuts! I met and chatted with far too many people that night to keep all of their names straight so I’m not even gonna try. Suffice it to say that I met a lot of interesting people to talk to and really enjoyed the evening.

«««  -----------   »»»

Sunday rolled around and found me laying in bed until around 11AM. I wasn’t sleeping, but what with the pace I’d been keeping, the cold my first customer on this trip had given me, and the late night, I just didn’t feel like getting up. I was watching something of no consequence on TV when Sophie called me and invited me to breakfast/lunch with her. She was in boy mode, and so was I, and off we went looking for someplace that served brunch. Our search ultimately took us to a pub not far from her home, and as we entered, Sophie just about tripped over one of her life long friends and invited him to join us. We had an awkward couple of moments trying to skip over the issue of how Sophie and I had met each other, but in very little time everyone was chatting freely. After those two launched into several conversations regarding history and politics, I quickly came to realize that I was way out of my league with these two. It was nothing you could really put your finger on, nothing you could point to and say “That’s why”, but I just had the impression that I was sitting with two damned smart people. I began to think that I knew what the village idiot must feel like now, and I later commented to Sophie that I must be her token dumb friend.

When Sophie got me back to my hotel room, it was time to start getting ready for dinner with Captain Jenny! I had met Jenny before, in an airport when we were both in guy mode, but it’s just not the same. Jenny has an easy and infectious smile and constantly gives the impression that she is up to something or in on a joke that you don’t know about yet.





For diner, we went to the “Tavern on Camak” – a piano bar and restaurant that Sophie and I had visited before. We sort of circled the area first, making sure we knew how to find the place, and then we found a parking lot nearby. After a short walk down the alley to where the entrance was located, we made our way inside, where we found some people singing at the piano. The piano player played well, but frankly his singing left something to be desired, and so it was fortunate that several of the patrons were helping him out in that department. We looked around and found no indication at all that there might be a restaurant in the building and so I had to ask the bartender. He pointed out a staircase going down stairs that we had totally missed. I’d seen a blocked stair going up, but hadn’t noticed the open stairs going down. When we got to the bottom of the stairs, we found a couple of people gathered around a wine bar, and a cozy but empty dining area where the waiter seated us. I had my fears, assuming that an empty restaurant may imply a restaurant that people have decided isn’t worth eating at, but I’d have to say that the service was terrific and the food was good as well. Periodically as we ate and chatted, I couldn’t help wincing as I heard the piano player upstairs singing flat note after flat note, but what can you do? I had expected that hanging out with Jenny would be a fun time, and I wasn’t disappointed. As seems to be the agenda every time I meet with another TG, we talked for hours about everything we could think of. Way too soon, dinner was over and we made our way upstairs where we were discussing whether we should stay and listen to the piano player for a while or not. When I saw the tiny woman that had played the piano the last time I was here enter the building and begin getting ready to take her place at the piano, we decided that we would indeed stick around for a while. We stuck around and listened for a couple of hours until we both agreed that our work schedules the following morning really did dictate that the night must end.



On the drive back to King of Prussia, Jenny asked me a question that has kind of stuck with me, almost haunting me.
“How long will you do this? When will you stop cross dressing?”
What an interesting question. . .
“When I look in the mirror and see someone ugly looking back at me. When it no longer seems worth the effort I suppose . . . ” I hesitantly replied after thinking about it for a moment. The thing is, I am telling myself more and more often these days that it’s not worth the effort. I’ve had entire days on the road where I could have and didn’t. I’m making more and more flights in boy mode again because I just don’t feel like the work, effort, and angst of flying cross dressed.
“When will you stop cross dressing?”  I keep hearing that question in my head over and over this last week. Thanks for giving me something to obsess over Jenny!

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The next day, I completed my service call in the Philly area and then made the drive to Manassas VA, and the traffic going through the Washington DC area was every bit as bad as I had been warned it might be. I didn’t get in until after 7PM, so all I did was go grocery shopping and call it a night.

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Tuesday was of course dedicated to getting my customers system back up and running. That really didn’t take too terribly long, but given that it had failed twice in three weeks, I wasn’t inclined to go sprinting out the door as soon as it was working. Instead, I spent the day running the customer through how to operate it again, just to reinforce the training I had provided when we installed it a few weeks ago. I then told him that I was going to be staying in the area for a few days just to be sure everything continued to work! We had arrived quickly to resolve his issues, the system was now working well, and I was staying local just in case – the customer was thrilled!

«««  -----------   »»»

Wednesday, I checked in with my customer and found everything still working well and him still happy, so I returned to my hotel, got ‘dressed’, and headed for Washington DC to see what I could see! Sophie had warned me to wear “comfortable” shoes if I was going to check out the monuments in the National mall and I had just laughed. First of all, I don’t own a single pair of female flats, and second of all, life is way to short for wearing ugly shoes, so off I went in my cute skirt and high heels.



I knew everyone said not to drive in, but the very thought of trying to navigate my way through a huge city’s train and bus systems just scares the snot out of a small town desert rat like myself. To all of you that grew up in cities, this may be second nature, but to someone that has never used public transportation, it’s terrifying. Mind you, I am not concerned with my safety – that’s not what stops me. What stops me is having absolutely no clue how to navigate the system to the destination, and then even more important, to find my way back to what ever station I left the car at. I have this vision of being lost somewhere and with no idea how to get back to my car! Anyway, I made my way in to the city and circled the national mall looking at monuments and searching for a parking lot or garage. The Washington monument is of course visible from just about everywhere, and I also slowly drove by the World War II monument and could see Lincolns Monument way off in the distance. Several times I was forced almost entirely out of the city by traffic, one way streets, and streets that switch directions based on the time of the day. Still, I was stubborn and kept returning to the area looking for a parking area. Using my GPS, I did find several parking areas but that did me no good, because they were all full! When I found all of the parking areas more than two miles away from the monuments to be full and closed, I decided that it was time to throw in the towel and admit that driving in had been a bad idea.

«««  -----------   »»»

Thursday I was going to risk getting lost in public transit and return to DC in boy mode, but I just couldn’t find any enthusiasm for it. Just thinking about it I felt overwhelmed and exhausted and so I decided to just go see a movie in drab. I found that “The Other Guys” was playing and so I bought a ticket for it. If your thinking about seeing this movie – don’t. I would put it in the top three worst movies I’ve ever seen. It was boring, pointless, and had nothing I found even marginally redeeming.

«««  -----------   »»»

Friday it was at long last time to make the trip home. While I was gone, my one year old son had taken his first steps not holding on to something or someone, my (almost) seven year old daughter had started first grade, and my twenty one year old had at last called home from navy basic training. I know that most fathers would have missed these things, having to be at the office or job, but somehow it just seemed unfair that all of this had occurred while I was so far from home.
I felt absolutely no interest in flying home pretty. This time it wasn’t even a toss up, there was no inner discussion with myself over it – I just flat didn’t want to.

“When will you stop cross dressing?” Jenny had asked.
 “When I look in the mirror and see someone ugly looking back at me. When it no longer seems worth the effort I suppose . . . ”

I think I need a vacation – BAD!

Current mood:tired

 

I’m off to Detroit again, and apparently I’m not alone, ‘cause almost every car rental company was sold out. I always use Avis but this time they had to get me a rental car with National – more on that later.

I’m continuing to enjoy my new found appreciation for dresses and wore a new one on this trip. It is kind of a business / office kind of dress and I think looks very professional - unlike the tramp wearing it! When I took a seat in the gate area of the airport, I discovered that there is a bad girl element to the dress you see. While standing, the slit on the side didn’t appear to rise too terribly high, but when I took a seat I discovered that it showed a bit more leg than I was really comfortable with.



On my drive to the airport I was listening to the news on the radio and I got a little worried when they started warning everyone that the traffic in Austin, and especially around the airport, was going to go all to hell today. It seems that President Obama was visiting Austin somewhere around noon! How cynical I must have become in my old age, because here the President of the United States of America was coming to our city and my only real concern was the hope that he not mess up my drive to the airport! Fortunately I was arriving at the airport at about 630AM and he wasn’t coming in until around noon, so my drive did not suffer at all. I did have to chuckle a bit when I went through the TSA security process though, because they were all looking sharp, clearly intending to be “inspection ready”.

I got checked in and made my way through the TSA check point, then I pulled all of my things off of the X-ray machine and made my way to a seat where I put my jewelry and shoes back on. When I had all of my things back together I started off for my gate and almost fell flat on my face. The strap on my shoe had broken and it had come half way off of my foot! Limping along on my tip toe, I made my way to a chair, where I took my shoe off and examined it. The strap was supposed to be held on by a button, and the thread holding the button in place had broken. Fortunately the button was still gripping the strap and so I had not lost it. Tucking the strap inside the shoe and under my foot, I made my way through the airport looking for a sewing repair kit, thinking I could probably repair the darn thing myself. Not one of the half a dozen shops in the airport carried a sewing kit, and so I spent the rest of the morning wearing one shoe with a mary jane strap and one shoe without. Talk about a fashion statement!
The good news though, is that the Chicago O’Hare airport has not only a shoe shine place, but a full fledged shoe repair shop! With a lot of grins from the two or three guys working there, they had my shoe repaired in less than 10 minutes and it only cost me $6! The inside of the shoe looks a bit rough now, but the outside still looks flawless. Feeling more than grateful, I gave him a $5 tip on top of that, and headed off for my connection.

When I landed in Detroit, I almost headed to the Avis shuttle bus out of habit, but caught myself as I exited the building. The National shuttle bus driver was real nice, grabbing my bags as I boarded, and then chatting with me as we made the drive to the lot.
“Are you a member of our program?” He asked me.
“Nope. I’ve gotta be honest, I normally use your competition – Avis.” I told him with a laugh.
“Well, once you have used us, you wont go back to them!”
“Confidence AND pride! I like that! And you know, I have to be honest that Avis has sort of pissed me off pretty bad a few times lately anyway!”
“Really?! What did they do that made you mad?” he asked, looking at me through the large mirror as he was driving.
“Well the worst was calling me three weeks after I returned a car in Wisconsin to tell me that I had scratched the hell out of the trunk and they were gonna charge me for it! THREE WEEKS it took them to try and blame it on me.” I told him, getting mad at the very memory of it.
“No WAY? You didn’t pay for it did you?” he asked.
“I told my company not to pay for it under any circumstances and that I’d be willing to go to court over it. It offended my principles that they were blaming me for something I didn’t do. As if I wouldn’t have the moral integrity to admit it if I had scratched a car in the snow and ice that was covering the roads at the time. Still, I think my company IS going to pay for it, just because it’s easier than fighting with them.”
“Well that’s just not right!” he said. “Be sure you walk around and inspect the car before you take it from now on.”
“Oh, no question about that!” I told him with a laugh.

Since I was not a member of their program, I had to go the counter for my rental agreement, and the lady there was just awesome. She made the same claim that I wouldn’t want to go back to Avis after I had used National. After a little bit of chatting and laughing, I had my rental agreement and was told to go to the luxury lot and pick out the car I wanted. Since Ford was going to be one of my customers on this trip, I made it a point to grab one of theirs.

I got my bags put away in the trunk, my GPS programmed for the hotel, and then grabbed my contract and drivers license so I’d have them available for the gate guard. At least that had been my plan, because I couldn’t find my damned drivers license! I went through my wallet and purse at least half a dozen times – not there. I dumped every thing out of my backpack twice – not there. I pulled my bags back out of the trunk to be sure I hadn’t dropped it there when I was loading them – no drivers license. I had just had it not five minutes ago when I was at the counter, so I returned there and asked the young lady behind the counter – nope, not there either! By now I’ve been bouncing around inside the car, walking around it, and walking to the counter and back for about 15 minutes, so two National employees walked up and asked if I needed help.
“Thanks, but I don’t think there’s much you can do! Being the brilliant person that I am, somehow I’ve managed to loose my drivers license between here (I pointed at the car) and there (I pointed at the office).”
“Well, let us know if we can help!” they told me, both laughing as they walked off.
Just as I was getting ready to really get upset and blow a gasket, I found it where it had slid down between the seat and center console, standing straight up on edge so that the edge was all you could see.

As I pointed out in the title of this post, I think I need a vacation or something, because I am always exhausted these days. I don’t mean just tired, I mean the kind of worn out where you sit in your car or your room for a couple of moments trying to convince yourself that you really don’t have any reason in the world to feel like crying. To add to the worn out feeling, I have this wonderful condition called Erythema Nodosum. Ironically enough, according to the many doctors I’ve seen through the years, its an almost exclusively female condition. Anyway, the end result is that I have these large and very painful bruises and bumps all over my rear, my thighs, and my calves. This is a particularly bad flare up and so I pretty much hurt every where from the waist down. It hurts when I walk, hurts when I stand, and hurts when I sit, so I pretty much can’t win.
Suffice it to say that by the time I got to my hotel room, I was really tired, hurt everywhere, and so I just called it a night.

The following day I worked until 730PM trying to get both of my customers back up and running. To be honest, part of my motivation was also the hope that I could just get both repairs done that day and catch an early flight home the next, but it wasn’t to be. After staying so late, we ran into a serious problem that was going to take me a couple of hours to address, and so we agreed to return to the issue in the morning. Once in my hotel room I started checking my emails and found one from Victoria, a local Tgirl that I had met once before. She’s a real sweetheart and we keep threatening to meet up again but never seem to get our schedules together. Anyway, she wrote that she might be able to meet me that night if I was free. I sat there feeling worn out, with my legs hurting and throbbing, empty stomach growling, and looking at my hands and clothes that were filthy from the days work. I wrote her back and told her not today, but that I’d be happy to meet with her tomorrow. She wrote back to say that she wasn’t going to get off of work until 11PM tomorrow, so it looks like we miss each other yet again.

The next day I returned to my customer to resolve the remaining issues. As I parked, I reached for my cell phone to call them and let them know that I was there. The only problem being that I couldn’t find my cell phone. Once again I dumped my backpack just as I had when I was looking for my drivers license the day before, but no cell phone. Eventually I gave up and just headed for the lobby where I used their phone to call my contact. The good news is that I was able to resolve the remaining issues in a few hours, and was then free for the rest of the afternoon.



Despite the dark bruises all over my legs, I decided to wear a relatively short skirt because it was just too darn hot for anything else. Once I got dressed, I had the usual dilemma – what to do?! I decided to continue looking for new hair, and even realized that the Detroit area would be a perfect place to find a wig shop I can build a relationship with. I’m there so often, it would make a perfect place to find a shop that I could return to over and over if I wanted to.

I searched the internet for “wigs near Detroit” and while it came up with a lot of hits, I didn’t find a single one that had a web page I could browse, so I headed for the car, setup my GPS and searched for “Wig”. It offered me quite a few options and so off I headed to the closest one where I found an Asian woman helping an elderly lady. While she was helping the older woman I browsed around but didn’t see anything comparable to my favorite hair. All of hers were by a manufacturer that I’d ever heard of, and frankly struck me as cheap, and sure as heck didn’t approach the quality of the one I had, so I thanked her and left. The next shop I visited had gone out of business and was closed up tight. The third shop I went clearly catered almost exclusively to African Americans because every piece she had was either very dark black or brown, or exotic (Orange, red, purple, etc). I decided to head to Ferndale because I’d been told several times that they have a large GLBT community there, and so I thought that maybe their wig stores would have a better selection, but it wasn’t to be. The first one I visited there still had the lights on and everything, but had the closed sign up despite it’s being just 445PM, and the next store I found had also gone out of business. Apparently owning a wig store in the Detroit area isn’t a real good idea . . .

I’d had enough disappointment for the day and decided I’d give up for now and just go have dinner, and so I made my way to Maria’s Italian restaurant. I had found this place a couple of years ago, because it’s right next door to the “SoHo” bar / club where I used to go for karaoke all of the time. The food is good and the owner and wait staff have always been really friendly with me, so I’ve made it a point to try and eat there when I can. When I entered, I was greeted by the one waitress working at the time. She is a pretty woman with mid length brown hair, and I’d guess that she is probably in her early thirties.
“Just one?” she asks me with a smile.
“Yup, just me – the lone ranger.” I replied.
“Hey, I remember you, you’re the karaoke . . . person.”  There was a ever so short pause between “Karaoke” and “Person” and I busted up laughing.
“Go on, you can say it! We both know you were gonna say “Karaoke Queen” before you decided it might not be the best way to phrase it, huh?!”  We both laughed as she seated me.
“Uh, no, not at all! I’d never say anything like that!” she said with a shit-eating-grin that made it clear that this was exactly what she had been thinking. A little later in the evening, I could hear her softly singing to the Dean Martin music playing on the intercom as she was cleaning things up at another table.
“I see that I’m not the only one here that likes to sing.” I told her with a wink when she brought me my check.
“Just when I’m alone or in the shower, but NEVER karaoke!” she laughed. As she took away the check and my credit card, the owner approached my table. He is very tall, well over six feet, and has very short hair, almost a military cut. He has taken the time to talk to me every single time I’ve been there.
“So I see that your back in town.” He says, and then continues after a short pause. “I’m a master of the obvious, aren’t I?”.
“That’s OK,” I told him with a laugh. “I always make it a point to eat here when I can.”
“I’m glad to hear that. So how was your dinner?” he asked.
“It was awesome, thank you. Of course, that’s why I make it a point to come here!” I replied.
“Well I guess that makes sense, so then once again I’ve stated the obvious !” he said with a laugh, and then he retreated as I filled out the credit card slip and handed it to the waitress. I had to walk right by him again where he was sitting at the wine bar on my way out the door, and he spoke as I went by.
“Hey! You do know it’s not karaoke night tonight right?!” he asked, picking on me by implying that I had chosen the wrong night to be there.
“Actually, according to their web page it IS karaoke night tonight, but it doesn’t really matter. I’ve got a flight to catch in the morning, and they don’t start the karaoke until too late for me to hang around. I don’t do late nights followed by early mornings much anymore!”
“Well, I hope you have a good night anyway and we hope to see you next time you are in town.” He told me with a smile.

When I was seated in my rental car, I checked my makeup and was shocked to see a fairly large spot on my chin was 100% clear of foundation. I have no idea what part of my dinner I had managed to get on my chin that cleaned foundation off, but there was a spot about the size of a dime that was glaringly obvious. Embarrassed, I wondered how much of the evening I had spent that way. Still, even though I have never had to use it until now, I always carry foundation and powder with me just in case, and so in short order I had it repaired. It was only 630PM and so I decided ‘what the heck, let’s hit up Macy’s and JC Penny’s and see if we can find a new pair of shoes.’ I checked out JC Penny but didn’t find anything I liked there, so I headed to Macy’s. As I was browsing through their shoe section, I noticed a young woman, probably still in her teens, wearing a scarf over her hair, neck, and shoulders. I assume this is a Middle Eastern or Muslim thing but wouldn’t claim to know enough their culture to be sure. She is cute, and despite the very conservative scarf over her hair and shoulders, she is wearing a colorful and cute dress with pants under it. I noticed her because of her bright outfit, and because she apparently worked in the shoe section. I’d have to admit that I was a little nervous to approach her for help because I wasn’t sure how someone of her culture might feel about someone like me. Still, I told myself I was being silly for making assumptions, and besides, it was her job, and so I did approach her with one pair that I liked.
“Can I help you?” she asked with a professional smile that I thought might be just a little on the cold side.
“Sure! Do you have these in nine and a half and tens? I’d bring both sizes if you have them, because it might save you trip.” I asked, handing her the shoe I had picked out. She punched a lot of keys on her PC and then responded.
“I have both. If you will wait here, I’ll go get them!” she told me. She seemed a little friendlier, and despite her clearly middle Eastern features and scarf, her English had absolutely no trace of an accent, making it pretty clear that she was probably born in the US just like I was. As she walked off, I was feeling guilty for having had my reservations about dealing with her, and I was kind of contemplating the less than flattering things that my earlier assumption implied about me, when another young girl spoke to me over her shoulder as she walked by me from behind. I was caught by surprise and deep in thought and didn’t catch what she said.
“I’m sorry, what did you say?” I asked her. She was almost a carbon copy of the young lady that was now in the warehouse looking for the shoes I wanted. She was also probably in her late teens, cute as a button, and wearing a long scarf over her long hair and shoulders.
“I’m going to scare her when she comes out. Let me know when she’s at the door!” she told me with a huge grin, and clearly not willing to even entertain the thought that I might not want to be an accomplice.
“Hmmm . . . I dunno . . . . “ I told her.
“She’s my friend – it will be funny!” she told me.
“Well I sure hope so! I’d hate to think you were gonna scare the heck outta a complete stranger!” I told her and we both laughed.
“Just put your thumb up or something to let me know when she’s coming out, OK?”
“OK, but she might be a while you know. I sent her after two pairs.” I replied, and then moved to a position at the counter where I thought I’d get more warning as she was approaching the door. So there we stood, me at the counter getting ready to warn her when her friend was going to exit the door, and her beside the door and waiting to jump out. We kept glancing at each other while we waited for her friend, and then without warning, she said something to me that absolutely floored me.
“You are SO cute!”
I think my jaw literally dropped and it was right then that her friend walked out of the warehouse carrying two boxes of shoes . . . using a completely different door. . . .
Of course this caught her friend and I completely by surprise, but still the one girl tried to scare the other by running the ten or so feet to the other door and yelling “Boo!” at her. We all had a good laugh at what had turned out to be a pathetic attempt at scaring someone. The bad news? The shoes looked good but were far too uncomfortable for someone that does as much walking as I do.
As I left the store, it was with a mixture of feelings. I was very pleased that a young lady had been so willing to speak with me, include me in her fun, and even to tell me that I was cute, but I also felt ashamed that I had made assumptions about her because of her attire and presumed culture. Those who live in glass houses really shouldn’t be throwing stones you know!

The following morning was my trip home, and once again my legs hurt and I felt emotionally and physically worn out, so I made the trip in boy mode. Oh – do you remember that I told you I had rented a car from national? Yeah, I tried to turn it in at the Enterprise lot, and I swear I’m not kidding.

Did I mention that I need a vacation?