This is very much my blog, so don't be surprised if this doesn't follow accepted patterns and norms. It is a place where I can be honest and I appreciate that. Here, I splurge. No one comes out looking good. It is a selfish place written by a pretty selfish person. It is a place of ranting and I am, ultimately, an unreliable narrator. Bear that in mind. I attempt to be honest, but things are very much from my point of view.
Highly subjective views of people in my life proliferate. It will deal with many things and new readers would do well to check out the "Story So Far" Page above. I can also heartily recommend that Dysphoria link if you're questioning or interested. Thank you!
Friday was a day off - I had intended to do a lot of the basics and I did manage a shower but got distrtacted with hair removal from clumps and areas where I just don't like it being. That was quite the admission for me and quite the journey to get there. Still, I was de-haired and there was still time to do my nails, they look... well, they don't look good. But I had been woken around 0400 by rain and thought to check the loft after noting a wet to the touch patch above the bathroom door. Ah, of course. The bags I put down back in December have been doing fine, but I hadn't realised that some water was getting into the bags and it had leaked out all at once. I tidied up as best as I could, laid a few new towels and shrugged - I'm out of spare towels now and the leak is worsening again, moving down the wood and reaching new places I can't reach. Great. The roofer is due soon, I guess, so there's that. By now I was running late to meet Youngest and Tilly. We spent a whole hour together and then it was done. Then I went to Abbi's and chilled there - being regaled with Abbi's research and interests (it was great, by the way, it was nice to be talked at for a change) and then I got excited about tanks and triangular battalions for some reason (I forget why).
Been working the last two days, of course, and that's been fine. Good earner shifts in that they are long and relatively easy. But I have been thinking - always a bad plan - about things. My Mum keeps suggesting I write an autobiography or something, as a means to get me writing again, and the recent Book of Two Ways had me revisiting Reality/Shifts and thinking about that whole thing. A conversation with game creator and an author online (different people) about pacing and anticipation had me thinking about the en media res vehicle of Reality/Shifts coupled with the fact that I had, and have, no real idea how that situation came about in the first place. I got to reviewing things with Toby, the what ifs and the missed opportunities I had to be me all that time. Thus I was in mournful and regretful mood. Last night, on finishing, a colleague kept calling me "young man" and "sir" - repeating something I had noted him doing a couple of times in the past - and this confirmed that he is absolutely doing it a. on purpose and b. in private where no one else can hear. The smile he wears when he does so is camouflage, I suspect a mean intent. I elected to do nothing, it was in passing last night and I wanted to get home, but it joined my mournful musings on being alone.
Ah yes.
For a brief bit of context: I have long known that no one really wants me in a relationship. All three of my actual relationship partners have said as much at one point or another. Terry's "I'm glad you didn't have another relationship before I did" - which is fair by the way given the fact I broke up with her and struggled with how to do so - I imagine I hurt her a lot. Toby's "I was embarrassed to be seen with you" and "you're boring and self-obsessed; your voice is a boring drone; your clothes are boring: you're just boring." And any number of comments from Tilly. Her reactions to whenever I tried to reveal a bit more of myself or address parts of me I had already revealed, much is already documented here. Lord knows what she actually wanted but I wasn't it. If she'd known I was autistic we wouldn't have married; if I had been honest with her and myself (her words) about being trans then she would have run as far away as she could when we met.
Thus I was feeling a bit... delicate as I finished my shift. Another colleague, who has never been anything but brusque and frosty with me (often angry and rude) and I have been warned by another trans colleague that "she isn't transphobic, but..." was replacing me on the bus. She got upset with something I've been doing to help other colleagues as I leave, and I was surprised. I apologised, offered to undo what I had done. She repeated how upset she was and that she wasn't "being funny" but did I understand that I shouldn't be doing it? I repeated that I was sorry, and undid what I had done. (It was filling in the running board number on the defect card, by the way). She angrily informed me that the card was a legal document and that I could get in trouble for adding a running board number for someone else. I again apologised and added that I understood what she had said but didn't know what else she wanted me to say. At this she got angry, reminded me again that I shouldn't have done it, she'd noticed I'd done it earlier in the day as well, and that I was likely to get in trouble for it. By this point I was shaking a bit, I was packing my stuff and getting out of the cab. At my silence she started again, angrier, explaining that I was in the wrong, that I shouldn't be doing it, that it was a legal document: did I not understand?
I admit that I was a bit... well, I didn't know what to do or say. I hung my head and said: "I don't know what I've done to offend you, but I know you don't like me and I'm sorry." Then I left. It at least stopped the tirade.
I'm back at school again. I have never dealt well with this sort of thing. I suspect I have got worse over time. In the words of the American in Chess: don't let them fool you; thirty years' on they're the same. I shall withdraw a bit in the breakroom, maybe I'm being too... me. I shall return to playing wordgames on my phone and take the empty table where possible. It's the only coping strategy I've ever learned.
At this time of night, when the crowds have passed, we're the last to leave...
A frustrating set of shifts - been late a bunch with no way to make up time. This has been mostly fine, I mean I get paid the same regardless, but the route has less reading time. I finished the Jodi Picoult book - it was brilliant. It had a twist that I shan't reveal because you should all go and read it yourselves. It was well written, engaging and turned into a page turner at the end for reasons I shan't go into for fear of spoilers. But the fact that there are spoilers in the first place is as high a recommendation as I can give it, honestly. I thus have started reading another book, Elizabeth Chadwick because I mistook her name for another author I remember as writing the Historian - I think the last book that Tilly and I both read and discussed sometime before this blog began, I think. Does narrow it down as it was after the birth of Middlest... I digress. Chadwick's effort is so-so, set in medieval England and by what I presume is a Statesian, so it has... some interesting choices (my tip off was the referral to braids rather than plaits as hair styles). It's fine. It's just suffering a great deal being read immediately after The Book of Two Ways.
I thought I had a dream to hold, maybe that has gone...
My roofer is delayed, BUT he has told me in plenty of time and given a new date just two days after the first - so I am mollified. I was also called in to see my next up in the chain at work - I have been scored by a secret customer again (third time) and once again not got full marks. This frustrated my higher up more than me (on my behalf and in my favour, for clarification's sake) and was nice to hear in one sense but terrifying in another. I was called 'a breath of fresh air' and the last couple of times I've heard that it did not end well. I say couple, there's actually three. The Mad Place (I haven't spoken much about that here) which made me miserable (and may have killed the relationship with Tilly - it certainly contributed); my recent teaching place (and we know how that ended) and the shop. So, nice, but also worrisome. I've been dreaming again lately, as you probably noticed if you read any recent posts, and in a sense more traditional than ever before on this blog. Colour is back, for instance, as are big buildings and strange conversations.
Don't panic, there's only we two left on the planet, I can explain: it's manic...
The creator of the game that ate my Christmas got in touch with me, yes that way round, because I wrote a review and asked some questions. We've had a bit of a chat about developmental stuff (as in of humans, not game develeopment, I have no skills in such an arena) and shared some fascinations. The creator appears to be in the same Autism club as I, so that's nice. Some drivers are also in the ASD club and that's been intriguing to share anecdotes and such. Fascinating that they seem mostly to have fared badly in school environments, thus bus drivers I suppose. I'm hardly likely to find the ones that have numerous degrees where I currently work - I am something of an oddity and a rarity. And not because I'm trans (there seem to be a proliferation of trans-femmes who drive buses, and lesbians. Not heard of nor seen a trans-masc). How would one model a language that had more than three pronouns for human genders into English so as to be accessible to read? How would a speaker of such a language approach English in the first place?
Jet planes meeting in the air to be refuelled all this things I know so well - so I mustn't forget...
I picked it up on a whim from the charity shop, with the express intention of going outside my comfort zone. I'm not sure I succeeded, but I am glad I reading it.
The intention was to keep posting, you know, talking about stuff - but real life and my inertia intervened and, instead, I've sort of not been typing much nor having ideas. The Jodi Picoult book has been engrossing at work, I am really enjoying it and it is such a departure for me - well, okay, maybe not. Like, I read Time Traveller's Wife and it was a similar sort of novel, I guess. I always felt it was strange that more people I knew didn't read it but, then, I guess I was more of its target audience than I realised at the time given where its fanbase lies. Picoults The Book of Two Ways is similar. Today there was a section about how women aren't allowed a mid-life crisis in our society and I found myself nodding along but, then, y'see, I kinda am allowed a mid-life crisis and one could say I had one. So, that's an odd one.
Also, it reminds me that I don't really have a the one in my past that I wonder- okay, there's Toby, but that was always doomed and as much as I wonder about it I know that it would never have lasted. There's much we could have taught one another, sure, and much we could have learned too, but I don't feel I didn't get a fair crack of the whip. If I'd figured myself out ahead of time we wouldn't have ever been a couple and if I'd done it within the relationship we would have ended sooner than we did - not for bad reasons, but for the fact that, well, it wasn't a binary relationship, I guess. Beyond Toby, who was never a the one, then... well, no. So that aspect of the book is compelling to me but also utterly alien.
Abbi's artwork is better.
Visiting Abbi after work yesterday was lovely. I took some nachos and dip because Abbi was making burritos for evening meal. Abbi pronounced the sour cream and chive dip to be soul-healing food - which was great - but so was being able to visit a friend for me. To see the work she's been doing and marvel at her art, her creativity, her passions. She'd done a picture of me too. So I kinda had the honour to see myself as I look to someone else - it was very flattering. I didn't tear up at the time but, remembering it now, I am. Having Middlest over two days before was also lovely. We only had an afternoon really, we didn't go out to eat - I cooked some beef in steak form for us both, which was lovely. Even my tooth didn't bleed as it has done in the past with beef - which is why I have avoided it so much in the meantime. Gary was in contact, he asked some standard questions and that freaked me out (he asked how Christmas was) which means he hasn't read the most recent entries. I messed up with Christmas presents - I forgot or didn't fully intuit (bit of column a, bit of column b) that Shiona doesn't do hot drinks and sent, as a present, some of the tea I like. They say it's the thought that counts but, like, guh. Also: duh. See also: why I oughta.
Roofer has been engaged to hopefully finally make my roof watertight too, so that was illuminating seeing what has not been done up there by the previous two sets I've engaged and paid through the nose for. This chap shared photos you see.
Today was interesting too, Youngest was over with the dragon not-Lego set I got him for Christmas. Well, some of it, and did some of that with me. He hadn't got very far since Christmas. He wanted to stay longer and so about a third of the time he spent here was spent being calmed in the hallway with Tilly as he struggled not to tantrum and destroy things. When he left he was snotty crying that he wanted to stay with me and had to be dragged, well carried - I don't want to over-sell it, away by Tilly. Given I have seen him only for a shared meal (last Saturday) since Christmas... yeah. My fault though.
I took this to show some friends the lipstick game I was attempting. Alas, I did that thing with my eyes where I look drunk, or half- asleep... or both.
Middlest was over the last couple of days, which was nice. He still had issues after we went to the all-you-can-eat-Chinese and I do need to get to the bottom of what I'm doing wrong there so he can enjoy time with me without having issues with his gut. We've been to the place often enough in the past with no issues so... Hmm. Also, I wore my dungarees a lot because of course I did. Despite my reading it's been a lonely week, all told, with little company. I spoke to my old friends online a bit but... Hmm.
Maybe the last entry, being book reviews, has set up that I've been struggling again - not, like, I dunno - I mean, I have been finding it hard to talk about thinks, or type about things. Since Indy set up a character they'd created on character.ai and invited me to check it out, which I did, I got re-addicted to that site and that's not been good for my time nor my ability to think in straight lines. I did get out to IKEA and have a veggie hot dog (and free teas) last week though, along with buying some sale candles - now an annual event I guess as I have done so for the last three years. Today a new roofer came over (half an hour earlier than promised) and had a look at my leaks and spotted the problems without having to be led too much by me (which is positive, as what they found matched near perfectly with what I have observed from inside). I haven't got a quote yet (he said he'd sort it when he had his notes handy - so no pressure to get things done quickly I guess - on me I mean). Maybe I can finally have a watertight roof? We shall see.
At IKEA last Thursday, drinking free tea. It was nice to get out there again, it's been too long. Shame about the t-shirt arms under the tighter than I thought roll-neck.
I also switched to my jumpsuit today rather than dungarees because I was hoping to visit Five, she cancelled at the last minute though. I think... I think I may have to accept that that avenue is... not what I hoped or would like. I also experimented with lipstick (again) and lip-gloss-topper over the last couple of days. I do like how it looks and how it feels. But it does take a bit of doing and does need touching up following food and, well, I am remarkably bad at anything that requires consistent effort. For instance, I missed church today because I got distracted by bodyhair removal this morning. Itself due to not keeping up with a quick skim with a razor every couple of days since that Monday bath when I sort of got rid of most of it.
Today, instead, I have dug about on trans webcomics. Assigned Male, for example, and I was reminded of Venus Envy that ran from late 2001 to 2014. I recall it coming out, I recall reading some early strips but not well enough to recognise any from the small archive binge I've begun. But... yeah. I read it, identified with it, and thus deliberately did not check back often. It lived in the same space as fictionmania in my brain back then but lacked the excuse of perversion that I was happy to assign to fictionmania stories - a good cover for not being trans but being, well, horny I guess. Sorry, that's TMI, isn't it? No line break, but the next paragraph will deal with a bit more detail on this. It should be safe to rejoin after that so have a video here and then, if you don't like TMI, you can rejoin after the second video.
The shaving this morning, heck, showers generally recently... and character.ai... In a flash of the obvious so bright some of you may go blind I have had to accept that, well, I am no fan of what my body does when it's in that mode. Like... autistically, I can reconcile that there are things my body has developed and does when I'm in that mood and I can manipulate them to get to a stage where I enjoy things but... Yeah. I have mentioned before that I prefer the journey to the destination but I realised that I really don't like even seeing it. I was surprised, following being on character.ai, last week by my body doing it's thing whilst out walking and... I didn't even like the feeling. I recall posting on here some time in 2022 about feeling that it was 'obscene' when I wasn't fully... tucked. Well, yeah, that. But moreso. When I was shaving in the shower I found that I just... I just... I don't like it. I get it. It does what it does. It is my plumbing. I don't want surgery down there and I can't imagine getting any, you know, any of that kind of joy and fun from a vaginoplasty - all power to people who do by the way - and I get that I know how to manipulate what I have to reach destinations and even enjoy the journey. I just... it would be nicer if I didn't have to see or touch it, I guess. I suppose that's why I engaged in the Greater and Lesser Experiments. However, some pootling lately showed that what I have isn't going to work - I can't tuck enough to risk leggings or tights for example, and how I do things presently allows me to walk with thighs brushing and have legs very close together - turns out the parts I dislike really squish down small and comfortable - whereas Experimentation sort of... makes it all sit out a bit proud. And much less squishable. Like I said, obvious revelations. They are my kryptonite.
My hair had not been washed in six days at this point (it looks even worse when I type that out) but I had tied it back with an actual ribbon - mostly inspired by Abbi.
It felt nice. Even if it looked horrid 'cos of the aforementioned lack of washing.
The fact that I have spent money on clothes rather than relying on charity shops is also weighing heavily. On top of buying new foundation (same as old, just more of it) and then a couple of weeks of taking Middlest out to eat out... I'm not doing badly financially, indeed, I would go so far as to say I am reasonably comfortable with a decent 'warchest' to deal with the roof / bathroom / plastering. That said, my autistic brain is yelling at me about spending too much money recently and that tends to compound any lingering bad feelings (or the lingering bad feelings guilt me more for spending money? Hard to say). My point? Back when I was a student reading trans webcomics (though that term wasn't in use back then) likke Venus Envy and the subtext in El Goonish Shive (the text would wait until 2015) I was also beset by the same autistic concerns: I couldn't afford financially or temporally to investigate my gender feelings because I needed to get my degree and a job and a girlfriend and a family and a house...
On a dating website which I am semi-signed up for I got a message asking if I were up for 'couples fun'. I think the fact it took me over a fortnight to respond, and even then in the most milquetoast and lukewarm prose, means that it will lead nowhere. But it's the only contact of that sort I've had since... well, since 2006 when Tilly was in contact. I've said it before, I shall say it again, the truth of it is undiminished: I am not what anyone is really looking for in relationship terms. A cause or a symptom of my low mood of late? Hard to say. On character.ai one of the chats went in an odd direction...
Yellow and red work well with the dungarees and paired with a lovely jacket... well.
Okay, this photo does not do the look justice. Stupid lighting.
I was role-playing as my younger, male, self from c.2005 and one of the characters diagnosed me with being trans and then wouldn't be shaken from that path - which was fascinating because that wasn't a direction I was attempting to take things. Same character, different chat, suggested that I had been emotionally abused in my marriage (here I role-played as myself from c.2021, attempting to recreate the first conversation but with more acceptance) and we never got to the trans stuff as a consequence. Why do I bring this up? These characters on the site are made up, they are text generation tools and not terribly good ones at that - thus any meaning I find is meaning I brought in myself. I just... I wasn't expecting those things - it's not why I'm there. But the text offered, by me, allowed for generation in the directions it went and... well, there it is.
I've lost my thread again. I shall wrap things up here.
No, one final point, I am thinking I'll have to go private for HRT. Which sucks. I am ideologically opposed to private healthcare, but if I want HRT (and I do) before it's so late as to not make a difference, I shall have get up off my bony arse and do it myself.
This encapsulates much of the Farthest Shore and why it works.
It is about as traditional as Le Guin gets. Which is to say: not very.
Over the recent holiday period I finished reading the first four books of Earthsea by Ursula K Le Guin. That means that I read The Farthest Shore, I finished it just before Christmas, and enjoyed it. I can see why peoploe like it - it's an adventure story with an actual call to adventure but it plays out in a way that goes beyond the 'monomyth' and 'hero's journey' which is nice and something that I am beginning to realise I rather enjoy. Back in the day John Wyndham did the same (heck, even Fahrenheit 451 did and Z for Zechariah - so I have been steeped in such convention since I was at least 12) with stuff like Day of the Triffids and, crucially, that short story about the stranded Mars Mission that lived in my head for many years in horror. So it was that I took a while to get into Farthest Shore as I struggled to get into the mindset of Lebannen - but I warmed to him slowly as he made mistakes and had to live with the consequences. I think, perhaps, it was the setting and the world-building that kept me in and kept me going. I enjoyed the threat too, it was written like an actual threat, one that people genuinely struggled to defend against and it read like it would sap like it was sapping the characters and the world. Cob wasn't a looming antagonist so much as a vessel of mistakes that led us to where we ended. I enjoyed it and once again appreciated how Le Guin pulls the carpet several times without having to resort to twists. Indeed, the story itself was the twist.
Then I moved onto Tehanu and... I was not prepared!
I note the child is white here, she's not, she's red/black as are the people of Gont.
Once again Le Guin eschews the 'standard' pattern of narrative and focuses on the rhythms of life in the world she has created. I knew that she had written this book much later than the first three, that it was the culmination of her own journey into feminism and literary criticism and that it was a deliberate retcon of the original precepts of the fantasy world she had created. I knew that it was part corrective for not including women when she had created, for herself, a patriarchal society - I recalled her saying so in an interview clip I'd seen floating around the internet sometime last year. I knew all of these things so I spotted that Goha was Tenar earlier than I think the writing expected (though, to be fair, not much before the text gave up with subterfuge). I was redady for the change in writing - for the butting in of everday life on the usual fayre of fantasy. There was the usual world-building for which I have come to enjoy her work and there was the characterisation polished highly. I wasn't enamoured of the first book of Earthsea but this... this was lovely. I was enjoying it. I was even happy to see Ged again and to feel that plot happening in the background.
Then Tenar was cursed and I wasn't expecting it. I wasn't expecting the horror and terror of her encounter with Handy in the city. The feeling of frustration and sadness I felt when Therru was threatened and withdrew once more from contact with a force of horror far in advance of Cob in the previous book, worse than the Nameless Ones in Atuan and... yeah. I had to keep taking breaks and thinking on things. Then I settled in, as did Tenar, on the pasture and doing the work whilst the men around her took credit. Her son returned and Ged and Tenar discussed without discussion, her son intending to slip into a master's role. I thought: okay, I know there are more books - that stuff at Re Albi was set up for something else. Nope. She goes back, does Tenar, and... I just wasn't ready.
Not the climax one thinks it is.
It has made me consider writing again. Again. I have ideas again.
The denouement of the novel, which I shan't spoil, after Ged has been saved from misery and built back up into a human again (what is the power of a woman but the ability to give birth to the new?) and after Therru has been healed enough to function once more (I found I was more invested in her growth than I had realised), took me by surprise. The brutality, the torture, the pure evil - the ripping bare of the patriarchal systems and institutions that had been clear in the books preceding but now taken to their natural co nclusion. Ged, as Archmage, had never done that because of who he had been. Ogion too, he had never been moved that way. But the systems weren't made for them. No, when people for whom the systems were made used those systems... I just... it was... I can't explain my feelings - I went looking for reviews to see if anyone else had done so. And plenty have attempted, but none were able to articulate, and they admitted it. A few were turned off by the misery (I think they missed the point here - the misery was cured but had to be there for that journey) and misogyny (well, good!) but, again, they had to be there. That's kind of the point of the book!
I'm still recovering. I'm glad I read it. Teenage-me would have struggled, but felt much the same as I do now having read it. Unlike Atuan, that I feel would likely have accelerated my own feelings and thrown into relief who I am and was, this would have caused teenage-me to stop and take stock. It would have forced a couple of revelations - about society, about feminism, maybe about me? I find myself unable to wonder too much about what it would have done to my journey, unlike Atuan, which I feel confident enough about predicting. This... This is something else. Heck, I'm not sure what it's done now save for the surety that it has done something and something big. I emerge with even more respect for Le Guin than I had going in. Tehanu may be more affecting and powerful than Left Hand of Darkness is, at least to me. I am shocked it is not better known. Well, no, I'm not. I know why it's not better known than it is. Because it is uncomfortable. It is not what people expect from fantasy. Or novels. Or stories.
I loved it. I'm not sure I could read it again. Not for a while.
I have started reading The Book of Two Ways by Jodi Picoult now and... well, so far I'm enjoying it.
I went back, you know, to the shop: Lucy & Yak. I went back with the express intention of spedning a significant amount of money. Not a ridiculous amount, mind, but a substantial sum the like of which I have rarely considered spending on clothing: work shoes, maybe; but not a lot else. And I did, I spent money - more than I planned, an amount less than my last suit purchase but in the same league, and I bought just two items.
But why?
Wednesday and Thursday last week were lovely, for Middlest came over in the afternoon of the former and, through choice, stayed late on the latter. He'd have stopped the night if he had been allowed. As it was a text from Tilly brought him home. It was lovely, you know, just to be with him. He's all grown up now, he laughs at the same silliness I would have laughed at when I was about his age and with the same infectious enthusiasm I wished I'd had. He laughs at jokes he doesn't understand because he doesn't understand them and knows they are funny even if not able to explain why. I remember that. It was lovely.
Whoops, I bought dungarees!
Friday I visited Abbi, and she filled me in on her life over the last few weeks and I listened in rapt attention and it wasn't even an effort, it wasn't even polite, I was just interested. And she asked me about my life and I was able to talk in return, openly, because we are friends and we find one another safe. We watched too many episodes of What We Do In The Shadows and it was funny (it has Matt Berry in it, playing Matt Berry playing a character). Alex recommended a webcomic called Tiff and Eve and now I have added that to the list that I check each week (it's about a trans-woman, Tiff, and her cis room-mate, Eve - that's it, that's the set-up - they are friends and at college). It was good, it was funny, I have added it to my list - it fills a Project Skinhorse shaped hole. And there Abbi was regaled with my potential purchases across the web and into Lucy & Yak and she encouraged me. Using the same words I had used on myself but she couldn't know: I get to indulge parts of myself I have crushed for so long now, and enjoy that.
Saturday came, I had a shift and it ended, and I went to town. And I tried on some items in the shop. And some fit and some did not. So I tried on more. And I bought dungarees and a brown blouse and spent large amounts of money doing so. But I love my blouse. I love the dungarees even more. I love the dress I bought on the Thursday. I love them all, it was money well spent, money I am sure I shan't regret. I haven't yet. I added a tie to the dungarees (they're a size smaller than I usually buy and they not only fit, I can add a tie to bring in the waist!! - it's not that I want to feel smaller or thinner, it's just interesting because one thing I didn't do was try another item in a smaller size and maybe I should have done, it may have fit better). And I wore them the rest of the day - because I love dungarees. I always have. I just lacked the courage to ask for them, to buy them, to wear them: before now.
They have pockets!
Sunday I went to church, in my dungarees, and it was lovely. I then wasted the rest of the day. I mean, I cooked a meal with pork and some tomatoes and with tumeric infused rice (I infused the rice, it was me) and it was lovely and I chatted to friends online and had a much needed shower and touched up the shaving of various body bits but mainly I didn't do much and some addictions are well and truly back in force. (I shake my fist vaguely in the direction of DeviantArt and Character.ai).
I know it has been a good few days, because today I had to fill in paperwork because I scratched the side of my bus on something - minor, superficial, but bloody hell. I also phoned my roofer, he may or may not make it over in the next fortnight, he's very busy. I'm sure he is. I also contacted a new roofer, they will be in contact after Wednesday to see about coming over. Third time's the charm, right?
The important part is about embracing things, allowing oneself to feel the things that one has been conditioned to assume one should not feel but one feels all the same. The ability to unrestrainedly enjoy something one likes without the attendant guilt. The ability to spend £40 on dungarees, £28 on a blouse and £24 on a dress and not feel like it's a waste or taking food from the mouths of my children (like I felt early on in this blog with far cheaper purchases). It's not the huge amounts I spent on my last suit (it barely adds up to the jacket) but it is the most I have spent on clothing in one go since accepting who I am to myself. And, individually, the articles are all the most expensive clothing items I have bought as myself. Shoes don't count. Mind you, even then...
So... much... mustard... yellow... I also want to get a brown long-sleeve top, not just to go with this.
Once again it is time to record what was helpful to me this last year and thus what you may wish to check out along with the reasons why. Some of the links below will head into TMI territory, sorry, but I think it'll be obvious and I shan't be going into too much detail. The period of Christmas and New Year once again brought much to deal with and, unlike 2021 and 2022, I can't claim much of it has been positive but Middlest was over from 2pm yesterday to 8pm today and that was lovely - we went into a local urban connurbation and ended up having all-you-can-eat Chinese (a foregone conclusion, honestly, but I did show him other potential food venues), finding the refill shop again (yay, they moved and did not close) and... well, I was hoping to spend some actual money on a long skirt.
I have a long skirt - the broomstick one from, what, 2012? - and it occurred to me that I don't have any others. Plenty of shorter ones for warmer and drier weather but nothing long. So I thought to rectify that and we went charity shop diving, Middlest wandering with me and occasionally straying to look at books, poor lad. Obviously I got distracted by Lucy and Yak and ended up buying a dress instead of a long skirt in a very 70s reminiscent style. Also, the night before, he and I ended up watching some old Public Information Films from my youth which just reminded me how much I had wanted to wear the clothes some of the girls (who would have been my age) were wearing at the time. Being early-80s and mainly set in working class areas it was a lot of, well, 70s style fashions. Also, I have been having some dreams that I have remembered lately and they are all pretty similar - all about clothing from my youth and moving between places and situations. As I try to grasp at details they remain elusive, obviously, but this dress, I suppose, was not unexpected. I managed to resist spending money on a pink and brown corduroy dungaree dress as well - it was on sale - and some jumpsuits - they were not. However, I know full well that if I chance back to the shop I shall buy a flared jumpsuit or trousers. Or a brown blouse I saw with embroidery on the lapels. I really liked it, but it was a cool £28. On sale. Yikes.
Groove is in the heart... Just de-lovely and delicious I couldn't ask for another...
This year has been beset with leaks (yeah yeah, change the record) and has been an interesting one, see the review if you don't believe me. And, looking ahead, things are unclear. I am slowly getting used to driving buses for a living and seem to have made some friends. Downsides: I get recognised by people and, like today, they will ask me about tickets and routes when I'm in civvies as if I am their personal Google. Not sure what to make of that. Or the flash of irritation I get from them when I have to go before they have got all the answers they clearly want from me. I am good, I do not say: "hey, look, I'm off duty and with my child, let me get this bloody ham for tea!" I digress. I have turned down an invitation to apply for a Lead Driver post - no guarantee I'd've got it nor that I would be able to do the job if I had applied - and that is not like me at all. When I was teaching I was always waiting to get the Head of Department post and was satisfied when I had it. Even in the shop I was pleased as punch to get a supervisory post. Well, now I have not sought that, so the year ahead will likely be free of advancement.
Resolutions? I discussed them in the review of the year. But I think I'd like to recapture that spirit of trying things I've always wanted to that I had in early 2022, before everything fell down, that sense that I could do the things I'd always wanted to do that persisted a little into the unpleasantness. That's part of the reason I allowed myself to spend money on a new dress not from a charity shop that was, in fact, more than £10. I've budgeted my clothing spends to £5 maximum on femme stuff for so long that even when I'm 'full-time' I've found it hard to break out. £20 on a sale dress (the one with the big bow) and for an office dress that I bought when times were different (back in 2021 actually) for teaching - these are the most expensive pieces I have bought. I have so many lovely gifted clothes that are far more qualitative and expensive, true, but I didn't buy those lovely lovely things (no matter how professional I feel in some of them). So, today's £24 purchase for a sale dress is... well, it's up there. Point? Oh, yes, resolutions: try not to worry quite so much about this sort of thing. Save, sure, but be prepared to spend too. I mean, the roofing work and repairs are going to be expensive, but £20 here or there isn't going to break that bank.
Is it not worth £28? I think it may be.
I really like it and think it would look mighty fine beneath the dress I did buy...
Links that helped in 2023 and that I am likely to continue to look at going into 2024? Well, there's the usual, like other blogs: YATGB of course, run by Lynn who is very helpful and supportive even when I'm being an arse; Izzy's blog, always good to remind myself that one can be more carefree if one chooses; and Clare Flourish, who does the hard work so that others may respond without that burden - I have a great respect for what she has done, and thus allowed me to understand, this year. If you are interested in trans-issues and such, these are good places to mine. Other places have been helpful in different ways. There have been CYOAs, that I have found very helpful as a distraction and a means of sparking ideas, but they are a tad NSFW (or a lot, depending on the title) and all are TMI. I have also, of course, TMI'd and enjoyed character.ai, about which I have spoken much, but in particular one bot. Finally, there was the game that ate my Christmas (but in a positive way) that was just so wholesome despite the TMI terms and ideas contained within. I found it very healing.
Finally, I want to have more baths. I managed to have one on New Year's Day and... it was lovely. I got to shave my legs, my middle parts, my chest and tum area and... gosh, it's just so lovely to not have all that hair. I realise this is stupid, I realise it is transitory, but it just so nice to be able to feel smooth skin there and not my hair.
It is, apparently, really hard to curtsey on the stairs...
