I'm Hurt

Last week, I wrote a post here in Cyrsti's Condo about a "day trip" vacation Liz and I took to Ripley, Ohio and Augusta. Kentucky. Augusta is just a short small ferry boat ride across the river. I wrote at the time (I paraphrase) "Augusta was/is a charming sleepy little Ohio River town. As it turned out I was wrong. Augusta was just sleeping that afternoon after the CSX coal train rolled through and we ate lunch. My apologies to Augusta. Turns out I missed all the action.

Now, fast forward to this week and I saw a story on a Cincinnati television station about movie star George Clooney and new wife Amal visiting George's childhood home in Augusta. Now, I knew George grew up in Northern Kentucky, but never knew exactly where and he still has immediate family there.

According to TMZ, George put out the big money and treated new wife Amal to "Poor Man's Pie."

I'm hurt because no one mistook me for Amal when I was there. Must have been the accent?

Advanced Training?

I picked this up through Stana's Femulate blog and similar to so many other excellent posts I see from her, this one really resonated with me. It was actually posted by Monica:

"I recently went to SF and then on to Denver to go to Art of Feminine Presence (AFP) Training.

This was my fourth time going to AFP. I am still amazed that our community has not taken to this; it really is the best way I have found for getting in touch with my feminine essence.

My companion for the training was my friend and well known voice coach Kathe Perez

I was surrounded for six days by loving caring and sympathetic cisgender woman who treated me as one of their own.

I have a theory, if you want to learn Japanese, you do not go to Japan and hang around with Americans. Similarly, if you want to get in touch with you feminine essence, hanging around with cisgender women is likely to be more productive than hanging around with transwomen. I am just saying! Get outside your comfort zone and you will be amazed at what you can achieve and learn!"

This post resonated with me for several reasons. First, I went through similar trials and tribulations as I was coming out of the closet. Unlike Monica, I couldn't find any trans women to hang out with if I wanted to. There were plenty of what I call "predators in dresses" but no true trans women.  Similar to Monica, I began to hang out with nothing but cis women who consistently accepted me and pushed me out of my comfort zone. In fact they flat out tossed me off a gender cliff.  I too was amazed on what I did (and have) achieved and what the future holds.

I love the line "I have a theory, if you want to learn Japanese, you do not go to Japan and hang around with Americans." I do think if you are going though, I think it is impossible not to bring some of your male past with you to spice your feminine essence!

Trans*forming The Dialogue Goes Live!

if your memory is even slightly better than mine, you may remember before the Caitlin Jenner binge-Cyrsti's Condo was chosen as one of the "gateway" blogs (by Simmons College) . Here you go:


SocialWork@Simmons is proud to announce the launch of: Trans*forming the Dialogue! In honor of LGBT Pride Month  and in an effort to continue to celebrate Simmons’ College commitment to fostering inclusivity and social advocacy, we are excited to promote this powerful message. We invite you to participate in our campaign and ensure that your voice is heard!

Follow the link above for more right now and most certainly we will have more to come from our end! 

This evening I did leave a comment praising the timing of Simmons' blog because I believe the Jenner "outing" is giving too much "warm and fuzzies" and not enough "reality" of the trans experience.