Mid Week Shuffle

Wednesday (today) is going to be spent doing errands and checking on the availability of the wardrobe I think I want to wear to the Trans Ohio Symposium coming up this weekend.

The weather seems to be cooperating with fairly warm temperatures and very little rain predicted. A couple years ago, it rained all the time seemingly.

Also, again this year, the Capital City Half Marathon will be running again on the main street in front of the Student Union of The Ohio State University where the Symposium is held. All of that makes it difficult to get across the four lanes of traffic to get into the venue. Essentially, you need to find a way in from behind the building through the campus.

We try to dodge that huge problem by getting the shuttle from our hotel to take us. Timing will be everything in that we are going to try to get there early enough to enjoy the complimentary breakfast/coffee and have plenty of time to set up for my workshop at nine.

Thursday, I am going to get more serious about putting together the outfits I would like to wear.

Great Memory

Last night, as I always do, I stopped for a cup of my fave coffee on my way to the transgender support group meeting. The manager has been there since I started to go in.

He is always nice enough to make small talk with me and ask about how my weekend was. Amazingly enough last night, he said isn't it about time for you (me) to head up to Columbus, Ohio for our party weekend. Otherwise known as our Trans Ohio Symposium Weekend.  I told him yes, it is coming up this weekend and I was amazed at his memory.

Somewhere along the way I must have made an impact with my barista!

Speaking of impacts, Leann wrote concerning my Easter Sunday/Mike Pence post here in Cyrsti's Condo:

"I did have a very holy Easter, thank you. Many so called Christians (and those like the woman who said Pence came from a good Christian family) are unwilling to acknowledge is that simply not violating the ten commandments in public does not make one a good Christian. Loving one's neighbor unconditionally is also required of a Christian. Pence and his ilk do not appear to be following this precept. Jesus tells us to love thy neighbor as thyself as part of the Great Commandment. This seems to be lost on far too many who claim to be following Christ. For these we should all pray for their conversion to true Christianity."

Thank you Leann, well put!

Trans Ohio Symposium

Since this Saturday at 9 AM is my workshop presentation at the Trans Ohio Symposium in Columbus, Ohio, I thought I better get started on my notes.

To start with, I'm going to pass out a cover page and paper which simply outlines the questions and symptoms of my topic. Gender Dysphoria.

It goes something like this:

                                                            Gender Dysphoria

               Sex?          Sexuality?           Gender?

          Stress...Tension...Anxiety...Withdrawal...Emotion...Suicide

Somewhere along the line, I may come up with an outline and/or brief bio to save me droning on about myself for a lone period of time.

For once, I am going to try to stay on point and organized which is always not so easy considering how my mind works!

A Good Christian Family?

This post could be mistaken for an Easter Sunday religious sermon but it is far from that.

To start with, I am a highly spiritual but Buddhist/Wiccan leaning person. I believe in what Jesus Christ stood for and taught but see too many evangelical hypocrites talking out of both sides of their face concerning transgender issues. That is, if you are lucky.

Take last night for example. Our cross dressing "friend" was told the Mike Pence banana joke. Through a grimace/smile she managed to blurt out what a great guy Pence was (claims she knows him since both are both from Indiana) and came from a "good Christian family." I about threw up in my throat which was not a good feeling before dinner.

Backtracking a bit, the cross dresser did show up in all his feminine finery, along with his two delightful college age daughters. It's my fault but I did not pursue what could have been a very ugly pre-dinner conversation about current politics in our country. I realize of course, the cross dresser doesn't really have any serious "stakes" in the LGBT game. Since he never served his country, he doesn't have any knowledge of the torment caused by the Trump/Pence supported transgender military ban. Plus wouldn't coming from a "good Christian family" mean Pence would be more understanding? For sure, Trump is the furthest example of an anti-Christian we have ever seen in office.

OK, enough of my rant. As I said, it s my fault for letting him off the hook last night.

Finally, I hope all you devout Christians' are able to enjoy Easter Sunday for all the day brings to you!

Saturday Night Lights

Tonight I will supposedly meet the two daughters of the cross dresser I am not really fond of.  You may remember, this is the one who is madly in love with Liz and has made the comment that all transgender women on hormones are bitches. One good way to make sure we are one is to come up with a sweeping stereotypical comment like that!

At any rate, I am looking forward to where we are going to eat and seeing if the cross dresser comes as his guy self, which he has done in the past. I am also interested to see if the daughters show up at all. If either happens, I don't know why we were invited at all.

I will let you know what happens!

Fierce

Last night was the third Thursday monthly social for cross dressers and transgender women Liz and usually attend.

At last nights' get together, seemingly, everyone had a good time and even had a couple of trans men attend. The venue we go to is normally very empty except for our group and last night was no different. We even have the same server.

All went well until it was time to pay and Liz was handling the credit card receipt to our server. For some reason, the server proceeded to call me "he" twice in the same sentence...to Liz. I found out if there is one thing more dangerous than misgendering me to me, it's doing it to Liz. In a split second, Liz fiercely set the server right. I was not a he! It all happened so fast I barely had a chance to comprehend what just happened.

I love her so much!

Liz and I at last years' Cincinnati Pride 

Changing subjects and going back to my endocrinologist visit a couple weeks ago, Connie had this to say:

 "I'm surprised that your endocrinologist didn't tell you about laying off bananas while on Spiro. Bananas (with peanut butter) has been my favorite mid-morning snack since childhood. I can even have withdrawal symptoms if I don't get my beloved banana boost. I'm sure that is why I took note of Spiro's effect of a potential potassium build-up when I was researching it many years ago. I would sacrifice my daily banana, though, for the lessening of my testosterone, but my levels have gone down with age, anyway. 

Speaking of bananas, have you heard that Mike Pence is so homophobic that he eats them sideways? :-)"

In all fairness to my VA Endo Doc, she seems to be over worked and under paid and remembering back not so long ago, my Veteran's Administration Medical Center didn't even have an Endocrinologist at all. I really have had no problem with the care I have gotten at the VA but on occasion you have to remember you get what you pay for and be patient...or be the patient. 

Ironically, it was a transgender friend of mine who reminded me about bananas when I started on Spiro.  And yes I have heard that about Pence. Saturday night, we are meeting up with a cross dresser friend of ours who knows Pence's brother over in nearby Indiana. It should make for an interesting dinner conversation! 

Cosmo Girl?

I have mentioned a couple times here in Cyrsti's Condo about how I was tricked into receiving a deeply discounted subscription to Cosmopolitan Magazine. What happened was when I was buying clothes one day, I was offered a "free" subscription. Of course, nothing is free and the subscription turned out to be only five issues which would automatically renew unless I followed a convoluted set of instructions to cancel it.

Amazingly though, I found plenty to interest me in a publication targeted mainly to "female identifying persons." Even more impressive is I found that definition in the editor's comments. For some reason my subconscious is tuned into anything remotely related to transgender issues when I read (or even scan) another article or post.

Elle Rose

Later on in the issue (May) I found out why the editor singled out "female identifying persons" for her mini editorial. It turns out Dove is running an advertising campaign called "#Show Us - beauty isn't binary" because 70 percent of women don't feel represented in media and advertising. Further more, model and trans activist Elle Rose of South Africa was featured in the ad.

#Show Us issued this statement March 28:The lack of true representation in the media of women of all shapes, sizes, ethnicities, and identities is glaringly obvious. ... Dove has undertaken a survey of women which found that 70 percent of them still do not feel represented in the media and advertising.

All of this takes me back to the photo album I was asked to pose for a year or so ago here in Cincinnati. 

It's about time we transgender women are included in the main stream media. As the Cosmo editor wrote so well, we are all "female identifying persons."

No Games

As promised,  this is part two of my previous post called no games.

It took awhile, but my endocrinologist requested blood tests came back on my levels of testosterone and estrogen.

It turns out my testosterone was very low and my levels of estrogen were as to be expected too. Also, the blood tests detected a slightly elevated of potassium. So, to counteract it, she (my Doc) is decreasing slightly my dosage of Spiro. I used to eat a banana a day, thinking it was good for me, until I found it wasn't and contributed to severe pain in my legs.

If you are not familiar, Spironolactone is used to lower testosterone and lowers blood pressure as a side result, among other things. (Or, vice versa.)

At any rate, one of the side effects of taking Spiro is it makes you lightheaded and/or dizzy, both of which I have been experiencing more of lately.

Initially, I was upset at the diagnosis, fearing my testosterone would increase and would not be counter balanced by a higher dosage of Estradiol .

Then I came back to my senses (what's left of them) and realized I was going against one of my basic principles...my health comes first.

This is definitely not a game! Plus, I have another blood test scheduled in May and another appointment in four months, so nothing is permanent.

No Choice...No Game

Yesterday's mammogram and today's call from my endocrinologist have proven to me again how my transgender journey came from having no choice and is definitely no game.  I have always been humored in a negative way by those who think any of us had a choice to go down this road.

Even though I chose the newer 3-D method of mammogram (thanks Michelle), the procedure was no walk in the park. For those of you who don't know, a "3-D gram" provides a better look at denser breast tissue, normally associated with transgender patients.

The technician was different in how she phrased the question most civilians want to know, when she innocently asked if I had completed my Mtf transition or still was expecting work to "move things around." I had a notion to say it was none of her business until I thought ahead and realized this person was going to cause me some potential discomfort. So I just replied I thought I was close to being done. Our local Transgender community was recently shocked by a trans woman who passed on (in her 40's) from complications when she went through breast augmentation, facial feminization and gender realignment surgery in the same procedure.

As we were finishing up and walking down the hall to leave, she was pleasantly telling me her about her love for upscale purses and then never carrying them.

So hopefully I will be done with mammograms, which I call a rite of passage, until next year.

The game part of this post will be coming up in my next Cyrsti's Condo offering, as this one is getting a little long. Stay tuned.