March 29, 2011; 5:45 PM:

“Ten-ninety at Citizens on West Main, ten-forty. Ten-ninety at Citizens on West Main, ten-forty. Ten-ninety at Citizens on West Main, ten-forty.” started blaring over the police radio just as Bill and I turned onto West Main from South Ninth West. We had been on regular patrol for the downtown area since early morning and all had been quiet until now. A “ten-ninety” is police code for a bank alarm, a “ten-forty” means respond quickly. Citizens Bank was the most major bank in town, seated at the corner opposite the courthouse at First and Main.

I picked up the radio and hit the speaker. “Ten-four. This is O’Meara. Ten-sixty-one.” I said as I simultaneously hit the lights and siren and Bill sped up to quickly get to the most major bank in town. A “ten-four” means message received, and “ten-sixty-one” means that personnel are in the vicinity. In other words, I was letting dispatch know we were already basically there.

Shortly after I released the radio, it squawked again, “Ten-four. This is O’Reilly. Ten-sixty-one.” O’Reilly and her partner were patrolling the Old West End; our patrols met but didn’t cross. Where our patrol ended at Ninth West, theirs started at Tenth West.

“Ten-four. This is dispatch. O’Meara, O’Reilly, ten-seventy-seven.” squawked the radio. Dispatch just asked us our estimated time to arrival at the scene.

“Ten-four. This is O’Meara. About one minute.” I responded.

“Ten-four. This is O’Reilly. About two minutes.” squawked the radio. I could hear O’Reilly’s sirens approaching as we pulled into the bank’s lot and blocked one of the exits.

“Ten-four. This is dispatch. O’Reilly and O’Meara you are to block the exits from the bank parking lot. Ten-twelve. Ten-nine. This is dispatch. O’Reilly and O’Meara you are to block the exits from the bank parking lot. Ten-twelve. SWAT is en route. Ten-seventy-seven ten minutes. Ten-nine. SWAT is en route. Ten-seventy-seven ten minutes.” began blaring from the police radio as O’Reilly’s patrol car took the other exit.

The time was now six pm. The bank had closed two hours ago, and there was only one vehicle in the parking lot. A white van with the emblem of the arch-angel Michael holding a glass vial in one hand and a perfume bottle in the other; “Michael’s Scents and Potions”, it proudly proclaimed. It had New York plates.

“Gofigga! One’o dem’ Yankee thieves turnin’ ta bank robbery!” Bill said, following my train of vision. “I always say dem’ Yanks’re bad folk.” We were small town cops in a town up north of Idaho Falls, in eastern Idaho. I was born and raised in the town, but Bill, he’d come up from the deep south, went to school in Idaho Falls for a little while, then dropped out and decided to go into law enforcement. He didn’t have enough to make it back home, and saw that we had openings on our force. He and I attended the academy together; I was just graduating when he joined up. I was his first training partner. Somehow, after he graduated, he conspired to be my rookie partner when it came time for trained officers to take the new crop under our collective wings. My old senior partner, Katrina O’Reilly, took on a new rookie, and I became senior partner to Bill Wilson. Called "Black Billy" by the few punk thugs we had in town, me, of course, they'd picked up on the other officer's calling me "Mara" and changed it to "Miss Mara" to be extra derogatory.

“Ten-nine. This is dispatch. O’Reilly and O’Meara you are to block the exits from the bank parking lot. Ten-twelve. Ten-nine. This is dispatch. SWAT is en route. Ten-seventy-seven five minutes.” blared again from the radio as a scrawny Caucasian male of indeterminate age led a group of bruisers carrying heavy bags out to the van.

“Mara, yuh seein’ wut I be seein’?” Bill asked. “I ain’t nevuh seen no big men listen ta no scrawny shit like da.” He was right. The bruisers were acting more like automatons than grown men.

“Ten-eighteen. This is O’Meara. Suspects left the building, loading into a white van. Scrawny Caucasian male, age unknown. Four heavyset men, thirties. Acting strange. New York plates Michael Irene Katherine Andrew Larry Eighty-Eight. The van appears to belong to a ‘Michael’s Scents and Potions.’”

“Ten-four. This is dispatch. O’Meara you are to continue to block the exit, do not attempt to engage suspects.”

“Why all ta fuss over a scrawny Yank’n a few bruisers?” Bill asked. “Mara, I got some bad vibes goin’ on tis’un.” As I mentioned in my foreword, Mara was a nickname all the other police officers used for me. They thought it was funny, and nothing I did was going to change that. Bill was right though... Something about this whole thing was completely off.

“Ten-nine. This is dispatch. O’Reilly and O’Meara you are to block the exits...” began blaring from the police radio again as simultaneously we began to hear the sirens of the approaching SWAT and a strange noxious looking green and brown gas began emanating from the Van. “...from the bank parking lot. Ten-twelve. Ten-nine. This is dispatch.” and then the world went dark.

This story naturally seems to want really short episodes. The knock-out gas has claimed our brave officers, what will happen to them while unconscious? SWAT is still five minutes away. Will the villains stick around to add insult to injury, or run while they can?

March 30, 2011; 3:00 AM:

“It looks like they’re starting to come to.” came a disembodied voice, as my groggy mind started to clear. I opened my eyes, and tried reaching for my service weapon, only it wasn’t there, and a searing pain shot through my head, sharpest at the two points at the ends of my optic nerves. I fell back... into a bed?

Previously on The Cop, The Villain, and The Wet Work:
Officer's Thom O'Meara and Bill Wilson were patrolling downtown when a bank alarm was tripped. They and Officer Katrina O'Reilly and her partner, who were patrolling the old west end, responded and were ordered to blockade the bank's parking lot. SWAT was still five minutes away when a scrawny white man and four bruisers left the bank and entered a vehicle belonging to "Michael's Scents and Potions". The sirens for the SWAT team were just becoming audible when a green-brown gas was emitted from the van, knocking O'Meara unconscious. Where is O'Meara awakening to?

“Settle down there, cowgirl! You’re safe, you’re in the hospital.”

Again with the girl crap. How many times do I have to tell people I’m not a girl! “I...” I started to croak out, then tried again, “I’m not...”

“Easy now!” the voice said, and then there was a small blip as an intercom was engaged. “Need a nurse in room 204. Bring water.”

“I’m... not... a girl...” I finally managed, just barely a whisper, and the “a” may as well have not been uttered it was so quiet.

“Nonsense, Mara, other than that nasty ass attempt at a beard you insist on trying to grow, your body screams girl. And a damned hot spitfire of a girl too, if I do say so myself.” the doctor said, his very voice grinning.

“D... Doc... Dr. Jameson?” I managed to squeak out.

“At your service.” he said, and even though I still couldn’t open my eyes, I could HEAR the mock bow. “Damned nasty business that poisonous gas you and Bill inhaled. Damned lucky it knocked you cold, or you’d both be seeing Jesus right about now.”

“K... Kat... rina?” I rasped out, just as the nurse finally got there and held the cup of water to my mouth and told me to sip it gently.

“I think it’d be best if you rest for now...” he said, with a quality to his voice which told me that I wasn’t going to like what I was going to find out. He was right though, I was completely exhausted. But I needed to know one more thing. “B... Bill?”

“Bill’s fine, and in the next room over. He didn’t wake up quite like you did, but he’s not had the same experiences yet... His life signs normalized and he just went into a regular sleep.”

With knowing that my partner, at least, was still alive, I fell into a fitful sleep. My dreams were filled with laughing phantoms, spraying strange gases and dumping strange liquids all over. Taunting me, calling me “little girly”, all the while.

March 30, 2011; 1:00 PM:

When next I awoke it was in a much more subdued state, but when I opened my eyes, I was at least able to see without the searing pain from the first time. Dr. Jameson was there again, and so was the Chief this time.

“So what the hell happened out there?” I asked, immediately getting both of their attention.

“Dr... If you could please switch off any electronic surveillance in this room and leave us for a few minutes?” the Chief said. “I’ll let you know when it’s OK again.”

Damn. If the Chief wants this kept classified, I really seriously suspect I’m not going to like it.

Once Dr. Jameson had complied, the Chief got started. “The events last night...” So, I hadn’t lost more than the rest of that night and perhaps half of the day, since the sun was still shining into the room and I happened to know the entire 200 wing was on the eastern end of the town’s hospital. “...was not an isolated occurrence.”

No shit Sherlock. There’s no way you’re making that much fuss, nor that the crook would be able to get away with it in spite of it, in a town this size, without knowing something ahead of time. Heck. O’Reilly and I were probably the best cops the town had, and they made sure to put our beats right where we’d be able to respond quickly when the call came. I may not be a rocket scientist, but I am a cop.

“A few days ago we were alerted by Homeland Security that a man by the name of Samuel Michaels, wanted in most of the states back east, was suspected to be in Idaho, and that they had reason to believe he might come pay us a little visit.”
Now, the town where I grew up and was now a cop was extremely remote. The nearest city of note being Rexburg, a Mormon college town just north of Idaho Falls, and even that was a good hour or so away to the southeast. If the passes were clear. There’s only one reason someone would come to steal something out of a bank in this town, and that’s if they were after something specific.

“What was it? What did he steal?” I demanded.

“Patience, Thom.” he said. Whoa. Someone on the force calling me my real first name, this had to be important.

“This Michaels has been very busy in the past year or so. His business, Michael’s Scents and Potions was about to go bankrupt, and he was getting desperate. He began cooking up various drugs and other chemical compounds of a not-so-legal sort to make up for a lack of a more legal customer base. An FBI drug trafficking case raised some flags at Homeland Security because some of the drugs were not of a... conventional... recipe. This sparked an investigation that eventually led back to Michaels.

“Michaels apparently realized he was in it deep and began cooking up a completely new recipe: A poisonous gas that attacks every single nerve in the human body. The gas received its debut when Homeland raided his store. As soon as they opened the doors, nearby video surveillance being conducted by a second team reports that a green-brown gas literally enveloped the entire area around the building. Everyone on the task force died instantly. Several gawkers who stopped to look later died of complications from severe nerve damage. The only reason you and Bill are still alive is because your bodies apparently shut down before you inhaled too much of the gas, or so Jameson tells me.

“The next time Michaels showed, he was leading a gang of street toughs like a puppeteer does a string of marionettes. A bank alarm went off at a Wells Fargo in Philadelphia, straight down the US Route 1 from his home in NYC. Video surveillance showed a man matching Michaels description enter the bank and walk up to a banker where he appears to be opening an account. When Michaels received the intro packet, he lifted it up high enough that it could be seen over the windows outside...”

The Chief continued to relate to me how Michaels came to be in our town, stealing from our bank. Apparently, something he discovered on his raid back in Philly led him on a chase to try to find the lost city of Atlantis.

“Wait, didn’t we have an old coot who lived here claimed he knew the location of Atlantis?” I interrupted.

“Exactly. And that is what eventually led Michaels here. The man we knew as an ‘old coot’ was once a prominent anthropologist with the University of Philadelphia, and apparently had left clues in a safe deposit box back home before leaving everything to chase after Atlantis himself.”

“Why would you come inland to chase after Atlantis, wasn’t the lost city supposed to be an island out in the Atlantic?”

“An island yes... Where exactly it was that this island was located... there’s about as many opinions on that as there are people who’ve looked for it.”

“Hm... So why would this Michaels guy want to find Atlantis anyways? He doesn’t strike me as the sort who goes gallivanting off for explorations sake alone.”

“Just how much do you know about Atlantis myth?”

“Oh! They were supposed to have had ridiculously advanced technology!”

“Yes.”

“So we come back to my original question, why was that anthropologist living here, and why did Michaels come here... Is Atlantis nearby?”

“You must not have paid that much attention to what the coot was always saying... not Atlantis, descendants.”

“Hm...” I said thoughtfully, and then my mind did that thing you know, where when you’re thinking about one thing too hard, it goes and completely changes the topic on you.

“Hey... so what about O’Reilly?”

March 30, 2011; 2:30 PM:

“Thom...” the Chief began, his face solemn, “Sorry... Officer O’Meara. Your previous partner didn’t make it. Nor her new partner. Both died from inhaling too much of the nerve poison. They died while in the ambulance.” The chief of police betrayed absolutely no emotion, his entire body a rigid mask.

Previously on The Cop, The Villain, and The Wet Work:
Officer's Thom O'Meara and Bill Wilson were taken to the hospital after being knocked out by a nerve gas when responding to a bank alarm at Citizens Bank. There, after spending a few hours comatose Mara woke up suddenly, reaching for his service weapon and furiously opening his eyes, only to suffer excruciating pain. After the doctor settled him back down, he immediately asked about Katrina O'Reilly, but the doctor dodged the question. After being assured Bill was safe, he went back to sleep. When Mara next woke, the Chief was there and told him a wild story about a hunt for the descendants of Atlantean survivors. When Mara tried to wrap his mind around that, he suddenly remembered that he still hadn't heard what happened to O'Reilly. How will he react to what he just heard? And what will Bill do when he meets up with his partner later?

“Dammit, Chief. Why?! Why did you put us there in the first place when you knew he had a lethal gas in his possession? You should’ve known he’d use it! You shoulda known...” I began sobbing uncontrollably. “Why *sob* Kat... *sniff* she came *sob* here *sniff* to *sniff* escape all that...” I managed to get out between sobs, then my face turned to stone, and in a tone of pure ice: “She had a family, Chief! That sunnuva Michaels has just signed himself up for a one way ticket.”

“It’s out of our hands, Thom, you know that.”

“No, Chief. It's out of you and your department’s hands,” I said, my voice still ice. “Those Homeland morons have been chasing this guy for over a year and still haven’t caught him!? The monster has racked up a death count that would make Hitler green with envy, and he’s still getting away with it!? No more! When I get discharged from here, I’ll be turning in my resignation and following this Michaels on my own. *Sniffle.* O’Reilly would do the same if it were me...” my voice getting softer and trailing off after the last sniffle, a single tear trailing down my right cheek.

“Revenge isn’t the way, Thom. You should know that better than most.”

“Revenge? It’s not revenge I’m after, Chief. I want that bastard to rot in an isolated cell with no access to any of his toys for the rest of his life. Death would be too kind for the likes of a monster like him.”

“Thom...” the Chief began, and then sighed. “I suppose I should have known you’d respond this way. You and Kat shared a bond I’ve never seen between squad partners before, and I’ve been doing this job a long, long time. It wasn’t really romantic, though very intimate... It was more like long lost sisters who found each other after spending their entire lives apart. I don’t need that resignation, Thom... Just... Be careful.” And then the Chief left.

Dr. Jameson returned moments later while I was deep in reflection. I was thinking about all that Kat and I had been through since that first day, so many years ago. I was just a dumb rookie, straight from the Academy, and a country bumpkin who just barely graduated High School before immediately signing on to the force. Kat was an experienced city cop. A full police detective with a resume decorated with such accomplishments as bringing down huge smuggling rings and drug cartels. She’d fallen in love, and gotten married. Afterwards, having lost the taste for the danger, she decided to pull up her roots and move out here to the more peaceful life of a small town beat cop.

Still, at first, trouble had followed her out here and our first case quickly had us in the line of fire from a drug cartel who decided to use our town as a pit stop for smuggling illicit drugs down from Canada. Talk about a crash course. The academy definitely didn’t prepare me for that. But Kat was calm and plainly in command, she taught me everything I knew on that first case. And, yes, the Chief is right: we quickly formed a strange bond between us. We came to understand each other almost as twins might, but there was never anything romantic between us. Why would there be? She was married, and deeply in love with her husband!

But sisters... I’m a man. OK. True. Despite her marriage and obvious love for her husband, the other guys at the precinct took every opportunity to ogle her and talk dirty about her, and not only did I not join in, but I’d always get all pissed off, even though she’d always just laugh it off, saying that boys will be boys... Boys... I never did get that saying. I’m a boy. Well, a man. But I don’t act like that. Women deserve to be treated with respect, I always thought. They go through a helluva lot more than we can ever even know.

“Well, Mara, gonna have to send you home, I’m afraid.” Dr. Jameson said. “You and Bill are both in the clear. I’ve managed to clean all the poison out of your system and my tests just now show no evidence of lasting nerve damage. Damned lucky, girl. That’s what you are. You and your partner both.”

“No, doc, if I were lucky Kat wouldn’t be dead.” I said as I got into the proffered wheelchair. “Bill already signed out?”

“Naw, yuh ditz. Ah’ehm righ’ ‘er.” Bill said from outside the door. Soon Dr. Jameson had me outside with Bill and two nurses wheeled each of us to the reception desk where we signed ourselves out.

“Yer nuts if’n yuh think yuh’ahr goin’ after tha bastard alone.” Bill said after we were out of the hospital. “Ah’ehm owin’ ‘im a li’l sumthin. Us dee’ sou' blacks alway repay our debts.”

Ok, for the following to make any sense, a little background... I have gynaecomastia, it's not all that severe really, my breasts are only A-cup. I also have a lot of body hair, even for a guy, and my beard grows back in so fast I don't really bother shaving it, just sorta keep it trimmed. I just recently used some hair removal cream on my body hair, so it's still pretty short though...

So I was taking a short break in the shade by the swings on property at the apartment complex I work at when a couple of kids come up to play on the swings. When they get there, the little girl asks "Are you ok ma'am?" Now, I wasn't going to bother correcting her, and just sort of grunt "Yeah" as I'm walking away to get back to work. As I'm walking away, I hear her brother say, "That's not a girl, that's a man."

Technically, the boy is correct, I do have a little something dangling between my legs. I don't really pay all that much attention to gender though... to me, it's unimportant, I really don't give a care if what I do is considered feminine, or masculine. And since I'm asexual...

I find it interesting though, that for the little girl, she noticed my small breasts and immediately assumed I was a woman, but for the little boy, he saw my hair and immediately took me for a man.

OK, so yesterday and today I rode through the same exact speed monitor next to a school zone, at the same exact time. This is a 35mph zone when school's not either starting or ending. Yesterday, I get clocked going 31mph, today, 28mph. Yesterday, I think almost every single motorist who passed me through there honked at me and yelled at me to get off the road... I was going faster than your typical Sunday driver for freaks sake! Today, only ONE car honked at me and yelled to get off the road, and this was a coupla miles back before the speed monitor.

Seriously, when I go faster than a typical Sunday driver, you're gunna get all huffy at me, and when I go slower than a typical Sunday driver, you're gunna be all hunky dorey about it?

On my ride, I also go through this series of two red lights immediately following the other, and, no matter what, you will ALWAYS get stopped at the second one, and if you get stopped at the first one as well, oh well. This is true no matter how fast you go, because of the way the lights are timed, you simply cannot make it. Anyone who goes that route very often KNOWS that there's no point in accelerating when the first light turns green, yet every single time I go through there, at least one motorist decides it'll be fun to go into the right turn lane, accelerate crazily, swerve over in front of me into the left turn lane, and then squeal their brakes when they suddenly realize it's all for naught.

Finally, why do some motorists insist on taking turns at less than 1mph, and then accelerate so fast that they squeal their tires once the turn is over? For another motorist who might happen to be behind them, I suppose it won't be as much of a bother, kind of annoying, but it's not like they have to expend any extra effort to stay upright going that slow, and then even more extra effort to get moving since they weren't allowed to begin acceleration early enough.

It simply never ceases to amaze me how stupid motorists are.

BTW... I wonder if there's any way I can get a cop in trouble for using their siren and lights for the sole purpose of irritating a bicyclist? I mean, seriously, the other day on my ride, I had a cop come up behind me, follow me for a coupla minutes, turn his lights and siren on, and when I pull over and stop, he turns them off and drives away. Leaving me with a bike in topmost gear to try to get moving again on a busy road.

This entry is inspired in part by the thread on Character Names on the writer's forum.

NOTE: This entry is now outdated, my account name at the time of original posting had been slicersv. This had also been back when I was still hiding from myself. All entries which predate "To Be, Or Not To Be" technically predate my coming out to myself, though there's an interesting progression, reading them back over...

My most commonly used internet moniker is actually the name of one of my oldest characters who's still on speaking terms with me.

He first appeared in a story written for a state proficiency tests writing prompt, the prompt wished for us to write a story about a treasure hunt. Slicer and his older brother Viniece were born, at the time, they had no surname and the presence of any other siblings was not mentioned either for or against.

Then, in an old story I wrote a long time ago, I had a family with the surname Vinesley, and three siblings, their parents named the eldest child Viniece Cloud, a boy, the second, another boy, Slicer Steele, and the third, a girl, Yulanaia Rudai... that's where the moniker comes from, btw, that second child... The oddity of their names definitely played a big part in their identities, though the poor girl didn't live very long in the original story, but then I wrote a side story later in which the brothers went back in time and rescued her, but left a dummy in her place so that the past version of themselves still thought her dead, in order to avoid a time paradox... Ah, those were some fun little romps, the original two Searth stories and my myriads of short little side stories.

Too bad the original Searth: The Ceasing Planet is long forgotten and lost to the sands of time... aka, physical copies destroyed in a house fire, digital copy, by a virus. My mind, is, of course, very hazy on the details of what it remembers of the story. I might re-write them someday... It's been a project on my back burner for some years now. I still have both the original novella version of Searth 2, and the mini-trilogy version that was published in my high school's magazine as a three-part feature story, however. Physical copies only... bound book for the novella version, the three magazine issues for the mini-trilogy version. The only differences were that the novella was originally only split into titled chapters, the mini-trilogy was further divided into titled parts, with little micro-poems for each parts intro and outtro. If I ever do my rewrites they'll be done as full novels, with titled parts and micro-poems for part intros and outtros, and untitled chapters. I also have plans for a third "main" Searth story, but it's going to wait for the rewrites, if I ever do any of it. I also have a distant descendant who wants to start a second series even further into the future...

Interesting bit about those stories, I created a man-made organism for them that was asexual and reproduced by absorbing a male and female of any sexed organisms and then cell-splitting. The resulting eggs would then be forcibly put in the womb of the absorbed female, whose form the organism would adopt until its young matured, when hatched, the new organism would have characteristics from all three "parents"... One of my characters in Searth 1 was a "carrier" of this organism, but had been able to regain conscious control. The brothers sister was also "eaten" by one of these, as the brothers put it.

Transgender fiction? I don't think I'd classify that as such, though it was a fun little creature to create, and certainly calls traditional gender roles into question somewhat, since the creature had self-awareness and intelligence comparable to our own, but didn't really "get" the concept of gender. For it, it just took whatever form was most convenient for what it needed to do. Usually either hunt and eat, or reproduce. It may have been self-aware, but being born in a lab, and then escaping into the wild, tends to limit what you consider to be important. Especially since humans had pretty well devolved into hunt and eat, or reproduce, as well, by the time Searth 1 took place. Cannibalism was rampant in the story.

Did I mention these stories were post-apocalyptic? IIRC, I set the first one for sometime in the 3000s.

Let's see how many hits that title gets. LOL.

So yeah, my boobs are sore and tits extra puffy, have been all day today. No sign of strange lumps though, I have a feeling I'm about to grow some more. I also noticed something else over the last couple weeks: my body hair isn't growing back in as quickly, thickly, or coarsely, as it used to...

Anyone who's transitioned find that they noticed their body hair start to change last, or is this something weird with my particular inadvertent diet induced feminizing?

I now have 31" waist circumference, and 38" hip circumference. Interestingly, since the last time I measured, I lost exactly 1" at the waist, and gained it in the hips. This puts my Waist-to-Hip ratio at 0.82. My old masculine pot-belly is almost completely gone. I'm now wearing my pants and shorts between my hips and waist at a point where the circumference is 32".

As a male, I've well exceeded the point where I'd be considered low risk from body fat for health problems, which is 0.95. As a female, I'd be in the moderate risk category. As a male with an herbally-manipulated hormonal balance that probably is more like that of a female? I really don't know and I'm not sure anyone does. Do I go according to the female chart? The male chart? Somewhere between the two? *shrugs*

Other news regarding the changes my body is going through. First, hair. My back and chest and beard have all been being effected as well now. My beard still grows in, still just as thick, but it's slower. My back hair is all but gone, my chest hair is just doing a combination of what my arm hair and leg hair were and (I think) are still doing.

I don't know if this is related at all, but when I was young, I had a bit of an accident involving my face and a bunch of broken glass. As a result, my eyebrows had to be shaved off. Shortly after they'd finally grown back in, I had a charcoal grill backfire into my face when I was trying to light it, and burned my eyebrows clean off. They've never really grown back since. Now they finally are.

My boobs have become a lot more... responsive... after the recent blog entry. They did grow a little more, but only maybe at most between a quarter to half inch circumference at the bust. They are becoming a bit tougher to camouflage. Since my boobs have become as sensitive as they have, I have finally taken to wearing bra's, at least at work. First day, it felt really strange, and I was constantly hiding somewhere and adjusting it. Second day, similar, though I was able to fight the urge to adjust it. Third day, that's today, it felt perfectly natural and I hardly noticed I was wearing it unless I thought about it. I have a feeling the bra is going to eventually go the way of the wrist watch for me, and I'll never feel fully dressed unless I'm wearing one.

I do have to make an admission though, with the noreaster hanging in the region, I would normally go into a deep depression. Constant cloud and drizzle tends to do that to me, so yeah, I have SAD. As a preventative, on Monday, I doubled my Chasteberry dose... boy does it make me feel good. I'm concerned what effect this might have on me long-term, so I'll be going back down when the noreaster leaves the region.

I still have to warn you, my experiences are in no way indicative of what anyone else might experience. In fact, according to Amyzing from #gabyzone, according to her doctor, my experiences with progestins is quite unusual.

Please, do NOT try to do anything with HHM without at least consulting a medical professional if at all possible. Preferably, just don't do it. It's still a very untried territory.

So I just checked my email as part of my nightly rounds before going to bed, and as I cleared out the spam box, I casually glanced at it's contents, and intermixed were ads for boosting my boob size and ads for "increase your Testosterone"...

...

Really?

How did I even get on the list for two clearly conflicting advertisements?

For the record, I'd not be interested in either product. I could just as easily do without the boob development I've been having recently, but nor am I gunna get all pissy about it either. As for the Testosterone... Obviously I'm not interested, I'm taking one product that intentionally decreases my DHT levels, which is the final form of testosterone, and I'm taking another product that, although I didn't realize it until looking things up later, redirects at least part of my hormonal production to progestins and partially blocks androgens. I haven't ceased taking this latter product after my discovery, in fact, with the noreaster in the area, I've actually temporally doubled my dose to stave off my SAD.

I've always told people I'm not a bird, to help them remember how to spell my last name right... Well, apparently my changing hormones are deciding to make a liar of me.

I've been noticing that I've been eating less and less, more and more often. I recently went to 4 "meals" a day, a bagel for breakfast, a sandwich around 11am, another sandwich around 2pm, and a light dinner.

Today, I barely finished one sandwich by the end of the work shift. And my body first told me to eat something around 10:30, instead of 11. I took three bites of sandwich and my body said stop. Thinking something must have been off, I took one more... My body nearly screamed at me to stop eating. OK... So 11:30, my body says to eat again, so another three bites, and again, stop eating. This kept repeating until 4:30 when my shift was up and I finally finished the freaking sandwich.

Now, past normal dinner time, my body is finally saying eat again, but it's also essentially telling me eat in the same manner it's been doing all day... I doubt I'll even be able to finish a half bowl of tomato soup.

Oh, and for those who still don't get the joke I used to title the entry: Partridge, instead of Patridge.

And that happened danged quick too.

It got quite warm at work today (at least 80+), so I took off my work uniform t-shirt and since my bandeau is plainly visible through the thin fabric of my tank tops, I took it off too and wrapped it up in the work t-shirt and put both in my gear bag to hide it.

Only the Friday before last, I wore my tanks without any thought, today, I felt extremely exposed not wearing a bra.

And yeah, I get uncomfortable when I'm not wearing my wristwatch too, always have ever since I first started wearing one. I'm weird, I know.

I'm now 30" waist circumference, 38" hip, 0.79 ratio.

The body hair is continuing to become reduced, though it seems to have slowed down for now. I think it's directly linked to my growth cycles, instead of growing normally though, it's reverting. One time when I was working, I could swear I'd felt a ton of needle pricks all at once along my arms, and when I looked, everywhere that I'd felt that, the hair had turned pale and thinned drastically.

No change in the boob department.

With the discomfort from yesterday when I tried to go bra-less, I decided to leave it on today when I took off my t-shirt, I KNOW the bra was plainly visible through the undershirt, of course, so were the boobs, they've become fairly prominent now that they're B cup, but I still have a beard... No one even batted an eye or looked twice when they saw me, some even exchanged pleasant and fairly normal greetings with me.

When I was packing up to leave, I was wearing just my tank and bra, and the co-worker who'd previously scared me when he noticed me wearing my bandeau walked in and surprised me before I could throw on the t-shirt. Surprisingly, he didn't say anything at all this time or even bat an eye or look twice, he just kept complaining about some tool he couldn't seem to find...

My older brother that I work with also came up to me while the bandeau was clearly visible, and was completely normal as if there was nothing strange at all, I even drew attention to it with him, he being blood and all, by telling him how the tank was size small and how absolutely mammoth the XL uniform shirts are on me now. He just said that's what working for a living will do...

So I'm beginning to think I've been being nervous about absolutely nothing after all, at least away from the house.

Maybe the folks won't react as poorly as I'm expecting either... I suppose I don't have to explain my lack of sexuality or gender affinity when I reveal I've been growing boobs and hiding it from them. Just say I know what's causing it, and no, I won't go to a doctor for expensive prescriptions that could have far worse side effects and might not even work for their intended purpose. Nor will I have a mastectomy.

I'll just be a guy with boobs, an effeminate body shape, and less-than-normal body hair. Fine with me.

For those who don't already know this, I am non-gender, not transgender. This means I feel no strong attachment to expressing myself as one or the other gender role, I'm just me. I'm also asexual. I happen to genetically be male, so some day, if I can find an LDS wife who'd be understanding of my situation, including the fact that I'm attracted to her on a purely spiritual level, and might have difficulties sexually, I do hope to marry a woman and live a "mostly normal" male life. Though with a fair bit of effeminate tendencies. It might be a vain hope, because so far, I've never felt anything but friendship signals from the member women I've met. Though with my asexuality and non-gender issues, I may just not be able to pick up on it... I tend to be shy though and try to let the other person lead... Doesn't work too well, girls seem to expect guys to want to lead. And they're probably busy trying to get me to step up and do so, just like I'm trying to get them to lead... LOL.

I just took a good look at myself in the mirror this morning in women's underclothing, with very light padding in my bra (the sort that instead of really adding any bust, it helps to firm up the existing)...

Ignoring everything but the figure itself, I look just like a cute, fit, high school girl.

Of course, I still have a beard and too much body hair to be a girl. There's also junior ruining the image... Really damned incredible, though, that I hadn't really noticed this happening until recently.

I'm still changing, I doubt that the body shape will change too much more though. Where my body hair and boobs wind up, who knows. I'm already happy enough that I don't have to use hair removal products to keep from looking like a gorilla anymore.

My skin where the old fat deposits used to be is still loose and flabby, I imagine over time they'll tighten up. The skin where the new fat deposits have developed is extremely tight, I imagine over time that'll become more natural as well.

And you know what? I've been masculinely fit before, and I didn't have anywhere near the same energy levels or endurance that I seem to now. If it takes looking a bit like a girl to feel this healthy, then damn it, I definitely don't mind at all. I suppose most guys would, but I'm not most guys, I'm a non-gender.

I fought against myself for a long time to try to be more "male", it took until this year for me to truly accept that's just not gunna happen and me be happy. I don't have an overwhelming need to be female either, though, so I imagine suicidal thoughts would never have entered the equation even had I continued trying to deny myself.

So living as an effeminate guy, seems to be the way the rest of my life will be.

And no, I'm not gay either, though as an asexual a lot of people are probably going to think I am.

To reach my current weight goal of 140 pounds. After the weight loss of 30 pounds over about a three month period, it feels slower now that I'm watching it this closely. (Note: I'm about 5'5" in height, so 140 seems like a good weight to me.)

My loose areas of skin where old fat deposits were are pretty well tightened up now, and there don't appear to be any visible stretch marks left behind.

When I look at my silhouette in just work shorts, bra, and tank, I see a girl. Complete with a killer athletic figure and tiny boobs. Not sure how no one seems to be noticing, or if they are, they aren't saying anything.

Or at least, she knows I'm wearing a bandeau sports bra.

I stopped at the store on the way home from work and picked up 7 24oz bottles of water, 24 energy shots, and some candy bars (I always used to tease girls about chocolate cravings... now I'm experiencing them, it must be hormonal...) This is in addition to my work kit that weighs several pounds on its own. Anyways, with such a heavy load sitting on the rack over my rear tire, I decided not to leave it strapped on while I put my work uniform t-shirt back on over my bra and undershirt combination. Needless to say, she noticed the bra.

She was like, "what's that?" I'm like, "what?" She's like, "underneath your shirt, is that a bandage?" I'm like, "you can call it that," and she's like, "what's going on?" I just ignore her, trying to come up with a decent excuse that doesn't bring up any other baggage, and she asks again, more insistent. Finally, I say "Nipple irritation," which is precisely true, I didn't start wearing it until my breasts became too sensitive not to. She pauses for a moment, and then is like, "I just never know with you do I."

So, I guess she's accepting enough. Most likely she won't tell Dad, she tells him very little in general about anything. It's Dad I'm worried about, he tends not to take things that are different about me from other guys well.

Had an interesting day at work today.

A couple weeks back our housecleaning crew (nicknamed The Wrecking Crew, which I'll get to later) was emptying out an apartment that had been just recently vacated when they turned on the stove to clean without first checking if anything was in it. So of course, there were a bunch of plastic handled pot lids inside, which melted and started a little fire. That wasn't really all that interesting a day for me, I was clear out back end of property and just saw the commotion over it from a distance, heard the story later.

Anyways, tomorrow, we're supposed to have new residents moving into that same apartment, so the office ladies went in and were immediately bombarded by the smell of smoke and fire residue. They go closer to the stove, and there's mildew odor as well, most likely from the fire extinguishers residue not being cleaned up soon enough.

Even though I'm supposed to be a groundskeeper, not indoor maintenance, and definitely not housekeeping, the housekeeping crew is, well, they're called The Wrecking Crew for a reason... and indoor maintenance was busy fixing up another apartment where the evicts had torn the place up, so I was the only person left for the job.

While I'm in there, just finishing up initial mopping, the office ladies walk in and are like, "Hm... It smells a lot better, you're doing a good job." and leave. I then start the cinderalla'ing, hands and knees scrubbing, having spread the cleaning agent with the mop, and finishing that up, take everything back to the shop and return with an Industrial Smoke and Odor Eliminator product, which I then spray liberally inside the stove, fridge, laundry room, closets, bathroom, and main areas of the apartment.

I did all this in less than an hour.

The office ladies were apparently quite impressed, and I told them about how I used to work as a tour bus cleaner and we'd often get a phenomenon I refer to as the "beer bus", so I'm no stranger to odor elimination. I also admitted to having been on The Wrecking Crew for a short time, but that Diane got rid of me because I wasn't fast enough. They got a real kick out of that.

But my bustline just had some redistribution occur.

My bust measurements had been 34, 38, 35. They are now 33, 38, 36.

In plainer terms, below the bust used to have a 34 inch circumference, at the bust, 38 inch, and above the bust 35 inch. Now, below the bust is a 33 inch circumference, at the bust is still 38 inches, and above the bust is now 36 inches.

Even plainer terms, I lost an inch from my chest (not bust!) and added it to my cleavage (not bust!).

My bra size is still 38B, but it APPEARS more prominent.

Something I found interesting while randomly surfing wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_height#Average_height_aro...

Scroll down towards the bottom and you'll see this line:

U.S. 1.789 m (5 ft 10 1⁄2 in) 1.648 m (5 ft 5 in) White Americans, 20—39 Measured 2003—2006 [72]

I have mentioned I'm 5'5", right? And that my Pattengale character is also 5'5"? Trust me, I didn't know this when I did that!

And I lost another inch from my waist and an inch from my height.

I've always been 5'5.5" ever since... mid-high school? Fairly recently, I've been feeling like I'm slightly shorter, and when I googled "m2f hrt shrinking", there were results, so apparently, some people do experience a slight loss of height on hrt. So I decided last night to check, and I was 5'4.5". Decided to measure again this morning to be certain, and it came up the same, maybe a sixteenth of an inch higher.

I also had to tighten my belt a little bit more, measured my waist this morning, and I'm now a 29" waist, still 38" hips. Oddly, my weight's actually gone back up a pound. Maybe it's the boobs, they were pretty irritable last night. My hips are kinda sore too, I've heard stories about hips rotating forwards or something like that and that they can have a dull ache to more severe pain associated with it.

I think I'm going to have to re-evaluate just how powerful these herbs are, I would've sworn that my waist couldn't get any narrower without my rib-cage starting to show, just last week, now it's gotten an inch narrower, and none of my ribs are showing. My hips are also seeming to change in some way other than just having some fat put on the sides of them.

It seems to take a little while for effects to start being noticeable, but once they are, they seem to start moving fast.

I don't remember if I've mentioned this yet on a blog, but my eyebrows are very definitely growing back in, and doing so in a tighter, more feminine, pattern. I lost them due to a coupla accidents burning them completely out when I was much younger, and they never really grew back.

Anyways... dunno what sort of birthday this'll be, it landed on a Sunday this year, so we can't go out to dinner somewhere (the LDS don't spend money on Sundays). It's also dreary out this entire weekend, and tomorrow still, at least. I never look further than a day in advance, it's usually different by the time you get there.

Oh, for those who didn't know, I've only been pretending to be 26, now it's official.

I wanted to try on womens cycling kit without doing so in the presence of the guys who work at the local bike shop just down the street. Some of them have known me since I was like eight years old. Others, since they've started working there. I don't know if any of the rest of you are familiar with the kind of bond that forms when you're an extremely regular customer at a shop of that sort for 18 years, but if you are, you'll understand my reluctance to out myself to my "bicycling family".

Because that's exactly what the folks at Reggie's Bike Shop are for me, a second family.

Anyways, there were a couple of guys next to all the cycling kit setting up some sort of training machine the entire time I was there, and they must have thought me extremely odd.

First, I go over there, and see only mens kit, so I wander over to another part of the store that proudly proclaimed "Women" ... yeah, normal gym type stuff there, so back over to where I saw the mens kit for a more thorough search. Lo and behold, the guys had rolled other racks closer to the bike kit rack so that it was covering the womens side! I ask them if there's any way I can get to the other side of the rack, and they roll the rack around for me. I know it was obvious that only womens stuff was on that side, and my beard stubble should have been fairly prominent, but they didn't say anything.

I then start searching through the stuff for medium shorts, capris, and tops, having decided on the way there that that was the size I most likely would be. They only carried one brand of the capri style bottoms, Nishiki, so I took a pair of those in medium, a pair of medium shorts in each of the three brands carried, Nishiki included, and the only medium top they had, the brand escapes me. Only the two brands of shorts whose names escape me fit right, everything else was loose.

So I try smalls in everything I can. Again, only one top in the desired size, of a different brand from the medium, and it is still a little loose, but better, the Nishiki shorts and capri's were perfect. The two brands which fitted me in medium also fitted me in small, though a little tight, but I kinda like tight.

Finally, to prove my sadism, I get a pair of men's small shorts and mens medium shorts and try them. These were exactly what I was expecting: the small shorts almost refused to come up over my hips and then compressed them nastily once I managed to get them in place, and the mediums rode up into my bum in the legs, and the waist rolled down towards my groin.

The fitting room had a three item limit, so this entire time I'm making trips back and forth to where these two guys are working, with mostly womens kit, and once with mens kit, and it's obvious I've been trying them on. I'm sure they must have decided I was some sort of fruit.

But you know, I really didn't care what they were thinking, while if I had been at the bike shop... well, there's a reason I went all the way out to a sporting goods store instead. I wouldn't have been able to get myself to do it at the bike shop.

I just noticed as I was about to post this that my blogs are suddenly getting an awful lot of reads, I'm not that interesting am I?

Well, on to the purposes of writing this morning.

I've recently noticed that my fingernails, toenails, and the bit of skin that comes over them slightly, have all gotten incredibly healthy.

My nails have always grown uneven, with bits that grow so densely they look like bone of the internal variety, and bits that are so thin I may as well not have them. Now, they're growing evenly at just the right density to look like normal, healthy, nails.

That bit of skin over them too, has always grown patchy. Some digits it wouldn't grow at all and I'd develop deep sores and abrasions that went halfway up my tips, and some digits it'd grow so much that it'd completely envelop the nail! Ingrown nails were a constant worry for me, and a large part of my having developed a nail biting habit in the first place was trying to control these issues. As a male, I wasn't exactly raised to carry a nail file around, and these things were more serious than could be controlled in privacy before going to bed at night.

Now, the skin is growing exactly as it should, covering just the bit of the nail where it meets the rest of the digit, and no farther, nor missing altogether. You can still see on my left pointer finger evidence of the major deep channel of an abrasion that was the worst of the ones that didn't grow at all, but it's well faded, and the skin is recovering quickly. All other digits it's as though there had never been a problem at all.

I'm almost certain this is due to my hormonal balance. My old hormone balance had been one of seriously excessive dihydrotestosterone, I was probably reducing my free testosterone too fast to even have a chance to use any of it to tone up, which caused my slightness. Further, I wouldn't at all be surprised if I had a low progesterone and estrogen level even for a male. Both of the "female" hormones are known to encourage healthier skin, nails, and hair. As far as I'm aware, DHT is, if anything, the opposite.

My mother noticed the difference in my nails the other day and was actually the one who brought me to awareness of it, she'd assumed it had been "a deficiency in my diet that I've inadvertently corrected with my supplements..." ... if she only knew.

The final component of the title of this entry - my breasts. At work yesterday I was having a heckuva time keeping my bandeau where it belongs, it felt as though it was too loose. So when I got up this morning, I measured.

I had the unfortunate problem when buying my bandeaus that I knew I could go either up, or down, in band size as I developed, and my band size, 38, was just at the tipping point that could use either a size down, or a size up. I decided to go with the size up, thinking it'd be more likely that I'd need to go up, not down, right? I probably should've counted on things going opposite what I expected and gone the opposite direction. I've lost an inch below and above, and a half inch at, my bust. This is probably from my generalized weight loss (142 now!).

What this means, though, is that I now need a 36 band size, which means my bandeaus are too large! Despite losing a half inch in the bust, if anything, I look a little more developed... Of course, according to everything I've read about breasts, that should be normal, I'm still a B cup, but instead of being a 38B, I'm a 36B, and the same cup size at smaller band sizes is supposed to appear more prominent.

I hope I don't end up any larger than a 36C, I have a feeling they'd be unwieldy enough by then.

Not literally. My entry titles are often not literal.

Remember, though, how in Cinderella, the way they determined who she was, was by finding who the missing glass slipper belonged to. They determined that by trying to find who it was the "perfect fit" for.

Well, you may recall that I'd never been able to find gloves that fit until I couldn't find mens small and tried womens, finding that, for the first time in my life, I could actually understand the phrase "fits like a glove".

Well, on chat earlier today Kristen and I were talking about whether I should get clothes that fit in the misses dept, or try to find a reasonable match in the mens and belt them in. This led to a generalized mens fashion discussion, which led to men wearing heels, which led to shoe sizes, mens and womens, which led to me admitting that I wear my shoes too large in the toe in order to have room in the width...

I decided then, to actually measure my foot, and then consult an online sizing chart. I couldn't find even a close approximation in the mens chart, I'd have to wear a mens 7 4e, or 7 extra wide, and 7 wides aren't even made, let alone 7 extra wide. Shoot, finding 8 wides would be near impossible. Anyways, if such a shoe were to exist, it might be only slightly too big on me, but the dimensions would be close.

So I decided heck, I have womens hands, maybe I have womens feet. Consulted the womens chart, and found that my foot size was nearly ideally designed to fit in a womens 8.5 d, or 8.5 wide. At least according to the charts and my measurements.

So I went to the mall and tried on lots of shoes in all the various shoe stores, and came to the undeniable conclusion: My ideal shoe size is, indeed, womens 8.5 wide. Every single shoe, every single style, that I tried on in that size, fit my foot like a womens small glove. ;P

I hunted the mens shoes for something that approximated my measurements, and found absolutely nothing. 7 was indeed pretty close in the toe, but was far too narrow, 8 wides were clown shoes, 8.5 regular, as I've been wearing, almost fits in the width (slightly narrow yet), but has way too much toe room. 8.5 wides like I used to wear before I started to simultaneously lose weight and feminize, were really clown shoes.

Just like my girly hands, there's just no denying it, I also have girly feet. What makes this even stranger is that I had no trouble finding womens 8.5 d's, while finding mens 7's at all, 8 e's, or 8.5's has always been a task.

Not sure what to do about when I go bowling, alleys have always only carried, at least for mens, only regulars. Never asked for a womens size, obviously. But if they only carry womens sizes in regulars as well, guess when bowling I'll just have to deal with having entirely too much toe room. Mens 8.5 with only just over 10 inches will be marginally better for my just under 10 inch foot than womens 10 with 10.31 inches... And, if the alley doesn't carry half sizes either, which many don't... Men's 9's would still be marginally better than womens 10s. If they have wides in womens, but only whole sizes, a 9 wide is very very close.

Could see if I can find and buy bowling shoes that fit, I suppose... I've never really had a huge shoe collection, and I don't really go bowling that often, but then, I've never actually found a shoe size that actually fit before.

I came out to my older brother at work yesterday. I'd been debating with myself internally over doing so, but since we were about to go off-property for a while to do another properties shrubs, and it got over 80 degrees quickly, I really wanted to take the uniform t-shirt off. Problem was, I was wearing a bra with straps and a thin tank top underneath.

I know I could have told a half-truth about gynaecomastia and nipple chafing, but I wanted to be fully honest with him. To be honest, I think I was hoping in some corner of my mind to find some local support.

Well, he actually surprised me, he was not only understanding and accepting but he said, "well, that would certainly explain a lot of the things that've always been odd about you."

It's time for full disclosure. It is time to stop "being nobler in the mind to suffer", and to "take arms against a sea of troubles."

I am transgender. I always have been transgender. For years, after having been abused by a psychiatrist/psychologist (don't really know which), I've been suppressing my wish to be female. The suppression was so deep that I didn't really even know what I was doing. The wish to be female was even deeper, though. I think this is what caused my quarterly depressions. Four times a year, the internal battle would get to be too much and my mind would just shut down.

I now believe that my Pattengale character was my Heavenly Father's way of helping me come to terms with this, and to realize, yes, he does love me, and yes, he will still love me if I take this all the way. Those of you who don't believe we have a God, a father in heaven, by all means, think of it as some portion of my subconscious, you wouldn't be too far from the truth, since God works in mysterious ways, and his ways are not our ways.

I'm still not sure how far I want to take this, or how quickly, but this much I do know: I'm now going to use HHM as a serious attempt at feminizing my hormonal balance.

As such, I'm adding licorice to my cocktail, boosting my saw palmetto and chasteberry, and taking 24 grams of whole soy germ intentionally throughout the course of a day. 24 grams of whole soy germ actually slightly exceeds the typical estradiol dose in potency, just with phytoestrogens instead. I'm now taking an amount of chasteberry that, for me, seems to have the strongest feminizing effect without the opiate becoming too strong or the prolactin effect becoming too severe. I'm taking enough saw palmetto that nearly no testosterone should be being reduced to dihydrotestosterone, and when I start on the licorice (still waiting for it to come) I'll keep that one fairly low dose, since it is not only a powerful 17,20 lyase inhibitor, but also severely inhibits the reduction of cortisol to cortisone, which can cause pseudoaldosteronism, where excessive amounts of cortisol leads to "inappropriate stimulation of the mineralocorticoid receptor by cortisol." I'm going to need to also add a potassium supplement to counteract another of licorices problems: burns off potassium from the body faster.

I do not recommend anyone to follow me in this, I'm playing with fire, but I really honestly cannot afford a doctor at all. This cocktail is only going to cost about 100 a month, regular doctor visits, and hormones would probably cost significantly more. I highly doubt any doctor will castrate me just because I ask them to, which would reduce me to just needing the soy and chasteberry, which are safer... Would only be a one-time thing too. Whatever, junior and his twin brothers will just have to hang in there for a little longer.

Will I eventually make a full transition? This does seem likely at this point, but I'm not quite ready to fully contemplate that right now.

The reason this comes now is because I just passed through the second of my previous quarterly depressions since starting my herbals, and, like last time, a little more came out of the suppressed bubble I've been holding for so long.

Well, this is it. I'm done. Not to be is out, I'm to be.

I didn't want to write this in with the other entry, since this is a much different sort of topic. The previous entry today was much harder to write, so I decided to do it first. Anyways!

My weight loss goal of 140 pounds was reached as of yesterday morning. I lost roughly 45 pounds between late June and now.

I still have a little bit of remaining pudge in some areas, but that should go soon enough as I move on to the next stage of my get healthy plan: muscle toning.

I'm not interested in building up huge masses of ugly arse muscle, but I do wish to have a more toned upper body than I do now. Wiry strength type of toning.

As such, I'm going to need to look into getting a membership with either a gym or the Y so I can pick up some cardio and lifting. My job alone isn't going to cut it, and the bike is only good for my already seriously well toned lower body.

Don't bother wishing me luck, all this takes is a little drive to actually do it and avoiding the depressions - since with the last entry I've detailed why the depressions aren't likely to bother me ever again, I should have no problems getting to where I want to be.

Just went to a local thrift store where no one pays much attention to what others are doing and tried on various pant sizes. 30" mens relaxed fit slip off my waist and sit around my crotch, 29" mens relaxed fit compress my hips and still want to slip off my waist, just can't with the hip compression going on.

Sizes 4-6 womens though... depending on style, are almost perfect. There was this pair of size 5 skinny jeans that were practically molded for me...

Now, I can't of course know that particular style's waist and hip, but the "typical" for a size 5 is supposed to be 26" waist and 36" hips according to wikipedia... whose accuracy may be questionable.

According to wikipedia, me being in a juniors size makes a fair bit of sense though, as I also seem to have a high bust, and I'm 5'4.5".

You know, I've always been a little bit pudgy, due to the depressions I've fought for so long, maybe this feminine physique was always hiding under all that adipose.

I -thought- I was fairly fit masculinely once, but perhaps I wasn't really, since I never actually went through a proper weight loss regime and went straight to toning like the dumb male I was pretending to be.

There's a problem though, junior and his twin brothers are very noticeable with the flat crotch of womens pant styles, and it's almost certain no one is going to mistake me for anything but a man wearing womens pants... I tried tucking my genitals and didn't have too much success.

Any tips would be welcome. Could always buy more shapers I suppose and just always wear shapers which seem to hold a tuck nicely, even encourages junior to invert himself most of the time.

I didn't actually buy anything at the thrift store, going to do that tomorrow before church at Target now that I have a fair idea of my size.

Take to flight, like a foolish angel!

(Lines from Yuki Kajiura's "Fiction", title song of the album that "Open Your Heart" is contained on.)

Today was an eventful day. Chose my new name this morning - Abigail Drew - shared it with my older brother at work, and towards the end of the day I finally got up the nerve to do something real major: Talk to my bishop. By the end of my meeting with him, I'd worked up the nerve to do something even more major: Set a date for telling the family.

I wasn't kidding when I posted a short time ago that I'm done living the lies. Done suppressing who I am to such a degree that even I didn't know what I was doing, or that it was the underlying cause for my cyclic depressions. Full disclosure. That's what I said. I never lie intentionally.

Once I'd realized I was living a lie of my own fashioning, there was nothing for it but to stop lying. First, was my older brother who I'd been more hopeful for acceptance, though not the amount of understanding that he's been showing. I am grateful to him for his support, it made it easier for me to face the next step, which was facing my ecclesiastical leader.

I originally intended on talking to him at church yesterday, but events decreed otherwise. Perhaps that was for the best. When it's so obvious that you're walking into the bishops office in front of all the other membership of the ward, as an LDS, you become very self conscious, at least I do. Members are not SUPPOSED to gossip, but they do, I've always fought the gossip bug something fierce myself, so I do not begrudge people for being unable to contain the viper.

As it is, I almost didn't make the call during work to set up meeting him afterwards. I'd made a bargain with myself, and if a certain event had not occurred to send me somewhere private enough that I wasn't worried about getting in trouble for using my phone for private business... I wouldn't make the call. The event occurred.

You all should well know by now I do not believe in such hogwash as "luck", or "coincidence". Everything in this world is linked. And not just physically. Everything. I also don't believe in the word "try". Yoda really was right when he said there's only "do, or do not". Sure, sometimes you don't quite succeed at do at first, but if you keep WORKING at it, you will do.

Anyways, so I called my bishop and asked if it were possible for me to meet him immediately after work and before his family home evening with his wife. His kids are grown and gone, so it's just him and his wife now... And there I go meandering again, please, bear with me. He said yes, and so the meeting was set.

Around about 5pm, I'm in front of his door, ringing the bell, getting really nervous. He welcomed me in, offered me a (easy to wash) seat. Hey, I don't blame him, I get seriously filthy at work most of the time. And began asking me what was wrong.

My bishop tends to be extremely oblivious and had never even really heard of transgender. He knew about the op, of course, but he didn't know any of the why's or anything. So I attempted to explain it.

We get about halfway into him reading junk from the handbook on homosexuality when I suddenly realize we hadn't opened with prayer. I gently reminded my bishop of this, and then offered prayer.

Now. You already know I don't believe in coincidence, right? As soon as we finished praying and lifted our heads, you could literally see the light bulb go off in his head. It was really pretty cool.

He found that there really is some policy regarding us, though for reasons I cannot explain here, I cannot divulge what any of that is. Please. Don't ask me to. You won't get anywhere.

To make a long story short, my Bishop was accepting, tolerant, and as supportive as he could be given the circumstances. As we were getting close to finishing our chat, he asked if I had any immediate concerns, and brought up the difficulty I was going to have in telling my family. He was compassionate, but not really understanding the issue. His compassion, however, emboldened me to ask him to be present when I drop the bombshell. He graciously agreed.

He asked when I'd like to do this, and I replied, of course, "as soon as possible."

My bishop can be quite eccentric, and he took this quite literally. He was like, well, have FHE tonight, something about a presidency meeting tomorrow night, could do Wednesday or Thursday. Thursday might be better... Is Thursday good? At first, I was like sure! Then remembered that most of us are rather busy on Thursday nights. Especially the most important two! My parents! I mentioned this, and he was like, well, Saturday around... Some early hour or such because of another meeting he had in the evening. Then he offered Sunday after church, we further discussed that option, and the result was that around 8:20-8:30, he'd come.

I'm thinking I'll call for a family meeting at 9pm, he'll turn up at 8:30, visit for a while, and then join the family meeting, where I'll finally find out if there's any way I can make this happen, and still hang on to my family in the process. It'll be easier for me to do it all at once like this, for those who live there.

Oh, and also at work I got talking with two of the office ladies, about my weight loss and cyclic depressions et all (but not my TG status - though hints were dropped), and apparently I share my present size with the slimmer of the two and she might be bringing me some old castoff pants to wear. Will save me some money if they're in good shape, and it allows me to start prepping the work place for my coming out there.

I also stopped on the way home at a clothing store after the bishops and bought a reasonably nice pair of womens dress slacks. When I got home, my mom about blew a gasket and insisted we were going to a mens store to get me fitted. I tried explaining you're not fitting any mens pants on 37" hips and a 28" slightly high waist. Well, not without getting it custom tailored. She insisted on measuring me. Through my heavy work clothing, at what she thought was my waist, when I have like 4 layers of clothing and a lot bunched up at my real waist to help disguise my figure... I do worry about her...

For anyone who managed to read this entire rambling, boring, wall of text...
Bless you for your patience,

Abigail Drew.

I am not imagining things. To be honest, I was slightly concerned after my mothers stunt last night that perhaps I'm merely seeing what I want to see. That my own measuring is the measuring that's wrong. That she was correct in measuring my loose flab as waist - loosely.

But this morning at work, my boss was all like, "So now you've lost all that weight, when are you gunna start bulking up?" Several other comments, and then, the bombshell: "You're starting to get a bit of a girlish figure." Damn. That felt good. Scary too though.

While I was taking that in, I'd fallen silent, and she was like, what's wrong, you suddenly got silent. Since we were in front of EVERYONE at this time, I just sort of brushed it off with something non-committal. But internally, I was fighting a bit of a battle.

I had not yet laid any plans at all for coming out at work. None. I knew it was an eventuality, but I felt they should come after religion and family. But my boss had noticed something my own mother continues to refuse to.

So the battle was thus: should I, or should I not tell my boss. And in what manner should I approach this.

At first, I was kind of half-pacing near her office door, going back and forth on talking to her directly, which just did not feel right for some reason. Eventually, someone else came and went in and started having a meeting with her, which precluded that avenue. Then I got my whisper of guidance that I depend so heavily on in my life.

I was prompted to write her a note on a folded sheet of paper towel. I had no clue what I was going to write. None at all, but as I got a pen in my hand, and made a space to write, the words just flowed onto the sheet. I completely filled an entire side of an entire sheet of paper towel. I essentially just covered the basics, that I've been suppressing something for most of my life and that it had caused me cyclic depression, and that I was now facing my demons, and came out to her. I told her I was transgender, though I did not tell her anything about what it means. I stated concern for my position at the complex, and asked for her acceptance of the real me. I signed it with my new name.

I then folded it four ways, and wrote "For *name*, Drew" on one side. I went into her office and slipped her the note, quietly said read it when you can, she said thank you, and I went back to work.

Most of the rest of the day, nothing happened at all, it just sat under her coffee mug. After she came back from her lunch break, though, I saw her reading it. A little while later, I saw her glance my way, then I saw her carefully crumple up the sheet and throw it away. I have not heard anything from her yet.

I'm hoping that no news is, indeed, good news in this case.

Still though, if my boss is starting to notice, who else might be and are just holding their tongue? I'm still a hairy ape, though it's much much less than it once was. I have too many changes to make before I can start really presenting female, and it's scary to think that I might not have as much control over the flow of dissemination of awareness of my status as I would like.

Today, my new bra's came in my new band size. It's amazing how much nicer it is to wear a bra that fits again. I noticed something though, while trying them on - my bust is more prominent, again.

Funny thing is, when I measured it after that observation, it was actually only 37", just shy. My under the bust remains 32", and, most curious of all - my over the bust went down to 35" from 36". Yet my bust appeared more prominent. Then I noticed it. According to everything that I've read and studied, this should be impossible - my shoulders narrowed.

I -KNOW- that shouldn't happen, so I measured at least a dozen times, and every single time it came back the same. I've lost an inch in my shoulders. It wasn't a loss of muscle mass, if anything, the muscles there are even more apparent now.

It shouldn't be possible. But it sure as I breath air and drink water happened.

I think I need to see a urologist,

Abigail Drew.

(Another title which is a line from Fiction, the song has especial meaning to me right now, which I think you can imagine why: http://www.kovideo.net/fiction-lyrics-yuki-kajiura-810763.html)

So I talked to the other fish yesterday. Remember, my sister just older than I and myself were called Fish in high school? Because of the massive amounts of water we'd both drink.

Anyways, I'm not sure why I did it, in retrospect I probably should have waited until after the family meeting and just hoped if things went south no one beat me to it.

She says she's not rejecting me, but all the same, she insists I've let Satan get to me. Why on earth would anyone ever WANT to come to the conclusion that they're transgender? It's a scary situation to be in, and a painful one. Satan doesn't tempt us with things that aren't "quick fixes", or appear to be "complete nirvana". Being transgender is anything but.

I know she loves me, but I have a feeling that to her, I will never be other than her brother. A brother who never really was. The question will be only, can she accept me enough to be around me?

Needless to say, I was feeling rather under the weather yesterday, and I guess everyone at work noticed, because one of the guys offered to pick me up something at the gas station. I said "only if you're buying!" trying to make myself seem more cheerful than I was feeling. He wasn't buying the show, though, and said, "yeah, I'll buy." In a way that made it obvious he knew better than the show I was trying to put on.

He asked what to get, and I hesitated a moment, and then said to get me a dew. Apparently, I no longer like mountain dew. I took one sip of it when he gave it to me and I had to move off so they couldn't see the screwed up face I made.

My body was instantly crying out stop! Poison! This is very strange to me, because Mountain Dew has always been one of my favorite soft drinks.

To be honest, I'm still feeling a bit blue, and probably will be until Sunday when the curtain rises. Even then, I suppose it depends on the reaction I get to my story whether the clouds burn off with the rising of the curtain, or if things get worse.

Interestingly, I seem to be at absolutely no risk of actual depression. When I get depressed, I shut down, I don't talk, barely eat, and do a whole lot of sleeping. While I'm feeling a little lethargic, I'm eating normally, well, my new normally, and I am talking about it. Either Abigail copes with depression a whole lot better than Andrew ever did, or I'm not really depressed, even now.

Incomprehensible.

Even when I was trying to be one, I never really did understand the "other guys". Is it really so important that yours is bigger, or better, or stronger, or whatever? I'm competitive, sure, but mostly against myself. I don't really care if I keep losing to a more skilled FPS player - if I can manage to snipe him even 1 more time than before, I feel good about it. If I can manage to stay alive even 1 second longer than last round, that's great success. If I fail, I laugh it off.

I also don't get the way they never can seem to think with anything located above their waist.

The guys at work already knew. They'd apparently been noticing my transformation and figured it out and, instead of coming to me to ask for confirmation, they go to my brother! And he tells them!

He came up to me while I was blowing some leaves off the parking lot into the grass so the mowers could chew them up for us when they came later. I turned off the blower, and we talked for a bit. He asks me if the boss has said anything to me, which she hasn't, and I tell him so, and then add, "so I guess everything's all right on the work front, at least for now, until things get too obvious and the guys start to notice... not sure how they'll react."

The goofball then informs me that he'd already told them about me YESTERDAY, BEFORE the pop incident! Does it occur to any of them to come to me first!? Of course not. And then letting me wallow in fear when they already knew... stupid numbnuts, the lotta em.

This brings me to a new problem. The guy who offered to buy me that dew yesterday, apparently his first reaction was "so is 'he' gay?" and when John tells him that "if anything 'she' is a lesbian, since she likes girls and feels she is a girl.", conveniently ignoring that I've already told him I'm bi... anyways, so when John tells him that, it's apparently "OK" and when I confronted this idiot today, he's all like, "so when're you getting it done." and "go to Europe, it'll be cheaper, and I'll go with you." and "just let me know when you get it done, I'll come get you..."

Also, all day at work he's driving that Plume of Death truck of his by me and revving the motor... Far more often than he used to.

I call it the Plume of Death because the exhaust from that thing smells horrible. Not the worst smelling truck exhaust I've ever smelled, but it's definitely up there. He prefers to call it the Smoking Gun.

Is this guy for real? Please tell me he's just messing with me.

It's really kind of disgusting that he'd act this way when I still have a beard and look like a gorilla. If a feminine one. Speaking of... I really can't do electrolysis yet (want to make sure I do it right), and I've always hated shaving - anyone know if sugaring a beard works? Already tried waxing it, that was a complete fail. And there're just way too many hairs for an epilator.

Well, at least they seem OK with it, the only people left at work now that I don't know if they know (with my track record, they probably do) are the office ladies aside from the boss.

My "hints" must be too strong. Funny how I've been dropping even stronger hints in Moms direction... Maybe Sunday won't be such a big reveal after all.

Oh, and you may have noticed the more cheerful note this entry has compared to this mornings, apparently, all it takes to cheer me up is one tiny bit of good news. Mood swings?

It seems I'm really really poor at keeping up the Andrew mask already,

Abigail Drew.

My author name and account name have been changed to Abigail Drew, all three chapters of Open Your Heart, along with my organizer pages, have been changed as well.

Author page has been the most thoroughly edited of them all.

If only real life were that easy,

Abigail Drew.

Had dinner with just my mom and I last night at a Japanese restaurant in town.

The restaurant was excellent. It was my first time there, though my younger brother had been there and told me it was very authentic.

What he hadn't told me was that it was also very traditional! The cooks even come to your table and do the whole show thing if you order Habachi! We didn't, but we observed this taking place with customers who did.

Most of the staff are American, but the cooks are very definitely Japanese, and there's no way the chef can be other than Japanese, no American could have put together anywhere near so authentic or traditional a menu.

The food was very definitely authentic, and, from what I can tell only very good ingredients were used which had to have been imported at great expense.

Mom, of course, not being used to Japanese cuisine, deferred to me. I ordered Shrimp Tempura for appetizer, and Seafood Teriyaki with a side of miso and a side of rice. What wasn't mentioned on the menu was the side of rice was traditional Japanese sticky rice in a traditional clay bowl. The miso was also in a traditional clay bowl with a traditional clay scoop. We had only a napkin, traditional chopsticks, and a fork for utensils.

The food was divine.

We had a pretty good time, talked about nothing important most of the time, until she brought up my meeting with the Bishop earlier this week. I was expecting this to come up eventually, and told she'd find out Sunday. Her first reaction was "Why, are you being disfellowshipped or something?". A disfellowship is what we call it when you are permitted to continue attending regularly, but just not allowed to participate in any ordinances. Your records remain active in the church.

I told her that no, I want to have a family meeting at 9. She was all like, now you really have my curiosity going.

By that first reaction... I wonder how much she already suspects... And I wonder just how she's going to react when the full truth is revealed.

Hopefully, this was not actually my last time having a private dinner with my mother. And most hopefully, it's not really my "Last Supper", so to speak, with me losing my family being the expected result on Sunday night.

Holy crapoly, I DREAMED last night. No, seriously, *I* DREAMED! I *HAVE* been dreaming!

You're probably all thinking I'm nuts right now, and perhaps I am, but you have to understand, for nearly two decades, as my fortress has been in place, I have never once dreamed.

The last time I can remember dreaming while sleeping was around 10 or 11. That's 15-16 years of NO DREAMS.

Now obviously, my fortress of isolation and moat of desolation were in place well before that, so exactly why my ability to dream only disappeared later, who knows for sure.

My supposition is that since my mind and spirit is female, my subconscious must also therefore be female, therefore, my dreaming was female. My fortress was likely getting distressed by *his* "girly" dreams, and my subconscious decided it would be better to hide the ability to dream away from me as well.

Anyways, for almost a week now, I've been remembering dreaming when I wake up. For me, this is like a miracle.

I suppose unless you've experienced such a long term dream deprivation you could never fully appreciate what it's like to dream again. But oh! TO DREAM AGAIN! I would like to shout it from the rooftops, sing it from the mountains, share it with all who might listen. I CAN DREAM AGAIN!

Joyfully,

Abigail Drew.

So. The family meeting had been tonight.

This morning I had too much laundry to do and couldn't make it to church, when my mother found out about this, she was all like "what about the Bishop?"

I was like, "what, about the Bishop?"

She was, "Weren't you supposed to meet with him at church today?"

I was like "no..."

She said, "you told me I'd find out today, at church."

I know she's brighter than that, so she selectively misunderstood me back on Friday. I said, "No... I said you'd find out today - at the family meeting."

And she was all "but...", however, I'd bustled on past and kept doing my thing.

Early this evening, around 4:45, I'd noticed they weren't home yet and was becoming a bit concerned, wondering if mom had grown impatient and gone to interrogate the Bishop herself. She wouldn't have gotten anywhere, I'm sure, but the very act of it would have caused a scene at church, and I do not want any scenes being raised around me. Really though, my nerves were just getting very frazzled.

About five o'clock, my older brother texted me and asked if the meeting had happened yet, to which I responded no, it was to be at nine, told him I'd called Nichole, and that I felt it was a mistake in hindsight, and related to him my nervousness. He asked if she'd blabbed, I said no, but she hadn't taken it well, and that I was supposed to talk to her again later.

About a quarter after, the folks get home from church. Only a little late, really, and mom later explained she'd seen the bishop and stake president and gotten her temple recommend renewed, which easily explained the tardiness, and helped my frazzling nerves a little.

We have dinner, which I excuse myself from quickly after eating, I go take an hour in the bathroom getting ready, and the Bishop's late. Finally, at about a quarter after ten, the Bishop calls me and tells me he'll be here any minute. I pack up my laptop, remote it into my desktop, and haul off downstairs just as he's settling in.

For the meeting, I'd worn my womens dress slacks and a camp shirt tucked in and billowed out over a gaff for my underwear and my white shelf bra. I was tucked and as feminine as I could be.

I ask everyone to make sure they have their shoes ready (you already all know where I'm going with that, don't you?) and once everyone returns with shoes at the ready, I ask the Bishop to open us with prayer.

After he's done praying, I start the Simon and Garfunkel song, "I Am A Rock", and explain that that's what I've been doing as I turn it off round the line that states he's built walls, a fortress deep and mighty. I then switch to the song "Open Your Heart" by Yuki Kajiura and explained, after the first half of the song, that that is what I'm trying to do now.

I then had them put their shoes on the opposite feet as I started to read the story "Shoes" by Heather Rose Brown. When I got to the point where Brianna asks her brother how it felt to wear the shoes on the wrong feet, I tell them they can take their shoes off and then ask her question.

My dad was like, "painful." and my brother and the young man living with us agreed. The Bishop, who was excused from the exercise because of a medical condition said "I can imagine..." Mother... she refused comment.

I finished the story, then went on and read my Diary entry, "To Be, Or Not To Be." As I was reading that, the light bulbs went off.

Dad was like "that explains much...", and my brother and the young man both said they'd been expecting this. Mom was still mostly refusing comment, but agreed that she'd written in her journal about her suspicions.

From there we talked about where to go from here. The Bishop talked about the churches position, which was at least part of why I'd had him there.

At some point, we finally got mom to talk, and her thing was "I just can't see God making that kind of mistake." To which I replied "what mistake?" To which she responded "putting a girl in a boy's body." And I was, "Why does that have to be a mistake?" she still doesn't get it... but hopefully she can make progress. I told her that to me, my life so far has not been a mistake, but a trial. She's not getting it yet... but there's hope.

I think mom is having a similar problem accepting this that I'd fought with for years. It's something she's going to have to come to terms with on her own, like I did. I wish I could help her get there, but I'm not sure how.

Grateful to still have her family,

Abigail Drew.

Another Episode Of...

Silly Motorists

or...

The Male of the Species

---

So at work today, the guy who bought me a Dew, and then messed with me last week when he found out was constantly flexing his muscles at me every time he saw me. Seriously, does he think I'm going to be impressed by this behavior?

Then, on my ride home from work today I hear a honk behind me and start thinking "here we go again, just another day on the road...", expecting someone to swear at me and wave the very special kind of signal in my face. Instead he pulls his truck around in front of me, signals me to follow him into a parking lot off the road, and shouts "Hey!" as I ignore his silly antics and keep riding.

A little later, he pulls up in the lane next to me and is like, "Hey! You wanna hitch a ride home?". To which I shout back, "No thanks!".

Now, for the meeting last night, part of that hour spent in the bathroom was getting rid of all my body and facial hair, so my body was smooth and completely free of hair. Though a bit grimy from work.

I have a feeling this guy was trying to pick me up...

Felt kind of nice, actually, if strange and kind of scary too. Definitely not what I've gotten used to on my ride home.

Curiously, last week, even though I hadn't removed all my hair yet, I could also swear a certain five letter word starting with b and rhyming with itch was included in the swearing at me by passing motorists.

Abigail Drew.

I think some small part of me is still resisting the changes I'm beginning to make. I think I'm, in some small corner of my mind, still afraid. Afraid of what I don't know about being female. Afraid of how people who don't or can't understand will treat me. Afraid of change. Someone replied to Heather's entry about losing her pet that it's a bit of a "system shock", after 16 years, suddenly losing a dear friend and companion, her dog. I kind of think that's what's happening to me now. 26 years of living in complete deadness, and now suddenly I'm feeling a wealth of emotions and I'm alive! I'm used to being dead. My system is in shock over it.

Still. I would never wish to return to the way things were. Last night, I fell asleep in bliss. Actually thinking what if I had the right bits and hadn't said no to the guy on my way home... Though I'd've never in actuality have accepted his offer. Overnight I dreamed. I couldn't remember them when I woke up, but I always remember data-REM, so I dreamed. This morning I woke up slightly afraid, but not quite sure why. Then I explored the feeling, and came to the above conclusion.

I suppose this has been a lot, very quickly. My path to myself doesn't seem to be quite so much a road, as a mountain switch-back trail. A steep one. And so far, instead of following the trail, I've been blindly tumbling over the cliff. I think I need to slow down. Take the path carefully.

Then again, maybe this snowballing effect is exactly what is needed, and I just need to punch this fear out of my system and keep on keeping on.

Thoughtfully,

Abigail Drew.

So what do you want to hear first? The Good Stuff? The Not So Good Stuff? The Next Big Step?

OK, The Good Stuff.

So at work today I found myself subconsciously putting extra swing in my hips when walking past one of the guys on The Wrecking Crew. I thought this kind of odd... He's not much of a specimen, really. Kinda fat, no obvious muscle, and he works for The Wrecking Crew, nough said on intelligence.

Then I thought about it, and you know... Despite all his faults, he's kinda a sweet guy. He was probably the nicest person on Diane's crew for the short time I worked for her...

Then there's numbnuts. You know who I'm talking about. The Mountain Dew buying, Plume of Death driving, muscle-show-off numbnuts. Anyways, he was up to his usual antics, I was laughing, and I said something, I can't remember what, and he misheard me as saying something about the circus, and I was like, "yeah, that too, cuz you two, indicating him and the other guy currently in the shop, are a circus!" And just cracked up even more.

I left the shop then and went back to where I was working, as I was starting the Billy Goat back up to suck up more leaves, it occurred to me why I was cracking up so much. I thought he was cute. No, really. Absolutely no interest at all. But I thought he was cute.

Well girls, I think it's official, I'm boy crazy.

And you want to know the first thing that popped into my head at this realization? The Battle Hymn of the Republic. Thus the entry title. I just randomly started whistling the first few lines, paused for a while, then whistled the entire song. From memory, of course. (C'mon, seriously, who DOESN'T have that particular hymn memorized? Non-US Citizens need not answer. Nor you non-religious types.)

Now, guys, answer me truthfully, (this only applies to any "normal" or "semi-normal" heterosexual males that may bother reading my random thoughts), do you ever consider a girl cute or pretty, without having any sexual interest in her at all? The first guy, OK, I'll admit it, though I have no idea WHY I'd be sexually attracted to such a creature, I was sexually attracted to the guy from The Wrecking Crew. But numbnuts, he's just kinda cute.

Now for the Not So Good Stuff.

Talked to the other fish again when I got home. Gave her a small history lesson about our first modern prophet and how he wasn't a prophet yet when he followed the admonition in James, Chapter 1, verse 5.

If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.

According to our church history, he then received a direct visitation from God. Not yet a prophet. One of her hangups was that in her mind, only a prophet can speak to God. So I disabused her of that notion. I then admitted to her that no, I have not personally seen or heard directly from my Father, but that I do believe my guidance is still coming indirectly from him, through the Spirit, and my personal angel.

I then used the same teaching method I used for the meeting on Sunday night...

Long story short, she's still having a hard time getting past the "but the prophets have said..." Said what exactly? I'd have challenged her with the impossible task of finding even one iota of a word out of a General Authorities mouth against transsexuals. There's nothing. Plenty against living a homosexual lifestyle, but also, nothing against the feelings themselves.

I'd have challenged her... but I knew she wouldn't listen, that it would only serve the spirit of contention. So I told her to talk to the Bishop, that he'd already talked to Salt Lake, and that she was welcome to talk to him. Told her I'd email her his phone number, because she's refusing to talk to me while she's anywhere near her kids. As though talking about GID causes it...

And now mother... She's graduated from "It Is Wrong" and "God Wouldn't Make A Mistake" to "Why Me?", "Why my 'son'?", and "Where did I go wrong..." It saddens me to see her going through these stages, but I now recognize them for what they are, and am trying to gently guide her thinking towards "What A Great Blessing It Is To Experience Such A Miracle." I hope it will work...

And that's what I think this all is for me, folks. A Miracle. I was lost, but now I am free. I was in chains, led to a cynical world, but now I'm free. I'm FREE! I'm ALIVE! What a miracle it is to be alive!

Well, it's getting close to time for me to stop typing again now, but I did promise you one last thing, didn't I? Now... what was it... hm... I seem to have lost my notes somewhere... OH!

The Next Big Step.

I've told you I have a niece named Abigail Lynn, right? Hm... maybe not. Well, after talking to the other fish, I called up another of my sister's places, who live right here in town. She's the one who gave birth to my niece Abigail. Anyways, my sister was at work, so her SO picked up. I've arranged to meet with my sister, her SO, and their two girls on Friday at 6pm.

Oh, and this mornings fear? I decided that was the adversary and kicked him to the curb. He doesn't seem to like it there, but then, he doesn't like much of anything.

Keeping on, Keeping on,

Abigail Drew.

Work yesterday sucked. Rained all day, cleaned off a back patio of a recently vacated townhouse that they are getting ready to start showing first thing, then just blew wet leaves about all day with the blower. Wasn't the most efficient use of time, but it was the most efficient I could do with the rain, and the leaves just had to be blown away from the walkways, rain or not. Nothing terribly interesting happened, though I have mostly written a psalm in my head that I just need to mesh out in writing, which I intend to do tomorrow.

Yesterday was payday, though, and I burned over a hundred dollars already stopping at Walmart and the Dollar Tree on the way home. Picked up a bunch of depilatories, finger and toenail clippers, tweezers, nail file, a pumice stone, and some Niacin tablets. Also got a new (clean, not for work) clip visor, some cheese, and some oj. I'm now taking 1000 mg of Niacin a day to help counteract some of the undesired effects of the licorice, in addition to a teaspoon of Cream of Tartar (potassium salt) mixed into oj with my morning dose. At the Dollar Tree I picked up my 24 oz Propel (cheapest place for them), restocked my energy shots for a few more weeks, and a bag of harvest cheddar sun chips.

Ever try tying down a bunch of shopping bags to a bike rack in heavy rain? Not suggested.

I last shaved my face and removed all my body hair on Sunday before the meeting - almost a week later and my facial hair looks about like it used to halfway through the day. Going to start using depilatories on it on Saturdays, see if that lasts a full week at a time.

As I was getting ready for work today, my mother surprised me by presenting me with two possible names. I told her if she could choose a new name for me I'd use it. She seems to be on a mission to make sure I retain a somewhat masculine name - one name was Akira Kai... straight up Japanese, and while Akira CAN be either (tends towards males though...), Kai is masculine. Combined... well, since American's are known to bastardize everything anyways, I think no one would care... the other one was Audra Kai. At least Audra is very definitely female.

Well, I stand corrected, apparently, even though Kai has historically always been a male name, it is recently gaining popularity for females.

I am OK with Audra Kai, but I do wonder why the Japanese, she never would have had the least interest in it before her children gained an interest in Japanese culture... Could always pretend it's one of the other origin countries... Anyways, I think the meaning she was aiming for was "strong change"... even though Audra really means "noble strength", coming from Old English, and "change" is only one among many of the Japanese meanings, and "noble strength change" ... well, it's interesting, I guess.

With Akira Kai, she was actually going with the Burmese form of Kai, and aiming for "intelligent strength" ... though a strictly Japanese meaning would be one she doesn't necessarily like - "intelligent change"... heh.

Well, that was this morning, and I thought maybe she was on the mend, especially since later, she called my older brother while we were working and asked him for his opinion... Which he gave an opinion of full support, of course. Well... we'll talk more on this subject a bit later.

After work, I went up to my room and changed, then rode over to the sister who has an Abigail with the husband of another of my sister's. While I wasn't really intending to come out to them yet, it just sorta felt right. I have his full support and he assures me my sister will not be a problem.

The meeting with the other group of four went extremely well, as expected. I have all of their full support. Details aren't really necessary. Though I sent my sister for a loop when I told her the last time I shaved was Sunday night. She remembers my old hirsutism well. She also has a slight problem with a mustache she needs to remove frequently... though her imbalance is one of too much Aldosterone. She won't take pills though, and refuses to use herbal tinctures in hot water for a tea either... Could probably find her something that'll act on the reducer to Aldosterone to inhibit it... Would need to be careful though... inhibit it too much and you'll have another problem entirely which I do believe I might've mentioned a few times already... Anyways, that's neither here, nor there, she wouldn't use anything even should I suggest it, she wants to try to get shots or something.

Well, they drove me back home, and mom... well... she's really having a rough time. She backtracked again and started attacking transgender and saying a pre-op ts is not really any different from a tv... with the unsaid supposition that being tv means you must be gay. She also insists that since we need to keep taking at least estrogen for the rest of our lives, post-op, that we can't ever really transition... Oh... my poor mother... why must she remain so narrow-minded?

Speaking of her being narrow-minded, she objects to me calling a modern poetic prayer a psalm, because it's "not scripture". ... She does recall that much of what became compiled into the scriptures were once the diaries and journals of troubled believers, I hope? Including a woman, for one particular book. She seems to think the only psalms ever written are contained in the book of psalms - primarily written by one particular man, who was, by the time much of the the book was written, disgraced of God. Hm. And she seems to think a perfectly righteous young woman who just happened to be born in the wrong body can't write psalms.

So far it's looking likely that I will lose her and my two older siblings that are active LDS - even with my bishop supporting me.

I haven't mentioned the other still active LDS member of my family yet. She lives in Texas, and is so like our mother, that the two of them cannot get along. Especially since the sister has managed to become successful. But being so much alike pretty well assures me that what I see my mother going through, my sister will be worse - mom's my mom, whether she likes my choice or not, she's going to work a little harder at accepting me than a sister is likely to. Especially a sister I barely talk to. Ever. She's virtually cut ties with the family, and only ever talks to mom, and only when mom calls down there.

I think I just won't bother telling her, when it eventually reaches her ears she'll react by disowning me whether spun positively or not. Since I already have so little contact with her, losing her completely won't hurt as bad as the other fish, or mom.

I only have two siblings left that I actually care to talk to, one lives just a few blocks north in Michigan, the other lives out in California. I don't really worry about either of them.

Keeping on, keeping on,

Abigail Drew.

Sorry, you all should know by now that I can never resist a good bit of linguistic fun. I consider the Japanese phrase that roughly equals the English "Long time no see" much more linguistically pleasing. But I'm strange.

Doing a quick study of the Japanese phraseology reveals some interesting things. First, "desu ne", "desu" is a common sentence ending which is a "to be" copula (for those who don't know linguistics: see Wikipedia's article, and while in English, our copula is also a verb "be", this is not so in Japanese (though it once was...), and in fact, you can directly link either a noun or a verb, conjugated or not, to the Japanese copula! Nifty. There's two other forms of the Japanese "be" copula, one of which can't be linked directly to a verb and is considered rude - "da". "Desu" is the present tense, and "deshita" is the past tense. Further, the Japanese also have an existence verb! "Aru/iru". So really, in my opinion, Japanese can be far far more... refined... in its choice of how to describe existence.

The other part of the ending was "ne". This is a Japanese particle of a very special kind, not found in many western languages. The western solution to the problem addressed by ending particles is punctuation when written, and a change in timbre in speaking, the second of which the Japanese also do. Anyways, you can refer to Wikipedia's article for more on all kinds of Japanese particles, but I'll tell you what "ne" does in this particular phrase. It poses a reflective question of agreement. Like "eh?" for you Canuck's, or "non?" for you Spaniards, or even "no?" for some of the English speakers of the world. Pure poetry. Without even trying.

Now for the primary word itself. "Ohisashiburi". "O-" is a politeness prefix in Japanese. You can refer to Wikipedia's article on such and other fun tidbits about how the Japanese use linguistics to establish pecking order. "Hisashiburi" is the more polite of two words that mean almost the same thing, "shibaraku" being the other. "Hisashiburi" is a "na/no" adjective meaning "it's been a while" or "a long time". "Shibaraku" is an adverb most of time and a "no" adjective some of the time. Adverbs are often considered rude in Japanese, and generally always have a more polite adjective meaning something similar. In this case, "shibaraku" takes the distance out of the phrase and it becomes a more direct "it's been a long time".

So, putting this all together, I really said, in a polite and reflective way, "It's been a while, hasn't it?"

I just love that phrase, linguistically.

Anyhoo, now that I've firmly reestablished just how kooky I am, it has, hasn't it? At least, since the last time I wrote in my diary.

Not sure why I haven't been writing, I have millions of excuses I've been telling myself, but none of them are really quite right. I guess I just haven't felt like it. For whatever reason.

So... It's been three weeks. The Saturday immediately following my last diary entry was the first of a two-weekend span of going over my diary thus far with my parents. The reactions were pretty well what I was expecting. Dad "got it", while mom continued to hide behind excuses. At various points in the discussion, something would raise her hackles, and at one particular point, one of my excuses about not writing came up - protecting my mother from things she's not quite ready to handle yet. She took offense to this, despite every evidence for anyone other than herself to see that she is not ready to handle ANY of this right now, let alone some of my deepest thoughts that I've been keeping bottled, or in comments and forum posts sprinkled across the rest of the site, rather than posting all together in my own blog entries.

Dad then said something to the effect of talking about it later - without mom around... Well... dad shoulda oughta have known better. Mom became outright irate over this...

Anyways, I'm really not sure what to do with her, she seems to go in waves, occasionally appearing to be coping and handling things reasonably well, and at other times revealing just how much turmoil she's in. She's still trying to link this to homosexuality. She's been reading books by Chaz Bono back when he was still Chastity and she thought she was a butch lesbian... And trying to link the activities and mindsets of the homosexuals Chaz wrote about with transsexuals in general, and me in particular. Anyone care to suggest me a book or few to get her that might possibly be able to... attenuate the poison she's taking in from her own selection?

I'm going to be looking into seriously starting the electrolysis process soon, the first Saturday I can possibly get a session with Mary Ann - refer to this forum post if you wish to know more on that subject.

When I told mom what I was doing, her first reaction was a negative one, again. "I hope you have enough money," she said nastily, implying that there was absolutely no way I ought to be able to afford to get this done. She further implied that my particular beard is going to be particularly nasty to do. I dunno about that, it's mostly a neck and chin beard. Thin sideburns, sparse cheek beard, almost no mustache either above or below the lip. But boy howdy do I have some serious hair starting right at my chin line and going all the way down my neck. In the back, there's also almost no verge between my scalp line and my back hair, my back hair goes straight up my neck to my scalp. I'm still early on the changed hormone balance stuff, so who knows what that might do over time. I'm going to be concentrating first on my beard. Since I know there's only one way that's going away. Maybe a neck and chin beard is the nastiest to do, I suppose I wouldn't really know.

Work is getting interesting... The guys are OK. My boss seems to actually like me more since I've come out to her. The heavier of the two office ladies is acting pretty much like nothing has changed. Whether she knows or not, I wouldn't know by her behavior, though I highly suspect that my status is the worst kept secret in the history of poorly kept secrets. The thinner of the two though... She's always been of the more dominant personality type, and whenever the boss is away, leaving her in charge, she tends to try to micro-manage everything. She was bad enough before. Now though, every single time she sees me she's acting as though there's no way in hell I should possibly have any idea what I should be doing and that she knows better than me about my job. I'd like to see her do my job even half as well. Should be an interesting bit of comedy routine, I suspect.

The other day it was a particularly windy day. The winds were somewhat variable, but mostly going straight north from the south. Occasional strong gusts in any odd direction. These winds were absolutely PERFECT for piling up leaves in certain areas on property to make them easier to get up later, when it wasn't so windy. They were horrible for what she thought I should be doing - clearing walkways and entries. About 2 hours before my shift is up she asks me how long ago we did the "dog shit cans" (her words). I responded I didn't know, and I'd ask my brother. He told me Monday, so I responded back to him that I'd go around and do a quick run around property for them. That I didn't think they'd need done, but that if it'd make "miss pms" happy... I'm trying to be as civil with her as possible in her presence, but she's really aggravating me on this particular day. I mean, honestly. A PERFECT day for doing a task that's normally frustrating as all get-out, and she makes a point of interrupting this task as often as she possibly can. Anyways, about an hour before my shift should've been up, she comes up to me and is all huffy about how what I'm doing is pointless and on and on and how would I like to go home early, except posed as, not a question, but a very strong suggestion. I said "not really" in as non-committal a manner as possible, trying to avoid the coming conflict that I knew was coming. She huffed "I'm going to call Jackie and ask if you can leave early today." Well, that was that, I knew I wasn't going to be permitted to accomplish anything else that day. I think I may have at that point gotten just a little huffy back... Can you blame me?

The next day I'm told in no uncertain terms that I'd given her lip and that there'd be consequences if it happened again. I hate workplace politics. Why can't people just do their job and let other people just do their job? Is it really so hard to do? I would never ever think to try to tell the office ladies how to sell an apartment. Now, when she's left in charge, I don't mind a little intelligent suggestion on things I might do, or even telling me straight up to do something not actually on my job description... But when you're telling me to do things counter-intuitive and directly related to my job, which, c'mon, it's MY job, I'd think I know what I'm doing here...

I like my boss. She understands my job just as well as she understands her job, and the office ladies jobs, and she knows I know what I'm doing. She tells me what she'd like done, she doesn't necessarily tell me exactly when to do them, which gives me some lee-way on deciding what is likely to actually be able to be reasonably accomplished and doing that task first. She also lets me handle how I do them - as long as I do them. Perfect boss-employee relationship.

There's been some talk that she might permanently leave the property and become purely upper management over all the properties - which she already does, in addition to managing the property I primarily work at... Part of why she's able to ship "her" grounds keepers to the other properties when their own are slacking too much. If this occurs, the thinner of the two office ladies would become property manager... And I'll tender my resignation just as soon as that occurs, whether or not I find another job. I cannot and will not work for an uppity micro-manager who thinks they know best when they don't even know jack.

I try to be nice, I try to avoid conflict, I don't WANT to tell other people that, no, in fact, I DO know better... But when enough is enough... Well, I tend to get snappy under pressure. I'm like a dormant atomic bomb, just waiting for the right button to be pushed...

Our landscaping crew's been slacking off all year. They finally got kicked off property officially on Thursday. Yesterday, the new crew came on property and it was like a breath of fresh air. Their boss is also a great boss. If the complex gets handed off to the thinner office lady... Well, I'm going to begin trying to get in good with this guy so that I can make the job transition easy. Leave the complex, join his crew.

I bought a full suit of womens cut Underarmour recently as well as a new women's cut windbreaker. I'm going to need it. On Thursday I layered the way I normally do for a windy 50 degree high, and nearly froze to death, retreating to my dead zone to stave off the cold. Yesterday, I'd wised up and wore my Underarmour, a uniform t-shirt and women's black Dickie's uniform pants, my new windbreaker, and my crappy old one to protect the new one from the job hazards. And of course, large women's work gloves over the Underarmour gloves to protect those from job hazards. I was comfortable all day.

Well ladies... May we all bid a fond farewell to the one bit of masculinity I will dearly miss?

Thank you for your patience in my rambling, again,

Abigail Drew.

"That girl was hot!" whispered the lad to his friend as they walked past me. It was just shortly before three, and the busload of high schoolers who live at the apartment complex had just been dropped off.

"That was a boy!" his friend whispered back.

Oh, so they were talking about me, I thought. Poor boys, they didn't look to be more than freshmen, so their testosterone was only just starting to rev up from puberty addling their brains. Probably really doesn't help them any to see someone like me, sending mixed signals with a curvy figure, women's clothing, and lots of hair in all the wrong places.

So what do I do? I put a little extra sway in my hips as I continue past them, of course. What was that? You say what? No. I'm not a tease, not at all! *innocence whistle*

I've been wearing women's size 6 work jeans, a women's medium long sleeve t-shirt, a lightweight women's medium jacket, and a women's medium windbreaker over my Underarmour for a while now. Recently I had to buy a women's SMALL belt and belt it all the way down to a 4 in order to wear the jeans comfortably.

Last night I took a nice hot shower, exfoliated, and washed and exfoliated my face. This morning I was feeling a little extra flirty so I put some very light padding in my bra - just enough that even through all my layers for keeping warm working outside you could just see an indication of breasts.

Around about 2 today, I got a little warm and took the windbreaker layer off... The breasts became quite a bit more noticeable. What? Me, a tease? No way.

This week started a bit lousy. Cold and wet and dreary and it seemed 'ol Murphy was out to get me something fierce.

We're not talking about Monday. No. Skipping that day... Well, both Monday and Tuesday were wet drizzly and uber cold. Tuesday, on top of that, was a nightmare of problems. I started the day doing some indoor crap that the wrecking crew conveniently missed doing again.

Two apartments were being moved into later that day, and one of them stank to high heaven, the linoleum was filthy, the washer and drier were full of dirt, the toilet had a nasty ring around inside it, and the kitchen counters were sticky. Spent almost the entire first half of my shift cleaning that up. Moved on to the next one, this just needed some dirt swept out off the linoleum, there were no other messes to deal with, not even stuck-on stuff on the linoleum. Just loose sweepable dirt. And that, only all the downstairs linoleum (this was a townhouse).

Back in the warmer weather when my attire was reasonable both inside and out, this didn't bother me that much, but it's much colder now, and I no longer have the imperviousness to the cold that I used to. I was dressed in full wet weather garb - all the same as above, plus a slit open contractor bag used for a skirt to keep my jeans from being completely drenched through.

I had to take all this off to be able to not overheat inside the apartments. All of it. Down to my Underarmour. And of course, my brother walks in on me while I'm in such attire and is like "and why are we getting undressed?".

After that, I delivered newsletters most of the rest of the day. The box they were in fell apart, had to get a bag to put the newsletters in... Several keys wouldn't work without serious finagling... about fivish, I'm next to the grounds shed and notice that our seed and salt spreaders were still spread out in front of it getting rinsed out by the rain.

So I prop open the door I was about to deliver newsletters in, because I'd had to go around back to get in because the front door refused to work with the key, and go fight the blasted things into the shed. I go back to return to delivering the newsletters and the door I'd propped open was shut tight! Some bastard resident kicked my door stopper away while I was fighting the mess in the shed!

So I had to go all the way back around to the back entrance to the building, and fight the stupid lock to try to get in again, and the stupid keyring with all the building masters breaks apart and the keys go flying everywhere. By now it's almost time to be clocking out, and I barely have time to find and pick up all the keys, just barely get back inside the building to get the rest of the newsletters and dash back to the office to dump the crap, grab everything of mine out of the shop, and clock out before the rest of the overeager beavers lock me out.

Yeah. A real Murphy's Corollary day. Everything that can go wrong, will go wrong, at the worst possible time, in the worst possible way.

Wednesday was better, the wet had finally stopped, and even though everything froze overnight, the skies were clear when I got to work. Finished delivering newsletters, picked up dead fall, then went back to the interminable leaf cleanup. The day was really going quite well, really... ... and then the Corollary struck again. This time, right near the end of my shift, again, the rake falls apart and I have to pick up all it's spokes and rush everything back to the shop, again, just barely getting out of there in time. As it is, I got rushed out of the shop and ended up leaving my carabiners for tying my kit down to my rack behind...... Was a fun ride home.

Wednesday was also the day that the events at the top of this entry occurred.

Today was a good day though. Murphy's Corollary decided to take a vacation day. Maybe it was because of my extra-long bathing ritual last night, or the bra padding this morning, or maybe it just happened to be a better day...

Well, til next time I feel up to writing,

Abigail Drew.

This entry is inspired by LittleKatie's entry Monstrosity.

What I'm going to do here is take us all on a short photographical journey down memory lane, presenting - though old photographs - the path of destruction I'd been on before finally facing myself. I'm going to start in High School, since that's really where things started to escalate.

High School Junior:

High School around graduation time:

Just before leaving for Uni:

Just before getting kicked out of Uni because of my worst depression to date:

In all but the last picture you can't really see how I've always been overweight. I've always worn my weight distributed almost evenly throughout my entire body, with just enough concentration in just the right spots...

In the last picture... Well, I was heading into a VERY serious depression at the time, as I've said many times, my worst one. Didn't help at all having to share an apartment with 5 boys who I couldn't relate to socially at the level they expected of me. Towards the end of my stay out in Rexburg, I spent whatever time I managed to be awake hanging out with my "sisters" at their apartment, and the rest sleeping. I didn't attend classes. I occasionally finished assignments, but mostly didn't... I did manage to fulfill my church responsibilities... Barely.

At the time, it must have been glaringly obvious to everyone around me what was happening... Of course, they couldn't have understood why any better than I did at the time. I was on a path of assured self-destruction. It may not have been sudden, intentional, physical suicide, but it was an emotional one that was sure and steady. Eventually, that path would have led to me simply not waking up one day. Ever again.

Forever and always,

Abigail Drew.

Where did the time go? It seems just yesterday was the middle of summer still. OK... not really.

Though this year does, in turns, feel like it went by awfully fast, but that an awful lot happened.

Well... the situation at home has pretty well stagnated. Every time I try to push any further, my mother about bites my head off and the heads of anyone who she feels is supporting me too much.

I've decided to move out. First, because I want to. Second. Because I want to. Third... ;)

OK, real reason out of the way, some of the rationalizations:

First, where I'm moving to will be a ten minute relaxed walk from where I clock in for work. Five if I power walk. Maybe fifteen if we have a nasty snow the night before and I need to shovel my way to work, well, more like plow. Sit the shovel in front of me and, with both arms locked forward so my legs do all the work, just walk. So I want to be closer to work.

Second, I'm feeling more and more repressed by having to dress and act "somewhere between" at home in order to keep my mother tame. If I have to try to repress myself to be around my mother, then I at least don't want that to be all the time I'm not at work. It's bad enough I'm going to have to keep presenting male at church until I can figure out a way to present fully female and run off north where no one knows the old me well enough to care. Things in the way of that: voice, though I think I'm getting somewhere on that, and hair, both of the facial and the body varieties. So I really want more freedom to be myself.

Third, I want more room. I'm trying to cram all my stuff into a tiny little bedroom, well, ok, so it IS almost master-sized... but I have more stuff than I have wall and floor space to put furniture to organize it all, so I -REALLY- want more room.

So there we go, the three "I want to" in their fully rationalized forms.

The other day when I got home from work she and dad were in the basement and she called up the stairs my male name and "is that you?" Instead of answering immediately, I go down there to talk. She'd texted me just as I was clocking out from work if I wanted a beat up old 20th century relic called an "entertainment center". This is the two thousand teens, jeesh. Only people who use those relics are still using CRT televisions. They take up too much space when a simple table or small shelving unit would suffice for the receivers and stb's and dvd/blu-ray players and game systems. The TV itself you wall mount, and just cover up the holes later.

Anyways, she takes offense to my referring to entertainment centers and CRT TV's as "relics", from which point she goes off to talking about how I'm going to afford everything and stuff to do with my transition. Electrolysis in specific comes up, and she's all I don't know how you're going to afford it, it's expensive, and I'm like, yes, but that's my problem. And dad backs me up on that, and she's then like "and it better be just his problem."

I don't see that it should matter to her if my father decides to help me transition, or help me with my apartment, or anything else with his money. Both my parents work. Both have their own independent incomes. I never hear dad making any stipulations of what mom should do or not do with hers. They both help cover the bills, and, after that, it's their money. Much of dad's does go to helping various of his children, what of it? It's a better use for it than many things he could be spending it on.

Anyways... At work the end of the leaves is finally almost in sight... well, the ones that aren't clinging desperately to their trees despite being long dead and black and shriveled. These desperate nuisances are going to wait till we get our first really heavy snow, so that they can make that first heavy snow really nasty looking.

Once I have the last of the really massive piles out of the way, I'll be spending the days raking out fields one by one. I figure, if uninterrupted, except for the two largest fields which each would take at least two or three days, the rest of them I ought to be able to do a field a day. Plenty to keep me busy until spring when we have several major projects to tackle. When there's too much snow on the ground to do much raking, I'll probably find some broken fenceline to temporarily mend or something. Real fixes will have to wait until summer when the ground thaws out enough to dig new posts, several have rotted out. That, and of course, anything the girls in the office can come up with. They figure on days when it actually snows and puts us all out on snow removal, the maintenance guys will be out on plow trucks all day, so they'll quite likely have me start picking up some of the slack on indoor maintenance duties.

I still haven't really found time to do much writing, my reading is also a little shortened, but we'll see if I can rectify that at all once I have my own place... I'm hoping that I won't be as stressed out.

As for my road to transition... well, with getting an apartment, the money I might've used each month towards transition costs will now be going towards rent and utilities... So, until I can get a second part time job (and really really kill my free time), most of my plans in that regard will have to be put on hold... except for the herbal cocktail of course. I'll squeeze that out of my budget if it kills me.

Of course, no end-of-the year would be complete without a Silly Motorists story! This is, after all, the absolute worst time of the year when it comes to that particular beast.

Interestingly, between thanksgiving till last night, things had actually been fairly tame on the road. Last night though... Attempted vehicular homicide was committed directly against me three times on the way home from work, and against those in my vicinity at least a dozen times.

Each time, there'd be a squealing of brakes, a few screamed epithets, and then the car would accelerate madly to do it all again. I mean, honestly? Do those people really think such behavior is going to do them any good? Hopefully sanity will be returned by Tuesday when I return to work. Or at least what passes for sanity on the road around here.

Abigail Drew.

Afraid I don't have any gifts to give to the folks here, but I just took another big step, though I suppose in a way I'd already done it unofficially anyways by simply not logging on...

Many of you may recall that I've mentioned I used to be a massively addicted MMORPG player. I had what even other players called an "army" of alts.

I haven't played these since June.

I just gave them all away.

The majority of my army was given to the last guild I'd been active in, and the lone remaining bard went to the guild before it.

With this move, one more piece of my old life is removed. Officially.

To each guild I wrote a fairly drawn out farewell, in which I alluded to the reason I was quitting quite pointedly, but did not quite come out and say it. I said some wouldn't get what I was talking about, and God bless them for their innocence, some would be "Ah, that explains some things," and God bless them for their compassion, and finally, that I hoped God might someday be able to soften the hearts of the last group.

OK, yeah, so I know many people don't believe in God. Oh well. It's the farewell I wanted to write, so it's the farewell I wrote.

I then indicated I might return someday as a complete casual player and newbie, with new toons, and a new identity, and that hopefully no one would recognize me, but if they did, hopefully they wouldn't be of a nasty sort. I wished them well in their endeavors, mentioned their current raiding tier, wished them short term success in improving it, and then spoke of what it might be like when I returned, with my "fellow" newbies revering them and me silently smiling to myself that I was part of that once, I knew those people.

Ah well, another chapter closed, I'm moving on.

That I decided to make this particular move on Christmas was largely so I was giving at least something of myself, even if it's the old me, to people I cared about.

Abigail Drew.

So yesterday a telemarketer called my cell phone -again-. I really wish I could figure out a way to get that to stop... Anyhoo... I answered it with "Hello", and they asked if they could speak to my male name as though there was no way on earth he was already speaking to them. I said speaking. And they were seriously shocked. They asked, in a disbelieving tone: Are you really Andrew? As though there was absolutely no way on earth I could possibly be Andrew. When I insisted that I was, in fact, the only person who I am presently legally known to be, he finally launched into his sales spiel, which, when I realized what was going on, I hung up on the tard bottom.

This has been becoming a regular event lately. It's like no one who hears me on the phone anymore can believe I'm really this guy named Andrew. Which is great by me, and funny too. I don't really think my voice has changed all that much yet and no one used to have any problems connecting my telephone voice with a male mental image before.

I wasn't even pitching my voice at all this last time, it was exactly like normal. At least to me... The first time I -really- caught someone taking me for female on the phone was when an insurance agent was talking to me, and they were ma'am'ing me even though I'd told them I was Andrew at the start of the conversation... They seemed to have completely forgotten that when I reminded them of it when they started talking numbers and the numbers they were talking sounded like they had the female premiums attached. They were all like, oh. *giggles*

I wasn't doing anything weird with my voice that time either, just speaking normally. There was one time though that I was practicing trying to pitch my voice differently when a telemarketer called that I recognized as having been trying to sell me male enhancement stuff. This same telemarketer had been calling me for weeks, and I'd kept hanging up on them, yelling at them to stop, and finally trying to just ignore them. So I was seriously pissed, and I answered it, accidentally pitching my voice a little higher because I was so pissed, and they hung up immediately and haven't ever tried back again. :D I imagine they don't think they'll be able to sell male enhancement to a girl very easily... I can't imagine why... *giggles*

I know, it's been a while since I blogged last... Honestly, my life's gotten pretty boring of late. It's the same story day after day, I go to work, eat, play some games, read some stuff on BCTS, occasionally try to write my stories that I'm really horrible about updating... And I'm getting absolutely no where with my transition goals. I'm not getting any closer to being able to afford health insurance (that covers transition), and my family and close associates still insist this is just some "phase" at best. At worst, they're like my mom and are refusing to believe it's happening at all.

However, today something really really cool happened... again, it was at work, again, it was a snippet of conversation from the kids on property. The middle schoolers had just gotten off the bus and a bunch of boys were walking past me when one of them said "hi" to me, I returned his salutation, and he turned to one of his buddies and was like "was that a guy?", his buddy firmly stated, "that's a girl", and then a third guy is like, "hey dude".

I was literally on cloud nine for like an hour afterwards. I mean, I wasn't even trying, I mean, I wasn't trying to disguise my slight breast development or modest curves, but at the same time I hadn't shaved my face that morning, and I never do use anything to try to hide my stubble or shadow anyways. I don't think I did anything special with my voice or anything when I said hi either... But still, the second boy had absolutely no doubt in his mind that my gender was female. Further, the first had doubts that I was male. Whilst the third apparently was certain of my masculinity, I don't really know, maybe "dude" is gender neutral anymore? I honestly don't follow childrens slang. Still, two of three, that's batting pretty good for not even trying.

Kids...

The fridge at work has been smelling awful for a long time, when I went in today, it was so bad that the entire shop literally stank and you couldn't tell the stench in the fridge anymore for the odor permeating the entire place. Towards the end of the day, 'Thal decided to once again clean the fridge. This time, he took it in his head to actually take the shelves out and REALLY clean it - that's when we found it. The reason for the stench. The odorous villain. The... Black Mold.

Seriously.

And it wasn't just ANY old black mold, the thing was HUGE. The entire bottom of the fridge was covered in the stuff. So of course, what's he do? Does he immediately clean it? Of course not, he has to show everyone first, and then he drowned it in a combination of bleach and this biologic digester stuff we have. Of course, then comes the actual cleaning it part... this is the guy at work who's always showing off his muscles and being all like "strength of ten men" nonsense... I don't think I ever mentioned that this guy once chickened out on helping me fix a rake that happens to be used for cleaning up dog crap on property, even though I'd bleached the crap out of it before working on it, and 'sides, it's not as though there isn't a bathroom sink right next to the shop well stocked with anti-bacterial soap... Anyways, so, I'm there, and, of course, he once again chickens out on actually doing the work part. He's okay with spraying the crap down and starting the job, but, once the real work needs done, he wimps out. He's like, "hey, you've got gloves, come wipe this stuff down"... Ah well.

Funny thing is, both he and the other maintenance guy he's always going around with were all gagging and putting up a show about the bleach and mold and everything, and I'm just standing there trying not to laugh. Well, anyways... So I get in there and kneel down and start cleaning the crap, while the two guys are going on and on about how nasty it all is... After a while, we get down to the tough bit, oh, and I figured out what it was that started the crap growing - someone spilled milk into the bottom of the fridge, there was still a layer of what was definitely milk once upon a time. Anyway, we get to the real hard crap and I'm like, we can't get the rest of this out with these paper towel. The other guy is like, can we scrape it? The idiots then try to scrape it up with a trowel. Seriously...

I'm all, we need to get some kinda brush with really hard bristles, like metal or something, and the guys go hunting and finally find something and, instead of handing it to me and letting me take care of it, the older guy has to be all macho and do it himself... all the while gagging and complaining. It's seriously all I can do at this point not break out laughing at their ridiculous antics... They're expending more effort on complaining about it than actually taking care of it.

We finally get it all cleaned up and the guys haul the mess of paper towels and some shelves they didn't want to bother cleaning to the dumpster... And I'm holding myself back, trying not to tease them about how silly they were about it all, or to point out that the entire time, I didn't once gag, or whine, or put up any sort of fuss about the problem... And then 'Thal's all like, "I just saved everybody's life"...

...

Silly boys... OK, yeah, so he was the one who finally found the mold... but... it's been there for at least almost a year... it was already there when I started working there last June... Well, at least now we know why everyone else there's been getting sick all the time... Wonder how the heck it is that I seem to have been immune. And wonder why the hell no one ever bothered REALLY cleaning it. Actually, 'Thal was SUPPOSED to have cleaned it MONTHS ago. Right... since he was supposed to, and appeared to have done, and bragged about it, I didn't even think about checking to make sure it was actually done right... I should've known better.

I just worked a nine hour day straight, no lunch, and I'm completely bushed.

We've been doing a TON of mulching of various of the properties held by the brothers... This week we did two properties in 3 days, this last day we spent seven and a half hours on it, then when I got back to my main complex, it was completely trashed and I had to do at least a cursory trash round... I punched in at 8:30 this morning, and by 5:20 I was so completely bushed that I limped back to the office and clocked out at 5:30 instead of finishing trash round...

I am going to be so royally pissed if they don't give me time and a half for that hour overtime. And they better not expect me to do this very often.

Okay, admission time, I've fiddled with my herbal concoction a bit since the last time I talked about it. I'm no longer taking any kind of phyto-estrogen at all. I've balanced and counterbalanced a purely anti-androgen formula and that's all I'm taking right now. Getting hold of strong enough doses of isoflavones was costing waaaay too much.

My current formula involves Chasteberry (pituitary, boosts progestins), Licorice (blocks the main male route to the androgens, also blocks cortisol and corticosterone/aldosterone...), Saw Palmetto (blocks dihydrotestosterone), and Tribulus for the anti-androgen and counterbalances, and no, I'm NOT going to share potencies, that shall remain my secret; first, the right potencies for me might not be right for someone else, second, I'm really not even 100% sure I'M using the right potencies. My formula is based purely on the "feel" of it... I don't have the ability to get my hormone levels checked properly.

In addition to all of these I'm taking a daily multi, potassium, calcium, and garlic, none of which should interact directly with the main formula, but the latter three help to... lessen... some side-effects. The multi is just because I know I don't get all the vitamins and minerals I should every day. Some days I do better than others...

Anyways, the design of it is basically to completely block my bodies production of dihydrotestosterone and spermatogenesis, which is a HUGE part of masculinization, then, further, block my bodies production of the other androgens completely through one route, leaving only one route open. This theoretically should bring my testosterone levels very close to female range.

I'm completely positive that DHT is, in fact, well and truly completely blocked, although I CAN bring myself to climax using some very creative methods, I no longer ejaculate, well, I sort of do, but it's a very thin fluid, and it's not as... forceful... there's definitely no sperm. I don't really know about the rest...

Interesting bit about Tribulus, and the reason I've added it, it has been reported anecdotally, though not enough real scientific experimentation has been done to confirm, that it boosts both testosterone AND estrogen, and does T more in men, but E more in women... It's theorized that what it's really doing that causes this reaction is to boost levels of luteinizing hormone. LH does a lot of very interesting things in the body, and I'm sort of curious just what effect it'll have on me with my androgens so thoroughly blocked... One of the things LH is supposed to do is increase energy levels, much needed to help combat the side-effects of licorice: pseudohyperaldosteronism is a bitch, trust me. And with my androgens so thoroughly blocked, I'm kinda hoping it might have the effect of increasing my own natural production of estrogens, even if only slightly.

Anecdotally, though I'm no longer taking any phytoestrogen component, my body shape changes seem to have, if anything, accelerated.

So yeah... the grand experiment continues... until I can find a way to afford medical and psychiatric care.

Something cool happened at work again today, a complete stranger looking for a specific apartment number stopped her car near me and called out "Excuse me, ma'am," and proceeded to ask me where the apartment number was. I had my music on, so I didn't hear her question at first, so when I went up to the car and turned my music off, if she changed her assessment after seeing me up closer I don't know. I muted it and had her repeat herself, and all she did was ask where the apartment was.

The other day at work the boss of the wrecking crew was all like "(name removed to protect identity) is upset because your tits are bigger than hers." I had a good giggle at that, though I doubt it was at all true, I have a strong suspicion that hers are 100% her, mine are being... enhanced... a little. Not really doing it to attract any sort of attention to them, well, usually, but I wear some thin pads in my bra to help protect my boobs from getting smashed against things at work... trust me, if you've never had the experience of having your boobs roughly meet a hard surface, or, even worse, a protrusion, it ain't fun. The pads are just enough to make it tolerable when it happens. Anyways, back to the story. I also strongly suspect that the individual mentioned doesn't really mind having small boobs, she's a butch, like, hardcore. Not QUITE to the trans-man point, but, well, lets just say that Extravagance and her would probably get on quite well (though she's definitely genetically female, she's bisexual and has kids) ;)

I THINK she was trying to make me self-conscious or upset or something, heh. Poor woman... too bad it had the exact OPPOSITE effect. It made me quite happy. :)

My coworkers and family and close associates outside of work still seem to think of me and treat me in male terms, but... well, at least people who have absolutely no preconceptions from my old shell I've cast away don't seem to. At least, not at first. It seems as soon as they notice the body hair though it goes right to "er, sorry sir," :( One of these days...

I was mulching with the Wrecking Crew again today. We were doing one of the owner's houses in town. Both of them actually have several houses... Er... well, this one was more of a mansion.

Anyways... A small gaggle of us were up front just three girls and myself, and one of them, a heavier set girl, noticed my sports bra under my work shirt. Why they hadn't ever noticed before beats me, but anyways, she noticed it this time, and was like, "Drew, are you wearing a bra!?" What else could I do but acknowledge fact. To my surprise, she's just like, is it a cloth one? And the other girls aren't saying much of anything at this point at all.

Of course, I'm like, huh? Cloth? She's like, "Yeah, cloth ones, cotton, they suck. You should get polyester." I respond that the ones I wear are all polyester blends. They're like, mostly cotton, some poly, some nylon/spandex depending. She's like, oh, where'd you get em? I tell her online. She's like, you should get pink ones, at K-mart! I'm like, nah, not really. She's like, oh, I love pink, and purple.

At this point, another girl, of medium build is like, "Do you have boobs Drew?" And so I pull my over-sized uniform t-shirt back to emphasize them more and am like, "Yeah." She's like, "What are those, A-cups?" And I say probably so. She's like, "I sometimes wish I didn't have boobs." And I say, "I thought all girls liked having their boobs, maybe they'd like em to be smaller or bigger, but..." The heavy-set girl says she likes her boobs and yells to the last girl, a little Hispanic girl, if she likes hers, who just laughs.

The medium girl then asks, "So are you becoming a girl?" And I'm like maybe. And she's like "Good!" and does that knuckle touch thing with me.

They ask me what I'm doing about it and I say that I'm on an herbal regimen to reduce my testosterone levels but can't afford to do anything else yet. After a pause, the medium girl is all, "So that's why you're growing your hair out. And why your voice changed!" I guess my voice really did change some time back?

Then they start trying to come up with names for me to use.

What I find kind of funny is that they only just then connected the dots. Only just then realized I've got boobs and have been wearing a sports bra at work... Even just a short time before this event some other ladies jogged by and were like, "it looks great girls!" and the others didn't even notice that they included me as one of the "girls" instead of using the neutral "guys".

*giggle*

OK, so, I've been "out" for a while. Just about everyone knows about me, lots of people who passed me with only a casual glance were already seeing a girl... So it was time to take the next step and drop the male facade completely.

Last Sunday I went to Dillards to get color matched for some foundation/concealer to hide away my beard shadow that is there even immediately after shaving. The girl who took care of me was named Dima and was very nice, I'm definitely going to her again when I'm ready to expand my makeup collection. She decided to try two different products from the same line, and have me wear test them and come back Monday to purchase what I wanted.

When I returned on Monday Dima was there and got me all sorted, except that the primer we decided on was out of stock, so she went on over to the computer and ordered it for me with free shipping. She then gave me some advice, and sample packets for the primer to hold me till the tube came to my door. On my way home from Dillards I stopped at Walmart to buy my first makeup brush and a thing of lip gloss. I found this wonderful Doctor's Formula pH Matchmaker stuff that I quite like.

I also thought I'd get my ears pierced, but the Walmart I'd went to was out of the set I liked, the next closest Walmart didn't even carry it, and the next closest was far enough away that by the time I got there, they'd closed.

Since then, I've been putting my face on every day, just hiding the shadow and using the lip gloss. Overall just a very natural look, with the gloss accenting the feminine full lips that I've always had my entire life.

I've been managing the pool for the Apts where I work this summer, and on Thursday, I went swimming in my swimsuit I bought a while ago. It literally called me to it when I went shopping for JUUST dry beans one day. It's like. Perfect. It's a one piece. Black background with red hearts and blue and white anchors, no shoulders, a small band around the back, and a little red string for around my neck. It really helps to show off my good points while disguising or enhancing my not so good points. The built-in bra component is a push-up type with small pads. Brings my beestings up to the A cup I've been pretending to have using padding ^^

It actually went fairly well, although one of the monkeys kept calling me "Mermaid Man". If he shows up again and starts that again I'm telling him to call me Miss Abigail, Pool Manager, or Pool Girl only. Nice people can call me Abi, Abby, or Drew ^^

Friday I decided it was high time I had a trim to tidy up my mane... But I erred here, I went to "Great Clips" a chain hair cutter. I thought... just a trim... how CAN you screw this up? She chopped 6 months off. 6 MONTHS. Grr. Even after I told her three times "just a trim, enough to make it look tidy." ... I bet she thinks I should stay as a guy and that guys shouldn't let their hair grow.

Saturday was very busy. I went down to the Glenbyrne area to go to the Glendale Walmart, finally got my ears pierced, and then stopped by the Beauty College over there... Was not particularly impressed. I stopped at a Goodwill on the way and bought three pair of white shorts, three pair of jean shorts, a teal top, a white top with a multi-colored band around the bust, and a shirt dress. I closed the pool in my swimsuit and one of my jean shorts - really really short, tight shorts. One of the monkeys standing outside the gate as I was closing up yelled "are you a boy, or a girl?" And I'm like, "Girl". He apparently then runs to older brother who's like, "are you a boy, or a girl?" and I'm like, "what do you think?" He then yells "I'm telling the office!" Soooo... this -COULD- be interesting, but I doubt it. I've already told my manager all about me, and she not only kept me on longer than originally intended, she's offered me additional responsibilities, like taking care of the pool. If she really had a problem with me, she would've ditched me already, don't you think?

This morning, I opened the pool in my tightest pair of white shorts, short shorts again, and my white top with a multi-colored band across the bust. Some residents were heading into the pool when I stopped and asked them for their pool passes, and they didn't say a word about me. At least, not to my face.

I suppose we'll see tomorrow if there're any repercussions from me dressing as I like on the weekend. I doubt it. Especially since I'm going to start wearing some of the jean shorts at work regularly as soon as my new smaller shirts get here. They're still going to be mens, so they won't really fit, but they'll be small mens, so hopefully they'll be a close enough fit that they don't totally hide my developing body.

I'm breaking into the full time. Like. Now. I'm past due, and if anyone else ain't ready, tough cookies.

I'm really much more patient and submissive than I ought to be, but there comes a point where the standstill is just too much to bear. That point is now. Prepare yourself cruel world, for Abigail is here now, and she's not about to sit still while you keep trying to knock her around.

So I've been looking into the possibility of going back to school, and the interest was in Cosmetology. After some research, I concluded it was going to be either Toledo Academy of Beauty Culture, or Regency Beauty Institute - Toledo. My instincts told me I was going to be going to Regency, but I wanted to avoid any pre-bias before even giving TABC a chance, so I visited them first. Ghettoist Beauty School ever! So that was a... maybe, but prolly not.

So then I put in an info request with Regency, the next day I get a phone call from one of girls there and she's all cool and upbeat and doesn't miss a beat when I explain that I'm a transsexual just starting transition... So I booked an appointment to visit the campus this morning. Absolutely Gorgeous Place! Like, upscale salon, kind of gorgeous. And everyone there except one pair of guests treat me as just a normal girl, looking to become a cosmetologist.

So... I like the looks. I like the "vibe". And I definitely like the way people are treating me. You know the three strikes rule? Well, this is the inverse, whatever that is. ^^ *giggle*

So after the tour and spiel and stuff, Heather, the Performance Floor Manager, and the one who was showing off campus to me and some dude who was also there for his tour today with some buddy of his, he's all like... I have a job... I'm thinking about starting early next year... Can I just reserve my spot with the $25 and decide exactly when I start later? While I'm like, I have a job, and it sucks major cow dung... where do I sign!? LOL. Actually, that was what was in my head, but I said something a little more tame, like "I'd like to enroll."

So... after lots of paperwork, lots of signing "Abi" and only two cases of signing "Andrew" and a quiz, she grades the quiz and is like, you only missed one question! And yeah... I'm enrolled ^^

I'll be starting September Tenth. So the week immediately after Labor Day will be my last week as a grounds keeper... hopefully ever.

Well. I suddenly find myself with tons of time on my hands. Part of me wants to be a total ass and try to go after them for harrassment, but... well, that part of me never really has been all that powerful. And honestly... They're being a lot nicer about it than they could be. A whole heckuva lot nicer than the last job to fire me.

I was weeding some flower/mulch beds with my partner in crime of late, my nephew, when I get called up to the office by my now ex-boss. My ex-boss was like... "Mister Andrew"... I think it's time for us to part ways... You were a great worker when you were hired, but you've lost your motivation - which is true, though I don't know if she quite realizes WHY I've lost it. After all... there was that "Mister Andrew" right from the get go, but I'm sure she saw my cringe that I tried, quite unsuccessfully, to hide, when addressed in such manner.

When you go into work each and every day to be run down and told to be more of a dude, and they refuse to respect you enough to even TRY to refer to you how you would like to be... And your opinions and ideas are treated as less than irrelevant... It becomes just a tinsy bit hard to keep up the motivation, no matter how hard you try. Before I was out to myself, I was more or less an automaton. And they essentially wanted me to stay such, it seems. They didn't want me to really exist, they wanted a robot to just do what they said, how they said, when they said.

Oh well... They're letting me keep my employee discount through the end of August on my Apt. And an additional $75 off my rent for whatever reason. They're being nice enough about letting me go, I suppose. I was kinda trying to make it till school started, but, whatever. I knew this was coming, it was just a matter of them finding the right excuse to get rid of me and having replacements lined up for pool duty and grounds. Farewell _________. You really did play a very important part in my life, the tedium of the job was part of the formula that was needed for my deep soul-search in which I finally found myself.

The important thing now is where and how do I go from here? Since I'm already planning on going back to school full-time with hours essentially identical to those of the full-time job I've just been fired from, I don't particularly wish to seek another job at this time. However, this might not be such a "BAD" thing. Since I was fired, and worked for them for over a year prior to, I now qualify for unemployment benefits in the state of Ohio for 52 weeks. Should be just about enough time to last till the end of beauty school. Since I'll now be on unemployment, I might just qualify for food stamps as well. I'm pretty sure I'm still SOL on health care though.

If I play the systems right, I might not be all that bad off really... about $100 a week blood money... errr... plasma, that is ;) Which is completely unreported income, and unemployment and food stamps... Live back with my mom again, so no rent, electric, internet, etc bills... I could actually stand to be in a better position than when I was working. Even if I can't do plasma for whatever reason... never know, really... It'd be tight, but doable. I just need to be able to survive until I can get a cosmetology job OUT of Toledo.

Speaking of living back with my mom... She and I seem to be mending our relationship somewhat. She's still not ready to see me as her daughter Abigail. But she is ready to stop calling me names about it. She's not quite ready to stop calling herself names, however... But... It's progress. And any progress is better than no progress. Progress is good. I can handle progress. Even if it is slow progress.

In other news... I've filed for my name change, I have my "Toledo Legal News" bill sitting here waiting for me to sign, place a check inside, and mail it off... hearing is on September 11th... Yeah... 9/11... Good thing I'm not stupidstitious. Unfortunately, that happens to be my second day of school. So I'll be starting my year off missing a day right away. Joy.

I have something called a Noogleberry ordered. We'll see if it does me any good. (Google it if you're interested... But I should warn you, the results are probably NSFW)

I also have a One Touch home electrolysis device that should be arriving tomorrow. My nephew is a self-taught tattoist, so I'm gunna see about letting him play around with it on himself and if he can sufficiently provide evidence to me that he can use it safely, I'll be subjecting myself to his tortures, since I can not afford a professional. The nice thing about doing this though, is that my nephew is very resourceful on getting his hands on normally tightly controlled substances... Sooooo... ;)

So today's an ending of a sort. But it's also a beginning. My ex-boss said it rightly. It's a "parting of ways". It is a farewell to a stage of my life that allowed me to begin to be, but then tried restraining me from fully flexing my wings. It's also a welcome to the rest of my life. I no longer have to associate with those people whom I worked with who were attempting to hold me back from fully embracing myself. I am Abigail Drew Patridge. Andrew Lehi Patridge ceased to properly exist on the eighth of October, 2011. His shadow is still here, but a little bit more has been displaced by an ever slowly growing ray of light this day. Which probably sounds pretty weird. You'd think I should be all depressed about losing my job. But, really, in a way, a burden has been lifted. Well. A few, actually.

So it's been a while since I last blogged. Again. Nothing's really changed for the most part recently, even if life ain't the best, when it's all much the same, not much point in repeating myself, is there? Anyhoo. So what's up?

I start beauty school this Monday and my hearing on my name change is on Tuesday. I'm pretty stoked about both... But... I'm mostly extremely nervous about both... I'm like. What if when I go to court on Tuesday the judge is all like, "DENIED!", and people there harrass me? Admittedly, those aren't really significant concerns, but...

As for school. Well. My main worry seems to be that I'll fail at YET ANOTHER THING IN MY LIFE. I mean. It seems to be a pattern for me. Every time I try to do something to move myself forward, I manage to screw it up massively. Another worry I've been having, and it's been getting worse as the big day approaches, is how the other students will treat me.

The school itself has already stated that I'll be treated exactly like any other female student, and so far, they've done exactly that... But they can't really do anything about how the other girls and guys behave. Not really. Policy is one thing, and they probably would kick any student that does anything overt. But there's plenty of more subtle ways to mess with me and they could always just refuse to socialize with me. And if I've been learning anything about the real me lately, it's that simply not getting any social attention at all would be as devastating if not more so than negative attention.

I also worry a bit about my clothes, and hair, and other such cosmetic things. I worry that my choice of outfits might not work with the dress code, and of course, my hair... ugh. My mane is stilllllll toooooooo shoooooooort. And beard and body hair... :/

Well. Enough about my insecurities. I'll get over them. Hopefully.

I've also recently discovered a fairly newly discovered phytoestrogen which when taken internally gets converted into a molecule that is almost completely identical to real human estradiol... My first batch of an extract of it should be here for me to experiment with this weekend.

Since it's not too much like estradiol when it hits the liver, the liver related side effects of oral estradiol aren't supposed to be present, at least, not according the the most current research on the chemical.

It does tend to cause hypoglycemia and can lead to estrogen dominance if progesterone isn't balanced. So it'll be fun to experiment with. I really wish I could at LEAST afford getting regular hormone testing... I did find this, at least, so I don't need to go to a doctor for it! http://zionpharmacy.com/hormone-saliva-testing/

Another recent discovery in the herbal hormone stuff is an alternative to licorice for androgen blocking. I found an herb whose primary chemical constituent strongly blocks the reduction of androsteniodone to testosterone and only has mild repercussions on other hormonal pathways. So I've stopped taking the licorice and am letting it wash from my system. I'm still taking my DHT blocker herb, saw palmetto, cuz there really doesn't seem to be anything else nearly as effective. I'll start taking the new T-blocker herb when it gets here, hopefully by the end of next week.

Finally, I've discovered an herb whose primary chemical constituent strongly SUPPORTS and enhances the action of aromatase. That's the stuff that makes estrogens from androgens. I'm not presently planning to use this one, I want to see how things work out going the blocking and supplementing route first. Depending, I might either add it, or toss the T-blocker in favor of it. No matter what, I'll definitely continue to use saw palmetto though. DHT IS EVIL!

Another "food" source of steroidal manipulation I've discovered recently is glandular supplements. These aren't herbal, however, these come from cows. Bovine Ovary seems to have a powerful effect on the ovaries in natal females with problems with their ovaries, but of course. But, curiously, it seems also that at high enough doses it can also influence the male testis to start behaving more like ovaries. Very interesting. If this turns out to be real, and effective enough... It could change the way SRS and HRT is done. Just imagine. Instead of blocking T and taking E, we just convince our gonads to do it? We can keep our gonads, and instead of causing ourselves all kinds of problems from taking hormonal supplementation, we can just produce our own natural hormones, correctly?

Wellll... I'm not really going to go into more detail about this stuff here. I don't want to cause anyone to just blindly do what I'm doing. I at least have the benefit of doing my own, extensive, research. I have a pretty good idea what to look out for to keep myself balanced. Someone who doesn't do the same research that I have wouldn't have that benefit. The last thing I want to do is cause a pandemic of over-eager, but ill informed, MtF's just blindly taking supplements that can cause as much or more harm than traditional HRT.

Also. I presently weigh 140 pounds. Too much of that is around my waist. I have a double waist. Not good. So, I'm planning to go on another weight loss plan and to aim for 120. At least. For right now. I might stop at 130. My main major goal is to get a nice flat tummy. If I get that, I'll recalculate my calorie needs at whatever weight I am when I achieve it to maintain weight.

Consequently... remember that recipe I posted a while back for a bean paste? I've changed the recipe a bit and made it into more a high-density protein paste. Slap some of the new stuff onto a sandwich with rye and sharp cheddar and you've got about 25 grams of balanced protein with incredibly low calories. Yay me.

I'm going to go on a crash diet of Greek yoghurt, the above mentioned sandwich, and chicken salad. Completely balanced macro-nutrition at crazy low calories. For my micro-nutrition I'll be taking a daily multi. If I need more calories, I can just fix another sandwich. Or eat more yoghurt. Or toss some more chicken in my salad. I know, not much variety, but it's easier to count calories while balancing nutrition if you're just eating the same thing all the time. And I've always been a strong subscriber to the KISS method. I'm also a huge believer in getting the best bang for the buck, and, foodwise, that's exactly what I'll be doing with this diet.

As for the family situation... not much change there. If anything, there's been some regression. Sigh.

Well... That's it for me I think.

Cheers,

Abi.

So it's been a week and a day since my last blog. It's been an eventful one.

My first new estrogen source arrived on Saturday last week, the day after my last blog... I started on it immediately at a fairly low dose...

Monday was my first day of Beauty School. Gosh was I sooooooo nervous. For the most part it was for nothing, though... Well. Really, it was for nothing really at all.

I mean, it's not all rainbows and teddy bear hugs and Hershey kisses... But everyone has been pretty accepting. More and more of the students are starting to correct themselves and use female pronouns for me. Some are already just doing so without thinking about it.

I have been getting bombarded with all kinds of questions, some sane, some a little less sane, and some reallllllllly out there. For me, it's just part of the deal. I could have chosen to run and hide, or, take it how it's meant, they're obviously curious and trying to understand. Some a little more than others.

There is only one guy in the class. And as far as I can tell, only one guy already out on the floor. I haven't had too much interaction with the guy on the floor, of course. The guy in the class is an ex-CO who decided it was time to make a change to his life and for whatever reasoning decided to go into cos. He's cool. I don't think he's quite entirely comfortable with me, even less than the other girls, strangely.

I'm still getting used to being back in school, and as a female now, and stuff. And geeeesh but is this stuff ever fast and uber condensed. I hope I can keep up!

There were some hiccups with the restroom situation. At first, no one was sure what the policy was on which restroom I should use, and for the first few days I used the men's while it was being figured out. The first day, the head manager of the campus at first said I could use either, then said I needed to get a special dispensation or something such to use the ladies, the second day I was still under that impression, and when I finally got a chance to look through the form she'd printed off, it said it was for disability... And I'd need a doctor and it'd need to have been known about 12 months prior and... yeah... I'd've never been able to get that OK'd. So I'd resigned myself to having to use the mens at school... Finally, I think it was on Wednesday, during first break when I took my name change order in, she told me that it was okay for me to just use the ladies. But only use it to go to the restroom, if I have to change, I have to go off-campus. Works for me! I don't know who, and it's not really any of my business, but apparently someone thought they saw me "adjusting" myself in front of the mirror in the restroom at some point... We all here are quite well aware how impossible that even is when wearing a gaff without literally stripping your bottom half... I can only suppose I was adjusting my jeans on jean day this Thursday... Since I have the aforementioned boney hips, and my jeans are hipsters, they sometimes like to ride down on me... The manager told me this is fine and she'd handle it, but I'm just going to have to be extra careful to do ANY outfit adjustments AT ALL, in the privacy of a toilet stall I guess. Just to avoid any confusion of any sort.

I slipped something into the previous paragraph quite innocently that deserves a paragraph of it's own. YES! MY NAME CHANGE! I can't presently afford to get my license taken care of, and I can't correct my bank account yet until I have my new SS card, but I have my court-ordered name change! I am now legally Abigail. It was interesting. I was all worked up about it, and then it was all kinda anti-climactic and over in like 15 minutes.

I go downtown and into the courthouse, go up to probate, go into the wrong room at first, get directed to return to where I'd filed, and talk to the same girl who I'd filed with, she tells me to wait outside and they'll call me back in in a bit. I sit there waiting, and eventually some guy walks by who I don't remember, but was apparently there when I'd filed and is like, I remember you! Name change right? I answer the affirmative and he talks to me for a minute like nothings up at all, then he leaves. A bit later, I get called back in and the girl notarizes my order of name change and runs a couple copies and off I go.

At the SSA I take a seat waiting my turn next to an older lady working a book of word search puzzles and she strikes up a conversation with me as just the girl sitting next to her in line. It was just so NORMAL that it was surreal. When it's finally my turn, it's all over in just a few minutes, they take my license, ss card, and name change order, do whatever it is they do, and give me back the license and name change order, telling me the new card should arrive in the mail within ten business days. She never once mentions my old name, it's just Abigail, and just a girl getting her name changed. Of course, I've still got that "M" but... one thing at a time. It'll be quite a while longer before I get that changed yet.

After SSA it's back to school for the remainder of the day. We were covering waxing, and one of the girls wanted to wax my legs, I'm like, OK by me, but I don't think I have enough... Once it's our turn, the instructor agrees I did not have enough hair to wax yet. I tell the girl who wanted to wax me that I should have enough grown back in the next day... cuz I'd last shaved them on Saturday... They weren't. Still weren't on Thurs... Still not on Fri... This morning, they're finally getting really stubbly again. Hopefully she can do them on Monday, it'll be the last day that we can do waxes on each other for free. That is only one of several effects I'm already noticing from the estrogen. My mood and energy is also so much better, and I've already gained a few more mm's in the bust probably. I haven't measured, but I can SEE a difference. I used to have to shave my entire body every other day most typically, and every four days was the absolute max. Weekly shaving will be such a relief in comparison. Obviously my beard is still a daily blood-letting. Literally...

Wednesday and Thursday we were on facials. Got my first ever facial done and did my first ever facial on someone else on Thursday. I'm awful at it at this point. Going to need to really work on that! As for my facial... I just wish I'd been on a bed instead of a table. ^^

Also on Wednesday the rest of my present HRT plan arrived from Swanson's. So far I think these dosing levels are working quite well for me.

Yesterday we did each others makeup and covered some basic color theory. I figured out an awesome new trick! OK... so... the instructor is all like, I'm going to intentionally try to use something not color matched in order to show you what to do... and then used too light of a concealer around this girls eyes. She's then like. Looks great right!? I'm done right!? and we all laugh and she's like, so here's what you do, and put a properly color matched foundation on top of it. The dark circles are covered, the too light concealer is covered, and viola, it actually is perfect! Suddenly a light bulb goes off in my head, and I'm like, to the instructor, what if we use this intentionally, on, like, my beard shadow? And she's like that could be interesting, who's your partner for later and yadda yadda.

So the same girl who wants to wax my legs is also the girl I'm partnered with for this. She does a full foundation first, then the too-light concealer into the shadow, and then foundation again, just as we'd talked about with the instructor. She then sets it with setting powder... And it worked! It actually does a better job than the crazy expensive cream and powder from Dermablend and the primer from TooFaced and I'm sure probably will cost me less! We used cream-to-powder products. Dermablend is just a straight up heavy cream and actually seems to melt on me more than this stuff. I never wanted to even consider the heavy grease stuff some girls resort to... So yeah. Very happy to figure this one out!

She took a really long time on me, and is like, "I took too long!", and I'm like, that's mostly because there's so much more to be done to my face... and she's like "No, I'm just too slow." *shrug*

Anyways, then it's my turn to do hers and we are indeed very crunched for time... So I try to work as quickly as I can while not messing it up, and I think I did a terrible job, but she seems to like it and other students seem to like it, so I dunno.

So I'm going to be needing to do permanent hair removal, electrolysis, to my face. This is supposed to be EXTREMELY painful... I've been holding off on really looking into getting started on it partially because of the cost of the procedure itself when done professionally, and partially because of the added cost of getting myself anesthetized beforehand.

There are products out there for around $20 that can do at-home galvanic electrolysis, so that's not really a big problem if I can just get up the gumption to DIY it...

But anesthesia would still be a problem... And is a LARGE part of what's keeping back the gumption to DIY it.

Someone over on a board I frequent, however, turned me on to a new research project when she commented on a thread about making your own pueraria mirifica cream using DMSO as the carrier through the skin barrier.

That's a large part of why effective topical anesthesia would be so costly, getting it through the skin barrier...

I did a little research on DMSO and found that in addition to being an excellent carrier for other dissolved chemicals mixed with it, it has analgesic and anti-inflammatory properties. That's two parts of the pain from electrolysis taken care of. Just need to find a reasonable anesthetic as well and I'd be set.

So I set to looking for herbs that when used topically act as an anesthetic and eventually found cloves. Actually, the clove oil. Apparently clove oil's primary constituent is a powerful anesthetic known as eugenol. And if you take the oil from the stems, you can get up to 95% eugenol! And to make things even more interesting, eugenol also tends to carry through the skin barrier easier than other drugs. Eugenol in fact has seen a lot of use by some dentists in place of the 'caine's. For people who are allergic to the 'caine family of drugs, but not allergic to cloves, it's a safer alternative than some of the other choices.

The bad part of this combination? Bad breath. But I have found out that apparently, just a small amount of aloe gel can cancel that.

So I'm going to be mixing a 99% pure DMSO liquid found here: http://www.petstruly.com/1871.html

With a 100% pure from-the-stem clove oil found here: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Clove-Stem-Essen...4ab92e2282

And some pure aloe gel extracted myself from plants bought at the local market.

I'll be mixing it in an approximately 7/2/1 combination. Seven parts DMSO, two parts clove oil, and 1 part aloe gel. 16 oz DMSO, 4 oz clove oil, and 2 oz aloe gel. If you divide by two that's actually 8/2/1, but if you recalculate based on parts of the 22oz whole, it's about 72%, 18%, 10%. Multiplied by their respective strengths you get about 71%, 17%, and 5% of active ingredients and 7% inactive.

Why that combination? For one thing, 70% is the minimum required DMSO strength to completely penetrate the skin barrier and carry things with it. Even just 15% eugenol when being carried directly to the local blood stream should be more than sufficient for quite a bit of numbing, and the aloe is only meant to help the odor. I was unable to find any specific quantity to use, but figured since DMSO is used by itself in up to 90% formulas, 5% active aloe constituents should be sufficient.

Now I just need money to buy the ingredients and an at-home electrolysis machine.

This mixture would probably be pretty darned effective for waxing too btw, if anyone would like to try it for that.

The potential dangers? Don't try this if you have an allergy to aloe or cloves. As far as I could find, there are no known adverse reactions to DMSO itself, only any chemicals carried with it. I am not myself allergic to either, I use both quite often for other uses. Cloves are one of my favorite food spices and aloe is an excellent moisturizer for someone who already produces more sebum than she needs anything to do with. It returns JUST moisture, with no oils. Aloe also tends to be a great enhancement for...

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other moisture needs... ;)

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Think of a certain word beginning with L, and yes, it's kind of dirty, but true... :P

So, I figured it was probably time for me to put up a more recent pic of myself. It's been a LONG time since most of my befores... But first, here's one more before:

This is what I looked like while I was slipping into my worst depression, the one that sent me near comatose and that caused me to vow to "fix" my battle with depression once and for all... Indirectly leading to my discovery that I am in fact female and have been hiding it deep inside me all my life.

But here's what I looked like the other day at school when one of the girls did my makeup for class:

I'm actually smiling! Smiling that's actually touching my entire face! Nothing forced, no hidden pain lurking behind that smile.

That's not saying life is all rosy and peaches and cream and everything else nice... Far from it. But I can actually have genuinely happy moments like this. That's something.

And now I'm making myself tear up... *grabs tissues*

I do not believe that I've mentioned this here before, but I've been using a series of subliminal programs to help me better myself in several ways...

Among them are programs to help with self esteem issues, fears, guilt, and shame, and what I'm about to share a progress report on now: developing a more feminine voice.

The program I'm using is the one found here: http://subliminal-shop.com/categories/of-interest-to-women/d...

And I have got to tell you... this really DOES WORK!

Do note that it has language that limits its effectiveness to ONLY people who identify as female subconsciously... So before you try this, you have to be absolutely certain that your entire subconscious believes you to be purely female, not somewhere on a scale between.

From a visible standpoint... you know that slight bulge in my neck from previous pictures? It used to be bigger. You couldn't really tell from when I was younger, between the fat neck and the hair on it... And by the time the hair was gone, I was already well on my way into the current sub.

And now... For the audible proof...

Here's a reading of my poem, A Month In a Moment, recorded a few years back:

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?ugw2qew1gh47nn3

This one was done with a high quality microphone, on my desktop with good sound hardware, with nice recording tools. I repeated the reading several times and spliced together the best pieces.

Now here's one I did just now with crappy microphone, laptop sound hardware, and lousy Windows Sound Recorder, and just a single read through because I can't do the editing with Windows Sound Recorder that I could do with the decent software of the old recording:

http://www.mediafire.com/?d2eapsqsl7d2l7l

The proof as they say...

The most interesting thing about this is that the subliminal I'm using has language in it to the effect of "if I'm female..." Well... It's working... lol :D

I must stress absolutely that I have been doing absolutely NOTHING else for voice training. Just this sub. No actual hard work or time expenditure on specifically training my voice. I'm just letting it slip into it's new shape naturally, as developed by this sub.

And I'm NOT done! Not yet! Though it might be getting kinda close.

The other subs I mentioned are subs I did before this one, to try to get anything that might cause any resistance out of the way so I could make full use of the sub. Though I do think I'm going to want to rerun those programs again later... I'm still having issues with those things... just not as severe.

As many of you are probably aware I've doing HRT DIY-style.

I've gotten my dosages and scheduling and everything pretty well perfected except for ONE THING. One of my three T blockers is making me tired all the time.

I'm using three different herbs to help eliminate testosterone from my body: Saw palmetto, which blocks 5-alpha-Reductase, the enzyme responsible for manufacturing dihydrotestosterone from testosterone, DHT being 3 to 10 times stronger than T. Spearmint which binds to androgen receptor sites preventing stronger androgens from doing so whilst not actually producing any androgenic effect at all. And finally, the troublemaker: Chinese Skullcap.

Chinese skullcap works by blocking 17-beta-HSD types 3 and 1. It blocks type 3 much more strongly than type 1 which is why I feel justified in using it despite it also blocking type 1. Too strongly blocking type 1 is undesirable, that's the type that's responsible for reducing estrone to estradiol, and a buildup of estrone can lead to many problems...

Blocking type 3 is what I'm using it for. Type 3 is the type primarily responsible for manufacturing testosterone from weaker androgens... By blocking JUST the testosterone synthesis pathway selectively I avoid many of the problems of less selective T-blocking methods, making it easier to control and "DIY" without medical oversight.

The problem is that over time abuse of chinese skullcap can, in some individuals, lead to stomach cramping, a loose bowel and excessive drowsiness. I appear to be one of those individuals. At first I felt great using CS. But months later I'm getting all the side effects warned about.

I do NOT want to resort to spironolactone. While it does the job of all three of my herbs, it also does things that are unnecessary, and things I'm using other things for, and could potentially STILL have the same side effects. I put spiro in the same category, but as an even worse offender, as licorice. It's even worse because it's entirely synthetic, a man-made chemical drug with no natural analog. And it's still a sledge-hammer to your insides. Licorice may be a sledge-hammer to your insides, but at least it's a natural one ;)

So yeah. I'm on the prowl for something else to use. Hopefully which only blocks types 3 and 5, three being preferred. Type 5 is ALSO responsible for testosterone production, but not nearly to the extent that type 3 is. If it blocks any other types, hopefully it does so very weakly in comparison.

My resources however, are limited. I have access to enough information to know that what I'm after is out there, but precisely which herb I want goes a little deeper into the medical research papers than I can get my claws into. I am using CS because, despite the potential side effects, it was the only one I could actually get the name of. But I know there are others. And hopefully at least one of which won't have side effects I won't be able to manage on my own. I honestly never would have expected CS's side effects to be THIS strong. The drowsiness I can fight. The cramping and loose bowel I can not seem to do so.

If anyone can help I'd appreciate it... Otherwise... I just needed to vent some frustration.

In other news...

I am really doing pretty well overall. For the most part I am no longer being sirred or having any other reference to being male made in reference to my person any more. There are the few very rude exceptions among mostly strangers, and those who already knew me are struggling but really are trying now. Well. Those who didn't immediately end contact with me when I came out to them. I still have not heard from my once dearest sister. And I suspect I never will.

I say very rude because except for just ONE THING my daily appearance is extremely feminine now... That one thing being the remnants of my beard that is just too dark to cover without painting on way too much makeup for my preferences.

One of these days that problem will be gone... Still need to shave my entire bloody body every day as well, but yeah. Soon as my face is completely done, I'll have them start my back, and I'll buy an at-home laser hair removal device to use on everything I can reach myself.

Though I still haven't quite worked up my nerve to go to my bike shop... And my one friend from high school hasn't been spoken to since before... I'm really danged nervous on both counts. The guys at the shop are really excessively macho types and the high school friend... Well... He was the only person in high school who even really wanted to try to be my friend. How do you tell someone like that that you aren't who they thought you were? And yeah. I kinda like him. And I was always sorely jealous of his sisters while at the same time actually wanting to hang with them more than him, which made me feel bad.

I still have my occasional doubts and fears, but then I look closely at what kind of life I'd been "living" and realize... Yeah. It might be rough right now, but a large part of that is that I'm even bothering to try. Life's easy when you aren't even trying.

Holy crapolie. I just solved my super retarded Firefox memory problems I've been having since like. They started coming out with new whole version increments in a constant flood. If anyone else has been fighting this, the solution is simple: disable the following services and shut them down: Diagnostic Policy Service, Diagnostic Service Host, and Diagnostic System Host.

Restart Firefox and browse with 50+ tabs open with NO MORE SLOWDOWNS! YAY!

I decided to run Windows Task Manager alongside for a minute and watch what happens whilst watching my Firefox RAM use escalate out of control... And observed a curious phenomenon. As the Firefox RAM usage escalated, so did the RAM use of two svchost tasks... Which indicated to me that two Windows Services were directly conflicting with Firefox. I do a little more digging and resolve those services to Diagnostic Service Host and Diagnostic System Host... But I disable those and it's not enough! Diagnostic Policy Service just switches them back on and it's right back to misery and woe and watching my RAM go from 34% to 100% within minutes!

So what does a girl who can't NOT multitask do? She shuts off Windows Diagnostics completely, for good, end of story. Starts Firefox back up, and watches as she loads up her tabs and only a very negligible increase in RAM use follows. And is well pleased.

This solution is probably best recommended to experienced users only... Those who actually rely on Windows telling them what's wrong (and usually failing miserably) need not apply. Because what those three services are, effectively, are Windows' attempts to tell you what's wrong when something goes wrong. An experienced user generally just ignores what those stupid things say and follow their own much better diagnostic methods instead anyways. An inexperienced user... well, I guess it's all they have to go on before resorting to calling on an experienced friend.

And to be quite honest with everyone, I don't know if it's Microshaft who's to blame this time, or the Firepoop team, or if they in some way need to share the blame. It was getting a tad ridiculous there though. My laptop ain't my desktop, no, but Behemoth's down for the count and she's all I got. Even so, 4 gigs of RAM PLUS shouldn't be getting gobbled up just by browsing, even with 50-100 tabs. I have no idea how much RAM it was capping out at on Behemoth, cuz he had a quite solid 12er. So whatever it was wasn't making itself too terribly felt other just the occasional "huh, well, those numbers seem a bit odd" observation every now and then. My laptop OTOH only HAS 4 gigs. So I was going from 34% ram idle to MAX within minutes of loading Firefox and a coupla tabs. And that was insane.

I still dislike that my laptop is almost entirely hogtied in its performance by its very miserable quantity of RAM. My usage patterns dictate for a much higher RAM to processor speed ratio than ANY laptop is built to handle.

"The Miracle Cure" of course being a reference to the idea that we can somehow be made into just a "normal" cis-gendered person in whatever sex we were assigned at birth.

I was reading a TG webcomic and something mentioned in the comments field really struck me, so I just HAVE to share:

Talking about an experiment that was done, hypnotising a bunch of transsexuals into thinking and acting as though they were "normal":

"or they fell into a terrible depression that they couldn’t describe; as though they were still deeply troubled by something, but couldn’t place why"

This! This describes my entire life from the time I was MAYBE 8 at the oldest until just a coupla years ago. I can't verify it to have started any younger than 8 because I honestly have no real memory even now of my most formative years. I just know that my earliest memories (where I also remember what age I was) are around 8 and even then, I was deeply troubled by something but couldn't place why. It'd get worse and ease off in an almost cyclic pattern, but it was still ever persistent. I actually even managed to convince myself I WASN'T being depressive during the eased off periods... But... Looking back now after finally freeing myself... All I really knew then was anger and depression, just at varied levels. I even know true despair. And trust me, it ain't pretty.

Thing is, I did it entirely by myself, to myself, and broke free from it entirely by myself, from myself. Sounds kinda confusing, I know, but it's exactly the way it went. Self-hypnotism IS real. All hypnotism does is program the conscious mind to perform certain responses to certain stimuli while preventing the subconscious mind from interfering. That subconscious block is the source of the "deeply troubled" feeling and also why you can't place why. WHY is in the subconscious, and is being blocked.

Some people take to hypnotism better than others, and for those, it'll last until it's broken. For some it'll naturally deteriorate on it's own without consistent reiteration. The ones where it naturally deteriorates are the ones that start showing signs of tg again in that article.

And when a part of the subconscious actually takes an active part in the constructing and maintaining of the program residing in the conscious and in blocking another part of the subconscious... Which is what happened in my case...

Someone recently tried telling me I had no idea how powerful my mind is (someone who self-identifies as being "in-between" and insists there's no such thing as full transsexuals, only cis-men, cis-women, and "in-betweens"... But I know EXACTLY how powerful my mind is. I also know without a single doubt in my mind, heart, or soul, that I am a woman. Heart, mind, and soul. My stupid body can say whatever my stupid body wants to say, and my conscious mind can be tricked into saying things that aren't quite true as well, but the fact is, deep inside me, at the very core of my being, resides a woman. End of story.

A few years ago I dropped out of college when I came face to face with true despair and still, even then, had no idea why. A couple years ago I went on a deep soul search within myself with the aid of a very mild opiate herb. I had no idea then that I was in fact a woman... But at the end of the search when I finally found myself, my true self... Wow. What a revelation it was. And it changed everything.

I'm now transitioning... Very early in the process, but when I came to from that long nightmare there was no doubt in my mind that I had no other choice. Period. End of Story.

Anyone still failing to understand... Let's face it. You'll NEVER understand. I'm not asking nor have I EVER asked anyone to "understand". All I ask is that you accept. Accept that I am not and never truly was whoever you may have thought I was. It was a lie. A very carefully constructed and maintained lie.

And if anyone thinks there's no freaking way someone so young could possibly have created such a construct within their own minds... You're an idiot. It may not happen often, but it's definitely real, definitely possible, and I'm LIVING PROOF of the concept.

I present to you without further comment, a real life example of forced fem:

http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/01/couple_reveals_childs...

So... I might just be getting a boyfriend soon...

I know! I can't believe it!

Anyways... He doesn't... At least, probably not... know about my past yet.

It wouldn't be as though I'm keeping it secret if I don't directly say anything, because he kinda found my Facebook profile through the suggestions feature through a friend of mine and added me, and then I turned around and asked her about him as is my policy any time a friend of one of my friends who I don't remember meeting myself tries adding me.

And I say a lot of things about my experiences being a trans woman on my Facebook.

But anyhoo... I asked her about him and she said he was "ok" or something like that. It wasn't really a raving recommendation but I was like, whatever, and added him. Like minutes later I get a text on my phone from a number I don't know saying "poke". Which I of course completely ignore.

Maybe a day later he then messages me on Facebook to text him some time and gives THAT EXACT PHONE NUMBER.

So now I'm kinda creeping out a bit and in the meantime I'm having an argument with one of my sisters and a FB-only friend about basically how I'm being too much of a conservative because of something I put on Facebook that's not entirely related but not totally unrelated but I didn't really get the relation at the time...

I'm also at a party of another friend at their house where I'm going to be spending the night...

Well, I unplug from both situations and put my head back in to the party and enjoy myself, then go to bed, then get up, and I put everything together and text him.

I tell him off gently for being creepy and he's all like sorry, but he's just kinda direct when he's attracted to someone, and he'll leave me alone... And I'm getting these like MASSIVE loneliness vibes from his message but no longer anything seriously creepy. So I'm like no, that's ok, just kinda new to all this and had some creep experiences lately making me even more cautious and I'm already super cautious! Anyone who knows me can tell you I'm like naturally pathologically neurotically almost paranoically cautious.

So anyways, we start texting back and forth a bit and before I know it he's all but practically asking me out on a date. I mean, seriously. The guy's asking what I like to do for fun.

At this point my phone is dying and rather than answer him right away I tell him later cuz my phone is dying and I'm at a friends and forgot my wall charger. All true statements though I later find my friends wall adapter for a USB charger plug and get plugged in then immediately text the friend this guy found me because of! I tell her everything that's transpired so far but kinda just leave it at that...

Now I'm both kinda excited but I'm also scared as hell. The guy seemed to have gone straight from profile pic to I want to talk to this girl and I'm not sure if he's even looked at my wall at all. He obviously looked at enough of my profile to get my phone number, but I don't actually mention my status there at all.

So I'm still stuck at the whole OMG! shock stage lol.

I still haven't texted him again and this all went down early this morning...

I know I look attractive in my FB profile pic, it's like my best photo ever... But if he's thinking I look like that all the time he's gonna be super disappointed because I don't even look quite like that even some of the time anymore. I don't have the wig that I was wearing in that picture anymore! lol.

I mean, I can still glam myself up pretty good when I want to but I don't hardly ever bother. If people can't accept me for who I am even when I'm sporting a beard shadow they can stuff it.

But this is like... different. I can't put this on my Facebook, cuz he might see it there!

Part of me is saying be right up front with him and tell him right now before things go any further so there can be absolutely no pain or confusion or hurt feelings later. Another part is saying seeeee him at least ooooooone time, then tell him.

Gaaaaaah! I sooo was not seeing this coming at this point in time. I suppose I should have and should have done something to prepare myself for the possibility of dating but... My focus has just been on anything but!

I guess advice is welcome but I mainly just needed to let this all out somewhere.

If any of it even makes coherent sense... lol.

I know. It's been a VERY long time since I've logged in here. I've been reading stories as and when I can, but my internet hasn't and still isn't particularly reliable. For about a year there I couldn't get my laptop to go on the internet at all, and my phone screen is just way too small to view this site well.

Speaking of... I can't remember if I'd mentioned that or not, but Behemoth, that's my moniker for my primary desktop whenever I have one operational, has been dead for quite a long time now. And he had all my files for both my series. I still can not afford to get the necessary device to even so much as extract that data. And I certainly can't afford to build a new Behemoth.

So both Chronicles of Atlantia and Open Your Heart are STILL on indefinite hold. I'd love to get back to them, but I'm not redoing all my previous work and hoping my memory is good enough not to get any of it wrong.

The reason I've been without decent internet is because I left my parents house again. A little recap of what's gone on between is in order I think...

In my last blog I was hyperventilating because some guy seemed like he wanted to date me. Well, that didn't work out. I let him know about my history and present circumstances and he wasn't awful about it, but made it clear he wasn't interested anymore.

After that situation ended, another guy who I'd met through local politics took me on a movie date. The date went okay, but I was getting some by then familiar vibes off of him, similar to the ones I'd gotten off the previous character.

Sometime after the first date, someone else, I still don't know who, let him know about you-know-what. His reaction was NOT nice. It took him a really long time to eventually apologize for his behavior, but he was an ass for a very long time. He even attempted to sabotage my relationship with the third guy I went out with early on. Fortunately, this guy was way more accepting and genuinely cares about me and kinda ripped into him a bit.

So now, the third guy. Our first date was a movie date, we went to see Thor 2, and spent some time in the mall. He was a perfect gentlemen, and I wasn't getting any weird vibe from him other than just both of our general tension. We soon had several more dates under us and then I moved in with him about 6 months after our first date. We've now been together almost a year and a half.

So yes. Abi really does have a long-term live-in boyfriend now.

In other events, I'm now also currently a member of the local county Green Party's Central Committee, though I may be forced to resign that position soon. I ran for and was elected to this position last November. So I've now held an elected political office. When we did our own internal election of committee officers, however, I abstained from running for anything, so I'm just a committee member, not a committee officer.

The reason I might have to resign soon is because I'm going to have to move again. When I met Randy, he was already fighting a losing battle with the banks over his house, and sometime last year they served him foreclosure notice... Just very recently we were served final notice of Sheriff's sale, which is scheduled for the 27th of next month. From my searching for an appropriate place to move, I'd narrowed our choices down to just two apartment complexes, and one of them is in Michigan. Moving intra-county wouldn't force me to resign, but leaving not just the county, but the state, and becoming a resident of another state or county would force me to resign. The other option is in the same county, but we'd HAVE to spend coinage on coin operated laundry there, whereas the one in Michigan has an included utility room, we'd just need to purchase a compatible washer and dryer for the provided hookups.

Part of why the limited choices is because we have to be close to both of our work. His isn't as important because he drives, but I have to be close enough to walk or bicycle. I could walk from the one in Michigan, though I'll probably use a bike in dry conditions, and the other I could ride a bike from, even though I'd have to do so even in inclement weather.

I'm not actually working right now, but I will be hopefully quite soon. One of my sisters is trying to open a for-dogs diner just across the border in Michigan from where I am now. It'd just be about a mile from the apartments in Michigan, two miles from the ones here. I probably wouldn't make much. Definitely not at first. But it would have a great deal of room for growth since it'll be a startup that I'll be in from the beginning. Though I do kind of doubt I'll stay with it for the long term. I still want to implement a plan of my own, this opportunity will hopefully just provide me with what I'll need to be able to afford to do more testing. And get my feet back under me before I go off and start pissing money away again after my dreams. I need to try to get some debts paid down to where I CAN try to implement a business plan. With how deeply in debt and how bad my credit is right now, no one'll give a business plan of mine a teeniest chance.

Anyways, since you all now know what I've been up to, and that both of my current titles are still stuck on indefinite hold, here's what I'm thinking about for the immediate future:

I'm thinking about starting a new story. Maybe several. Maybe it'll just be a single serial. I don't know yet for sure. One of the new semi-open universes right now has sparked my muse and I'm planning on contacting the owner of that universe to talk about my idea. I don't know yet if this is even going to go anywhere whatsoever, so don't anyone get your hopes up just yet. ;)

So I mentioned in a comment to something somewhere around here the other day that I wrote an epic poem once right?

I've also mentioned that I've done strict milieu-driven stories with no main character - letting the reader slip into that role.

I haven't previously mentioned that I've written a lot of stories that merge science fiction and fantasy elements into one.

Anyways, the idea has entered my head, and I'm starting to think up a nice little story in which I will marry all three of the above things to each other.

Dunno how long it'd be, probably not more than a longish short story, and it'll probably have to wait till I finish Open Your Heart... Though I may write them concurrently for a while and post the epic poem before Open Your Heart concludes.

It'll be a transformation story with lots of fun little riddles and puzzles that get solved in order to progress towards the conclusion.

The last time I did an epic poem transformation story it made heavy use of Native American folklore and was about a boy who wanted to become stronger and wound up transforming into an "eagle" man at the conclusion of the story. This time... you'll just have to wait and see!

Alas, though I still have the paper mache "head" that I wrote the previous story to go along with all as part of an art project, I have long since lost the story, so even if anyone would be interested in reading my last foray into this writing style, I cannot provide it to you. It had absolutely no TG in it anyways. Weak boy to strong eagle man transformation is as far from a story appropriate to this site as you can get, I would think.

Anyways, comments if you wish, not if you don't. I don't suspect this kind of story will garner much interest, but then I was quite pleasantly surprised at the reception Open Your Heart is getting so far.

OK, so while OYH's hiatus will continue for a bit longer, a new character has grabbed my attention and wants to be heard.

This character will be a cop from a town called Atlantia, which doesn't exist. Atlantia is a hidden town of magic and superpowers that once you've entered, you cannot leave. It was founded by refugees from Atlantis, whose history according to my story might be a little different to what you're used to.

Anyways, I'm about 700 words into the first story, which is to be called "The Chronicles of Atlantia: The Cop, the Villain, and the Wet Work", intentionally spoofed off Narnia's similar book title.

These stories are all intended to be parodies, and inspired by Erin Halfelven's "Girlery" captions, with permission. At least, the ones I write will be. I intend to open this up as a story universe after I get done with my string of stories to be set there.

Anyways, since Erin isn't sure she can find the original art for those, and is a bit busy right now, I was wondering if anyone might be interested in being my illustrator?

Looking mainly for pre- and post- transformation character illustrations, minus any captions, perhaps some illustrations for characters that are never going to be transformed.

PM me if you're interested in doing the illustration, I'm for bed tonight.

While at work today I experienced an epiphany... I think the thought was something along the lines of I might actually be able to catch up with my reading of Angharad's Bike serial if I could just copy a buncha chapters to my phone in audio format and listen to them while at work... Which led me to, well, what if other people wanted to listen to my story while doing other things instead of taking the time out of their day just to specifically read. Or maybe even they might want to read along with me and hear the way I voice the characters in my head when writing.

Therefore, from now on, I am going to start doing official readings of all chapters of anything I write and post to BC. For now, that's only Open Your Heart.

If I do this before posting up the text version, it could cause a delay in chapters being posted, so I'd be interested in the opinions of my readers whether I should just post up each chapter hot off the keyboard and do the readings after and add them with a quick edit. Or if I should write each chapter, do the reading, and then post both at the same time.

When I finish the book, I'll add a link on the books title page to an archive of cdrom image files containing the entire book as an AudioBook. Additionally, a PDF containing a copy of the book formatted as I would envision it looking if published on paper.

I dunno if I'd be interested in getting myself set up with Lulu or anything, probably not. Free downloads and it's up to you to print/burn/whatever on your own. This and any future stories will be the same.

Well, I don't know for sure how long it'll take me to finish readings for the current two chapters, I'll be sure to reply to this blog post when I do.

Thoughts?

Subject says it all. If you don't want to go back to the story page:

http://www.mediafire.com/?2od89xe980h4ujc

In other news... Chapter 3 is going to be further delayed... Not sure when I'll be able to finish it, but I ended up running all over town on errands yesterday cutting into what would have been writing time.

So... Chapter 3 could possibly be done... maybe.

I'm having difficulty deciding whether to post the chapter as-is, with only half as many words as the other two chapters so far and most other chapters are likely to have, and this, having taking over twice as long to write. Or, switch back from Janet's perspective to Drew's and keep writing (which is what would happen anyways, but as a new chapter), probably wind up taking until late Sunday to finish, and ending up with a chapter-and-half chapter length.

I know what caused the difference in chapter length. If anything, we learn even more about the background of the situation in this chapter than we have in either of the other two chapters, but Janet's mind operates at a different meter than Drew's does, and this caused a faster general pacing, resulting in fewer words to demonstrate the information in.

In actuality, only very little real-time has passed, Janet spends the entire time thinking about the first two times she met Drew, and the first time her and Jack's daughter did.

Since there will be a mostly harmless shower scene, I'm probably going to raise the rating to R for this chapter, simply because there will be some description of female nudity and bathing. Nothing overtly sexual, thanks to it being from Drew's perspective, were the same shower scene written from Christina's perspective... Might have to take it up even higher ;P

Honestly, as much as I avoid gratuitous sexuality, the subject matter alone for this story really isn't suitable for anyone who wouldn't be permitted to an R movie. It's not necessarily because it'd put any nasty thoughts in a younger persons head, though it could, especially with the upcoming scene in chapter 3, but because I highly doubt they'd even understand what they're reading. I mean, really understand it.

Better get used to it. Unfathomably, they seem to actually like my performance at work and plan to keep me around at least to first snow. It was originally supposed to be just a summer job, just till my brother got back on his feet, but he's back on his feet, and they've extended my hire. Now let's just see if they extend it again through the winter months...

Anyways, since I work full-time, usually prepare my own meals, and sleep most of the remaining time through the week, I only really have weekends to myself, either to write, or read. I got myself into Little Katie's God Bless the Child, and so now I'll likely be spending the entire weekend reading that.

I'm not really neglecting writing on purpose... but I really do have limited time to myself. I can't dare to start writing during the week with the hour or two before bedtime after dinner, because if I do, I might get too involved in it and wind up not sleeping - not good when I have to get up at 6:30 to get ready for an 8 hour work shift at hard manual labor.

Some of you may already know some of this.

Anyways, in the first chapter of Open Your Heart (hitherto referred to as OYH), Drew mentions that he's been taking herbal supplements to keep his hormonal imbalance somewhat controlled. I haven't yet mentioned what, though this will come up in Chapter 4 whenever I manage to write it. So right now, I'm going to describe the science behind what I'm writing, for two reasons. First, I don't want anyone going off and telling me it's not possible, when I know full well it is, when I use it in OYH. Second, maybe some of you might find it useful knowledge so you don't inadvertently mess up your own hormonal balance with your diet. Which I think I've done myself, now that I've done all this research for my story... and I think may be the cause of my gynaecomastia and other feminizing features, such as my feet narrowing, and my fingers slimming, my waist narrowing, and my hips widening... none of it is all that severe, but then I probably don't consume nearly high enough concentrations...

Anyways, it's important to know how your body creates its hormones for any of this to make sense, so, a chart:

The chart doesn't list what "A" stands for in the T->E switch, it's aromatase.

There're two main ways to manipulate your hormonal balance herbally. The first, is by preventing the reduction/conversion stages from occurring.

Now, say you do something to prevent 5-alpha-reductase from working. This is called a 5-alpha-reductase inhibitor. A popular herbal treatment for men with male-pattern baldness or prostate problems is Saw Palmetto. Saw Palmetto is also a common ingredient in hair removal creams that advertise inhibiting of hair regrowth. Why? Saw Palmetto acts as a powerful 5-alpha-reductase inhibitor. By inhibiting 5-alpha-reductase, free testosterone cannot be converted to dihydrotestosterone, which causes hair loss on the scalp, hair growth on the body, and all other secondary masculine traits to occur. The only thing free testosterone is good for is muscle growth. Saw Palmetto is also a common ingredient in steroid cocktails for that reason, steroid users want to get muscles, but they don't want the problems associated with excess "sex hormone" testosterone. So, to summarize, if you inhibit 5-alpha-reductase activity in your body, you become less masculine. The most powerful herb to do this with is Saw Palmetto. Saw Palmetto can also act as a mild phytoestrogen, covered later.

Next, say you do something to inhibit aromatase activity. This one should be obvious. The only way to make estrogens is to convert it from androgens. The only thing your body can use to convert androgens to estrogens is aromatase. If you block aromatase activity, you block estrogen development in your body. Luckily, for those who WANT to become more feminine, very very very few naturally occurring substances that you might eat can do this. Of course, in Drew Pattengales case, he was becoming more feminine, and wanted to stop it, so, he had to find something that could. The most powerful aromatase inhibitor, even more powerful than prescription drugs, is the bark of a phellodendron. The phellodendron genus of deciduous trees is common in the Far East, and is a known invasive species anywhere that deciduous trees can grow. The bark is used to treat all kinds of things in traditional Chinese medicine, so if you are female, or an MtF transsexual, you are strongly advised to be cautious of any herbal remedies claiming to be a traditional Chinese one! For the purposes of OYH, I'm going to claim that Drew was able to discover a large quantity of the trees on the apt complex property and has been harvesting the bark himself. Drew just recently harvested a large amount of it and... well, you'll just have to read and find out when I get there.

There's another way to manipulate your hormonal balance with what you eat as well. This is by eating things that directly act as though they are the desired hormone. These are known as phyto-hormones. Phyto means plant-based.

To boost your estrogen count, you can eat something with high phytoestrogens. Interestingly, for you drunks out there, alcoholic beverages, and beer especially, are known to be high in phytoestrogens... Now, I'm not telling you to go out and get drunk, obviously there are better ways. Soy. Soy is extremely high in phytoestrogens, and is also known to be the opposite of an aromatase inhibitor, it actually boosts your metabolism of aromatase... Which is good on two counts for women or MtF's, by keeping your unused aromatase low, you keep fat off better, and, by boosting your metabolism of aromatase more free testosterone becomes natural estrogen. For men who don't want to grow boobs... now you have a reason to tell your wife not to feed you those veggie-burgers anymore. ;)

For those curious about why beer is NOT a good way to feminize: #1: it'd take too much to be effective at changing your overall hormonal balance, #2: instead of being an aromatase booster, it's high in aromatase, and it acts as an aromatase inhibitor. Unused aromatase == fat, well, not exactly, but aromatase that isn't metabolized gets stored in your fat cells and actually makes them worse.

You can also eat things that boost your progesterone. Progesterone is a mood-altering hormone for both genders, and you ought to be careful with it, any excess gets converted to androgens, or cortisols, while you can notice significant improvement to your mood and slight improvement to your ability to concentrate. Or it can go opposite. There's really very few foods that can boost this, but one of the better ones is chasteberry. The fruit, obviously, not other parts of the plant. Chasteberry fruit, however, really really should be used with caution by any male who wants to remain male, it acts as a moderately strong 17,20-lyase inhibitor. While you can get estrogens from plants, you can't get testosterone from plants. Inhibiting your testosterone at that level can also cause full, irreversible, chemical castration if your organs go and stay dormant for too long. You can hope that the one remaining route to testosterone that remains open is enough to keep the organs from completely shutting down, but I don't think you'd want to risk it. (I'm told 6 months, but I'm not sure on the accuracy of that).

Anyways... about why I think this is all related to why I'm feminizing... I'm taking Saw Palmetto for male-pattern baldness, Chasteberry fruit for anti-depressant, and my diet is high in soy. Yeah... I'm hitting it big time.

To be honest, even though I do not believe myself to be transgender, I don't feel any NEED to be female rather than male, I'm not all that bothered by it, and now that I know my diet's likely to blame, and nothing in it is likely to cause me significant grief later in life, I don't honestly give a care.

It'll be interesting as my breasts continue to develop and my figure continues to feminize, finding clothes that fit decently without resorting to cross-dressing though... And I imagine my parents might take it poorly when it gets to the point that I -have- to start wearing a bra. Ah well, maybe I'll have my own place by then and if they want to get all pissy about it, they can just deal with me not wanting to be around them.

I suppose I could see about getting hold of some of that phellodendron bark and see if that helps to at least stem it, but I'm not sure I'd want to risk unused aromatase causing me problems.

Well, this has turned into a very very long explanation, I'm not sure I can even touch half of this in prose without making my readers go cross-eyed. So, when I do push out Chapter 4 of OYH, I will be putting asterisks next to all references to anything covered in this blog entry, and at the end of the chapter, where I've been shamelessly plugging my music, explaining a few extra tidbits, and shamelessly requesting feedback, I will put a link to this blog entry.

PLEASE REMEMBER THAT EXCEPT FOR SOY, ALL OF THESE THINGS CAN BE VERY VERY DANGEROUS IF USED IMPROPERLY. I SEVERELY RECOMMEND THAT YOU USE THIS INFORMATION AS A WARNING, AND NOT TRY TO INTENTIONALLY CHANGE YOUR BODY CHEMISTRY WITHOUT THE AID OF A SPECIALIST.

Kudos to anyone who actually managed to read this whole thing to this point. Thanks for giving me so much of your very valuable attention.

EDIT: Corrected the info on progestins, some additional information came to me that suggested my previous information was incomplete, in a bad way. Also, added a further warning, in all caps, near the end. In case someone forgot along the way.

Drew Pattengale told me something very interesting at work today, but I'm not sharing.

Ok, ok, I'll give you a hint. When I first started writing Open Your Heart, I had no idea what was causing Pattengale's hormonal imbalance. He told me at work today what it is. But I'm not telling you any more than that! Well, ok, it's not his diet.

I will tell you that this additional bit has cinched it for me, when OYH concludes sometime next year at the soonest, there'll be a sequel. The sequel will be titled Come to the Grace, and I'm still trying to figure out what to call the two books together, as well as any other novels written about Drew, if there are more. Though "Ask For Forever" is kind of in my mind for that.

I know, I'm a horrible horrible tease. It's my way of living my motto: Play Hard, Laugh Harder. It's all about having fun.

By the way, the cumulative meaning of the three titles ought to give you a very very big hint. Especially if you listen to the lyrics of "Open Your Heart" by Yuki Kajiura and "Everlasting" by Kokia.

Yep. I'm evil. And proud of it.

I hope you all can understand that with what I am going through right now, I really can't even begin to think about writing Open Your Heart.

Don't worry though, I do not plan to give up on it or stop writing it! I merely need to work out my own life before I can help Pattengale with their life.

Even when I do start pushing chapters out again, they will likely be very slow in coming.

Abigail Drew.

This is a very emotionally and spiritually charged piece. As such, there will be references that those outside Mormonism and Christianity in general will not get. In this entry, I will attempt to explain some of these references.

Right away you will see a reference that really, only the LDS will get, Kolob.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolob

Essentially, the center of the universe. Modern astronomy cannot even come close to approaching the center of the universe, even now. Thus, the statement: “If I could but Hie to Kolob” means “if I could but go quickly to the center of the universe”. Or, do the impossible.

“Turn back the pages” — there was once a theatrical production made by the church called “My Turn On Earth” in which life was described as a book whose pages are being written even as we live them.

“Before my mortal birth” — the LDS believe in Eternal Life. This means that we lived before we came here, live here for but a moment, and will continue to live after passing from this life.

“Great Serpent”, “Father of Lies”, “fallen Son of the Morning” — all names for the devil. As even non-Christians likely know, Satan was once an angel. He denied the will of God in the pre-mortal life and became Perdition, a fallen angel. Lucifer was his name in the pre-mortal realm, which means “Son of the Morning.” “Great Serpent” is in reference to the form he took when tempting Eve in Eden. “Father of Lies” is in reference to what he does.

“Sons of Perdition” — other devils. The Hosts of Satan, the 1/3rd of the hosts of heaven who chose to follow Lucifer, along with Cain (so far as we believe, the only mortal to have thus far been cast to hell). They, along with Satan, were cast out and now live a very lonely and cold existence cut off from all contact with anything other than them. They are truly truly miserable. Make no mistake about it, Hell is Frozen.

“Cold depths of Hell” — well, I already covered this in the previous paragraph, didn’t I?

“Is there no balm in Gilead?” — Common saying among believers, whose answer is, of course, YES! It’s basically a rhetoric used to emphasize just how much the user of the phrase feels they are suffering.

That’s all I can think of... If there’s anything else you’d like explained, please, use this blog entry to ask for explanation, keep the poem’s page for comments directly on the piece itself.