I'm back home. The surgery went well. It turned out to be not a hernia OR a cyst, but some kind of hydro seminal blockage or something like that. The upshot is they fixed the blockage and did take one of my testicles, so I'm halfway to an orchiectomy. This also helped allay some of my fears about undergoing surgery under a full anaesthesia, since I came through this well.

I'll be in Buffalo today at the Veteran's Hospital, getting some surgery done. Unfortunately it's not the surgery I would HOPE for... this is to remove a large, ingrown cyst from my groin area. Hopefully, while they're in the area, and they DO know my desire to have a couple of small trouble makers removed... oh well.

About 430 PM PDT we hit 10,000,000 visitors here on BCTS. It took us almost exactly 4 years and 11 months to do that. Other versions of BigCloset, before and during the time of TopShelf, have clocked about 1 million additional visits.

Congratulations are in order, I suppose, if for nothing else than that we survived. :)

Hugs to all,
Erin

That's the total visitors to the site as I start this post. Will we get to

today?

Sadly, children are being targeted again.

Tanita Tikaram - Good Tradition

well, I went to the school, and told them my story, including the fact that I am tg. They are going to recomend me to the goverment agency that does retraining. I will see them at the end of the month, and if they approve, they will pay for my schooling. I almost cant belive it, everything could really fall into place.

Some culture courtesy of the Guardian.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/may/13/cross-dressing-w...

Angharad.

The above is from a sketch from Montey Python. A man wants to change to go swimming on the beach, but every time he starts to get undressed, someone exposes him and he is forced to cover up again. Finally he goes into what looks like a dark room and starts to undress, only to find he is on a stage and stripper music is playing. So he just gives in and goes for it. I kinda feel my transition is like this. I keep wanting to have privacy to make my changes, but i fear i am going to have to "strip" my male self away in public, risking humiliation and abuse. Ah, well.

This experiment seems like it could be mucho helpful to a lot of people. Here's hoping the technology gets available soon.

I'm an aficionado of getting out into the great outdoors. Walking in the back country goes by many different names, depending on where you live. Hiking, rambling or bushwalking are some common terms, but in New Zealand we call it tramping, and people who do it are known as trampers.

Bob has added a new capability to BC. Near the bottom of each story, in the mass of links down there, you should find one labelled, |PDF Version|

This will produce a PDF file saved on your hard drive of most of the stories on BC. Some stories with poor or wrong HTML will not be properly converted, but if you need a PDF version for some reason, this may be handy.

Thanks, Bob.

Hugs,
Erin

Well, I learn tomorow if I could get a loan to return to school and take medical administation assistant. Yet, I find myself hesitating. It wouldn't be a bad job, but I cant see how I would transition doing it. You are still in the public eye, and nowhere to hide while making the changes nessasary to live as a woman. On the other hand, the company that does training might be a better fit, but untill I have my appointment with them at the end of the month, I won't know for sure. I could use some wisdom in making a right choice.

Here I am thinking that I had put my Dark Shadow away when I came out, had SRS, and began living as a woman. In the last few years I have really tried to cultivate my spiritual side and to really begin to understand more about God or who ever did this humanity thing.

Still, from time to time, I have really felt something pulling at me from deep inside; something that I have tried so very hard to put away but it is still in there waiting for the tiny spark that would trigger a bonfire in my soul. It is there lurking and sometimes I get really frightened by it.

As I sit staring at my screen, I wonder if I've taken too much, too fast with Robin's life.

The 'problem' is that Robin has lived in role all of a week to a week and a half, but she's taken to being Robin so absolutely naturally because of the loving support of her friends and family. She's been allowed to be who she always was inside, and she wants to take that a step further as quickly as possible.