Paying Forward

Again, many of you Cyrsti's Condo regulars know I do a bit of selling "collectibles" on other sites such as Ebay, Etsy etc.  It's not much money wise, but it does really help make ends meet.

Most of the time, our business is rather mundane. We sell it and hope to pack it to withstand a nuclear explosion-until this weekend.

On Friday we sold a vintage garden/nursery catalog to a person whose father owned the business and she was looking for any of his catalogs. We did, we made a few "Sheckles" and she was happy.  Then today, we were able to help out a person in Virginia with another catalog and ended up paying forward in the nicest, unexpected way.  Here was his comment:

Cyrsti, I too believe in paying it forward and keeping good Karma. I swear, when I worry about MY needs, I never end up in the best place; when I worry about OTHERS' needs, things go a lot better for me!

Certainly simple words for us all to live by and all of the sudden the weekend was just a little brighter!

Cyrsti's Condo..."OOOOPPS!"

JIM!!! Why is your sister smiling and saying  your blind date is here and HE is waiting?  WTH?

From the Transgender News Network

Is there one? Sometimes I feel like we have one here in Cyrsti's Condo thanks to all of you who send things along.

The latest comes from Bobbie reporting that a "Fox News Regular" (of course)  was suspended from his own company!

The actual link is from the "Raw Story" site:

According to Adweek, Gavin McInnes has been asked to take an indefinite leave of absence from his position as Chief Creative Officer at Rooster NYC, an ad agency he co-founded in 2010.

The column, ‘Transphobia Is Perfectly Natural,’ proved to be so offensive to readers of Thought Catalog — known for outrageous and contrarian posts — that the website inserted a splash page that appears before the column warning, “The article you are trying to read has been reported by the community as hateful or abusive content.”

Among the least offensive assertions McInnes made in his essay, he wrote:  “We’re all transphobic. We aren’t blind. We see there are no old trannies. They die of drug overdoses and suicide way before they’re 40 and nobody notices because nobody knows them. They are mentally ill gays who need help, and that help doesn’t include being maimed by physicians. These aren’t women trapped in a man’s body. They are nuts trapped in a crazy person’s body.”

Responding to threats  on Tumblr and Twitter to boycott companies — including Vans and Red Bull — who use Rooster as an ad agency, a representative from the company stated, “Gavin’s views are his own and do not represent those of the company or its members. We are extremely disappointed with his actions and have asked that he take a leave of absence while we determine the most appropriate course of action.”

Certainly, this means he will have a lifetime job at Fox?

Purging Revisited

I felt it was worthwhile enough to use Billie's comment and rerun the picture I used

The same thing has happened to me! Let it go, you're still you! And you're looking good! Thanks for the pic, Cyrsti.

Number one, I'm sorry I didn't make it clear the cross dresser in the picture is not me but the situation has happened to me-kind of. ( If anyone knows who she is, please pass the compliment! -And thanks for being so incredibly protective of me!")

While we are backtracking here in Cyrsti's Condo, let me explain what "purging" has always meant to me:

It's the act of throwing away all (or a portion of) your "stash" of feminine articles  When I saw this un named person, I thought immediately someone had found her "stash" hidden away with the lawn mower.

I'm sure like me, all of you have creative stories of where you attempted to hide your stash.  When I was a kid, I used an old box above the garage which was marked as books and even kept a water proof dress, mirror and makeup hidden back in the woods beside our house.

Later in life, I would keep a certain amount of items in a closet space my semi approving wife knew about and then had other stashes hidden here and there.  For the most part the scheme worked well, my problem was flat out getting caught cross dressed in the world-where by mutual agreement I shouldn't have been.

The most embarrassing instance of having my stash discovered and thrown back in my face came just before I had to go into the Army.

I was living in an apartment with two other guys in a medium sized college town in Ohio.  Truly, I got a little careless with how I was hiding my wig, clothes and shoes, and was "discovered."  The worst part about it was, I didn't know right away.  My two roommates were still in college and went home for Christmas break.  I had graduated and was waiting for my due date at Ft. Knox.  A few days after they had left, another guy who had kind of just "hung out" around there happened to stop by.

Looking back, he had to have known about the discovery because he casually turned the conversation around to cross dressing.  I figured what the hell, in a month I would be in the hills of Kentucky running and doing all sorts of other fun Army stuff.  So I told him what he obviously already knew, I was a transvestite or cross dresser and I would show him.

Secretly, I was fantasizing he would find me amazingly beautiful and ask me to go out with him.  What I really found was someone had stolen most everything I had.  So that was that.  When everyone got back from Christmas, of course they all viewed me a little different and even blamed their girlfriends for stealing my things.  I just them to go to hell, where I was going I couldn't wear them anyhow.

I made sure I let them know that even though their girlfriends enjoyed the supreme female privilege of not being drafted- I hope the rest of them would soon enjoy the military too!. 

Domestic Violence

I live in a violent country and it's getting more and more violent all the time.  In fact, I got to see it up close and personal this week as I viewed from my second floor window, my neighbor across the street get drunk, push and then hit in the face the woman who lives there.  There were other women involved who I assume were related and called the police before I did.

Often I wonder where does all of this leave me out here in the middle as a transgender woman.  Not so good I'm afraid.  First of all, we trans woman are targets of random violence of the worst kind as are genetic women.  I know all of that though and try my best to take the safeguards any woman would take - and then add some more.

My real worry is though is the mental gender transition I'm making.  I am not all the way to the point where my mind is saying "wait a minute dummy-you aren't a 275 man anymore who can 'bluff' down the other guy."  Plus, I'm very sarcastic, which doesn't help either. But, I come by it naturally.  My 5'2" Mom was not at all shy about saying what she felt and neither is my daughter.

As far as the guy across the street goes, the cops took him away and I haven't seen him since. If I was a betting woman, I figure he is "drying out" in jail for a week and I will see him back next week. Sometimes he is great free entertainment when he gets drunk and throws all his furniture in the street.  But I'm afraid hitting a woman won't be enough to keep this guy down and out.

Cyrsti's Condo "Don't You Just HATE This?"

Dammit! My wife found my "stash" and it's trash day!!!

"Itty Bitty" World Comment

I loved this comment from J.AlanaS on the Cyrsti's Condo "Itty Bitty World" post:

I had a friend from grade school, who wanted us both to be on the cheer squad. When he suggested this, all I could think about was hoping we could wear the cheer skirts and pom-poms. So I said yes, but we were denied by the school board. Only a few short years later we moved away, then one day he contacted me via snail mail. I let that slip, but after Stana's post thought I'd try FB one more time, and there he was. He was the second from the youngest with all sisters, and always was the girls best friend, and mine too.


Indeed most of us knew "one of the boys" who was more "one of the girls".  Back in the day though, it was assumed all of them were gay although other things may have been going on.

Looking back, I grew up with the same kids who went to the same school-kindergarten through the 9th grade.  Our class size was 100 at the most. It wasn't until I moved on to a much bigger high school in the 10th grade I heard "rumors" about certain other boys.  So, I was very fortunate to have encountered another boy before that (at my age) at all who may have harbored any of the same gender dysphoria I was experiencing.

It's too bad, the school board wouldn't let you two on the "cheer squad!"  I understand.  Around here when I was growing up, there weren't even (and still aren't) any womanless pageants a prospective cross dresser could "play with".  Even though they are great fund raisers.

Where I live, If a young transgender person today was attempting to participate in a school function as their chosen gender and it was allowed with out a fight- I would feel the ground getting real cold -because hell was freezing over.

Cyrsti's Condo OOOOPPPS!

Just a little fun :)

Picture #1.-  Dammit Tom!  Forget the dress, I told you to stay the hell OUT of my eye makeup!







Picture #2.- Dammit Jim, get OUT of the Women's Dressing Room and LOSE the sign!



Picture #3

Hey son, come on down, you friends are here to go get beer and wings!

It's An "Itty Bitty" World

As I always do, in the morning I jump over to Femulate and get my Stana fix. Yesterday morning her lead post at first got my attention and then "riveted" me.

Over the years I think Stana has revisited the question of any of us having any reason to believe we had friends who possibly went on to be cross dressers,  transgender women or transgender men.  Then, Stana went on to write about her childhood friend Billy who went on to hint heavily about his affection for girl things. Follow this link to read the entire experience.

What got to me was that I too had a friend named Bill for a short time before he moved away , we were somewhere in the 14 year old category and lived in a very rural area.  During the summer before he moved we did "boy" things like "borrowing" his older brothers old Ford and driving it around the farm, plus we "tried" a couple of his Mom's cigarettes.  I can't tell you why, but cigarettes ended up not being all we "borrowed" from his Mom...on several occasions-we got into her makeup and clothes too.

I often wondered what would have happened if he had not moved three states away because his Mom didn't seem to mind we were playing in her clothes.  As in Stana's case, of course I too had tons of conflicting emotions.  On one hand I was learning to drive and smoke at 14 (never did continue to smoke thank the Goddess) but on the other, had another friend to share my shaky exploration of femininity.

I wouldn't see Bill again for at least 25 years and only for an hour then, so I have no idea of how much time he went on to spend as a girl.

Who knows, maybe I wasn't so alone after all -just another confused kid afraid to push it farther.  After Bill left, I fell into a group of kids who weren't in their Mom's makeup.Very simply, by doing so, I sold my feelings out to live a long lie and not get bullied in the process.

I also know, until I read Stana's experience, I had forgotten mine had occurred at all.