One week home.

One week of house arrest is over since my return. My how time flies.

I can finally sit comfortably at table to eat a meal, the drain sites in the buttocks have taken a while to heal internally so I spend most of my time semi reclined in a chair or lying on my bed reading. Reading often causes me to pass out, I can sleep at any hour of the day!

In the UK we have a health service free at point of use and  there are times like this when I am glad we do. I have rarely had cause to get anything back for all the tax contributions we have made over our lifetimes but since Monday I have had a daily visit from our district nurse service helping to deal with my patch of failed graft. It is times like this when it is good to have someone reassure you that things which look ghastly are behaving as expected and will heal over in time.

Not being a typical patient they were keen to make sure that they had all relevant information from Brighton then decided that the best plan was to keep the area dry by recathaterisation, this has allowed me two full nights sleep while a prodigious quantity of urine seeps safely into a bag. Interesting how quickly something strange becomes normal!

I am now left to clean up and reapply a dressing several times each day then just potter round the house occasionally helping with food or washing but mostly just feeling tired. Evert day there is a clear improvement, taking an interest in things outside my recovery bubble is a good indicator. They do warn that this is a dramatic procedure with countless things which could lead to a less than perfect recovery or even result. So far mine is a nuisance and a small trial to deal with but I am sure in a few weeks time memory of this time will start to fade and real recovery be foremost in my mind.

Now two weeks post op today’s reward is being able to restart my HRT and soon I shall be free of the hot flushes which have been such a nuisance for these last two months.

Friends and family keep dropping in to visit and deliver odd supplies, Julie escaped for a couple of hours today to do an organised grocery shop so we are well stocked with biscuits for visitors and enough food for the next ten days. Meanwhile I just look out the windows watching the snowdrops come out along with the other signs of early spring. The growing days are cheering me a lot and thoughts are moving towards a possible early summer trip towards the sun...

Spa therapy...

Many of you may remember Melissa and her online Meanderings. Sadly she is no longer with us but when she was she could often read my mind and one day out of the blue wrote to me saying that she did not want to switch on one day to find out that I had sneaked away and had my plumbing repaired. As open as I have always been online I had long suspected that a countdown clock was never going to be on my blog page and no fanfare  announcing my surgery date.

I have never been lucky with surgery. My appendix scar was a mess where the two sides were out of level by an eighth of an inch and was still a lump twenty years later. My orchiechtomy had an internal bleed and the sac looked like a black and blue grapefruit by the time I went under for the repair.

There are a lot of things which you are warned can go wrong in the complicated process of making a silk purse out of a pigs ear, which one was I going to suffer?

My Sex Preference Affirmation, Spa treatment was performed in Brighton on the 3rd. Of February. I had checked in midday the day before as calm as if I had come for a short seaside holiday. My room was spacious with a view across the South Downs to the sea. They brought me an omelet for lunch, the start of a low residue diet, various folk came by to ask questions get forms signed and do various tests to see if I was still alive. I unpacked the few things I had brought with me to wear during the recovery and some electronic readers and music. Once online several people came on to chat, some phoned and the time vanished. A sleeping pill was requested else I would be online when they came for me in the morning…

At six in the morning there was the joy of an enema being squeezed into the lower bowel which is the only part cleared at this facility. Once empty I had a thorough shower and slipped on the gown. Within two hours of waking I was being wheeled away through the chill corridors to theatre. A quick check of the wrist band to ensure that they did the right op on the right patient and a needle was going into my wrist for administering any drugs. Still dead calm. Something went into my wrist and instantly felt like a hundred bee stings, it was being massaged but I was out! Never even got to count backwards, no dreams and before long I was finding my way back to consciousness in my room with an oxygen mask on and tubes going in and out all over. Other than a change to a tube under the nose for gas that is how things were for the next two days with clear liquid diet.

On the third day the view out of the window was a winter wonderland with children sledging don the hills, somehow my sister and brother in law managed to drive two and a half hours to visit and found me in a good mood and we had three hours of happy chat.my BIL watched the end of a ball chasing game which his team won so his day was a great success. They returned at midday the following day having stayed with a relative a few miles away then left to drive home in the daylight. Their timing was impeccable since lying with an empty gut gives you wind as it tries to restart, I do not pass noisy gas but that day I was delighted when it all came out! Back ache is also a problem until they let you raise the head end of the bed. The gut pains lasted nearly three days, not everyone gets them. From the operation site, no pain at all.

Once the visitors had gone two nurses came to remove the pressure bandage, during this the urethra started to bleed. Pressure was applied in relays! My friend Lucy eventually joined us and added to the conversation since she had been in my position just eleven months before. Numerous times it appeared to have stopped bleeding but on subsequent checks found to have restarted, this repeated all through the night for eighteen hours before the surgeon arrived and did something and left a drained and exhausted me holding a small pad in place. My hand and arm finally went numb so I called the duty nurse who declared it stopped and I passed out exhausted and in tears. By leaving this small wound to heal before getting me out of bed I only had one day to get up and start to walk about, first round and round the room then along the hospital corridors. By the end of that last day everything was working well and I had stopped walking like a patient and with music in my ears was almost dancing along.

I met up with another patient at this time, they were only a day out of surgery but had their boyfriend to distract them  from the back and gut pains. We all have a different path but here was someone almost my age who had found hormones when twenty one and ou would have thought her a natural born, for decades she had let people believe the surgery had already been done thinking that it would be impossible to ever find the money to fly to the UK and be repaired…

I was allowed to stay on a few extra hours on checkout day and I needed them to rest! Lucy collected me and drove me away in style for a restful lunch at her home then on to the airport south of London. My booked help worked well as I was wheelchaired speedily through to departures with only a small delay for frozen plane from Amsterdam. Louise did her relay section from Edinburgh to home where she stayed overnight with us. The journey was hard and when I paid a visit to the bathroom on arrival blood went everywhere!

It is ow nearly a week since I returned home. Most of the recovery is going well but a small section of graft which the surgeon showed some concern over has failed to take and will take considerably longer to heal over especially since it gets peed upon many times each day. My local nurses are having great fun fixing me, something new and a chance to talk directly to Brighton while working on me helps. I have been replumbed to keep things dry so that they can apply wound dressing methods. So close to being right first time but my usual luck came into play…

Would I sign up to do it again knowing what I have had to go through? Without a moments hesitation!

Frosty...

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A visitors view from my spa room.

My Spa trip is over. I arrived just before the snow fell and then froze and I escaped while the roads were clear just before the next fall of snow! Back home in Scotland it might be a bit frosty in the mornings but thankfully we have  remained clear of white stuff.

I have generally been very lucky with the support of friends and family throughout my transition. Some not so close family members have been the least enthusiastic, small in number most have shown signs of melting their coldness.

Sadly there is one of my partner’s cousins who remains very frosty, this is interesting because her brothers who arrived nine and ten years after she did,  called her “Frosty”!

She had always been one of Julie’s closest friends as well as a cousin but has been distant to us both in recent times just when Julie really could have benefited from some support. Perhaps it is just as well that she did not get to preach her negative bile, things could have taken a different path…

Her frosty demeanor has put a business meeting air into family party gatherings while we remained civilised, it is enough to make me try to keep away from some of these gatherings but I don’t wish Julie to loose out on spending time with her. I encouraged a visit while I was away at the spa so she went to stay and they even came and stayed here for a couple of days afterwards which she has not done for many years now, so I had imagined that they had reactivated their old closeness.

Ever the polite one I called Frosty to thank her for spending so much time with Julie while I was away, it was less fun a call than the uninvited sales calls for energy plans or double glazing, much frostier than usual…

I mentioned the extra chill to Julie who then told me that Frosty had suddenly come out with a long statement about why she would never be able to forgive me for having cheated her cousin by marrying her half a lifetime ago! Julie was so stunned by the statement that she did not try to debate the irrationalities in it so we are no further forward than before, only we now have confirmation of my suspicions.

It was an odd feeling knowing of such complete rejection and it has had me thinking with a different perspective about all those whom I have come across who have had to endure much deeper rejections than mine. Perhaps this poor woman has never forgiven me for my politely rejecting her sexual advances soon after I has started living with her cousin!

Off for some winter sun.

At this time of year I start to get a bit desperate for some sun and a boost of vitamin D. For many years when I still had muscles I would be invited to spend several weeks out in the South of France to help with family building projects. Sadly they seem to be finished for now so my time out enjoying their winter sunshine and eating lunch outside on the terrace looking out to a landscape full of almond blossom seems to be over for now.

Last year a friend persuaded thirty or so of her friends to help celebrate a significant birthday by all staying at a spa hotel in the countryside. We joined her there, others had flown in from several european countries and a great time was had over several days. Because we were mostly busy with the many events organised for the group we did not get a chance to empty the bank account by trying out any of the offered therapies or treatments.

This year we have split up and gone our own ways again with Julie going of to stay with her cousin in Edinburgh for a few days and visit other friends and do lots of cultural things. I have come to a seaside spa town in England where I met up with my friend Lucy who escorted me through the winding old streets in search of food and then somewhere quiet to catch up on chat. It was bitterly cold out and we would have chosen somewhere to eat a lot quicker if I had not shown a desire for something Chinese which just could not be found! Eventually we settled on a Spanish tapas place which seemed to have a good happy crowd, soon after we got our table the place was full. We ate our way through a table full of small dishes which we washed down with a glass of Rioja before moving on to a quiet pub with comfy seats for a chat over a couple of cups of coffee.

I love being by the sea, just makes me feel alive. After a lazy breakfast I checked out of my hotel in the center of town and wandered out for a bracing couple of hours wandering about. I came here on a family holiday in the sixties, we stayed in a friend's flat on the sea front overlooking the east pier very near where I was staying, back then we just drove p and had no trouble just t parking right in front where nobody is even allowed to stop now. I was nine or ten and my memories are hazy but I do remember looking down on our beautiful Lagonda which looked even better from above.

One crazy guy likes the shore even more than me and went in for a swim from the shingle beach! The rest of us, and there were many out walking, were wrapped up warm. It was heartening to see a lot of activity already renovating the the seafront businesses ready for the new season, normally I like things with a bit of age and weathering but at the seaside it really needs to be bright sparkling fresh paint. After the seafront with hardly any wind it was a surprise to enter the narrow lanes back from the beach and find myself in a series of wind tunnels! Had I not been trailing my small case on wheels  I may have explored the small shops there more thoroughly, never seen so many jewelers in one place. Lucky for me I am not driven to acquire expensive jewels and like cheap glass rings. In the last year or so my fingers have slimmed down a lot so that the few rings I do have often try to escape which is what happened to the one which I was wearing yesterday and I thought it was lost for ever… I have just unpacked at the spa and spread everything in drawers and have found it at the bottom of my handbag so now I know that they come off while I am searching amongst all the stuff in there!

Now that I am settled in I had better settle on what treatment to get I guess.

Afternoon tea has just arrived, I could get used to this...

O, I do like to be beside the seaside.

Burns Suppers.

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I live in Scotland, top of that strange shaped island in the north eastern Atlantic. 

We have a National Bard, national poet, and a day to celebrate the lecherous old drunkard, that day is today.

We have a National Dish which you would have thought could have been our famous wild salmon or hill caught venison but no! It is Haggis made from all the bits nobody will buy mixed with onions, bait of spice, and oatmeal which should then be stuffed into a sheep’s stomach, we are nothing if not gourmets…

It would be a crime to eat such a delicacy alone though we did on Saturday, it is more traditional to get a roomful together and have a party of sorts. In the best gatherings the “great pudding” will be led to the table by someone in full Highland regalia playing the bagpipes, once the European Union gets word of this and measures the sound intensity of bagpipes in a domestic setting I am sure they will instigate legislation to ban it! There is a poem which is delivered to the haggis before the declaimer eviscerates it with his dirk, a dagger he keeps down his sock… People say poems in praise of lassies, I said he was a lecherous womaniser didn’t I? Traditionally a lassie gives a speech in reply before outers join in with their poems or songs. It can all be a bit much especially when they get to dancing highland reels after having drunk some of our National Drink.

Sunday we were invited out to lunch by friends who have some money so I was somewhat disappointed when an email arrived some days later to say that some contribution by Burns would be required. Darn, I really like Haggis but here was a premature Burns Supper where I had hoped for a real treat and a chance to chat with a few university professors to add to my font of useless knowledge. I googled “Burns and Haiku”, sadly he was such a traditionalist and fond of his own voice that he never used the form, all I got was a recommendation to burn my Haikus to CD! Next I Googled “Burns shortest poem”. He wrote countless hundreds but Google had no idea which was the shortest, so much for the internet!! We did eventually find a couple of epigrams which would not have us in the limelight for too long and neither were about sex or drinking.

Epigram Addressed To An Artist

Dear Sir, I'll gie ye some advice,  

You'll tak it no uncivil:  

You shouldna paint at angels mair ,  

But try and paint the devil.  

To paint an Angel's kittle wark ,  

Wi' Nick , there's little danger:  

You'll easy draw a lang-kent face,  

But no sae weel a stranger.

Mine was to show that even though Scots were famous inovators in road building, they are still a mess!

Epigram On Rough Roads

I'm now arrived - thanks to the gods!

Thro' pathways rough and muddy, 

A certain sign that makin roads 

Is no this people's study: 

Altho' I'm not wi' Scripture cram'd, 

I'm sure the Bible says

That heedless sinners shall be damn'd, 

Unless they mend their ways.

I did learn that our mild winter is due to a 25% rise in the suns UV output even though the light output change due to sunspot activity was only 1 to 2 %, this change affects the north Atlantic weather systems especially it seems and few had bothered to measure the UV changes before assuming that they were just related to the light output, Duh. Record sunspot activity has been related to our recent bad winters…

Sunspot Activity at 8,000-Year High | Space.com

That concludes today’s useless information .

After all that anticipation we did not get our Pudding but an excellent Beef Wellington. Tonight we will get a Haggis from one of the prize winning makers, you smirk!? Thankfully there will be no bagpipes or too much poetry though I think I shall take mine along to raise a smile ot two.

It has been my aim to do something to break the long gloom of winter by spending a while out in France helping with renovation projects but they have stopped for a while, last year we had a spa break when a friend celebrated her landmark birthday with a large group of friends. This year Julie is going to spend some time staying with her cousin an a big city for some culture and I am going to visit one of my online friends, a week to decide what to wear.

Jonathan Meades on France.

Two likes in one programme , what joy...

Jonathan Meades on France.

January, staying cheery.

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January! Month of cold and colds… I feel fragile and that is the last thing I need right now. So many of our friends have reported failing health recently, some think that is what christmas cards are for! 

The joy of reading books rather than computer screen has been rediscovered.

I feel a little low because I have gained a small amount of weight and lost fitness with spending the last two months dealing with toenails and the restricted walking with the raw toes. I am fine now and ready to get out, I can even get my feet comfortably into each of my two pairs of shoes, more comfortably than I have ever been able to do. My greatest hope is that the treatment to kill the nails works this time and the twisted horny nails never bother me again. 

Until I abandoned shoes for sandals forty years ago it was costing a fortune in shredded socks… With the muscle changes to the feet and the improved toes It might now be easier to find shoes for those occasions when they are needed, they are well over a size down from what they were before! If only it was not frosted on the ground everywhere now I could be out rebuilding some strength and stamina. I am wanting to get out and enjoy my new life…

So many of us spend years, decades, staring into the mirror telling ourselves that change could not possibly work on the raw material we see reflected in the glass. I am still pleasantly surprised when I catch a glance of myself happily going about everyday tasks. There is a sadness associated with transition. You get to know many while they are in this transit camp and get to watch them bloom. Just as they start to become beautiful their need to be here fades and they are gone leaving the memory of yet another miracle. One journey which I have followed posted a video today. For those who think that this can’t possibly work and you will be alone forever have a watch…

Debra, Transitioning Past.

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Time flies.

The days are flying by into this New Year. Often quite a sad time as the Yule tree loses its decorations and comes down for yet another year and the house looks quite plain and empty.  Fortunately  the weather this year is being much much kinder to us that last and we are having some bright sunny days like today rather than the deep freeze and thick ice on the roads we have at this time last year.

This truly is the New Year for me, and probably a good moment to mark the change from the old life to the new. After a sociable Christmas and New Year when my change has been totally accepted and hardly noted any more by close friends and hardly noticed when I go out in the wide world. I think I can now claim that my social transformation can be considered complete. It is not to say that I am perfect in every respect and I’m sure many will have second thoughts and suspicions but I no longer sense any negative reaction wherever I go. This is clearly what I had hoped before just to short few years ago while staring into a mirror and seeing a quite masculine face staring back. How could it possibly be that it could be transformed into anything even remotely representing feminine? At this point you might be hoping for a few pictures of the gruesome hairy creature I once was and an up-to-date one of me looking all glamorous but I think it is best that I deny you this pleasure.

Usually at this time of year I will be feeling quite glum, short days and gloomy light make up an often depressing time but this year I feel quite cheerful. I can hardly believe 10 days have passed already. I’m so worried that the spring will be upon us before I know it that I am already scanning the seed catalogue and planning what vegetables should go into the garden in the spring. In recent previous years I have had help in the garden from a young teenage daughter of friends which this year has quickly transformed from a young innocent creature into a real teenager and for the first time in her life has gone off to do some real schooling, she says she’s doing drama but didn’t say whether she was teaching or learning! I suspect she will not be around so much this year and so have mentioned the possibility of sharing a part garden with a direct neighbour, he was somewhat disheartened when he first arrived to learn that my vegetable garden once belonged to his cottage but had been separated from it by a high wall when someone in the past gave away the cottage but decided to keep the garden not thinking that their drunken brother deserved the pleasure it would give! It gives me a lot of pleasure, though sometimes it’s more of a punishment only softened when the crops start to produce the kind of vegetables which money cannot buy.

So far I have not broken my New Year’s resolution. I’m the most sociable people who somehow finds it difficult to be a success on social media! It is an entertaining distraction, pointing the way to many interesting things and each week many hours vanish almost without you knowing. The downside is the volume of angst which pours out onto the screen, I have had a lifetime of depression and angst of my own to deal with and though I have always been happy to be supportive and pass on what little comfort I can I am enjoying my holiday away from it. Perhaps in this day and age it is not surprising that social media sites are popular with their rapid short bursts of communication, I read mutterings online that email is obsolete in the twitbook age, perhaps for those a generation younger but I can’t help longing for a few friends who like me prefer the slower electronic version of an old fashioned letter.. 

Ironic really somebody who has always hated writing a letter then again nobody ever figured out how to do spell check which worked with a fountain pen.

Living in and age where you can buy an avocado any week of the year I miss those things which used to mark off the year in regular seasonal ways, Easter eggs are disastrous now, the first ones were on sale mid December! I have not seen hot cross buns yet, they are late this year the first ones were on special offer on New Year’s Day last year! One thing that does remain seasonal is Seville oranges for making marmalade, the only ones where the white pith cooks away to something transparent and you can never buy shop bought marmalade which taste anything like as good as home-made. Last year’s supply was finished last week so I was pleased to receive an e-mail from one of my girlfriends saying that she had spotted the first oranges in one of the few independent vegetable shops we have now. I was just going to pop in and buy a few kilos and be on my way but found myself in a long conversation with the girl who runs the shop which opened just a year or so ago. Last year was the first year she had ever made marmalade herself and like many things there are 100 ways to do it and some tricks which can make life easier, I left her with a few ideas to try though she can’t try my favourite which is to push all the fruit for a hand turned meat mincer which grinds the Orange skins into something which can be spread evenly onto a slice of hot battered toast. 

My juices are going just writing this. Guess you know what I’ll be up to tomorrow…

Resolution...

New Year is never the best time especially in these northern latitudes with so little sun and subsequent lack of vitamin D. It is best to be aware of any lowering of mood before it overwhelms you. I am so much better about this than I was in former times. 

There are so many things which need to be attended to so that when the seasons change we are ready to be free to take advantage and get out if we wish, another road trip if it can be afforded comes to mind…

Blogs were my chosen social media and continue to draw me back though many which I used to follow have now run dry… For over two years now I have been on fb and have a few there who regularly entertain me but my posts based on my dull life have not triggered much comment or sparked any regular correspondence, well those who replied most died which is not a good sign! I do know because with yet another change there impending with their timeline imposition I have read through my timeline from beginning to end. Editing is only possible post by post which is why I was still up at 4.30 this morning… In hindsight it would have been easier to go with my first thought which was to delete the account and start another, I would not be so tired now. 

New Years Resolutions are made to be broken, everybody knows that, so I have made one with the express intention of eventually breaking it. Whilst sticking with it I will be able to assess just how much that which I am choosing to give up is part of my life, do I get cravings to indulge, does anyone notice I am not engaging and get in contact. Already I feel a sense of freedom and a freeing of more time to post blogs…

Bye-bye timeline, bye-bye...

Thoughts at the year's end.

Yuletide has never been my favourite time of year as I may have mentioned…

The year flashes before your eyes as you try to write to keep distant friends and family up to date, some have had a bit of a surprise and those who should be up to speed have been hopeless at absorbing the new name! Poor postie must think there are about eight people with similar names living here.

Thank goodness for the photo files which act like a diary and supplement the hazy memory with reminders of forgotten enjoyable trips and meetings with friends. I know many disparage “the c********s letter” but it has to be better than the half hearted scribbled signature combined with blurry postmarks which have us guessing for days sometimes…

In most peoples eyes my change is a fait accompli with the only vestiges of resistance in some of those who have been closest to the old me and find it hard to overcome the imprinted automatic greetings with wrong pronouns and especially amongst my partners cousins who still flinch at a close contact. The latter becomes more pronounced with the absolute acceptance of so many, it would be impossible to fake the soft embracing hugs so many of my closer women friends share… Priceless.

For so long I have been at a happy place, completely comfortable with my strange hybrid body which seems so natural to me now. I don’t know how I would be feeling if I had lived these past years with a  sack of junk bouncing between my legs and have never regretted for a moment my decision to deal with that problem early on. Before c********s when I paid my visit to the GIC in Glasgow I found myself comparing my present self with the creature who first went there just two short years ago. I remember speaking about how much some must change at one of my earliest appointments at a time when I felt that I probably would not change too much from how I had been for most of my life. How wrong I was! 

Gone is my long hair! For this visit I arrived with a fringe, something which I have not had for nearly forty five years… Some of my nails were broken so gone was the colour which was so long my trade mark as the collection of forty small coloured bottles testifies to. For forty years I longed to wear earrings and necklaces but could not bring myself to do it after some nasty close encounters when a student in the seventies, now they are something which leaves me feeling a little naked if I go out without them… My old androgynous clothes now feel almost butch when I wear them for doing housework or gardening, being a child of the fifties and austerity it is hard to part with most of them until they are worn to rags, this may have to change! 

Stepping out with my slowly improving wardrobe is so liberating though that feeling is fast being replace with the general feeling of a happy rightness. That rightness feeds back to the confident daily presentation which increasingly has me interacting with strangers who despite a good few clues to the contrary, like size, have us chattering away with no sense that they see anything other than another woman. I have been having both my large toenails removed over the past five weeks so have spent too long in the waiting room at the doctors surgery for the procedure or subsequent dressings. During one long delayed wait with just me and another woman a long dialogue started up, first about the usual, cold wet windy weather and delays then on to life the universe and everything… I think that was my final passing out test leaving no more doubt that the project has worked.

As we work through our transitions I think we have periods of absolute comfort as we achieve some personal goal then some anxiety as we face some change. As I said at the start of the post I have been quite comfortable with my present body and for so long thought that this would be the end of my physical change. Now that GRS is now a possibility with the funding now in place I do find myself in a strange state of low anxiety that something like age related health will trip me up with the final goal in sight. I have lost some of my recent joyfulness and find myself a little lacking in focus and lethargic. Weird, you would think it would have the opposite effect.

I thought that this would be a presentless c********s, not a bad thing, I have enough to keep me entertained. Just before c*********s there was a packet delivered by post from Virginia. Those who have been reading for a while may have come across Melissa who took ill in the early summer and soon succumbed to a melanoma on her back. The packet was from her sister Robin and contained some of Melissa’s earrings and a delicate chain bracelet as mementos of our friendship. The earrings show a more flamboyant side than we were used to from her blogs and at present are hanging amongst the decorations on out Yule tree!

I guess with fewer posts published on the blogs which I follow there are fewer prompts to inspire a post from me…

I have been looking at some older photo files for another project and occasionally come across pictures of someone who looks vaguely familiar though any feeling that the creature was once me is getting weaker. If I had known just a few years back that I could be at the place I am now and feel so comfortable and what I guess can only be called “normal” with the body I inhabit, I would never have had a moments hesitation to move forward. Starring into the mirror, after decades avoiding them, I remember the fear that that hairy face and clumsy body would never easily exist in a more feminine form and move freely in the wide world. It is now just get up and go without a second thought, how wonderful it feels I lack the skill to adequately describe but it is beyond all my expectations.

The winter is setting in with record wild gales bringing down trees all over the place and snow closing roads even with all the extra resources put on standby after the last two winters. Naturally it is time to venture over the backbone of the country to the GIC in Glasgow. We made it this year, last we were iced in and could not move the car for a month, this year I got to sit in the waiting room and be tortured y some of the worst christmas music I have ever heard. Long way to go to just chat about how great it is all going but seemed pleased with how things had gone for me and letters have been written for the surgeon to eventually get on and do his thing. That is nearly two years since they first saw the long haired me on the feminine side of androgynous, I have moved more feminine than I ever though I would.

Board and lodging for the night was provided by a distant cousins family who provided a fine meal which marked a significant age for this body, not a date which I wished to “celebrate” much to the dismay of those who wished for a party. I must be getting old because I forgot to pack the bottle of Champagne which they gave me as a present, I blame the wine they gave us to drink including a marvelous bottle which I gave them as a present, our last good bottle! A 1928 Maury, pure heaven…

The next day we met up with another GIC visitor and then spent much of the rest of the day visiting a couple of museums and their cafes and restaurants to catch up on Louise’s news. Nobody ever gives us a second glance, just a few girls out for the day, how I wish I had found a way to escape like this earlier…

Back home to the freezing cold, road iced up for days and trying to tidy up for the expected crowd who are coming to eat on christmas day. Ten seems like enough without being hard work. Think it will have to be a rescued fake tree this year since one the height I wanted was £60 / $ 93 and the money is being spent on food. Shame, decorating a tee is really the best thing about this time of year. Presents have been banned this year and with luck for all time. In an ideal world you would love presents but nearly everyone is now agreed that spending money on things you would love to receive to give to others only to receive in return stuff you have no room for no need of or desire to own is just stupid. Reduced income sure focuses the mind.

Cards are all sent. Working through the address book was something of a shock as all the redundant names were scored through, what were once occasional entries every few pages have become large patches in most sections. Think this is telling us to enjoy what time we have and not put anything off for later. We have been getting out visiting friend whenever the weather permitted and in one day when perhaps we should have stayed home as record gales ripped up trees and caused flooding but who can turn down a lunch invite?

This is never my favourite time of year with the low temperatures and low light levels and endless inane christmas music, well they call it music! Roll on new year and lightening lengthening days.

Months ago facebook threatened to put your whole history out as a profile and I set off on holiday worried about what would be up when I returned. Clearly they are not as clever as they thought they were and it has taken until now to start to appear. Only a minority have voiced any disapproval of the new format. I liked being here blogging and took a long time to try that different place. Now the old concerns are flooding back, I saw it as akin to dropping into a cafe and conversing with friends, a few jokes, a few serious conversations. Now it seems all conversations are to be written on the walls for all time and everyone is supposed to be able to open my bag and browse through my diary. Perhaps it is because I am an open but fairly private person, no embarrassing pictures of me at parties to be found, I don’t even post too many things I like or much about my strange past. Does anybody out there have any thoughts on this? Are you going to just accept this new format because you want the world to know about your every move or are you going to quit in disgust or start a new empty profile and reinvite your old friends to see who still wants to know you?

Skeptical old biddy signing off...

Winter blues...

Well that's really great, I've just remembered voice-activated typing program and turned it on for the first time since I upgraded the operating system and would you believe it the first message says this program is not fully supported! Brilliant!

You must all think I've disappeared like so many others but I've been a little distracted for the last couple of months.

We had a fabulous time in France, three weeks of glorious weather, blue skies, above-average temperatures, and the sea was better than it has been all summer so got to swim almost every day. This wasn't quite the autumn break we had been expecting but we put up with it… We did manage some culture between some good food including at trip to Montpellier, our third visit over the years and we have still done nothing more than visit the Farbre art gallery and eat lunch each time at one of the open air restaurants in the park outside!

Almost immediately there was a trip south and the chance to meet up with friends and family, that marvelous restaurant lunch meeting Lucy for the first time and a few days staying with my sister's family and a chance to meet up with Jenny again this time with Vickie.

Sophie and her cat.

 

We also managed to visit the renovated Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and with Julie's magic parking badge were able to park right outside in a city where it's almost impossible to park anywhere. The place is an absolute treasure chest and you could spend months doing nothing but visit this one museum. 

They had a quite good copy of this Greek sculpture which we had seen in Athens 30 years ago. I guess this is what they must have thought of as an ideal male body, I shudder to think that I was once grouped in with the likes of this... NO no no!

We have been trying to distract ourselves from the possibility of winter blues with a few local cultural visits and quite a few of the public lectures at the University. It takes our mind off the cold damp foggy weather.

 Only for the most adventurous 

wheelchair users!

 Edinburgh Chambers Street Museum.

When I'm not trying to hibernate I have been indulging in an old hobby, having large toenails removed.

The price of having large feet is that the big toe sticks out and regularly gets something drop on it, both of them are now severely distorted and grow as thick as horn, so thick in fact the doctor hurt his wrist removing the first one, they take them off like we used to take the lid off a sardine can! This one is healing up quite nicely so with luck the second one to be removed on 19th. December will feel no worse than this on Christmas day when the house is full of friends who've come to lunch. I think this will be the first christmas not wearing my one good pair of shoes, scarlet patent leather pumps. This is all good practice for whenever I get to be a real patient sometime in the future.

Our friend Louise came to visit us on Friday arriving in the most ghastly weather, dark gloomy and windy with driving rain. The reward for horrible journey was a complete change to bright and sunny with blue skies by the time she was ready to try us out for lunch at a fancy farm shop and restaurant in the country. It's getting on for two months since we last met in Perth and went shopping together. I've been living in what we bought almost constantly for the last month! Julie wore her purchases most of the time we were in France. This time we bought black pudding which we ate with sliced fried apples which Jenny gave us on our visit to Oxford.

It was lovely to meet Louise again though sad to see somebody having to suffer through the process which was my lot just 2 to 3 years ago. I now know that I could have already been through this long ago had I just stuck to the crazy system we have in the UK and which I have long disapproved of. Thankfully things are slowly improving and soon more will be allowed to start hormones before throwing themselves out into the world with no help as in the past.

My life is now settled and the once desperate need to read those exploits of others going through the same process for information and reassurance has faded away. So many of those whose blogs I did read have finished the process, had the surgery and started to get on with their lives leaving their blogs far behind. How the whole nature of how people write their blogs has changed in the short time I have been involved... 

This week I had a quite a surprise whilst listening to the radio where the principal character had a name quite familiar to me, a male name once used to try and describe me. I didn't flinch, it was just another guy in a radio play, just another name, it was almost as if it had nothing to ever do with me…

Remembrance sunday 2011

They march to gather by the memorial where last year the 90 year old gates were stolen by scrap merchants.

The war to end all wars and create a land fit for heroes...

666 miles for lunch with Lucy.

The trip meter read 666 miles as we pulled into the car park, we were about two minutes earlier arriving than we had said we would be.

I have met a few fellow bloggers since I started and each one has been a joy to meet and Lucy was no exception. Somehow I had formed a mental image of Lucy from her blog and the few emails we had exchanged and here she was exactly as I had imagined her. If I had learned anything about Lucy it was that she was not afraid to enjoy a decent lunch and that is what we had met up to do. The walk from the car park to the restaurant in the Lanes of Brighton was a only a few minutes so we had the best part of three hours to sit and sip a glass of Tuscan wine and chat about life the universe and everything. It was a fun time which passed in a flash and I can hardly wait until we meet again.

Having come so far is only seemed sensible to pop into the local hospital to see if they could do anything about my small birth defect. We found the place on the outskirts of town overlooking the rolling chalk downs with the sea not far beyond. Heck, this was more like a  smart holiday hotel. They seemed to think it was past it’s prime and renovation was soon to commence to bring the accommodation up to a state the state hospitals could not hope to reach.

No grubby car park with horrendous charges and the reception was exactly like a smart hotel with service to match. A little formal paperwork was soon dealt with and a short walk taken to a comfortable waiting area. Shortly the person who had dealt with the appointment details a month previously found us to ensure that everything was understood then The head nurse who supervises each patient through their whole treatment came to explain about the tour of facilities and meeting with medical staff. Everyone wanted to ensure our comfort and provide drinks while we waited. I was tempted to find a sharp instrument and test wether this was all a dream, everyone was so helpful and friendly and seemed to enjoy the work they did…

Liz, the personal assistant to Mr Thomas and clinical nurse specialist stays in touch with each patient throughout the whole process and she gave three of us her standard introduction to the process and explanation of all required by each patient and then a run through of their procedure with the aid of a cutaway model of the alien structures we were born with. After all my years of interest there were still a few interesting facts which came up that I had never come across. Two of us were all ears but one did not seem to want to know exactly what was going to need to be done, just wanted to wake up fixed! Two of us were somewhat shocked by her attitude as was Liz!…

Julie joined us for a tour round the facilities which normally you would be thrilled to get to use but they start next week to update every room and ensuite facility, those lucky enough to look out to sea will think they are on holiday!

Countless apologies were made for the lateness of the surgeon who had a 12 hour work load before seeing a small group of us. Those with slightly later appointments were former patients returning for checkups and three of us were to see about our birth defects. One of the group had failed to understand that a surgeon can’t expect to be on time and had made some arrangements for soon after the notional time given for her appointment and  Liz asked two of us if we minded letting her go first, she gained no points for not giving full attention and seriousness to the matter! And looked none too happy as she left after her consultation… I got second spot having the longer drive back to my bed for the night so with a good luck message from the other girl I stepped in to meet the surgeon who could decide my fate. Julie joined me for this interesting interview. Liz, and Mr Thomas, a quiet introverted man as she had described him, worked quickly and efficiently through my notes questioning intently all the time and I added information when I felt it relavent. In no time I was ushered into an adjoining room for a close inspection of the defect. Half my clothes were soon on a chair and I was half naked on a couch, something which never bothers me, not really my body!  Another few questions while the defective parts, well those which remain, were man handled and assessed. A cool conclusion was given as to the potential of the remaining material and more than confirmed my intention to opt for a cosmetic procedure. 

Hands and voices are now probably being raised round the world in shock and horror at such a decision. How could you come so far and not get as much as you could? What if you find the perfect playmate in the future? How, why…?

I have my partner of half a lifetime still with me through all of this and she will not be expecting me to be playing away from home and after a lifetime of being unattractive romantically or lustily to more than a couple of people on this planet It is realistic not to raise  my hopes to high that an invisible alteration is going to make me hot property and highly desirable to pounce upon. A recently opened play in London was written by a woman in her late sixties who stated that she had not been touched for over thirty years but wished to have sex with someone she could like as often as possible in the time she still had. I have vague memories from the last century of physical pleasure but know this one will not see a repeat no matter what form I take. I find joy in just being as I am now and hope for more of that when mind and matter are more congruent.

I also want to recover in a reasonably short time since I am the shopper, driver, gardener, half or the partnership and Julie is the brains and not as physically able as she once was. If she remembers she will bring me the occasional hot drink while I recover, unless she is reading a good book then...

At this point I expected a demand to loose weight especially since I have regained some of the summer losses whilst testing the current menu choices in France, I was anxious that I was not going to be really accepted by some of the French family so comfort ate for a while then acceptance grew! No demand for weight loss was made and it would have been so much easier to do if ordered upon pain of refusal to operate! So which parts need hair removal? None!

Then I heard the words “I think we could possibly do this in the first half of next year…”!

I must have had a smile on my face when I returned to the waiting room and the girl who was to follow me asked the rhetorical question about it going well and I could see that it had given her some hope too as she set off for her chance at being repaired.

Now returned home and not looking forward to the darker evenings after the clocks change tonight. Some time in the very near future Liz is going to be telling me exactly how their timetable is for me but already my mind is racing trying to get organised. I still feel like I am in a game like snakes and ladders and will suddenly be flung well back. Just my pessimistic nature based on previous life experience. I will believe it when the stitches come out…

Still feel low writing when I know this is the post Melissa was waiting for and would have enjoyed and shared my joy.