From Wingtips to Sling-Backs

A girl with a style I can appreciate.

2011-01-06T21:50:00.000-08:00

I'm sitting in a bar in a college town. Feeling a little old and for some time now, not at all femme. That period still strikes me as surreal and seems to have receded into a collection of bittersweet musings.

In walks a girl with a quick engaging smile and what I think of as "Breck-Girl" hair.* She is meeting a covey of four girlfriends and apparently one boyfriend, though it isn't clear which he had the good fortune to pair with.

She had a smart, belted, plaid coat on, with the hem of her skirt about equidistant from her rather attractive knee to the bottom of the coat. Sandal wedges seemed to complete the fun and flirty collegiate look.

The friends each seemed to have an individual style that were all similarly well put together. For some reason though I thought if Barbara existed any longer she would likely dress like the girl in the coat that caught my eye.

I've wondered from time to time what to do with the blog. It is in storage like the six suitcases of what may well have been more of a shopping fix than a strong pull towards feminine expression.

Odd, that. Making that sort of analysis about a dormant feminine persona's taste and sense of style seems sort of Quixotic.

*Breck Girl ads featured a pretty wide variety of lengths and layering, but there was a bounce and a shine to it..In this girl's case thing a shorter, less fussy version of Jacqueline Smith's.

Back in Wardrobe!!!

2009-03-19T18:53:00.000-07:00

I went back to our old house and dug through the piles of trash and treasure that out oldest son and his stoner friends tossed with no regard into a pile as the evicted us from the Master Bedroom. It was supposed to be so more rooms could be rented, but the thing about renting rooms is you need to collect the rent. In advance. Not after the fact. From stoners. So everything smells of hookahs and poor quality cannabis sativa.

Nevertheless, I was so pleased to find my expensive (to the original owners) sport coats and prom dresses in a pile, not too rumpled. The bags of trash piled on top of them protected them from fecal matter when the cats decided dirty clothes were more hygienic than the never emptied litter box.

So now I have them in my new humble abode in the country. For 1/2 of just the amount I am upside down on my city house I have an acre and a double wide. Apparently we trailer trash types are not usually a 3 personality montage of clothing choices.

My wife has ordered me to cull. I am resisting. She maintains that it is a bit unfair that biologically I am one 1/2 of the couple but have 2/3 of the small closet. She has a point.

Progress..Or is that a loss?

2009-01-23T08:37:00.000-08:00

I have cut back heavily on the quantity of food I take with me to work. Since I have my lunch on the seat next to me for 12 hours a day I eat what I bring. Out of boredom more than hunger. I have tried substituting lower calorie versions but that doesn't really help. Most of them are just smaller portions of the same old calorie laden snacks. The worst of these was Special K brand crackers. They advertise something like 90 calories for a whole 17 crackers! You open the box and they are just fancy edged wheat thins. Which I hate.

So now I take a sandwich, 2-3 pieces of fruit, maybe some carrots and a Fresca. I think Aspartame is a horrible product that threatens health and only makes you crave sugar, but I rationalize that one won't hurt. I used to like Fresca for the taste long before I ever had a need or even a thought of dieting. I wish they'd come out with a Splenda version.

On the subject of diet sodas: my wife is addicted to Diet Dr. Pepper. Interestingly I found I liked the taste and had long been stealing sips of her tasty beverage long before I was "dieting" much less dieting to get down a few dress sizes. I had a laugh when I suddenly remembered one day a commercial about being your own person and enjoying your Diet Dr. Pepper no matter what anyone else thinks. Shows a guy fishing, upper half all male, dangling hose-clad gams and a cute pair of pumps off the edge of the dock. Can't seem to find a clip of it to download, but can see a tiny version of it here.

It has been very discouraging that after dropping 43 lbs in 6 months then ballooning up 20+ lbs on "Lou-si-anna" roughneck food in just a couple of months that none of that rebound weight has come off for nearly a year. It is now one year ago that I went to live for just a few months in that dormitory.

Finally this morning I stepped on the scale only 13 lbs above my lowest weight. I celebrated with a Bacon, Lettuce & Tomato (and olive oil mayo) sandwich. Yummy.

Oh, the case fell down on my head.....

2008-12-31T23:46:00.000-08:00

My Liz Claiborne sweater-top was on the bed in our room after we came home. My wife, knowing I was in a femme sort of frame of mind today thought I had gotten it out. I hadn't.

She queried the 13 year old who gave the explanation above as to how she happened accross this located at the bottom of the make0up case with a few femme items and make-up and my wig that m wife had sent up as a "comfort package" when I was living alone at a residence dormitory for my job.

She then brightly went on to explain that when she "happened upon" the case in the top shelf of the closet in our master bedroom she found a wig. Which she put on and proceeded to parade around outside the house in. My wife's sister happened to be driving by and thought from a distance that it was my wife given the hair color is in the ball park of a box of Miss Clairol that my wife sometimes uses.

Now my wife feels she needs to be thinking of a reason she owns a high quality wig that her sister has never seen her wear.

A modicum of privacy in my own bedroom would be nice. I mean Barbara has been residing in the closet (on the top shelf no less. Leave her alone.

This child regularly borrows my shoes because as she points out they are a size and a half too big for my wife and only a 1/2 size too big for her. she has also appropriated two of my bras with similar logic pointing out that they aren't my wife's size.

I've half a mind to tell her "Leave my transvestite gear the hell alone!"

We're Pretty Sure He's Gay, Mom....

2008-12-31T23:35:00.000-08:00

My wife was harangued into sitting down with the kids and playing their current favorite video game. It is one of those virtual cities things where you walk around and interact with characters for no apparent reason other than to see what is around the next block in the tableau.

There is a character in the place who is apparently a wolf. The explained he was the gay character.

"Really?" said my wife, "How can you tell?"

"Duh!" they responded, "He is wearing a dress!"

"You are gonna have to field this one," she tells me.

Don't think I'm touching that.

Reluctantaly Manipulated.

2008-12-31T21:08:00.000-08:00

I was at a loss what to get my better half for her Birthday. If money were no object it would be simple, just get her the latest Canon Rebel. Money is extremely tight though as my income just dropped by 65% and expenses are about the same.

I had in mind making a small cash donation to a fund that would help her begin saving for a replacement for her current failing camera. It hesitates and takes several tries to get the shutter to release and basically is worthless for impromptu shots.

We drove from the small farming town we reside in about an hour and a 1/2 to a town that I hoped I could browse maybe some thrifts or a pawn shop. No thrifts seemed extant and the one pawn was panned in review by a local we asked. We even struggled to find a non=chain place to eat and were pleased with a small eclectic looking Mexican food restaurant that had incredible rellanos. (I'll save the review of that for my yet-to-be-created foodie blog.)

Anyway we went to Walmart, because as long as we were here the other nearest one is 40-50 miles the other direction. She made a beeline for the cameras, giving a wistful look. She pointed out some that she would be 'happy' with although they aren't her ideal but they were maybe 1/6 the cost of the Rebel. I worried its money kinda thrown away if it doesn't do what she needs in a camera and will just be put aside when she can finally get what she needs. Then I (and we) engaged in some circular economic logic..."We cant afford A but for only $30 more, is another 2 megapixels, and for another 60 from there is better optics, and for $#20 more more zoom..."

I told her lets walk a bit while I think it over...we were just passing the purses and accessories. I turned my head slightly when I felt my breath catch a little. Not sure why. Part of me wanted to stay in male/logic mode to make a sound decision that is kind of important because money is so tight. Part of me wanted to avoid turning "her day" into a "Barbara day". Like for example since we were going to another town, know one knew us I thought of going en femme but that wouldn't be appropriate when the focus is on her birthday. That and the baby is old enough now that I am not comfortable dressing around her.

I thought my mental realignment went un-noticed. She paused and said, Oh lets look at purses! I tried to resist a bit, and she grinned and said, "I'm sensing a presence here..." Then it became a game, she tormented me, I tried to resist, she though I played it a little coy. Perceptions.

My favorite (and her most effective ploy) was when she pulled a pattern out that was similar to the dress I described Audrey Hepburn wearing in Sabrina.

The point of the teasing back and forth is that it is well known that Barbara likes to shop and the other guy is a tightwad. Bottom line she is really really happy with the upper-mid-range camera she got for her birthday.

You are NOT doing farm chores in high heels.

2008-12-22T16:14:00.000-08:00

...."You are NOT Daisy Duke!" said my wife (To the thirteen year old.)

Funny. I had actually thought of doing a photo shoot of me in heels. Say, hanging wash on the line with the pasture in the background. Hadn't thought of it as Daisy-esque at the time. Daisy Duke is a fine rolemodel for transvestites, I think.

56% Male...

2008-11-23T22:50:00.001-08:00

When I saw this site for Gender Analyzer, naturally I had to see how the gender of the writer of this blog reads to an artificial intelligence algorithm compared to other blogs.

We guess http://barbaratalbot.blogspot.com/ is written by a man (56%), however it's quite gender neutral.

Not that surprising, really. I am after all genetically and living as a male happily.

Playing Barbies...

2008-11-14T14:19:00.001-08:00

After the initial shock of learning that hubby is a transvestite, my wife started helping out with primping sessions. When she would purse her lips and lean in close as she applied some eye shadow, or sensually traced on some lip liner I could see her as a little girl playing with one of those Barbie heads.

These dress-up sessions, often after a whirlwind of thrifting, were referred to as "Playing Barbies."

We haven't really had the time or the privacy lately. We used to worry not at all about the baby, but now that she's terribly two and talking it seemed a little discretion is called for.

Today my wife brought out a package of glue on toe-nail tips and asked "Wanna play?"

I readily agreed. Not much of a sacrifice on my part holding my feet out for pampering as I blurfed the web.

Thrilled with the results I of course wanted pictures.

This was the best result.

It's good to be Barbie.

Update on spectators.

2008-11-13T12:29:00.001-08:00

A few of the "spectators" viewing my blog get here from Google Images. I grin a little when I see a"hit" where they get here from searching "spectator pumps" and run (as I imagine) screaming when they realize those legs belong to a tranny!For quite some time I am the only actual picture of a "real" person on page one of Google Images for that search. Yes, technically they are spectator pumps, but in my view, not a very good example of such. I prefer ones that have a blended male/female stile with wingtip type detail. I think any black/white combination pump can be called a spectator.

I decided if I am going to be famous for my spectators it should be for cuter ones!

Why homes need one bathroom per girl/gurl.

2008-11-10T20:14:00.000-08:00

My wife bought a knick-knack (sans paddy whack) at a charity rummage sale. It says, "Where love dwells, no house is too small." Bull-pucky I say.

Our other house is 4-5 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, 2200 square feet with a garage as well. Owe more than its worth (like 20% of America), should probably give it back to the bank. Especially since we aren't living there. Well, Barbara's wardrobe for the most part still lives there but that's a really expensive closet.

This house we rent for $525 a month, comes with mature pecan trees and likely less than 1,000 feet (including a poorly done enclosed porch addition), one bath, two bedrooms. I tried to get more bathroom time by getting a mirror for the oldest daughters room for make-up and hair, that helped a little.

Last night, I decided to do something about my legs. This is a several day process to wax them myself. I began and in 10 minutes, she was banging on the door. I vacated, and tried again in an hour, same result. Finally gave up realizing with no overtime the house is relatively kid free in the daytime, so I finished as much as I was going to today and shaved the rest.

Sad really how this seems to be a progressive condition, feminizing I mean. In the past (long past) slipping into a stolen swimsuit in the bathroom and a couple turns in the mirror sufficed. Now, I eye with disdain my hairy chest, next on the list.

I had shaved my head clean for the last 4 years or so, and am experimenting with growing what little is left. I added a beard as well, knowing my wife favors the look. She was a bit indifferent, (justifiably) pointing out that its sure to go if Barbara comes to visit.

I have been wearing jeans today so I have been able to avoid molesting my legs. My wife laughs a bit about how hard it is for me to avoid touching my legs when they are smooth. It's just that they don't feel like mine to me, but better.

She's got legs.......

2008-11-08T14:25:00.001-08:00

Kinda manly, hirsute legs.

I've been wanting to wax for a while, time/endorphins/assistance/courage have been in short supply.

I have read a lot, and experimented more about hair removal in its many forms. I have tried for Alyssa Milano's legs with Veet. I have shaved with from one to four blades. I have waxed with horribly sticky purple goo, to pleasant citrus-y green honey-sweet Nads. (Something tells me Nad's doesn't mean the same thing in Australia!) I have even removed a few stray hairs with tweezers and once, needle nose pliers! What I have come to believe is that hair grows in cycles with various follicles falling out at various times in no real pattern. Some days smooth smooth legs are assaulted the very next day with a growth of previously dormant follicles, and other times re-growth is slower.

It does seem that if you keep after it the follicles go into remission bit. Such was the case a month ago. There was one smoothly waxed patch on a thigh where I had given up and shaved the rest. I observed that the waxed portion was more sparsely repopulated with new growth. I was going to re-wax, then foolishly put it off because of a Doctor's visit. In the mean time the hairs have gotten too long to comfortably wax.

Resolved: To post more often.

2008-11-08T14:17:00.001-08:00

Whether I have something to say about crossdressing or not, I have decided to approach the blog daily if possible again.

I find myself with time on my hands with the elimination of overtime at work, I was putting in an extra 60 hours every other week, so in theory I could spend 120 hours a month typing. I don't think that I have quite THAT much to say, though.

I was reading a blog the other day (Cate's) where the reason for the blog is on hold so she decided to avoid blogging while she gets her feet under her emotionally. I was reading from my horribly inadequate interface on my Motorola Razor 3, so naturally I could not leave a comment. What I was going to suggest (selfishly) was that she SHOULD continue to write, ostensibly for its cathartic effect. In fact I just want her to write (and post scintillating pics)for my own entertainment.

I shall suggest she include fashion insights, photography or in desperation, recipe posts as long as it involves bare feet and a short apron in the kitchen. But I digress.

Google-y eyes on me.

2008-11-06T15:02:00.000-08:00

This was my first Blog, and when it started I updated it just about everyday. I wasn't sure what it was going to encompass, and since I had no other place for everyday thoughts I put them here too. I used to get a fair number of those odd Google matches that other bloggers have reported. I used to giggle at the thought of someone shopping for Gillian and O'Malley bras and finding a tranny wearing one.

I moved on somewhat in Blogging with the my wife in a sexy/kinky blog that had a lot more racy language then seems appropriate to Barbara's staid vernacular. For some reason we still get tons of hits there from the phrase "cum lips" which doesn't actually appear in that blog, but the words do separately in the same sentence. (the inordinately clever of the readers here might well find the other blog from that hint alone.)

Here, I seem to get hits from pictures. Specifically one of me wearing what I described as spectator pumps. They aren't quite as spectacularly "spectator-y" as my latest pair, but they have come to reside on page one of Google images for that phrase. Interesting bit of fame, that.

Lately, the profile picture here seems to get a lot of Google images hits. I cant seem to back-track it to determine under what search parameters it shows up, but evidently it does.

I wonder, when someone sees it in Google images do they think, hmm is that a dude? and click to investigate? or do they think, "hmmm, what a saucy looking wench, might she have nudes extant on her page?"

Not too long ago one of those hits on my head shot was from an upscale town adjacent to the one I more or less grew up in. They stayed a very long time. I pondered a bit the possibility that someone thought, hmm slightly familiar face..." A bit worrisome, but then again not. I really think I am fairly comfortable with myself. I do worry though that my wife and kids would suffer a lot in the very small parochial town we no reside in.

I asked her about it and she stated again her unqualified support for Barbara's persona. Strange though because (among other of her reasons) she has removed all posts from our joint blog that she authored because of fear of discovery here. True to her stated resolve though, she has left intact her "wife of a crossdresser" blog. I don;t link it directly here to help keep her privacy, and she hasn't updated it in ages. (Owing mostly to my lack of crossdressing activity as of late.) I am rambling here, but wanted to post something to keep Barbara alive a bit..

Male Squeamishness.

2008-10-29T12:26:00.000-07:00

So, I went to the Doctor today for a male well-check. I expected a hernia check and a prostate exam. There was a gallon size bottle of lube. I had hopes that the entire bottle wouldn't be necessary.

He probe a bit, I turned and coughed...he said to I think his relief as much as mine, "You don't really need a prostate check at your age." (At 43 I think he's wrong but I didn't protest.)

One of the reasons I hadn't waxed as of late was anticipating this exam. So I chickened out. I had had some concerns about enlargement a year or so ag, but I rationalized that those symptoms have gone away so perhaps I'm fine.

My wife's comment was "Pussy!" I pointed out to her that as a CD I didn't find that particular epitaph all that offensive.

"You march right back in there and ask that man to stick his finger up your bum!" I didn't heed that advice.

Later she was pointing out that men seem to have no problem with anal penetration as long as it isn't them being penetrated. Um, yeah.

The intangible gender switch.

2008-10-29T00:38:00.000-07:00

It isn't on/off exactly.

It isn't a dimmer switch.

It comes, it goes.

Today we had to go back to the town with the thrift stores, mostly to take the middle child to a dental appointment.

As I dressed, I anticipated that I would be a little en femme in my mood and was looking forward to shopping. I even put on a pair of plain whit cotton Hane's (panties, of course). Do you think that is what Michael meant in the commercials when he said, "Just as long as they say Hane's!"?

In the store, later, I just wasn't feeling it. I saw one spaghetti strapped cream shell with a padded shelf bra built in, but , meh...

It could be a little intimidation since our middle child's IQ of 180ish makes talking over her head impossible, so subtle signals weren't possible. Or maybe wrangling the toddler, hard into her "terrible two's" phase with a penchant for running every time she gets feet to floor.

I am looking forward to getting my "male well-care visit" out of the way. Why is it that I feel more comfortable with a health care professional seeing/poking and prodding my ass if it is clad in its natural hairy state? I cant wait to denude it again after the visit. I have noticed that it is hard for me to get "en femme" in my mind when I am hirsute. It just goes against all that I think of as womanly. (Yeah I know millions of European women can't be wrong yada yada yada...)

I got used to loaning out clothes....

2008-10-25T16:18:00.000-07:00

...sort of. I mean Dee has shopped wiht me most of the time and there are clearly things that are 'hers' or 'mine' or 'ours'. The problem is I apparently like to shop more than I like to dress so she has taken a certain license in 'borrowing' about anything that catches her fancy.

In truth, I kind of get a kick out of seeing Barbara's clothes out in public on her.

Not so much on my teenage daughter. Erp??!???!

She has long stolen mom's clothes.

The other night she decided she needed some nail polish in a subtle hue and took mine! I couldn't well loudly lambaste her for taking it without so much as a "by your leave?"

Today I happen to be wearing a blue and white striped (male) pole shirt, and I look down and see that she is wearing my blue and white striped, kitten heeled, strappy mules. Her feet, typically filthy, are leaving dark, ugly impressions on my shoes.

I'm going to need a locking wardrobe, apparently.

Glimpses of Barbara in a small town thrift.

2008-10-15T21:00:00.000-07:00

We live in a tiny town these days and have to go 30+ miles to the nearest town with for instance a WalMart.

We had to go to town to pick up a starter for my import (2 week process to get it in Ford F250 land), Take care of a leaky valve stem, and get groceries. We had talked about checking out what we understood to be the only thrift store around. We had heard it was small, with poor selection and quality and pricey compared to our beloved Goodwill Dollar Days. None of the above was true. It was EVERYTHING 50 cents. (except ball-gowns, must be an anti-tranny thing..~shrug). The store was small, not a lot of space and the inventory was slightly less than the average CD's closet...but some items the quality was superb.

For example I got a Ralph Lauren jean jacket for work in my manly job. I didn't actually notice the buttons were wrong till I got home, it was Femme!...Grin...

Anyway, I was in Barbara mode meaning I loved shopping and the aim was for Dee, not me, as the selection wasn't likely to yield much for me that I don't have back at our other house. We were being even more discrete than usual about outing me, and only a couple of "Would Barbara like this you think?" queries. This led to a little minor misunderstanding about who the red Asian dress was for. I suggested for her, she wasn't into it, but when she found out all was half a buck, she got it and I thought it was for me. It fits me OK, but it fits her fabulously. She scored several other dresses that fit great. Her shape is very easy to play dress up with now since she fits all the cute clothes again. We talked about how I actually enjoy the shopping more than the actual dress-up it seems as of late. Just as I was her Barbie doll a year ago, she is mine now.

We found a second, larger thrift with higher prices, where I picked up some spectator pumps. (BTW do you know that in Google images for spectator pumps, one of the top 10 results are Barb's legs in a pair of spectators? These are kind of wingtip spectators that I like for the mixed gender aspect.

We also recently have found a brand and size for Dee's brassiere-ly uplifting needs. We went back to the store and bought her a couple of more. She was concerned about the expense since these are pricey.(but oh, so worth it!). I pointed out that I don;t even care for bras in a fetish sense or really to wear in dressing, but I own more than she does!.

Home later she started modeling our purchases (including a formal gown from store two.) She looked great, and I felt the urge to try on a LBD she had found for me. I felt silly in that I am a bit hirsute at the moment and had nothing handy to "tuck" my maleness out of the way. I decided though that it would dishonor my Barbara side to pass on even trying on based on my polarized thinking that if I can't dress right I won't at all. My wife isn't going to laugh at me and has always been supportive. We have been through a rough patch lately and I think part of that is my not being as open as I was in the year past. So I forged ahead. I did feel a little silly but the shortish, velvet, wrap bodice little black dress looked great. No padding, no bra, and it gave me a nice girly shape.

Inspired I went through and tried on all our purchases hers and mine, as well as the few femme items she had brought with her for me when she came out here. Some I hadn't tried on since she brought them, and one I hadn't tried on in well over a year and at least 25 lbs ago.

The forest green dress with the peblem detail from (where else?) Talbot's, fit amazingly well. I had only bought it because it was a nod to my made up (somewhat randomly) name. I got an OMG look from Dee and the treasured comment.."You LOOK like a chick!"

It was just what I needed hairy knees and chest inclusive, to break the ice. I , for now, feel comfortable dressing around Dee again. Nothing changed throughout all this but my mindset.

"Betch!!"

2008-09-21T09:40:00.000-07:00

This is the pronunciation we use when affectionately (and jealously) calling each other bitch for gloating about a weight loss triumph.

My wife went to the town dance last night in the small town from whence she came where we now reside. She looks very much like she did when she left 2 decades ago. Many people have remarked as such, to her effervescent glee.

Last night she wriggled into a pair of size seven Rockies. Tight jeans, small town, hot girl..what could be more American.

Congrats dear! ~"bitch!" under my breath.~

(I am having trouble getting into my 8's and I believe those 7's were actually mine!)

Trying to re-gain my girlish figure.

2008-09-11T17:04:00.000-07:00

Before I took my present job I got all the way down to squeezing into a size 6 occasionally. Tre-cute clothes in that range. I bulked up to probably a size 10, but keep wearing my eights.

I've been eating healthier since renting a little farm in the country and getting out of the dormitory.

Still it has been frustrating. I get no exercise to speak of on my long shifts. I eat because I am bored. I finally gave up my second sandwich and just go home on the bus hungry.

That helps I finally dropped 5 lbs. Don't know if its permanent though.

Adding more fruit and fiber, making myself drink lots of water. Water is my favorite diet tip.

At the moment the wife and I weigh about the same. I have more belly, she has more boobs.

Weirdly Furtive.

2008-09-11T16:14:00.000-07:00

I have been for some time trying to re-channel my femme side.

I've been stealth dressing all along. This means wearing actual made-for-a-girl while still presenting in boy mode. Part of this is because I started pretty much only buying girl clothes, this is some-what because it amuses me and somewhat because as I lost weight I got down to female (thin) proportions anyway. Its hard to find pants that fit in the mens department anyway. Also women's used jeans are in much better condition than boys. I git a giggle when I see "boy-cut" in the label of my girls jeans.

Lately, I have been under-dressing as well. This means wearing girl clothes under boy (or boy-looking anyway) outerwear. On the one hand, I enjoy slipping something silky on under my jeans. On the other hand, no one sees it and when I do, I find I feel a bit silly. I'll be standing in a port-a-john at over a mile of elevation with the roar of hundreds of diesel powered horses idling outside as I look past my very male parts to some steel toed boots. I'll see the strip of mint green or pink or even fuscia hooked underneath while I relieve myself in a rush of relief having usually held it for far too long, and I think: "Well that looks silly."

What is stranger still is I have what is every gynophillic crossdresser's dream: a real living breathing sexy gen-u-wine girl who knows/accepts/even sometimes is turned on by my crossdressing. I have boxes of shoes here. (Sadly no prom dresses). I have skirts, blouses and a cute bandanna dress. But I don't dress.

Part of it is a time factor. 15 hours + from home to work to home.

But that doesn't tell the real story. When I do decide to slip on some panties, I wait till I can reasonably expect she won't walk in on me. For some reason I am back to worrying what it looks like to slip them up my legs and over my male-ness. I can't explain why. The truly weirdly furtive part is I simply put my panties in the laundry at the end of my long day, and my wife washes and returns them to my crossdressing drawer without comment. So it isn't that I am hiding, but for some reason I am back to doing this as a solitary pursuit. The really unexpected benefit of sharing my crossdressing last year was how close our relationship became after sharing that secret.

In an effort to somehow re-vitalize my crossdressing, I have even been toying with the idea of sexualizing my crossdressing, going so far as to join an adult site, that while interesting, seems to appeal to my male side not my femme side.

AAG has a current contest running about write a story involving a gift basket of adult toys. I have an entry pretty much written in my head but I can't make myself write it out in text.

In short it involves Barbara, a make-up and photo session that goes a little hard-core, tinged with light fem-dom elements. The Feeldoe being introduced makes me tighten up on many levels. Up-tight that is. As it turns out that isn't one of the products offered the closest offered in that basket is the Jaguar Harness with its accompanying ~blush~ dildo. That just smacks a little too much of taking-it-up-the-ass-gay for my emotional comfort level. Bear in mind that part of my reticence with coming out to myself as trans-gendered is that I don't find men sexually attractive and am uncomfortable with being categorized with their team.

dunno.

"At least they are not stripper shoes"

2008-08-31T11:18:00.000-07:00

My wife explained as she justified her choice of shoes to wear to church this morning.

I just brought a couple (three?) crates of sexy shoes (hers and mine) from home #1 to where we are actually living the very cramped home #2 in the country. (Her home town.)

She made a selections and queried my approval. I gave it but added that they were "little slutty for _______ (small town)"

She smiled, said : " Thats the idea, help bring the town into the 21st century." adding that " At least they aren't quite stripper shoes!"

Technically she doesn't own any stripper shoes.

But I do!

Manly Depilacion

2008-08-25T09:08:00.000-07:00

Many crossdressers have a strong desire to denude their bodies of hair as we associate furry with not looking feminine. Most of us are to a greater or lesser extent closeted and worry that the absence of hair will make us look too "femme" and people will KNOW.

On crossdresser forums the subject comes up many times, such as, "If I shave, how quick will it go back to "normal" and will anybody notice in the meanwhile?

The answers of course are , "much sooner than you want" as any born woman could tell you, and "nobody notices."

For example I shaved my arms a month ago on a whim, and oddly the next day a guy did notice and asked me, "Did you shave your arms?" (He is remarkably nearsighted so things in his close field of vision are blown up high res for him.) I did the smart thing without thinking about it and just said "Yes, I did." and remarked on his uncanny vision.

He said, "I did that once and couldn't stand it, because it got so itchy as it started to grow back."

We worry for nothing. He is neither gay, nor (I assume) a crossdresser.

Last night the the equipment I was assigned to operate had Sirius (which is a rarity). Actual working Sirius (even rarer still) . Rarest of rare was that for some reason this one didn't have "objectionbal" channels blocked.

So I had blue comedy, sexy smut, and some things of interest to trannies, i.e. Cosmo, and the GLBT channel. (although typically we are thrown in there as an after thought initial and only mentioned in passing and then only gay drag performers.

So I listened anyway.

On a gay radio program with a gay male host and a female lesbian host, they went to commercial and a female voice came on advertising the latest and greatest in male hair removal grooming aids. They extolled its many virtues including how "girls shouldn't have all the cool gadgets for hair removal" and that this one had rugged manly styling of its case.

Keep in mind they are advertising this to gay guys (who really actually for the most part have no interest in looking femme or those that do.) Why then, does the stereo-type of fem guy equals gay guy persist?

I was laughing out loud as I sat, a rugged heterosexual in an immense piece of equipment 24 feet off the ground, wearing girls "boy-cut" jeans covering my partially smooth legs. I had just that morning before I went to bed started the arduous process of self-waxing.

I have never known a woman to go through the pain and awkward gyrations involved with self-inflicted leg waxing, but the box seemed to imply they do.

Would it work better if they had some well-muscled gay dude on the box?

My quanderay over sexuality and crossdressing.

2008-05-25T16:50:00.001-07:00

I am well aware that there is an ardent following of tranny porn afficiandos. I have run accross such things in my porn-y travels over the years, prior to my realization that I myself fit into that general genre, and was at most time somewhat disturbed, occaisonally fascinated.

I recall the first time I saw some and found it arousing, then conflicting. It was a short video clip I downloaded using a file sharing service. In it a handsome man is making out with an attractive woman, fondling her breasts next to a bed. As the camera pans back, you realize there is another woman on the bed and she is sucking the first woman's cock. Oops. was not at all sure what to make of my reaction. Now I would be a bit more openminded about the whole thing. Kind of wished I had that clip, so hastilly deleted.

Barbara was formed in my mind (but without a name) in very early pre-pubescent days and therefore doesnt have a very well fleshed out (pardon the pun) sense of sexuality, healthy or otherwise. This has been good in some ways because it has allowed me to explore the transgendered issues aside from any sexual context.

I can;t see this bloig ever turning into a tranny porn site, but there is a part of me that is intrigued with the idea of doing some. If I ever do, I suspect I will submit such to other random sites or start another (5th) blog fro such purpose. Funny to consider that I may have to resort to some sort of disguise to protect my female persona as she has developed.

The other day, Dee expressed interest in taking some raunchy Barbara poses. (No, don't write in asking to see them, as I am 200 miles away - it didnt happen.) One of the problems with this idea is that as far as I know the vast majority of tranny-fanciers are straight men. (No, I don;' get that either.) As I seem to be devoutly gyno-phyllic, that makes for a bit of a mismatch between performer and fans.

It led to some interesting discussions and apparently some homo-erotic musing/dreaming/fantasizing on her part. Even though that doesnt seem to be my thing, it was hot to hear how into the fantasy she was. Without losing the relatively work-friendly fell of this blog, I will say it involved a series of scenarios where she and "Barbara" interacted with another crossdresser. In her version Barbara was a much more active and giving participant than I myself can ever actually imagine her being in such a scene. I think in such a scene Barbara would be much more of a pillow queen. Funny, though. If Barbara were ever to be invited to an actual lesbian scene, she would be far from a pillow queen there. Rambling here, kind of random musing about this lately.

A year later...

2008-05-25T16:50:00.000-07:00

Not sure what I want to write here so this is starting out as a place holder. It was the first week of may 2007 when I bought my first fem item and admitted it was for myself. (It was a pair of clear-heeled stripper shoes.) My awakening started when I read a post in an online forum that pointed out that a bi-sexual girl and a crossdressing guy could be a good fit. I knew my wife had some bi-tendancies so, it rang some bells and made me connect some seemingly dissassociated crossdressing events in my life.

I wanted to post about some of the differences in myself, my wife, our marriage, and our online lives that came about all because of that post I read. I'll think about it and edit this later.

Challenges in eating healthy.

2008-05-23T13:00:00.001-07:00

I had a rare day off today as I have been working insane amounts of overtime. I was in camp rather than in the field for lunchtime so I headed to the mess hall. I have mentioned before that our chefs apparently learned to cook in the oil fields and don't spare the butter.

Today's menu? I decided to skip the rice, beef stew with phyllo (sp) sheet topping, and the canned veg-all. The baked tillapia, roasted new potatoes, and green beens sounded healthy. Not so it seems. The tillapia was apparently dipped in melted butter and dredged in bread crumbs. Tasty, but not particularly lo-cal. The green beans? Cooked in bacon grease with chopped bacon thrown in for good measure. The potatoes drizzled with melted butter naturally. I really should peek in the back and see if Paula Deen is back there doling out the butter by the pound.

I decided to add a salad. The "healthy" choice was a full-fat version of a house Italian. I decided some field expedient tranny diet dressing was in order. I squeezed some lemon wedges intended for their heavily sweetened iced tea over the salad first. Then I dusted it with Splenda and a little salt and pepper. Tasty and virtually no calories. I am going to have to start cooking in my room or risk plumping out of the juniors department range.

I am now about 10 lbs OVER my drivers licence weight having come up here about 4 months ago 10 lbs light. Not the right direction to go if I want to wriggle into some of those dresses in the new post-prom-ball-gown-thrift-store-season.

Engineered Dimensions.

2008-04-17T21:12:00.000-07:00

I was in engineer mode today whilst operating my equipment. Imagining again if I were en femme. I got to thinking about breast forms (which I don't have...Barbara is in my mind kind of a sporty flat chested gall, but forms would balance out my manly shoulders a bit......)

I devised a method for sculpting breasts, and making a mold and then casting...Probably wont ever get around to it but I had the methodology figured. So the question is since I was in engineering mode, thats typically (for me) my male side, so was I in Barbara mode, or perhaps nicely integrated?

Gender Divisions and Expectations.

2008-04-03T15:05:00.001-07:00

So it finally happened. My youngest boy that I have written about previously, wondering if like father like son he has any trans issues, has been indoctrinated by society about what is appropriate garb for a male.

In my last visit home, I was relaxing in a post coitus fog, when Dee reached for a bottle of a very summery-orange nail polish. This particular shade wasn't one I would have thought to pick, nor probably her. It came courtesy of a good friend who sent his stash when he decided he didn't want to dress anymore. She cradled a foot in her lap and began carefully applying the polish. It looked good, I thouhgt especially later when she pulled out my Charlotte Russe gold strappy sandal heels and placed them on my feet. We actually ended up getting pretty kinky with both the painted toes and the shoe it self. I don't think that Charlotte had devised them as either a marital aid or a workable paddle, but they did suit both purposes well, but I digress here.

I was down in the kitchen kneading some bread dough barefoot, when the boy happened to notice. Mind you, this is the same boy that DELIGHTS in wearing mom's (really mine) heels and his sisters dresses and a wig. "That's GROSS!!!!" he announced, pointing to my coppery orange toes.

"What?" I patiently and and innocently asked.

"Your toes!" he exclaimed. "They have fingernail polish on them! That's for girls!" he proclaimed and began in a singsong voice to ask.."Do you want to be a girl?"

"Who says polish is only for girls?" I ask.

"It just is." The nine-year-old persisted "Girls wear that."

The eleven year old tomboy who has been quietly talked to about teasing her brother shen he wears heels or a wig, surprised me by jumping in.

"What does it matter?" she asked "It's just paint."

She went on to mention without being hateful about it the times he has crossdressed and that its fun and that clothes don't mean anything. She pointed out that Scotts wear kilts. This last was interesting since I don't recall any of us pointing that out to her in any prior conversations.

I saw a bit of recognition in her eyes that she knew this was more than paint, but its hard to tell if I was projecting. Interesting how ingrained these gender roles are in our society. I doubt he and his friends have ever had a conversation about what is and isn't acceptable for a guy to wear, and I know that conversation never took place in our home, yet there the bias is.

I am back at the residence campus where I live with 500 other men, mostly pretty rough and rugged manly macho types in appearance anyway. I left the polish on. It contrasts nicely with my blue shower shoes.

My Trannydar may be a little overly sensitive...

2008-03-27T18:16:00.001-07:00

Today there was a training class for 140 people. Usually I see everyone in hard hats, ball caps, baggy coats and ugly safety vests.

Today I saw more of peoples personalities a bit. Women who I had never seen in makeup wore some, guys who usually don't, shaved. I saw a guy with long hair with some really weird red almost parachute pants but with chains and mesh pockets and odd details like that, almost biker leathers but bright red?

So he turned and I caught a glimpse of sparse chin scruff. really no more than you see on a teenage boy trying out his first month without shaving since he started shaving the few he has...

He turned and I thought no more about him until later when we were settled in our seats. She turned a bit and her chin was hidden and all I saw was well cared for skin, plucked eyebrows in a definite fem arch, and long hair. I was convinced in an instant that she was a transgendered person. My only puzzle was is she a natal born male taking some hormones that are retarding hair growth or is he a natal born female taking the early doses of T to gain some masculine traits...

Either way, this person did androgyny better than anyone I have seen in a while..

Perplexing....

2008-03-26T20:22:00.000-07:00

Today I was in Barbara mode again and I wonder if that had any impact on a really weird incident today.

This project I am involved with is huge, there are hundreds of operators on various pieces of equipment. I'd guess about 1/3 are women, and of those there are a few, though certainly not the majority that would have elicited wolf whistles from construction workers a couple of decades ago. This sort of behavior isn't tolerated of course, but you hear flirtatious tones going both ways on the radio at times.

I arrived at a destination to do a job and backed in slightly before another operator. As they started to back alongside me, the individual who had control of that section of the project called out to the person following me and said to give me enough room to pull out. (They had, but it was just a safety concern because of size, proximity, weight, height, soft material below, etc. Better safe than sorry.) I thought nothing at the time of it since such instructions are routine. My impression was that the operator beside me was also male. The person calling out the warning said "Move over a bit and leave 123 enough room so he can pull out when he is done." Now, the he could have been referring generically, and is usually how we speak of the combo of a piece of equipment and its driver. Like as in , "Oh, go on around the 456, he is locked down." even if the operator is a woman.

So as I was leaving, with my piece of equipment between the man running the equipment managing that area and the second operator, he came out on his deck and waved, and raised his shirt with a grin in the universal, "show me you tits" international sign language. As Barbara, I went ahead and gave him a grin back and a wave and drove off shaking my head. I had actually thought of bringing a wig and wearing it under my hard hat. In this case though my military looking high and tight hair style was mostly hidden by the hard hat as would a woman's hai with her hair tucked up as many do. Wen you add tinted safety glasses, my small frame, thin arms, and whatever body language I was giving off by my posture, you can see how he could make the mistake.

I had no interest in correcting him as such an incident would both embarrass him, and provide fodder for those that might want to in good fun take a poke at my perceived manliness. I took an operator break thereafter and sashayed off my truck and called Dee to tell her about it. With a wan smile on my face, I decided to continue the "act". I doubt he could gain much of an impression from the several hundred yards away I was but it gave me a grin to keep it up. I walked more or less normally but with arms loose by my side, palms a bit forward. I let a little swing in my hips, careful not to get carried away with it since that is a skill I just don;t seem to have a natural knack for. When I want to walk like a girl, I just unlearn all the rigid ways I learned to hold my body to "walk like a man". I did a bit of a Donna Reed in reverse gliding up the stairs to my cab, and motored away.

All in all it was interesting.

It reminded me of the day I was feeling "Barbara-ish" and gave the fey wave to the girl in the cab adjacent to me. At the time when she waved back similarly, I didn't think she in anyway would have assumed I was a girl too, but now I wonder.

Barbara has been visiting.

2008-03-25T20:31:00.000-07:00

This week I have been working beyond the point of exhaustion. I worked 33 hours out of a 40 hour period. The work itself in theory is dangerous because of the scale of the equipment. You are never moving very fast, but given the tonnage involved, you have a lot of momentum. As a result, complete lapses of attention are pretty rare. This heighten alertness made the long shifts possible, and sleep came easy, if not for long enough.

I found that often Barbara was riding along with me on my travels keeping me company. The phrase that came to me is "In vino, veritas." which if I have the phrase at all right and its meaning is in wine there is truth meaning that get a person a little drunk and the truth tends to come out. In this case, it was the exhaustion of work that let her peek out of the closet again. I had thought since she seemed absent so often since I started this regular get paid for what I do as I do it kind of job that my male side was just feeling better about himself and didn't need to retreat into Barbara to escape. Today I decided that its possible that the opposite is true.

At the end of the first one, I looked forward to a long, hot shower and a soft bed. I trudged down the hall in my bathrobe with a small sample size dove bath gel, a toothbrush and a razor. I had decided that the "manly" scent of my originally packed soap lingered to long in my cramped dorm room as the wash cloth dries. I have adopted a habit borrowed from those in the military of shaving in the shower to save time and for expediency in the field and long ago adopted the habit when I don't wear a beard. The hair on my head at an 1/8 inch is too long to shave easily, so I only shaved my face. I didn't want to waste the razor that was still pretty sharp so I decided I would shave a little of my legs, knowing in the poor light and tiny shower stall I would miss a lot. I figured that A few swipes a night and I'd get them smooth. It felt so good gliding the razor over my calves that I ended up doing a pretty good job on my whole legs and then moved on to my arms and my chest. I always love the way my skin feels shaved and was not disappointed. Dee laughs a little after I wax my legs that I can't seem to keep my hands off myself.

The next night went about the same with catching some strays here and there, and over all I was at least able to squint my eyes a little and see a woman's legs which, after all is the point of the exercise for me. The third night I declined the extra 4 hours and instead was planning on going home to sleep. I was out of laundry though and tried to squeeze that chore in by starting it before I went to the evening meal and finishing it after. A very long shower with careful attention to areas best shaved in better light left me a bit aroused.

I am not sure what I have said here about that sort of thing. Barbara's blog has always been relatively safe for work. Partly because my fem persona is a little youthful and in some ways dates from a pre-pubescent time, and isn't really about sex.

We have another blog for my male side and his wife and it gets extremely graphic, so it seems silly to use the euphemisms I do here, but somehow it would offend that side of me not to.

In my (rare) teen days of crossdressing (all though I had no name for it) I experienced some confusing sexual arousal about the dressing and in a difficult to explain way, experienced a sexual, voyeuristic thrill seeing and touching myself.

The resurgence of the urge to dress that from my reading seems to be common in "ex"crossdressers approaching or in middle age. I, like others have reported, tend not to get that sexual charge out of it as I did although there is an aspect of that that underlies it. I don;t consciously repress the sexual aspect to it and have worked through a lot of the shame I used to attach to it, so there isn't any reason it can't be, it just often isn't.

The third night, I fond my self lavishing my legs with soap and really enjoying every curve. The supple feeling smoothness contrasted with the firm strong calves of an ex-long distance runner. I found myself well, er, 'taking advantage" of myself. I really enjoyed the time I spent with Barbara in a sexual way and at the time was pretty shame-free.

The morning after I felt a little silly. That old wall of shame threatened, but I held it at bay.

This morning, after a couple of "normal" days of "only" 12-13 hours and my first full nights sleep, I realized with delight that I was Barbara at the time. I rode along in fem mode, fully garbed as a man if you don't count my size 7 Calvin Klein button-fly jeans. I resisted the urge to avoid fem gestures, or how I sat, or how I danced in my seat to the radio. I had a good time.

I need to explain a little here about my job, without leading to a Google hit that outs me. I operate a very large piece of equipment with all sorts of modern electronics, that really don't change the function of the equipment from when my grandpa operated a similar one on a much smaller scale. I can monitor exhaust temps, turbo pressure, suspension variance from side to side, brake temp on each wheel, weight and on and on and on. There is a completely separate system that among other things assigns me tasks and lets me report where I am with them and so forth. There were problems with both systems. The equipment ran fine, I used the old fashioned analog gauges to insure that the other ones were wrong and that in fact the leviathan was running as well as my ear and my gut told me it was.

About three hours into the shift I was interacting with another operator. His equipment serves to me. In the process of doing so I had no way of knowing when it was that he was done with his part and I was to take of to do mine. One system told me nothing the other told me he had released me. The third method was he honks. I can not hear that frequency over the squawk of two way radios, brake squeal and the like. I paused, waited to see what he would do, and when his equipment turned away it seemed to me that despite the fact that it just didn't seem that his part should be over, it apparently was, so off I went, only to be recalled when he indignantly protested that I had taken off early. It really was a no harm done, turn around and finish what we started sort of thing. I suddenly felt defensive though. I went back completed the task this time from a much harder angle because the delay had changed the nature of the task, but I did it just right and had every reason to feel I had done well with what I was given to work with. Never-the-less, I wanted to explain. I fought (successfully) the urge to try to battle through incessant radio traffic to explain why it was that I had no way to have known and that it "wasn't my fault". Silly since everyone had long moved on to the next thing and protesting would gain nothing and only fix the incident in peoples minds.

A little later I had a chance to call Dee from one of my "offices" as I like to call the port-a-johns. We chatted briefly and I got back on the big noisy monster. Only after I got off the phone did I realise that Barbara was not with "me". Puzzled, I retraced my steps to see where I had left her. I had an epiphany when I realized at the moment of defensiveness she had fled. I have suspected that Barbara irrespective of gender issues is a repository for the tender feelings of an verbally and physically abused child. I think that she has been the caretaker of that side of me and has brought, intact those qualities that might have been lost under layers of thick-skinned emotional armor.

As I thought of this, I decided there was no reason I should allow her to be run off at the first sign of trouble, so I consciously worked on channeling her. (I don't actually use the word channel to describe finding myself in that character, but it seemed the closest I could think of.)

I had no clothes with me at all, but I thought about what I would wear if I could reach into McGee's knapsack and out with it. I thought a pair of 4" heels would be nice and at minimum some knee-highs. I could see easily managing that below the sill height of the cab.

I needed to make a bathroom break and on a whim grabbed a small role of duct-tape. Now I don;t feel up to giving a description of "tucking" to those that don't know the process, so Google that if you must. I DON'T recommend duct-tape, but with a smooth shave, It was a reasonable field expedient. It worked and the overly efficient A/C system helped. I actually enjoyed the effort, if not the comfort level of bouncing around like that. After 2-3 hours like that I decided I could end up with some chafing and no one needs that, so I hopped down to my office and, er, well, let it all hang out again.

The effort didn't lure Barbara back completely but with some concerted effort on my part to sit up in a ladylike fashion and a little dancing around in my seat and I at least gave a nod to the fem side of me and felt good about that.

I am writing this in computer cafe attached to the residence dorms with a bunch of manly men all around and really don't care who reads over my shoulder although no one has tried. (Of course I would actually care if they did, but it was more important to get this out and on paper.) Dictated, but not read...

-Barbara

Fleeting Moments of Duality.

2008-02-29T13:27:00.000-08:00

I am finally home for my week off and can be who I want to be. I had the idea I might swing more femme in my time off, but it doesn't seem to be something I can predict.

While I was being a manly man as an operator of heavy equipment I had my moments this past week. It of course isn't actually a man's job anymore. In fact, about 1/3 or so of the operators are women, and not at all women that would fit the stereotype of what a woman in a "man's" profession would look like. I was backing my 400 ton behemoth next to another operator's behemoth. Looking over we met eyes because of course one doesn't want to meld the two machines into one 5 million dollar 800 ton sculpture. I blushed a little after I realized that Barbara had given her a fairly femme wave which was cheerfully returned.

On another occasion I was listening to the radio. There are only three stations that even sort of reach the remote location. One country, one classic rock and one that features 70's 80's and 90's music. I was listening to the mix station when apparently they were in 70's mode and I found myself grooving to disco. I was thinking of the alternative club that Dee and I have been thinking of and for some reason it seemed the very music that I imagined they would play. My male side would have had no interest whatsoever in the music. Barbara was tossing her auburn mane around to the music, oblivious to the fact that I am actually shaved bald and wearing a hard hat.

Not feeling very Barbara lately...

2008-02-22T03:20:00.000-08:00

...but I smile at the moments I do.

I was in the cafeteria with a bunch of rough and rugged men. There was a fairly cute smiling girl working there of vaguely Asian extraction that seemed to be commanding the attention of all there.

What I noticed was what she was wearing. (Dee is going to be livid that I found this outfit cute.) She was wearing sweats. In male mode I detest sweats on a woman. This particular track suit ensemble was gray with pink piping and has slash pockets and a cute hood. Something only a transvestite could appreciate.

New Driver's License.

2008-02-02T17:11:00.000-08:00

I have a long history of difficulty with motor vehicle registration. Emission testing, lack of insurance, or other problems has me very wary of my surroundings and keeping cops off my six. I have driven 10's of thousands of miles with one missing document or the other. Sometimes this has cost me my license for extended periods. Having been legal in all respects for a couple of years now, I am loathe to give up my good citizen status if I can avoid it.

The mid-life crisis was due for new tags October 31st. I had my initial interview on that day. I drove up the night before and scooted 225 miles home on the last good day for the tags. Being pulled over for no good reason (which seems to happen to me an awful lot for a basically law abiding white guy) reinforced to me that that area is not a good way to flout the law.

6 weeks later my background check came back clean (surprising me most of all) and they finally scheduled a physical. A one month repair tag (allowed once in any 12 month period) got me there and back where I waited for a start date. By the time the human resources leviathan slowly ground out a start date for me that free pass had long expired. I lacked the money for even the emission testing that I knew would fail. My catalytic converted is clogged and the car only runs well because a bump took out part of the down pipe and the resultant exhaust leak has let it breathe again. I can't weld on a new one because my garage door is broken and I cant muscle my welder out past the junk out to where I could work on it. I had resolved to try emissions testing anyway, but ran out of time to do so. What I ended up doing was taking the title from one of my many spare cars of the same make that is currently our of service and getting a temporary tag for it. I slapped that in the window, knowing that if stopped, the VIN was not going to withstand scrutiny.

I resolved to break no laws on the way there, and to out run them if they (as per usual) attempted to again violate my civil rights with an illegal stop. Fortunately the two cops I did see had their hands full at the time.

I managed Friday during a brief time out when the family came to visit and I could bum a ride to that county's MVD office to get a new license. Again as per usual I lied about my weight. This time I was only off five pounds. I put 135. Two weeks ago I was 125, but a week of eating food designed for roughnecks on oil rigs has put me halfway back up to my goal.

With a valid residence in this barely populated county, no emission test is required. $55 later I am legal for two whole years. Hallelujah.

Pantyhose sure are warm....

2008-01-30T17:48:00.000-08:00

Today at the barracks was linen service. I sort of forgot it was Wednesday. I left in a hurry and left my bottom drawer hanging open. I keep my short sleeve shirts there and all of the small electronics, camera, charges and so on. Staff here seems pretty upstanding, but never-the-less, no need to tempt anyone. So I was quickly looking over them to make sure all was in place. Yep, all there...

...including the pair of pantyhose I had balled up and set on top.

I got a virtual laugh online out of Dee when I related this. She pointed out that a lot of guys up here wear them for warmth against the extreme cold. Even her dad. Hmmm, he might be wearing them for warmth. Don't they say that a girl tends to marry her father?

Little White Dress.

2008-01-28T19:17:00.000-08:00

I made the four hour dash home after getting a couple of days leave. I lied to Dee and told her I was going to sleep and then come the next morning. Towards the end of my 4 hours of excuses about where I was in camp and what I was doing, I couldn't reach her. I was a little worried I had pushed it too far and she was miffed at me putting off our nightly phone call so long.

All was forgiven including the foolhardy run home after 12 hours in the rumbly seat before I even left. I arrived weary, but pleased to be home. The kids were up and cheerfully enthusiastic about not alerting mom to my presence. I had a fantasy about getting a bath and a quality triple blade to touch up the hack job I did to my skin. None of that was to be, though.

We planned to have some "Barbara time" when the kids were bundled off to school. We had grand ideas of costumery and pictures, but the errands to get me ready and financed for the trip back out took up most of the time.

We did manage to get past Goodwill and spend about $9. I got a Glen Quagmire approved pilot's jacket with wrist stripes. (Giggedy!) Dee got herself a leather look jacked and a pink one. She got a couple of items for the kids. I found a slip with lace work at the décolletage in ivory and pink. Yes, I liked it for me too but pink is her color. My favorite purchase though was a lined, white lace, clingy, sleeveless dress I found with the wedding gowns. I had time to try it on before I left and was satisfied with the look even still wearing my briefs and crew socks.

The beard would probably need to go if I hope not to be read.

Sisters and clothes.

2008-01-25T17:58:00.000-08:00

No I don't mean borrowing from my sister. Other than the odd pair of pantyhose and the initial full dress-up at age three and a half, I haven't borrowed clothes from her for at least 30 years.

I started amassing a femme-drobe after I had come out to my wife. In assembling an actual outfit with her help, from time to time at first I had to borrow a shell or a top or jacket. As my wardrobe expanded to take over 2/3 of the closet, I was able to return the favor. She has borrowed my Liz Claiborn sweater top a time or two and depending on the shoe we can sometimes share. As I dieted out of things, she dieted into them, chasing me down the scale. Always though we have been careful to segregate the 'Hers' from the 'Hurs'. Dee explained that having seen arguments between sisters or roommates, she didn't want any misunderstandings. She always asks if she wants to borrow something. I am flattered that she wants to and get a a little private thrill out of seeing my clothes walking around in public.

Her weight loss has been at a faster rate than mine, and if I had managed to stop at my goal she would have already been been at her goal of weighing less than me. I am away from home eating really good institutional food. (No, I haven't been arrested....again) Its incredibly calorie laden food designed to sustain rough necks working 12 hour shifts. She has continued to lose meanwhile and there is a good chance that when I see her next we will be at the same weight. I a little taller, her a bit curvier.

When we got married we were about the same proportions and although she didn't know it of course at the time occasionally I did borrow, obviously without asking.

Today she was practicing her photography and post production skills and borrowed one of my thrift store ball gowns. The results really showed how beautiful she is and how confident she is feeling in her skin and my dress these days.

Bored, yet smooth.

2008-01-24T16:00:00.000-08:00

So I am stuck in this camp, training by day, ineffectively perving online by night as most adult sites are blocked. I understood that I would have a small private room and communal bathroom, that remains mine for the duration of the assignment there. I still thought it prudent to get the lay of the land, in this land of roughnecks prior to breaking out the ball gowns.

The only femme thing I brought was the very first pair of panties I actually bought and admitted to myself they were for me. The are plain, white and nylon. At a glance they could be men's bikini style briefs. I actually wore them one day, and it was comforting, but not femme. I was expecting to go home Friday afternoon. There is a lot of pent up urges for both of us. Dee has taken some really beautiful, tasteful, sexy self portraits and we had talked a bit about taking some of Barbara. (that is after my male side's more primal needs are met!)

This morning I woke up an hour early and am afraid to go back to sleep, any tardiness can result in termination. high risk job with no margin for someone not being there when something gets dangerous. So I headed to the communal bathroom to shave my head and face. Can of cheap foamy shaving cream, bar of Irish spring, one single edged disposable razor.

The eight stalls are not very private. Cheap three by three vinyl u-shaped showers with plain vinyl curtains. Two rows of four across from each other. I had woken up an hour early and had the showers to myself. I started with my head and was going to just hit a few of the easy to reach spots. As I cleared a section of brush, it only made the next thicket look all the more furry. I ended up taking it all of as best I could in odd contortions in that little shower. I ended up bloody but smooth. The water up here apparently is incredibly hard..I seemed to have lime scale on my hands and feet after an hour in the shower. The cuts seem a little slow healing. Next time I think I'll wait till I can get home.

Back to my old driver's license weight.

2008-01-21T04:08:00.000-08:00

I figure the steel-toe work boots required on my new job and the heavy wool coat to keep out the chill has to be making up the 10 lb deficit.

Having plummeted through the basement, I catch glimpses of myself looking gaunt in reflective surfaces. I am eating with abandon. Between last night and this morning I polished off the extra deliciously greasy cheeseburger Dee packed for me when she kindly packed me up for the trip. I also finished the whole bag of gooey chocolate chip cookies the 12 year old resident baker made for me. I'm waiting for the cafeteria at the residence campus I am staying in to open to take on another load of calories and decided to update the blog for a reasonably productive use of time.

I was more reticent to leave home for a week than I thought I would be. Dee and I haven't been away from each-other much over the years, and now it's going to be an every other week thing. In my silly obsessive need to tank up on sensory overload before I left, I neglected the opportunity to spend some quality time with her and the kids and I regret that, as she knew I would.

My room is comfortable, spartan and lonely. I have no computer access from my room thanks to HP.*

*I dragged up here with me my HP desktop. It is cobbled together with duct-tape. I mean that literally I have bright pink duct tape holding a donor power supply to the outside of the poorly designed practically not maintainable case. The HP monitor didn't survive the journey. It won't turn on at all. I think the once clever HP engineers now spend all their time finding ways to make the power supplies in all their products fail on a schedule so they can sell you a new one. Like I would ever by HP again. Ive said it before, I own nothing but HP. I have two dead laptops, just jury-rigged the desktop, and now a monitor. Four out of four of my most recent HP purchases all developing similar issues is pretty telling. Before he messed up the Vietnam War, Robert McNamara developed a pretty similar program for General motors of planned obsolescence. The American car industry is still mistrusted by anyone with any engineering sense to this day. So long HP, I hope you enjoy spending the last of your ill gotten gains on all that expensive advertising in advance of your eventual collapse and restructuring.

Frottage

2008-01-18T11:25:00.001-08:00

In my early sexual experience which of course for me was entirely male mode and hetero, I really enjoyed grinding against an eager girl's zipper. I had heard this called zipper grinding, or rubbing off at the time. Later I heard the term dry-humping which seemed an oxymoron. Plenty of humping, not so much dry.

In our explorations online, Dee and I have met some interesting people. One in particular is a friend of Dee's who is a lesbian and speaks in the vernacular of the culture. I have never really seen myself as a lesbian in a man's body as they say because there are cultural issues I don't share. I am gynophilic in much the same way, but biology, experiences and perspective is not the same. One of the terms Dee picked up was tribadism. Sometimes tongue in cheek miss-spelled in their community as tribalism which is what spell check wants me to change that to. Essentially it is a form of frottage, as in external touching or grinding. Against another's hand, their leg or in the case of two woman with some gymnastic effort, more intimate contact on contact.

We saw an interesting video of such and we both found ti well motivating to say the least. I donned a pair of cheap pantyhose...(we call these floss)...and a sports bra just to give Dee something for leverage and well, tucked we went at it...quite interesting. They ended up later with a rather large hole strategically torn in them with her teeth, hence the term floss.

I am a bit unsure about what to do with these sort of experiences blog wise. Barbara herself is absent a lot lately from my life and out bedroom so there is a relevancy issue at times. In addition Barbara seems to be a time-warped me from an earlier time, and not that sexual usually, so to sexualize her here seems odd to me. The blog itself although it was meant mostly for me as a place to sort out my feelings, has become apparently a bit more than that with both regular visitors and the curious who want to know a bit more about what life is like for a straight married crossdresser. Although some of them come here hoping for "Hot SHe-male Pics!" and leave dissapointed, my sense is that plenty might be loved ones of a crossdresser or maybe a crossdresser who like I was less than a year ago confused as to what his dressing means to him and is seeking answers.

On the other hand, Dee and I have been highly sexual with each other and quite open about it in another aspect of our online life. We have become together sex-bloggers and although I mention in passing that I am also a crossdresser, since I am usually not dressed (or in femme mode mentally) during our adventures, the CD issues are only a footnote there.

I am only sure I am not starting a 4th "Hot Tranny Sex Blog" so perhaps I will just relate the relevant adventures here as they occur. It is weird though to fracture my writer's psyche to adjust the tone and timber of the writing to the euphemisms I employ on this blog, when I write raw, gritty filth on the other. Maybe that is appropriate though as the two sides of me are a bit different in the sensibilities.

Sometimes it is nice to slip into my femme mode as a respite from my too-urgent, too-driven, too-obsessive sexual urges as my male side experiences. I feel a little guilty though not letting Barbara be more free with her desires what ever they might be. She seems remarkably neutral on the subject.

Finally Starting My Manly Job!

2008-01-18T11:18:00.000-08:00

Going to be a heavy equipment operator. I realize that there are even petite women employed in similar jobs, but it tickles my funny bone a bit to imagine up in that cab with my current gender awareness, and my return to my slender frame.

Along those lines, I have decided the only reason I gained weight over the years was a side effect of Prozac. I stopped taking it after years on it at about the same time I started consciously eating healthier and avoiding snacks. I slid right through the ground floor of my diet of 135 in to the basement of where I was when I got married 15 years ago. I was 124 yesterday. I have been eating larger meals, I am out of the habit of snacking/grazing between meals, but I may have to start. Hard to believe that a few months ago I was bulging out the sides of a size 14 skirt.

I have added real butter back into my diet, am drinking 2% milk, where I had even given up skim before, I eat red meat, pasta, bread. Its like old times when I couldn't gain weight. Seems odd now, because I thought the days when my metabolism would let me eat whatever I want were long gone.

I wonder if its all the sex?

Another Prom Dress, Another Dollar

2008-01-08T14:45:00.000-08:00

The other day I "pre-ran" a thrift store. Blue tags were 50% off. That usually means that on Monday, blue tags are $1.

I didnt see much that interested me except for a Nehru jacket that I don't actually know if it was cut for a man or a woman. Obviously, I don't care; it fit well.

I lost my wallet the other day, so no ID, no debit card and no access to the $2 or so in it. I was out near the thrift store on Monday which is also near a bank that knows me by sight. I went in and they did remember me, and were willing to help me check my balance and get some cash. After checking the balance, I really didn't want to admit to them that I did want the $3.28 in there to go buy a new wardrobe, so I just left.

Combing through the car I found two quarters. four dimes, one nickel and a dozen pennies! I went to the thrift store and to my dismay it was green tags for a dollar. Trying to make the best of it I confirmed the Nehru was still there but at $14.99 that was a little out of my budget. I cruised the "better quality" racks looking for green. Very little there that wasn't obvious why someone would have passed on it. Then, The DRESS...

Size eight, strapless so my big bony shoulders don;t have to fight the dress size. Black, satin, cute buttons on the back and a white inset in a back pleat that Pepe le Pew would love.

I brought it home, took off my t-shirt and left my jeans and cowboy boots on under as I cooked lunch for Dee. She came home to a gender-fucked husband and a nice vegetable sautée with roast beef.

In a Barbara State of Mind.

2008-01-08T14:07:00.000-08:00

The other day, I was sitting in an nice custom tailored suite made from Saville row wool. I had my legs crossed subconsciously in Barbara mode. Dee and I were having a nice, easy conversation about things that in the past could have been tense. They weren't we even smiled about past behaviors and new openness.

Suddenly Dee said, "You are in Barbara mode!" I looked down at my legs and said, "Because of this?"

"No, but being in Barbara mode may have those sort of effects, I meant how open and approachable you are."

We talked at length about this, and why it is that Dee was so accepting of Barbara from the very first time we met. It is because Barbara shares with my male side the very best parts of me, the open quality that I use gruffness to hide and protect myself when in male mode.

Beginning the New Year at Peace.

2008-01-02T00:51:00.000-08:00

This time last year I didn't know the word transgendered, and probably hadn't put on anything feminine for months. If I had, I would have felt guilty and confused and not at all wanted to know, "what it means."

A year later, I don't "know what it means," but if I feel the urge I dress up, giggle a little and feel just fine about myself. New Year's Eve I was in my closet, Literally but not figuratively. There is a whole rod of really nice quality menswear, all purchased for $1 apiece now that I am an avid shopper of thrift stores. None of that was there a year ago. I didn't own a suit that fit. This is just a byproduct of my femme shopping. I had 3 ball gowns and a few cocktail dresses to choose from, and no place to go.

I wanted to try some on so I did. Some were purchased in the middle of my weight loss, so they are now a little too big. good news if that Dee has dieted down in to them.

I was probably 175 lbs this time last year, I am now adding fat to my diet to try to get back UP to 135 from a nadir of 124. I can do so many things better at this weight than I could carrying around the extra bulk. I used to think I was more masculine when I developed a little fat reserve added to my former runner's 4% (or less) body fat frame. Now as I see the real differences in my frame from even a woman of my same dress size, I feel very masculine, which distresses me not at all. I feel fortunate to be able to embrace my feminine side without denigrating my male side.

I look forward to what this year brings in self discovery.

Where to Begin with Crossdressing.

2007-12-23T17:13:00.000-08:00

This is a placeholder for a list of "how to's"

Barbara Came Home Last Night!

2007-12-23T09:21:00.000-08:00

Ever had a friend or family member gone for a long time and then picked them up at long last at the airport? You know you missed them, are eager to see them once again, but perhaps in their absence you haven't written or phoned like you had planned. Maybe you have fallen out of touch a bit.

You wait, now in the overcrowded holiday season packed converted 'waiting area' of the airport, never designed for the post security measures crowd. Then, at once, emotion floods. Your loved one is there. In the flesh, huggable, touchable, kissable.

Such was the case last night. I was posting away on a site. It has a GBLT area. I saw a couple of posts by a young transperson, and Barbara's heart when out to her. Just like that I was back. Tender heart, vulnerable, feeling lovely. No clothing, no make-up, no wig for the transformation, I just was. I nearly cried. I am a bit teary right about it now. I have been trying to get back to Barbara for sometime without success. I waxed my legs, she didn't appear. I bought some femme items I could feel her hovering near us at the thrift store, but she stayed just out reach. I went on to www.crossdressers.com
and re-connected with treasured friends there. I felt their warmth and welcome. But not Barbara.

I thought for a while with the new open communication that Dee and I have had with each other especially sexually lately that perhaps Barbara was all a dream, or a device, or a temporary blessing to get us through some tough times. I wondered if I was somehow a fraud. A dude in a dress acting out a kink just for a cheap sexual thrill.

I sit here, tears rolling down my cheeks, happy and soft. As Barbara. Still not playing dress-up, but I could. Dee just said its a shame we are broke. It would be a great time to go shopping. (Barbara is a bit looser with the purse strings.)

This morning I logged into my email and say a sweet note from my (Barbara's) big sister Paige. I've not said much about her in my blog, but despite the fact that my male side is older, Paige will always be my big sister. She so kindly led the teenage, giddy, scared, Barbara by the hand carefully out of the closet and into the beautiful light of day. Thanks, Paige, I've missed you also.

I have always met good friends in my travels. I have another adoptive big sister that seems to serve as a substitute for my actual sister that, sadly I am estranged from. Jessica seems to serve as sister to both my male side and my female side and helps me to connect with the authentic me no matter where I am on any given day on my own personal trangendered sliding scale. Thanks for the overburdened ear, Jessica.

And of course Dee is there through it all. When my gender repression probably erupts out as male irritability, when I am feeling pretty, when I am feeling silly, when I am dead sexy. Love you Dee.

With Love,

Barbara

The Care and Maintenance of Barbara

2007-12-20T00:00:00.000-08:00

I have neglected the blog here as my few regular readers may have noticed. This is more an indicator of my neglect of my entire Barbara persona than lack of interest in writing or blogging in general.

It seems to have started when I realized that I was constrained by circumstances outside of myself from maintaining Barbara's smooth legs. In male mode its the thing I would notice first so naturally it is one f the things that defines Barbara. Seems silly given that I went decades without really wanting to shave, that I would feel angst at all about it. I think though that crossdressing is a progressive condition. The more involved your preparations are for transforming yourself get the higher the bar is set. Once I saw myself in a skirt, mere pantyhose wasn't going to suffice. Add another layer of a wig and make-up and tasteful clothes, and that becomes the point where I feel like Barbara. I still like the soft satiny feel of a nice pair of panties but that is a comfort to my male side, not really anymore a step towards feeling en femme as it was in the past.

As I said in a previous post realizing how much I missed smooth legs scared me a little. If I miss it is important. If so I have to re-evaluate in my heart and mind where it is I fit in on the spectrum of wants, needs and behaviors that is described as "being trans-gendered". I like to believe that I am a fetishist. Why than the angst at doing without that that I did nicely without for so long in the past? Why is is such a comfort. Why is it less and less of a sexual thrill, while maintaining its allure in indescribable ways? And most un-answerable, what does any of this mean now and especially in the future. If I dress more will I be sated or demand ever-more?

Tonight I was going through my closet sorting a bit. I have skirts that I purchased after I had lose 20 lbs and a couple of sizes that are now much to big. This one skirt is cute and I never really ever wore it. It is a size 12 wrap-around reversible skirt. green plaid on one side a green floral print on the other. Even the label is cleverly reversible. I wrapped it around me and tucked it in to itself. (The skirt! not well the other!) I wore it as I surfed the net and spent some time on an adult site that my wife and I have been enjoying together as of late. It felt nice to be so, and it seemed silly I don;t dress just for emotional comfort. Whether that sates me or raises my desire to dress more shouldn't be the criterion for whether I dress or to what degree.

As I vacillate about these issues I can feel Barbara slipping away, and it makes me sad.Best evidence of this is the fact that I can't get her out of third person.

Big Brother in Heels.

2007-12-16T18:49:00.000-08:00

The boy came into our room and without pre-amble grabbed a pair of heels from the closet door. This time, apparently in a more conservative mood, got a pair that actually WAS my wife's. He usually prefers mine as they are a little more camp.

He slung a long Tigger-like toy around his neck like a mink stole. He attached anther stuffed animal to his forehead using a large rubber band. He clomped and posed and generally had fun.

He was trying to attract the attention of the toddler. My wife asked him if he is playing the sister or is he just the big brother in heels? Without hesitation he said, the big brother in heels. Its just fun, as it should be.

He is so getting his own pair of heels for Christmas. We already bought them on dollar day, they are tiny like size 5 probably, but with a 3-4 inch heel. So that they are available but not obvious they are going to be tucked into a dress-up box we have been working on including a nice waiters jacket, a gangster suit, and various hats, Halloween masks, and just maybe a ball gown..:)

Well hirsute didn't survive the day.

2007-12-08T22:12:00.000-08:00

The plan was to take some tasteful manly pictured, before I got around to shaving. The potential babysitters were gone, so we didn't get around to that. I didn't think I was feeling a really strong urge to denude. I figured I would wait until we had a Barbara photo shoot to shave or wax so I'd be as smooth as possible.

As things wound down around here I decided, that I'd rather wax than shave and it can be a several session process to get from Sasquatch to smooth and lovely mode. I started with the parts I could reach, my shins and knees, a little of my calves and parts of my thighs. I tried a little of my belly myself. ALWAYS a mistake to try that yourself. Do NOT try this at home, kids. I had Dee help me rip those out, and cajoled her into helping a few more areas. Once I started and could see actual legs for the forest I wanted it all gone. I finally like I usually do gave up and shaved the rest. I left some of the back of my legs for another session.

Spotted one of Dee's nighties on the back of the bathroom door and slipped it on...feels nice to be relatively smooth again. Had to reduce pic size here or you'd see my still partially hairy knees. :)

Went to a thrift store again today...

2007-12-08T18:02:00.000-08:00

Bought nothing femme unless you count the Calvin Klein button fly jeans for my manly photo-shoot. I got a pair of Justin Western boots for $7 too. Dee made me pass on a genuine Stetson for $24 not because of price but because it was the official authorized version of by Burt Reynold's in the acclaimed Smokey and the Bandit

Speaking of, I didn't have occasion to outrun any Smokeys on my last trip. I managed a leisurely 75 mph average speed over a distance of 435 miles. Which is pretty impressive if you saw the construction zones, the times I really did slow down through hall the small towns and the no-passing crawls. I never went over 120 miles per hour as I told a nice old lady at the clinic that mentioned she thought I drove a little too fast.

The boots were nice and fit well. I wrote about them and the Justin Roper's I found for Dee one night of dumpster diving on my diving blog here.

It wasn't that I wasn't feeling femme at all its just that Barbara has a pretty extensive wardrobe that I haven't been able to wear all of yet, let alone out somewhere. At one thrift store Dee refused to use the dressing rooms because they had curtains instead of actual lockable doors. I picked a stall to try on the jeans, and noticed a red sparkly medium sized cocktail dress. How fun I thought. At $24 I wasn't going to buy it, but maybe to try on. I sat and was taking off my boots when an older lady stuck her head in my stall and said, "Oh, sorry!" with a blush. Imagine her chagrin if I had been halfway into that cocktail dress. I placed my boots near the front to signal that a manly man was gettin' disrobe-ed in thar'. No one bothered me while I tried on the dress. (It did fit OK but I am not so into the 80's shoulder pads look). Jeans fit, and rather than hassle with changing back I pulled on my boots and transfered my pocket litter to my new jeans. I paid for my old jeans again on the way out making my new ones free, and my old ones cost about $3 total.

Since I am STILL under 130 despite eating country-style at my sister-in- law's on my trip, I had some greasy and delicious fish and chips for dinner. All in all a good day.

Back and feeling pretty macho.

2007-12-07T16:34:00.000-08:00

Having just had the adrenaline-fueled, put-hair-on-your-chest, high-speed dash through the mountains, I'm still not feeling that femme. I went 435 miles though hills and curves and construction zones, and small town speed traps in a combined total of 5 hours 15 minute. No close calls with the cops this time!

Physical went well I think. I went in lean and healthy 42 lbs lower than I was when I started crossdressing in earnest just in May. The staff was very professional and I can;t imagine that they would have had any problem at all if I had shaved, but given it is a small town facility, I had been a bit paranoid about it. Shouldn't have worried about it.

Now that I can shave/wax/veet/trim at will, I feel much better eve though I haven't. It was really odd how antsy I was about being hairy when it didn't feel like my choice. We have been taking some artsy (and less artsy) pics lately, and I am leaning towards leaving the manly look for a while.

That could easily change in a heartbeat though. During this time I was holding off denuding, I bought a lot of cute things that I am dying to see on with smooth legs..:)

Smooth again soon.

2007-12-06T14:15:00.000-08:00

I stopped shaving and waxing now almost 2 months ago. I'm back to my macho furry self, and its really hard to feel femme like that. Funny how I miss it since I went most of my life that way without any angst over body hair.

As I have mentioned previously I think, I realize that many people with gender identity issues have very real feelings of dislike for their birth gender. I have never had this diaspora towards my gender. I have long admired the other gender and sometimes wished I was, but in reality I would prefer to be fluid in my gender expression and able to float between the two.

I stopped shaving because I had an idea about dressing up as a good friend of mine who passed away several years ago. Will used to wear a leather vest (With a .45 ACP in a shoulder holster.) I found a similar vest in a thrift store. My wife really likes my face with a beard so the plan was to let my beard grow for a month, shave the beard for Halloween leaving a mustache like Will's When I knew him he was bald n top friar tuck style. I am balding, but not quite that sparse. I was going to leave a fringe and go as him as kind of a tribute.

So abo0ut this time a job I had applied online clear back in June called. I have an actual profession that on an hourly basis pays up to 10 times what the new job pays, but my assignments have been painfully sporadic. I have no benefits, health care, retirement, etc etc.

The new job is in an environment about as macho as it comes. I wanted the job. I felt antsy as the interview approached not about the interview but because I felt I couldn't shave because there might be a physical. If I had the job I would hope I would be brave enough to groom my body as I see fit, but I am no crusader for the transgendered. SO the interview went well I thought, I came home and shaved my head and face which felt good, but not specifically femme. The next step was a background check and then a physical, 2-3 weeks I thought. I figured I could wait.

As the weeks dragged into over a month and I didn't hear, I grew depressed, mostly I think because I can't even get what seems like a fairly basic job. I finally had some break-throughs on the femme side. I have gotten some tips on my, er, technique from a bi-sexual friend, to rave reviews from Dee who had had no complaints previously. She reports that she was able to see and feel me as Barbara, even en homme, and that felt good and validating.

Last night a weird number came across the display on my caller id, it was only 4 digits. I thought it was the automated reminder that my payment on the phone was overdue. I picked it up and hung it up. Fortunately they called back. Thinking the computer needed a couple of seconds connection before it would release the call, I answered. It was the job.

They made me an offer, I accepted it. They wondered when I wanted to schedule the physical. I said ASAP!!!!!! I am leaving to make the 550 mile round trip now. I plan to be smooth as can be by Saturday!

Trashy Blogs are up and running...

2007-11-23T16:15:00.000-08:00

Ive got 6 posts up on my new dumpster diving blog. That one will be linked from here but not in reverse. I want to be able to let the kids read that one, so I'll avoid mentioning my little hobby there. So far I've got a couple of recipes up there for using ingredients I have found.

The no-olds barred boudoir blog that Dee and I started has been picked up by one site that steers the occasional random stranger by, but so far only about 25 random strangers have peered in through our curtains. Thats kind of interesting. And no, we won;t be linking that blog for anyone we actually know. In the extemely unlikely event that you are one of the 25 who have seen it, mum's the word, k?

Feeling better still.

2007-11-21T13:53:00.000-08:00

Shopping will do that.

Not that it wasn't without its challenges.

Backing up a bit, I was feeling better this morning, then Dee came home. I didn't know what of the below post I wanted to discuss with her. She must have sensed my reticence . Despite the fact that I felt better, that message hadn't yet been transmitted to my visage so she still saw a mopey long face. She said she was worried about me and offered to make me some breakfast which I declined. I then thought better of declining as it just reinforced my sullenness. I went down and talked to her, tried to explain to her what it was about her post that upset me. She offered to take it down, said she should have just journaled privately. I tried and probably failed to convey it isn't that she posted it publicly but the fact that she at least as she wrote it felt that way about me. Anyway I had some malt-o-meal with a few frozen blueberries and Splenda.

She did take down the post. She also mentioned the actual password that I had gotten an email saying she had changed it. That didn't bother me since I hadn't known or cared to know the password previously. I found it interesting that she chose a word that seemed to indicate an interest in some sort of retribution. She insists that I am reading to much into it. As soon as she changes the password to something else I shall post the word and it will be most apparent that there was some sort of Freudian association,and I don't mean just in my mind.

Anyway enough of that.. Any residual hard feelings I had I used up on Chase Bank through the marvelous psychological device of transference. Dee got paid and sent me to the bank with her paycheck and ATM card. I was to make the deposit of the relatively small check and get $40 out for our shopping spree. The MFing bank did not make the funds available until tomorrow. I find this out AFTER I had made the deposit and checked the ATM. They assured me that there is not "HOLD" on the funds, just they are not "AVAILABLE". I fail to see the relevance of this distinction. I had spotted an older Pierre Cardin Couture collection custom suit in my size for $1 and needed to get right back and buy it.

I ended up driving to another city to collect $350 from a client and since there was a Goodwill Store there, I browsed a bit before going back to the one with "my" suit. Of course it was gone. Despite the fact that it had sat available for $1 on Monday and Tuesday unmolested, I spot it turn my back and its gone. :( My second choice was a sport coat worthy of Herb Tarlick that Dee vetoed.

The first Goodwill yielded a woman's all-wool double-breasted jacket that was mis-filed in the mens area that fits me well. I got a plain oatmeal polo shirt by Saks 5th Avenue. I got a woman's blouse with a hood. Not sure about the cut but loved the cerulean blue color. At the site of my great suit disappointment I really got nothing, but Dee met me there and got a cart full of stuff. She did find me a pair of Rockies brand cowgirl jeans. I bought a half dozen Corelle brand mis-matched cereal bowls for 50 cents a piece. They are nice because they are microwave and oven proof.

Nursing a minor headache I am recharging and planning to go out once again to yet another store.

Oh almost forgot. I was also trying to just do SOMETHING anything productive to kick start my day. I decided to gather a bunch of dove-for items that I have only saved with an intention to donate. None of the items were things we needed or would fit anyone now or in the future. I found 3 pairs of jeans, 5 pairs dress pants, a dozen t-shirts, a sweatshirt, a jacket, a couple of CD towers and an overstuffed chair. In the light of day the overstuffed chair looked a little grim. I loaded them all up hanging out of my hatchback and dumped them at Goodwill for a nice tax deductible receipt. The house will be a lot more orderly if I donate something every time we go in to shop.

Happiness is....

2007-11-21T06:48:00.000-08:00

....a warm cuddly child on a cool morning. Remember those Charles Schulz cartoons featuring Peanuts characters?

It has been so blasted hot this year that I am starting to wonder If I wouldn't have been better off voting for the genius that invented the internet and lives in a several thousand square foot eco-friendly glass house from whence he throws rocks.

Its actually nice to feel chilly finally now that the elusive season of autumn is almost over.

I've been really down the last couple of days. I have been trying (very unsuccessfully) not to appear sullen and petulant. I have a lot on my mind and a lot on my plate. I have a lot of time on my hands and am making poor use of it. Money is a serious ongoing problem with no improvement even imaginable over the horizon. A really good friend of mine from boyhood is in town. He went through a similar financial funk for a while and recently sort of fell into an ideal job paying the most he has ever made for doing what he loves. He has offered his sympathies and a collection of financial self-help CD's. Neither are going to pay for food for 7 people 3 cats, and two dogs. I dreaded his visit to my home yesterday. It went well, he and his newer wife were very gracious and non-judgmental about the hovel I call a home. Given that for all practical purposes I am unemployed I could make more of an effort to clean up after the other creatures I cohabitate with as well as myself. It is such an unbelievable mess. I occasionally will spend several hours trying to make the kitchen conform to UN guidelines for the sanitation of eating facilities in third world countries, but give it a few hours and it is as bad as before. NO one uses any of the 12 to 15 f'ing trash cans ever. Why should they when there are piles of refuse everywhere.

I am upset most of all by an entry on my wifes blog. There she publicly calls bullshit generically speaking on my life,my words, my actions my intentions. We had a rough patch a few days ago, talking only made it worse, we agreed not to talk about it, and I encouraged her to talk to her friends, the world whomever just so she doesn't feel isolated. She objected that if she talks to mutual friends about it it will shame me. I said I don't care. I apparently do. I understand her frustration with me, I truly do. I object mostly to her wanting to know just enough details to give fuel to her imagination, but not enough to put some of her unfounded fears to rest. She emailes, blogged and apparently felt better. Was even apparently somewhat amorous. I felt small that I couldn't reciprocate. That I felt myself pulling away.

On top of all of the above, we had both incurred a huge sleep debt the last couple of weeks. We had spent our Deficit of wakefulness in the most delightful ways, but it was a debt like all others that eventually must be paid. I think I might have settled up on that finally. I arose at what I thought was a little after 5:00 am when the dogs barked at the anal retentive OCD neighbor who must exit his side door every morning making them sound off rather than using his front door. I wasn't ready to kill the dogs this time (the neighbor lives only because I don't want to return to jail.) Turns out the clock that sets itself with some sort of satellite signal, is unaware that my area doesn't follow daylight savings time.

Either way I am not particularly sleepy, but the toddler is. Dee leaves in the morning for a short while to help at her work then comes home for breakfast before leaving again. The toddler s often difficult during that short absence. This morning with the chill she is snuggled up next to me and seemingly feeling me with some of the self-love I seem to lack as of late. It feels, if not like happiness, a little less melancholy.

Thinking of starting another trashy blog...

2007-11-18T22:35:00.000-08:00

I have mentioned in online vanilla communities as well as here that I am fascinated by what people throw away. It appeals to my voyeur side, my thrifty side, my adaptive talents in re-purposing other's discards.

I have often thought it would be fun to keep track of the approximate retail value of what it is I find, maybe take a few pictures. I enjoy doing it even when I have no need financially to do so. In fact I am more likely to do so if it isn't a needful thing, I have nothing against those that do subsistence diving and have done so myself. Wen I am out lurking in the night and on the rare occasion I see another diver, I often try to discern whether they are a for profit salvage expert or someone just down on their luck. If the former I will swoop in ahead of them and feel no pangs of conscience in leaving the cupboard bare. If I see signs that someone else is frequenting the same dumpster I visit, I will set aside things that I don't need in a place they will see on their visit.

Lately it has been a subsistence thing for me. Business is non-existent. I was renegotiating the repayment of my mortgage with a couple of different reps at my mortgage holder's servicing agent. They found my estimate for groceries and sundries for 7 persons to be unrealistically low. It was in fact higher than I actually spend.

I am a supremely competent scrounge. I can find just about anything if I have the motivation to find it. Most people I relate this too, are a bit incredulous and envision the process to be much less pleasant than it actually is. There are dumpsters to avoid and dumpsters that are not often fruitful bit there are those that pay off like a gamblers dream of a broken slot machine.

Sometimes it is very predictable which will pay and which will not. I used to avoid the dollar store dumpster for example. If I don't want most of the stuff inside, why would I want the knick-knacks after they are chipped and broken and thrown out? I changed my mind one night years ago when I pulled 35 brand new Duncan brand yo-yo's still in the packaging.

Last night I was visiting the dumpster I consider my green grocer behind Safeway. I don't know if all Safeway's are this way, or if the affluence of the area is a factor, but they are very choosy about their produce. If an apple is too large or two small or misshapen much less bird-pecked it is culled. Anything even close to over-ripe is tossed. I find better produce in their dumpster than I can get INSIDE the produce departments of many other stores. The 18 wheeler was idling there so I cruised on by and hit the dollar store dumpster. I call it "neighbor trash" when people ignore the "no tresspassing" and "no dumping" signs and risk a $500 fine to illegally dispose of things behind stores. Somebody had 1/2 filled the otherwise nearly empty dumpster. I almost found out the hard way that some of it was a large plastic planter filled with glass shards. The kids regular ignore my threats of bodily harm and make off with my dive light. I was diving by the very bright display back light of my Motorolla blue-tooth enabled camera phone. The blue tooth I use less often then the glow of the screen.

After I negotiated my way into the dumpster safely I was able to see by the glow the labels on the cans. It turns out someone had thrown away 59 size #10 cans of long term food storage. I got flour, sugar, dried apples, rice, powdered milk and 2 gallons of canola oil. Once the semi-truck left and I got a 1/2 bushel of limes and a box of mixed apples, pomegranates and bananas.

Tonight I baked 4 loaves of very good white bread using nothing purchased but the yeast. I even sliced the bread with a bread knife that I got from one of my end-of-the-month apartment dumpster forays. Sliced bread really is the best thing.

I took a picture of the bounty for last night and had in mind I would cut and paste this entry for the post on the new diving log blog if I ever get around to starting it.

Cat hasn't got my tongue...

2007-11-17T08:42:00.000-08:00

I have been typing at about the same several thousand word a week pace, its just that well, I don't know how to tell you this, so I'll just come out and say it. There is someone else.

I think I mentioned previously that Dirty Filthy Princess' Blog inspired me to ask Dee to resurrect her short-lived sexblog. She did and we have been writing more explicitly there, together. It has been to say the least interesting. We have already had 19 visitors even though we have told NO ONE of its existence. It is nice to have a no-holds-barred place to write salaciously.

Whether it is lief following art of the other way around, things have gotten well sort of more adventurous. This is all good and fun,but we made plans last night to be a little more typically vanilla. This is relevant here because it was dressing related. Dee insists that the presence of two pairs of panties in the scene violated the vanilla label, but I see it as just a reminder that a softer approach was planned. However those plans went in each of our minds we found a comfortable and very enjoyable place, in a softer but non-vanilla place. Maybe more akin to soft-serve vanilla/strawberry swirl of fat-free frozen yogurt....

I now have the NUMBER ONE blog....

2007-11-15T09:22:00.000-08:00

...according to Google for anyone searching blogs for the phrase "drivers license weight". THats right NUmero Uno~!

Oddly, my post on the subject of October 3th was only tangentially on topic for the theme of my blog. I felt kind of guilty because the number two entry was more recent (October 5th) and on a blog that actually is about dieting. Felt kind of bad, like a usurper to the throne.

The individual actually stayed and read for 6 minutes, which is kind of unusual since although there are guys and gals that dig a dude in a dress, thats really not who one expects to bump into in the course of the day.

Try this - at lunch today at some chain fast food place, stare at the door and try to imagine that the next guy through the door is wearing panties underneath his Dickie's work pants. Weird, no? or what if that chick with the long hair, sunglasses, athletic hips is actually a guy. Its one thing to go to a gay bar on drag night, but looking for recipes, and finding out maybe for the first time that there are straight married crossdressers would be at the least, disconcerting I would think.

On the subject of Drivers License Weight, both Dee and I do not have the correct weight on our licenses. Interestingly, we both claim a weight of 150. Neither of us measure UP to that standard. As I stated previously, my license weight on the license before this one was 135. At the time it was a hopeful ideal that some day with enough protein powder and weightlifting I could gain that next 20-25 lbs. At my most recent nadir of weight..(Apogee of weight loss) of 131 I'm fine with my weight. I'd like a more toned midsection, but apparently not enough to actually do the crunches. I wouldn't mind adjustable clavicles and rib cage to get my manly frame into a more proportionate dress size, but over all I think I am at the ideal size to skip back and forth across the no-man's land between the masculine and the feminine.

Plaid shirt, snug jeans,work boots and a days scruff, and I am like Ron White would say a "Manly Man". A sleeveless blouse, even tighter jeans (tucked), sensible heels, a close shave, some foundation, blush, lipstick, eyeliner, eyeshadow, a wigs and 'Voila!' I am a girly gurl. It sure is more trouble to be a girl though. Probably why nearly all of these entries have been composes "En Homme"

s

2007-11-15T07:44:00.000-08:00

This post was started by our toddler. She has incredibly quick hands and has had a laptop within reach for her entire life. She loves to lash out and hit random keys.

She and I have an understanding. She IS allowed to incessantly press the mute button and the volume buttons on the side of the laptop. She likes to make the little toddler sized button light up and go out as she presses it. Give her an inch though...

She hits odd sequences of keys and brings up help screens and odd windows that I never before knew existed. This little genius excels at discovering hot keys. She, stuck in the middle of the bed cannot reach the right half of the keyboard to hit the enter key before I can administer a swat to her little hand. some how she typed a sequence of 4-5 keys that entered the "s" and hit publish post.

Her two older sisters I nicknamed persistent and irrepressible. The oldest seems to always strive to stay sunny in her effort find yet another way to still get what it is that she wants to do thus irrepressible. The middle one is an evil genius and from a young age never ever accepted no for an answer. She seemed to have an unlimited pain threshold, and would just glower at you if discipline was attempted. This one is by far more difficult than any of the other kids. TO top it off she is tiny, most likely will be considered technically a little person. As I understand it an adult under 4'10" qualifies. She is just not that interested in nourishment and is short as well. She looks like a little cherub. An evil evil cherub. There's a reason these frightening creatures are used to guard the entrance to the Garden of Eden. WHo would dare pass them.

I gotta go, she is , as we speak, one-by-one, removing each wipe from the box and throwing them to the four winds. The cat, buried under a pile of wet wipes is less amused than I.

Reminder of the serious nature of transphobic reactions.

2007-11-12T12:37:00.001-08:00

Last Thursday, I was minding my own business, as I recall dressed en homme over and under other than maybe some femme jeans.

I heard some incredible bigotry coming out of my radio as some local Disc Jockeys went on about their revulsion with "sick" or "mentally ill" or having a "mental disorder" speaking specifically about "those kind of people" referring to a local transwoman semi-reluctant activist as "it".

Had those statements been made about Blacks, Jews, or Gays, they would be fired.

Mostly they just displayed their ignorance. I mean that literally as one who has not learned the basics of a subject and really don;t know even what it is that they don;t know.

Some of the things they said included:

"We used to have attics we could like crazy relatives like that up in."
(joking after the sidekick expressed sincerely that trans persons should have 'thier own place to go') "I am not advocating Nazi round-up like my associate here, I don;t want to put them on their own island or anything."
Many comments about how genitals dictate which bathroom one uses always.

Their rant was brought out by a picture of a transperson in an attractive dress and pose. They stated that a GG in such sexy presentation would draw fire as being too sexy for a local newspapers magazine insert. I went to the paper's online publication and scrolled down to the comments on various trans related articles of late.

The vitriol was visceral. Including one from a self identified gay (cis male) reader. He felt that the "trannies" should just drop it and find their own place or use the separate (just added) bathroom.

As I searched and read and followed links through the gay community I was astounded at the level of bigotry and hatred from gays for transgendered persons. Not all of course, but those that did express revulsion did it with at least the fervor of what you'd find in the average fundamentalist Christian congregation towards gays for example.

I get that when gay men do drag performance to mock GG's (that they don't of course find sexually desirable) that it is camp and fun and vaguely misogynistic. I never thought they in some cases would be so transphobic themselves. I don;t prefer to see a hot GG in dumpy overalls any more than they like seeing a handsome slender man in a dress, but I don't find a girl in drab disgusting or cause for revulsion.

My reading took me away from the insulated world of crossdressers discussing cute clothes and into the rough and manly in a contrived sort of way of the comments sections on some otherwise thoughtful posts in the homo-blogger community. This week the amputation of the T in GLB-T in the pending employment discrimination legislation ( ENDA ). This I had been neutral about not because I agree with leaving those with alternate gender expression behind, but because it doesn't matter to me personally. I have no intention of presenting in a public way in a manner that would likely lead to discrimination in my self employed workplace. What brought home to me their disgust with gender-queer issues was that they seemed not to care at all about their gay and lesbian and bisexual brothers and siters who present in any other way than the CIS (as you were born) way. Their attitude seemed to be, who cares about drag queens and the bull dykes. They are on the fringe and not worthy of our love and support since they only bring down the image that CIS presenting gays want to present.

Good that came of this is I am seriously rethinking any plans I have and to patronize or provide background entertainment for a local gay bar. It also has led to a desire to be more up to date and informed on the broader world of GBL and Separately T. Ironic really because one of the things that kept me closeted for 38 years is it seemed "gay" to wear women's nylons. Only when i finally got my mind around the fact that gays like manly expression and that gender and orientation are really not even connected was I able to come out to my wife to such wonderful results. I was working hard to put aside my learned and maybe in-bred prejudices about the gay community and to see all persons as worth knowing. Now I am thinking I fit in at a gay bar as much as a lovely monogamous gay couple belongs sitting next to me in church.

As a white guy, Ive never had trouble finding persons of color in my circle of friends and laugh at the idea that having a "black friend" insulates one from charges of bigotry. I could really use a "gay friend" about now. He would make a good beard. I actually do have a number of gay and bi friends. The problem is they are all crossdressers and most are a bit confused about their orientation so I'm not sure I get to "count" them.

I hadn't figured out where to fit these into this entry so in no particular order this post was inspired by 98 KUPD mid morning, AZCentral.com, joe.my.god his comments section on a post, and a nice response on joe.my.god's by maine gay.

Just traded most of my crossdressing wardrobe away...

2007-11-11T18:01:00.000-08:00

..in exchange for a well dressed wife. I know, I know, when you think drag queen you think sequins and feathers and spandex..Oh My!

In truth I have been asking her help and advice putting together skirts and blouses which dresses flatter, and so forth. So, really I was shopping to her taste anyway. In a way it is my taste too because I always liked the way she put herself together.

Once, a few months and many pounds ago,I was trying to do some more self-less shopping. I bought a skirt or two for me,but was concentrating on finding flattering clothes for Dee. It was a real eye-opener about the lack of cute clothes for larger sized girls. It was impossible. Aisle after aisle, shapeless garments. Not even interesting fabrics or textures or colors. It is like the whole point of clothing after about size 12 and certainly after size 14 is strictly camouflage. "Hide me!" the clothes scream.

Down now sixty lbs and within 12 lbs of my weight, Dee has slithered her hips into most of my wardrobe. Some of my early purchases are a little loose on her and the rest is within sight.

I inhaled into a couple of pairs of low-rise size 6 jeans that I feel confident her curves will not fit into, but I thought that about the size 10 suit!

I am torn, on the one hand I feel naked in my own closet. On the other hand she looks hot. I'm Ok with that.

Shoes...Let's get some shoes...

2007-11-11T11:25:00.000-08:00

This morning Dee tried on the dove-for heels and found they are 8.5 wide and are too big. If anything they are too big for me also but in a pinch they'll do. I'm pretty sure that takes me to well over 40 pairs just since May. Also this morning Dee found that two pairs of her heels are to loose because of her dieting. A little stretching and maybe I score two more to the Barbara column. Yes, it is a contest.

We need a bigger closet. Ironic since I am spending less time "in the closet" so to speak.

Peppers, pickled and not.

2007-11-11T01:41:00.000-08:00

I am feeling better.

I had some work to do. Work is good, it gives me a sense of purpose. Wasn't sure I could arise form the funk to do it, but needed to. I decided to just begin, nibble away at it and see what happened. I did some research, sent it to the print que, didn't bother to go down and plug it in. Someone needs to send me one of those wifi printers to test like the vibrators they send to sex-bloggers...

Anyway, Dee wanted to shop. We have no money but I did see last week some brand new size 11 Doc Martin's I want to get for my brother-in-law to say thanks for letting me crash at his place when I was laying low from Roscoe and Cletus awaiting my job interview. Saturdays is often 50% of day so we had planned to go back and nab them. We were too late :(

I wasn't feeling like spending any money, but I had fun. I tried on two dresses that will be $1 next Thursday according to their tag color they were 1/2 of of $14.99 and $24.99 respectively today. I had worn pantyhose under my jeans and tucked so it made the changing room mirror slightly less ridiculous. Still the fits weren't optimal,but one had a cute gathered hemline which was brief enough to be interesting. I found a pair of men styled loafers but with pointy toes and 3" slightly thick heels. I put them on and clomped across the entire store, keeping a rack of clothes between me and the other patrons to show Dee. She smiled not so much at the shoes but my obvious ploy for attention and the risky outing myself behavior. I found them comfortable, and should have bought them for $5 but I put them back. Later at home Dee tells me that an older lady definitely did notice my antics and was mouth agape over it. She was probably just in wonderment at how well they went with my black boot cut Calvin Klein stretch jeans.

Almost bought some Donny Osmond style purple socks, but Dee wasn't as turned on by them as I expected so I put them back.

We ran into an old friend in the parking lot. Reading between the lines of his use of we and us,we figured out he and his wife had overcome the divorce and apparently were back together..hope springs eternal. He knows of my diving habits. In fact he is the very friend who once loaned me his copy of Hoffman's "The Art and Science of Dumpster Diving" which turned me hard-core militant about the sport. I told him about the 36 dove-for plastic pumpkins I was planning on donating to Goodwill for the tax write-off and the 20% off on your next purchase of $10 or more.

Next stop: we went to the house to be auctioned that a client had asked me to render an opinion about, I gathered some details and then off to the next Goodwill.

Here I found 4 Corelle bowls and an A&W Root Bear mug, one trip to the freezer away from being frosty.

I came home, took a nap...had to get up for a charitable assignment I understood to involve setting up or possibly taking down chairs. Turns out it was moving 40' long solid oak church pews that had been removed temporarily to make way for an orchestra. Much heavier than folding chairs as it turned out. My new 132 lb frame made it more obvious that I wasn't holding up my end so to speak and some more burly types stepped in cheerfully and without shame to assist. Good bunch of guys.

This for reasons that escape me had to be done at 9:30 pm. My night-owl 12 year old daughter wanted to go with. Afterwards, we did a little subsistence diving consisting of some 6" across tomatoes, some apples on steroids, so Lilliputian potatoes, some sweet potatoes some bread stuffs and a 1/2 peck of un-pickled peppers.

After sorting,cleaning and discarding, we had a couple of fruit boxes that needed to go back to a dumpster so as not to load up our home receptacles. I was going to dump them at the church, but when the 12 year old jumped in the van primed for adventure, I decided to take her for some recreational diving. Interestingly, the very first apartment complex dumpster we hit had a box of girly stuff in it that she liked and topically a bottle of pickled cucumbers, sans the juice. Squealing with delight she divided the booty more or less fairly in piles of things for the less girly 10 year old and the 8 year old boy. We got a industrial quality mop bucket with wringer I actually did want that, the grocery store version we have is shite. We got 4 pairs of heels in Dee's size. Included in the bounty were bracelets, necklaces and a piggy bank with two gold coin chocolates and an actual US 50 cent piece. Theres a Fiddy cent I can appreciate. In one dumpster I say an actual gallon jar of pickled peppers. Pepperoncinis to be precise.

All in all a productive day that might as likely ended with me typing how I hadn't gotten out of bed at all.

non-specific malaise

2007-11-09T20:45:00.000-08:00

A little depression. I think mostly externally driven. Lots of chickens coming home to roost. Haven't heard about the job. Not sure if I should have heard by now or not. Had some work in what I've been thinking was my profession. I now realize it is actually a part time job with no expenses and really high professional fees, software requirements, insurance and low rates of collection.

My wanting to avoid making some hard choices is a drain on my energies. I need to follow through and take steps I have already identified.

Telepathically Tantric

2007-11-05T22:35:00.000-08:00

OK last night I was reading several posts on the NSFW, but I consider appropriate blog by Dirty Filthy Princess. I just discovered her blog and was fascinated by some parallels. She, like I had for the most part saved herself for marriage. (Technically, we saved ourselves for the one we eventually married.) In her case it was a mature and thoughtful choice. In my case there was an occasional noble thought, but mostly I was a nerd that could never align my desperate hormonal urges, and actual opportunity, and my conscience at the same time. The perfect storm happened when I met Dee and not to tell her tale or too much of mine, but she had borne a child previously and I assumed that meant a less than immaculate conception.

She was a bit frustrated at the time as we grew closer and explored in ways I had had some opportunities in earlier life but the level of beguilement had not overcome my fortitude. She, (beguiling as Eve on a mission from he who persuadeth to partake of forbidden fruit) did persuade me, and I partook of some from the lower branches of the tree. Her frustration was we'd set a date, we did things that to her mind (and mine now) were certainly more adventurous then simple coupling. But I held out, treasuring the last shred of my virginity as a???? Well, I'm not sure why I did that, it probably was partly because I didn't know what I was missing, and partly because what I was getting was superb. We were actually celibate and chaste in all ways in the week before the wedding as if that absolved previous indiscretions. I am sure glad I didn't think of showing that fortitude say a month before the wedding.I would never have made it.

Anyway as it goes, I told you that so I could tell you this.

I am reading DFP's blog with Dee trying to sleep next to me. Among many posts I read there there were two or three in particular that seized upon my imagination. One was a rather impassioned description of her latest ministrations upon her husbands person with him in a shall we say receptive rather than giving mode. Another, I think alluded to the enthusiasm she has had for his person in this way since they became intimate, and it reminded me of us in our early days, not so much in some of the middle stressful period, and a lot as of late. The last one I cannot describe without being more personal than I want to be, but I shall send a note to Dirty Filthy Princess perhaps thanking her for the telepathic suggestion.

I finally closed the laptop and as it powered down I slipped out of my fem Calvin Kleins and socks, leaving male briefs and a t-shirt. I was pondering things sexual, and aware that Dee has an early day, and that surfing blogs so long had made any overtures a little untimely at this point. Still, I had some energy,and despite my puritanical upbringing that makes it difficult to do even at the age of 42 with a wife who (correctly) thinks it is a normal human event, I began the slow process of self exploration that could well lead to the grievous sin of Onan.

Dee, who I thought was asleep, rolled my direction and much to my embarrassment, her reach found that my briefs were not exactly waist high at the time. A soft hand though turneth away a blush, and I rose to the occasion I put aside all self-critical thoughts of my deviance.

She was in rare form, what I like to call her "artistic" mode. She once had a mall kiosk print 4 business cards with her name and "felatio artist" on it and there was in fact truth in advertising I can attest. I began to wonder if she had read over my shoulder as it was almost a concerto played to surpass the description of DFP efforts. I say this not to demean DFP's obviously worshipful and highly skilled ministrations, but to show the heights achieved here.

At some point she made a request that I am not to sure has ever been done in exactly that way by us in 15 years of sexual gymnastics, which is saying a lot. One doesn't find the truly new that often, although I find the combinations make it new each time.

The specificity of the request seemed to me to have come straight from a line DFP had written, so I assumed it was because she had read the words by the glow of the laptop along with me. She had actually said "You are addicted to blurfing" which I took to be a comment on the fact that I had kept at it till 2AM, and that she had read the blog I had finished last. I thought the enthusiasm was a gentle reminder to my easily obsessed self that there is a real live,willing woman in bed with me and reading about others experiences is a poor substitute.

I went back to blurfing (surfing blogs) none-the-less tonight and was reading some aloud to Dee. I mentioned something that harked back to DFP's and she gave me a blank look. I explained, you know the one you were reading over my shoulder? Nothing. Finally we realized she had read nothing but my mind,and more likely my responses to her. Incredible how in tuned she can be to me at times.

As if frequent 1500 word posts are not enough...

2007-11-05T21:46:00.000-08:00

I/(We?) need yet another blog. Dee had her own, started me one, one for the family, then one for her photos. She stopped using hers because that vender was awkward. I never wrote a word on mine,and the family one kind of became her main blog and her public face for her vanilla online friends.

Shortly after I started this one, Dee started her non-vanilla blog. It featured fictionalized depictions of some interesting moments of, er well intimacy. It was not, then linked to mine or really anyone else. At some point she thought better of it and deleted the entries, and over time that blog morphed into her wife of a crossdresser blog.

Anyway what made me think of the earlier sexblog was that I needed somewhere to recount the story in my head about something that happened last night, without resorting to the euphemisms that I use here to maintain a reasonably clean and for the most part safe for work blog. Since I do post pictures of me (In sane moments the non-en-femme ones give me pause) It seems I want to be a little less interesting to say, Inside Edition or a tabloid or some local attention if and when this comes to any sort of attention.

Anyway the gist of what I wanted to write is that there have been three occaisons lately where specific things that were on my mind because of blogs or other web pages that I have read, seemed to have been conveyed to Dee telepathically. In two of the cases, I know for a fact she hadn't read what I had read and I hadn;t even hinted I had read that genre that day, the latest that caused me to think about it, I assumed she had read over my shoulder.

I am not sure what I am going to do exactly in my next blog entry about it, but I think I will leave enough details to remind myself what it is I wanted to say, with still being cryptic enough to conform to my pre-conceptions about what this blog is and isn't about.

On the other hand it has been an evolving thing. Non-identifiable personal details about things I like to do creep in for example cooking. It isn't just NSFW stuff that I leave out of this blog. A lot of vanilla stuff I leave out too. For example things I collect, things about the kids like in the vein of kids say the darnedest things, things about my car, my profession, that sort of thing. Mostly mindful never to give enough pieces of the puzzle for the inevitable cyber troll to make grief of my life which is of course none of their business.

From Sling-Backs to Steel-Toes.

2007-11-02T01:24:00.000-07:00

I went thrifting, want really into it, probably because Halloween shoppers had grabbed all the 50% off tagged items for crossdressing, slutty, or hobo-esque costumes. By the time Thursday dollar day rolled around there was noting left to mark down to a dollar.

Bought mostly shoes. They are harder for the average shopper to decode, and the colored tags fall off, do it wasn't obvious which were a dollar unless you are a shoe fanatic.

Mostly found ones for Dee, or her sister (who recently put me up for the night whilst hiding out from Roscoe and Cletus and waiting for my Interview the next day).

The 12 year old has feet the same size as the sister-in-law and snagged the cute ones for herself, leaving only the high dollar Anne Klein pumps because she disdains pointing toes. I like pointy toes myself, but not ON myself, even at a relatively modest size 9.5 size, point toes that ad an extra inch or more just scream trannny shoes to me. I want shoes that shrink me a couple of sizes.

I found a great pair of Doc Martins, but they were a Men's eleven. Even though I am wonderfully endowed in other ways,(intellectually, egotistically, humorously, etc etc...)-those would be too big.

I looked some more and found a great pair of scuffed Stanley work boots with the MSHA required steel-reinforced toes and really good remaining tread life. These I spent far more than anything else on at nearly $8. It seemed a good purchase Karma wise to assume I will be needing these for the much needed job I hope to get soon.

Rant on the hopeless nature of government interventions.

2007-11-02T01:13:00.000-07:00

Outline for a blog entry that didn't get done a short while ago: (I don't normally work off an outline but type stream of consciousness, but I am trying to work on my writing skills and focus my subjects better.)

A thread about daylight savings time inspired a rant. (What doesn't inspire a rant out of my male side?)

Interesting factoid I learned was that the Scotts at sometime (look that up) had a 2 hour change. One seems silly. Farther North 'needs' more daylight?'

I likened the daylight savings idea to the save gas and lives idea about driving 55 for the entire portion of my formative driving years.

Consider a clip of I cant drive 55? Hagar? was he with VH at the time?

Look up stats on accident rates at differing speeds.

Upshot is pick the speed most likely to be obeyed by the most people and you get consistent traffic flow which is more important than nominal speed.

Maybe link to my most recent experience being non-compliant with arbitrarily posted speed 'limits' and the tangential interaction with the Gendarmes that ensued.

Pondering whilst scratching my wisker-less chin..

2007-11-02T01:04:00.000-07:00

Yet another place-holder. I need a blackberry with voice recognition software so I can blog every random thought I have; thus not depriving any of the handful of avid readers the benefit of my disjointed musing.

Having to consider whether an androgynous look might affect me getting the job in a macho environment has given me something to think about.

Was growing beard, part fun, part the wife digs it, part upcoming Halloween, part proving my recent trend towards leaning femme was merely a fun hobby, can quit anytime etc.

Got call about ob interview, wondered about physical, etc, hadn't shaved head, face or anything else in 3 weeks, figured no harm waiting another 10 days. Surprised that when I had decided I could not, the urge to do so increase. Previously I had put it off 3 weeks with no angst, a few days into my 10 day plan to cont. my wo0lification was noteworthy.

Interview went fine, wiskers didnt hurt, surely didnt help either.

Range of motion tests were all I had so far, and no disrobement required. Next step isa call in 2 weeks for full physical. Now my smooth reprieve is delayed further.

Shaved my head and chin. Seemed to help. Feel neutral.

Losing ROscoe and CLetus..

2007-11-02T00:56:00.000-07:00

Cliff notes:

Job interview 225ish miles away. Light car, heavy foot high revving car. Couple of over matched SUV's with flashing lights in the visors, Lots of adrenaline, no citation.

Version I posted about it..

I would have made the 4 hour leg of the trip in 2.5 hours, but it took me 10 minutes to lose Rosco and Cletus in their Highway Patrol SUV's and then for good measure I went the speed limit for the last 30 miles in case they were running a tascan. (stop watch test, they sometimes radio ahead.) I passed them going 105.

In the 30 seconds it took them to get on the black-top and underway, I had cranked it up a bit more and was nearly a mile ahead. First major defilade, I killed the lights slammed on the four wheel discs until I got it slowed to something the e-brake could handle, and finished the decel, I wheeled it around facing the cops, who were just then cresting the rise.

I thought I was too slow, but with nothing else to do, I hit the lights, hoping from their vantage point it would look like lights appearing from a gully, I gunned it, the went by me at over 100 I was doing a leisurely 70. With a closing rate of 170+ they didn't get much of a look at my car. I was so sure they would catch on two bends in the road later and come back after me. So, nervously I reversed yet again and followed them. To my relief, there was a Y and come to find out both cars went left. My destination was to keep to the right.

I saw only two semi's the whole next 30-40 miles to the state border. I took the road less traveled and that made all the difference.

Today on the way home I was scrupulously within the speed limit, but got pulled over anyway. Heart in the throat, I do think they were checking out anything low and fast his reasoning was a burned out brake light bulb...gave me a repair order and sent me on my way, but the stop was a lot longer than that sort of thing usually is..

I think that was my one and only get of jail free pass for the entire southeast quadrant of the state.

I am a lumberjack, yes, I am...

2007-10-27T22:51:00.000-07:00

I took the girls up camping with a bunch of other Dads. (We didn't actually camp, eschewing the rocks and the company of tarantulas for the floor of a cabin.) I wore a plaid shirt and women's jeans because that's what fits. I sat scratching my three-week-old beard and realized that I was in no way feeling en femme. That felt just fine.

I looked around and tried to imagine which men there would be accepting, and which would likely pray for my salvation. I didn't till now wonder which might be at the least recovering crossdressers. I can't imagine any in that particular group. If you can't spot the CD'r in a group of 20-25 men, statistically, you are it.

As I was casting about for a way to begin this entry, I thought of

The Lumberjack Song

I don't think I ever actually saw it previously, but Dee mentioned it a couple of years ago before she (or I) had any transgendered framework to put me in. It came up because of a silly picture Dee took of my even sillier outfit. (I was wearing my Lucky Charms pajama pants, Underdog t-shirt, and Davy Crockett hat. I was dancing a jig next to a gas pump in Blythe at about 2:00 in the morning on the way back from Disneyland.) A friend of Dee's who saw the picture, laughed and said that the picture reminded her of the lumberjack song. In context now it seems prescient.

I looked it up and watched it just now. If I had seen it before it wasn't in light of thinking about how people think about the transgendered. If anything I would have thought it funny, silly and that the reaction of those in the background of the lumberjack reasonable. When I think of it now its kinda poignant. His manly friends and his devoted girl are so supportive of the barber's need to dream of a new and different life. The provide the chorus to his fantasy of manly times in the woods. (Which by the way which after Brokeback Mountain sound's well, gay..:)) When he reveals he "likes to put on women's clothes and hang around in bars", they shrink away. He, lost in a pink fog, is oblivious to their revulsion. Pretty apt really I think.

At the end she laments, " I thought you were so rugged!!!"

This may happen even more so because those with any version of transgendered issues are at risk to overcompensate a bit on their manly side. I.for example was the most macho 115 pound man Dee had ever met.

We were talking about it in the context of changes and I pointed out that Christopher Reeve was very rugged, until a tragic fall meant he could do nothing for himself. Not what Dana signed up for, but she handled it with unbelievable grace. Dee mentioned the stereotype of the man who trades in the old wife for a new trophy model every 10 years or so, because he can.

Dee put it this way about the changes for us. "You married Kelly Bundy, and 15 years later are living with Peg."

Referencing her new sleeker look as of late, I said, "You're looking more and more like Kelly Bundy everyday, dear."

She rejoined, lovingly, "So are you, dear!" Its "spice like that" (~The Sheriff.. in the movie Misery) that makes marriage fun.

Dumpster Bruschetta

2007-10-26T02:00:00.000-07:00

Petra and I were having an IM conversation about places to be out and about en femme. I mentioned I hadn't as yet, but thought it would be amusing to go dumpster diving.

By way of background, I have long had this hobby, its fun, eco-friendly, a little edgy and gives one a reason to skulk around in the night. Forest Gump's mom had it wrong like is like the contents of a dumpster. Some finds are better than chocolate, Some, considerably less so.

I find I am more inclined to dive when its recreational than a necessity. I have always had a talent for finding needful things, but the ego takes a little hit if one thinks one is reduced to such as opposed to choosing to.

Apartments are always best on weekends especially at the end of the month so normally I wouldn't have gone on a Thursday night. Wanting to have something more interesting to report than some nice ripe tomatoes and a half peck of slightly bird pecked apples, I headed for a favorite gated apartment complex. Its newer, the residents are young and still running up their credit card, so I never leave completely empty handed. I recently refinished a beautiful dining room table from there. It was late enough that there weren't any cars to follow through the gate, so I burned some calories walking the circuit around the parking lot. A couple of open gates denied me the fun of hopping the fence. I almost did anyway for kicks now that I am no longer carrying a field-packs weight of extra caloric reserves around my midsection. I hadn't exactly crossdressed for the excursion but didn't want to risk ruining my one dollar thrift store Calvin Klein womens jeans, so I kept it light and resisted the urge to actually dive in so to speak.

Even with such a cursory search I came away with a GI Joe (he was neither in mufti nor Barbie clothes, just plain BDU's), a pair of apparently outgrown, good condition leather upper old-style roller skates in size 5, some misc snap together build a creature type toys, and a 52" five blade ceiling fan.

Grocery store yielded Roma and slicing tomatoes, zucchini, cucumber, a small pumpkin, a very ripe avocado, a couple of Maya sweet onions, vacuum packed individually sliced reduced-fat baby swiss cheese, and six crusty, baguettes. I left a dozen baguettes, a ripe mango because they seem to go un-eaten around here and lots more.

Before I left I had weighed myself after eating 1/2 a bag of chips. despite eating 900 calories of a full bag of chips then night before I was at the lowest weight in 10 years, at 132 and figured I should have a cookie.I had several Oreos but sliced out the lard sugar filling. No one needs those kind of empty calories...who thought of sweetened lard anyway?

After washing up the produce, I sliced the end off a baguette, split it open and drizzled with olive oil. A little oregano, garlic salt, basil, then sliced tomato, and topped with the cheese. broiled till bubbly then drizzled garlic infused red wine vinegar over that...Yummy!

Blurfing up a storm...

2007-10-23T17:19:00.000-07:00

I have a policy of when a client asks a stupid question - and yes there are stupid questions , Virginia. The degree of stupidity dictates the length of the response. The dumber the question the longer an explanatory letter or addendum they get. SO far as I know, no one has worked out my metric, much less the sarcasm necessary to belabor some of the points. My personal favorite runs to a good page and a 1/2 and explains in some detail how it is that an investor will purchase something at below it's apparent market value due to either the distress of the selling party or the intrinsic appeal or lack there of of the thing purchased. It goes on to explain that once the deficiencies are remedied such as removal of green,shag,cat-peed, carpeting that the renewed appeal of the now fresh-smelling travertine-d object might well fetch on the open market a sum that is greater than the sum of the original purchase price plus the repairs. This odd concept is known as profit and is why investors buy that ugly haunted house on the corner in the first place, aside from their primary motive of course in raising your property values and bringing that wonderful family (or crack dealer as the case may be) to live on your street.

OOOPS starting to get long winded...wouldn't want my readers to feel THEY (both of 'em) were bing punished here....

Anyway, I told you that so I can tell you this....

Dee knows I like to read, was aware that I like to write if only in the context of punishment. She long ago started a blog for me two or more years ago when she started hers, she offered to get me rolling, and even type up my thoughts. She knows well that I have no shortage of opinions on just about any subject you could name. In hindsight, I think she was hoping to unload some of my unloading on the rest of the world who deserved it more than she as she tends to not ask stupid questions.

Flash forward to that fateful forum post I read about straight crossdressers and bi-sexual girls and the weird and funny and sometimes sexy journey that ensued. I acquired a blog again. I wrote, and wrote some more. I have barely paused. I write, I read, I write some more.

I cut, I paste, I slice, dice make julienne fries and then post the recipe.

I have very little idea who reads this. 4,000 people in 3 months or so. That baffles me a bit. Even more so if I consider it to be LESS than 4,000 since that meant some of you all come back for more. I am aware of the existence of masochists, just haven't met many. I mean there is my wife, but when I met her I married her believing this to be a rare species I had collected...but I digress...

I don't know what I want this blog to be but (I think) I have an idea of what I don't want it to be. I am not interested in attracting an audience of trannie-chasers as they tend to be as I understand it, straight males. Since I am a straight male myself, I feel I would have nothing in common with them...hmmm that sounds wrong.. Now if there is a contingent of hot nubile young lesbian tranny-chasers I may reconsider my position vis-a-vis content I choose to provide here.

I do find that pictures tend to lengthen visits, and I am conflicted about what that might mean. I do appreciate the relatively chaste admiration of other crossdressers when and if I can garner it, and really should be secure enough in my own homophobia to not care about the rest.

I also consider the possibility of the wife that has found hubby's panties and goes online searching for hubby wears panties or the like. I'd like to hope for all closeted CD's that at some point they can share this part of themselves, and I can't see my blog helping them much, but I sure don;t want to drive someones wife screaming to the locksmith after reading my blog.

I try to keep my links fairly safe for work. I think about how they might reflect on me.

When I first started I used my blog as a safe repository for all sorts of kinky links that I'd don;t want the kids seeing bookmarked. I then decided for a while to 'clean' it up a little.

I worry now though that it doesn't accurately reflect my online surfing at all. I really enjoy going from one blog to another in random vectors,. I have discovered a lot of really good writers that way. Smile a lot, learned more.

I think I am going to go back to posting links to the blogs I myself read and too heck with you all if you think my magazine rack is looking a little seedy. Theres a pristine copy of scientific American and Omni at the bottom that I'm going to get to right after I read a few more pages of Always Aroused Girl, Belle du Jour, and Confessions of a College Call Girl.

Oh the blurfing...thats my word of the day...Dee taught it to me then rescinded (briefly ) permission to use same when she decided it was in common usage in her vanilla community and if it isn't Web-wide, it may out us...turns out its in fair use.

The end of the ever-expanding wardrobe.

2007-10-22T18:09:00.000-07:00

With the huge volume of $1-day finds at Goodwill my side of the closet has spilled over into quite a bit past the middle.

Today, Dee re-took some ground. My very first leather skirt, that I have dieted out of, she dieted into. It looks great on her. She bought a top last week with a wrap-around look that is perfect with it.

We are thinking of going to a Drag night at a local bar and she now has the outfit. The most expensive part of her outfit is the WalMart black patent-leather, peep-toe pumps.

She came up with a smoky-eyed make-up technique that looks really good in a slutty sort of way..:)

"MAKING" her accept. me...

2007-10-21T09:48:00.001-07:00

Some one typed "How to make wife accept crossdressing" into Google. This misguided soul was pretty persistent in his search for the impossible.

He evidently paged through 17 pages of Google entries, and found me right after -

Giuliani Tells Christian Right: I Am Not Your Enemy - The Caucus ...
wifes and his new wife has 3(!) husbands. These people don’t know how to make a compromise. It’s stays in a character for ever. ...
thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/20/giuliani-tells-christian-right-i-am-not-your-enemy

I had a post earlier about odd Google combinations generating hits on my blog. The thing that bugged Dee about it (other than the "MAKE" her part..) was that it was her comment to me on a blog entry about my history that triggered the Google hit.

You have always worn way too much guilt on your shoulders for things that you needn't feel guilty about. And that guilt just feeds itself, leading you to behaviors that aren't appropriate. I wish you could learn to love and accept yourself as I love and accept you.

Yes, she is accepting, and used the word "accept". But how the heck does Google know she is my wife??? No, I didn't "MAKE" her accept me. Really I didn't do anything to persuade her to be accepting. I chose well in general when deciding who to marry, but neither of us are really very much the same people we were 15 years ago.

It occurs to me that his query, and the companion query "How can I MAKE my husband stop crossdressing?" are based on a pretty flawed idea that we can strongly influence another's feelings.

A better question would be- "How can I as a crossdresser better assure my wife of my love for her?" or "How can I assure my crossdressing husband that I love him?"

Holding the line at 7-8 despite Ron Popeil's best efforts.

2007-10-20T23:32:00.000-07:00

My size 7-8 waistline that is. ~inhales gut a bit~

I mentioned earlier that I have a gen-u-wine Ron Popeil Signature Series Pasta Machine. I purchased this treasure for the princely sum of 14.99 less 50% because I did not ACT NOW. Rather, having spotted it on a Thursday, I went back on Saturday 1/2 price day and nabbed it. Seemed to have all the parts. Even though I WAIT!!(ed) there was not MORE! No Ginzu knifes, no lemon zester no second unit for the price of one. Still, it was cheap at twice the price.

No manual though but easily remedied with a PDF I snagged online. Interestingly the Manual has order form in the back for replacement parts, (I seemed to have the basic compliment intact), and optional accessories. Among them was a sausage horn, and casings. Hmm stuffing ones own sausage does sound fun, but I was unwilling to part with more for that plastic part than I paid for the machine.

It did a pretty good job on linguine, fettachini, and some rigatoni. It was tasty and I am still messing around with recipes to find a combination of texture, color and flavor that I like. I am not convinced though that it is so much better than good quality dry past cooked properly. At least when you weigh the time and difficulty of getting all the nooks and crannies clean after. I vaguely remember that the parts are dishwasher safe, but I am not sure putting egg fortified glue is such a good idea for the dishwasher. It takes a while and it exposes my nails to dishwater for longer than is good for them.

What's that you say? Latex kitchen gloves? That just seems a little to femmy to me. I mean I'll wash dishes in an apron and kitten heels but gloves? No man wants to be seen in kitchen gloves.

Anyway the point of this post was supposed to be about my multi-task idea. Alton Brown (a personal hero of mine, dunno if he ever crossdresses, but I think he could pull it off..)..has said don't own any kitchen equipment you can't use for more than one purpose. Watching the little pasta machines dough hooks whirling around I had a flash. Bread dough. Either that or some possible suggestion for such in the PDF I hastily scanned looking for a basic recipe said as much. Doesn't matter, I had resolved I'd abuse the machine some time in that way. Speaking of single use machines I think I own two bread machines, used to use them not sure why I don;t now. Oh right! These machines are used for a month or two then never again..a fate that I fear will soon overtake the pasta maker.

Saturday Dee came home between soccer games, with one hungry kid and needing to take something portable back to another of them still on the field. She complained we were out of bread. She greedily eyed a two dollar bill with a serial number that would be perfect for the owner of a 1974 Oldsmobile ram-air 455 cutlass, and a couple of other questionably interesting singles. Rather than have her give my money to some fast food place, I decided to make some bread. OK this wasn't a practical solution for the needs at hand since the next game was over in 20 minutes. For that I found some whole wheat hamburger buns that were remaindered because only Dee or I will eat them. Even the mold doesn't like them as much. They look nutritious , but they actually are pretty soft and tasty..but I digress. two slices of American so-called cheese, some mayo, some sweet pickle relish. Done.

Meanwhile I looked for a recipe.

Came up with:

2.5 cups flour
2 Tbs oil
1.5 Tbs Canned Evaporated Milk
1/2 cup sugar...(clearly not a diet recipe)
1 1/4 teas salt..(honestly, cooking is chemistry, but 1/4 teaspoon gonna make a difference???)
1 cup 80 degree water. I went with tepid.
1 pkg yeast.

Did that recipe as accurate as I could, ran it around a while, pulled it off all the odd little hooks in the machine and finished kneading by hand. kinda a stiff dough. Dishwasher was still warm, so I put that loaf in there to rise. Started a second loaf in the machine. As I said its a pain to clean, I need at least $3 worth of bread out of it to justify the time. This one I guesstimated proportions, I worried not at all when the milk spilled a little over the spoon, and flour I just dumped a couple of cups not even leveled off and added pinches of flour till the dough looked right.

It was nice and smooth and light and a little hand kneading and it was done. I let it rise and hour and punched it down. I then took a nap and woke 2 hours later. Loaf one was raised but not all that much, loaf two was at the top of the pan.

That recipe was from a bread machine website, and I wasn't using my bread machine much less theres. Another more conventional recipe suggested 400 degrees for 20 minutes. seemed high to me, but I didn't want to make a research career of this little project. 20 minutes later it was browned nicely and the larger one looked perfect, the lesser one still a little flat, about a little over 1/2 a loaf high.

Cooled them a while on a rack, they sliced nicely and tasted great. The larger one had good texture a bit like a dense dinner roll, the smaller a little compacted and doughy but tasty eating with butter. Gotta go easy on the bread and butter. Worked too hard to get into juniors sizes!

Barbara's blog comes of age...

2007-10-20T10:39:00.000-07:00

I got my very first spam posted in a comment!!

Completely off topic to the blog entry in question and in a foreign language.

Doesn't get much spammier than that.

I figured it was in Portuguese since I recognized a few slight variants of Spanish cognitives and I saw the word "Brasil" in the body of the text. I knew that was Brazilian for their country because that's what was stamped on a lot of Volkswagen parts if it doesn't say "Made in Germany".

To the point of the post below, a couple of words in Google (apparently in any language) can get people here if they follow a convoluted enough path.

A silly example: Since my Blog sometimes veers away from crossdressing specific issues, I once mentioned the various cars I have had. Among them are several VW's. I could have mentioned that I could use a transaxle for two of them. Often this is called a tranny. My first conversation about crossdressing with a sales girl happened to be Brazilian. (I meant that as in she was born there, not waxed that way, although come to think of it she might have been both.)

Imagine if my blog references in one part that I have a tranny left over from a VW I had the I parked when the engine got too hot. (actually it does say that now.) Then in a completely unrelated post I state that the sales girl was from Brazil. This prompts a Google hit for "Too Hot Tranny from Brazil with a Brazilian Wax."

I think we are drowning in information.

I used to be a privacy nut long before identity theft was as common place as it is. I would add "apartment A" or "Unit 12" or some such as a code whenever I filled out a credit card application. I ALWAYS opted out from them selling my name and 85% of the time, shortly I'd get junk mail with Unit 12 on it. I'd call the offending company who would swear they didn't do it. I had a friend with the same privacy concerns I had. His solution actually worked better. He woul fill out any and every form, survey and application that came his way..he would cheerfully answer all their questions, vary spellings, addresses. age, gender. middle initials and so on. Hos theory was that if you kept clogging up their machine with junk data, it would reject it. It seemed to work, he got less junk mail than I. A diligent search for him would burn up a lot of time and expense on false trails.

In case any of the (mostly) English speaking readers of my Blog have a pressing need for what I think is some sort of telecom or ISP services that will reach all parts of Brazil, I will post the most helpful message here. Sorry if the Babblefish translation and my redacting the pertinent URL and contact information causes any confusion. I wonder what the initials F U mean when translated into Portuguese.

Oi, I found its blog for google is well interesting I liked this post. It would like to speak on the F.U.Net. The F.U.Net is a dialed supplier of InterNet that remunerates its users for the hardwired time. Accurately this that you read, is paying you to connect. The paid supplier 20 cents for the moment of connection dialed with local linking for more than 2100 cities of Brazil. The F.U.Net has a connection accelerator, that leaves its faster connection up to 10 times. Who uses broad band can also profit, is enough to register in cadastre itself in the F.U.Net and when it will be to sleep to connect for dialed, it is possible to pay the ADSL alone with the money of the dialed one. In the schedules of only minute the expense with telephone is minimum and the remuneration of the generous F.U.Net. If you I to want to linkar F.U.Net(www.F.U.Net.com) in its blog I would be been thankful, until more and success. (If he will be possible add the F.U.Net(www.F.U.Net.com) in your blogroll I thankful, bye friend).

Interestingly, www.F.U.Net isn't taken...if you steal my idea I want some royalties.

No matter what you write, two words typed into google can find you....

2007-10-19T03:44:00.000-07:00

I get visitors to my blog from the oddest of searches. Normally most of the people that read my blog are either regular readers (obviously insomniacs with a need for soporific verbosity),forum members that are following a link either from my siggy or more often when I hyper link there to give the long winded version of a post, or a surprising number that come from Dani's blog who was one of the first people to find me through a search and as far as I know the only blog out there with a link to mine.

All other visitors come from search engine hits.

Dee found a site onetime that MPAA rated your blog is you typed in your url. She got an R, I got a pg-13.It was only one term in my blog on one occasion that got me the 13.

Apparently in explaining that my early interest in making my own little men's mag out of pages from the lingerie sections of catalogs, was innocent in the sense of it not being for masturbatory purposes. Well, including the "tion" version of the word caused some Google interest. I have gotten some hits lately from the combo of Cr0ssdressing and M@sturbation. Not sure what to feel about that. The visitors generally don't stay long unless I have recently posted pics and even then less than a minute.

The most recent one apparently found my blog after paging through THIRTY pages of Google suggestions. That kinda persistence you gotta kinda admire. He stayed for a couple of minutes. I hope he found it informative. The latest pictures I posted I really don't think very likely met his requirements.

On the subject of regular visitors, I know I have some. But I don't really know for sure who your are or where I know you from (assuming I know you at all.) Nearly nobody comments on a post. Likely because I have expressed myself so eloquently n more needs be said).

As a grand experiment, if you happen to read this post in your travels, communicate with me in some fashion. Leave a comment, (anonymous posting is allowed!). Simple as you want. Can be a just "found your blog by searching for _________ ran away scared" or "I am cyberstalking you in preparation for your ultimate demise" or if you wish, "I am ________ on CD.com" "I am a friend of Bill W. and he sent me to see you. Do you dress in the morning? Do you dress alone?" or "THIS IS YOUR MOTHER AND I RESENT THE IMPLICATIONS FOUND HEREIN" (that one I expect any day now..I'd send her a link but I haven't communicated with her in years.)

Musings on the etymology of the term 'beard'.

2007-10-19T02:30:00.000-07:00

In gay parlance a woman who gives cover to a man wishing to remain closeted is often called a 'beard'. I have recently grown one, Facial hair that is, not another woman.

We have joked about Dee being a 'beard' on shopping trips since it provides 'cover' of purchases that are actually for me.This works better though on those occasions when I am actually embarrassed enough about what it is I am doing to remember not to announce in a loud voice that "I already have on like that!" or "Oh, a 34B will definitely fit me!" Such was the case when several of the guys of varied ethnicities happened to be walking by from the loading docks to the front of the goodwill stores. Having just given the approval to put that $1 long-line boned bra into the cart, they cheerfully inquired if we were finding everything OK. I cheerfully and obliviously responded in the affirmative. I missed entirely their bemused expressions as reported to me by Dee later.

Anyway I got to thinking, why beard? Dee postulated that a beard if a common disguise. Makes sense except when the term I think was invented when gay culture was fairly effeminate. It seems to me that it was only during the permissive porno fueled seventies that the bearded gay man became an archetype.

It stuck me that it that crossdressers being associated necessarily with gay men does actually make sense historically. Before my theoretical time line of 70's porno mustaches, gay men were presenting more effeminately than they tend to do now. I think that it may not be defensive straight crossdressers distancing themselves from the Gay community so much as that gay men rejected femininity at some point recently and the phase of facial hair was a way of asserting that the male form is attractive in its natural state.

Or maybe since everyone associated a limp wristed foppish dandies with being gay*, perhaps growing a stash or a 'beard' was actually started to hide their orientation. SO maybe the term 'beard' originally meant exactly that.

I realize this is all circular logic and harks of chicken and egg, but it is interesting that regardless of how divergent gay trends and crossdressing trends diverge, the public still lumps them together.

Probably nothing that a gay drag performer or a bisexual crossdresser thinks about anyway, since in those instances there is a correlation.

*Not that there is anything wrong with ....................being a foppish dandy!

A suit as English as Fish and Chips...

2007-10-19T00:17:00.000-07:00

Dollar Thursday at Goodwill again today. All pink tags $1 all orange 1/2 off. I got 2 evening gowns, 4 skirts, 5 pairs of heels, a top and several swimsuits all for $1. Orange will be $1 next Thursday. Often I will make mental notes about what to get next week.

I ran across a $14.99 orange tag that couldn't wait for a week. It was an all wool 2 button suit in a delicate herringbone. It was tailor made of English cloth in Hong Kong when it was proudly still a British Protectorate. It was made in a shop at a Hotel. Back then, businessmen with far east stop-overs or business in Hong Kong would have suits handmade to measure in 3 days or so that easily rivaled Saville Row or New York City $1000 suits for quality. This seemed to be one of those. I have lost weight to the point that like in my younger days I can;t buy off the rack anymore. This suit I estimate was made for a 35 short. I think I am somewhere about there maybe a 34 regular. The jacket hangs off my bony frame well. The trousers are probably 33-34 in the waist which would have fit me 30 pounds ago. I'm going to have to have the seat and waist tucked in 2-3 inches.

On the way home I was joking that I need to add some weight back on to fill out that suit, and passed a fast food place. I think I have eaten fried food maybe twice in the last 3 months while rigorously dieting. Dee laughed when she pointed out that Pirates Fish and Chips adorned with the Union Jack seemed especially appropriate.

This was my previous "English" sport coat. It was $1 and made in America, probably in the late 70's from wool woven in and imported from the UK. I was really happy to find it at the time. It pales by comparison to the new suit.

Pornography is in th eye of the beholder and the artist.

2007-10-17T05:41:00.000-07:00

I thought I posted this before I wanted to quote it in a comment on another's blog about "Porn or Art" about peoples reactions to her self taken "French Postcards", but can't find it so here it is:

Pornography is a construction of some sort of societal or religious framework. Without such constraints, there would be no point in anyone objecting to any image. So pornography for a devout Muslim, may be a little less racy than pornography to a practicing nudist.

It boils down to intent and objectification.

If the portrayal is an effort to "use" the figure for salacious purposes rather than just an expression of beauty, it is probably pornography.

If it really is the intent of the photographer or artist to portray beauty as seen in The Creator's works, then the artist has not "sinned" in creating such a work. That said, it still is upon the viewer and his intent. If one wants to view certain types of images strictly for the buzz of sexual arousal, its probably porn for that viewer.

If I were gay,I'd have to say that Michaelangelo's David is pretty sexy. If I were a serial killer,I'd find Venus de Milo pretty arousing. If I were a lesbian I'd have a thing for Mona Lisa...(hmm she is kinda hot...)

When I was a boy (maybe 8 or 10) and cut pages Penney's lingerie section and pasted them in a book, this was my first pornography. It matters not that the models by today's standards showed less flesh than I might see in public today and certainly less than one sees during the family friendly (so-called) hours of the major networks. It matters not that as at the time I was pre-pubescent and didn't really understand things sexual and obviously wasn't using it for m@sturbation. What matters is that I had heard of magazines that featured scantily clad or (Shock!) nude girls, and I enjoyed the naughty secret of having a view into the mysteries of the female form (and in hindsight the lingerie!!).

The benefits a wife might get for putting up with CD'ing

2007-10-09T08:54:00.000-07:00

I read an angst ridden post this morning about a wife lamenting the loss of her husband's maleness. I don't know the couple well so it isn't for me to say. Her CD might be truly transsexual in which case she is married to someone whose gender on the inside doesn't match the outside. Her lament about not having a male to hold might be tragically real.

I only mention it as the thing that got me thinking. My situation may well not translate for them.

I have never thought of myself as a girl. I envied girls, and more especially their clothes and have fun emulating them, but this is not the same as wanting to be one. I am glad to be male. I used to think I wasn't male "enough". I thought I was too skinny, and that my features were too soft. This, until I tried some foundation to cover my beard and found that my square jaw is distinctly male. Same with clothes. I never thought of myself as broad shouldered until I tried on a size 8 dress. I look like a linebacker! :)

What I am getting at is that I had kind of poor self esteem about my male side. I actually felt better about my appearance as I started to get a double chin at 178 lbs. I believed I had finally been able to gain muscle bulk once I had some fat reserves built. I found that my long lean muscles are still as strong and as skinny as I have dieted back down. I have long hated the camera partly due to family issues and partly appearance issues. In Barbara mode I wish I could take more pictures more often. My wife, and avid photographer and graphic design artist, has really had to chase after me in the past and settle for annoyed shots that say to the lens, "Take it already!" She usually gets only one chance. She actually used one of the shots of me in a national magazine once.

Lately, she has been counting up the benefits of having a Husband and a Girlfriend housed in the same body. The obvious ones has been shopping and as she is dieting faster than I the now blending of two pretty good sized wardrobes. The less obvious is a more willingness on my part to explore my feelings, and the use of dressing to put the angry male persona away at times when he needs a rest.

I haven't felt as much like dressing up lately,partly I think because after you have done the whole wig and make-up and hose treatment, a pair of panties seems a bit less than fulfilling.

Sunday she wanted to take some family pictures. I went eagerly, wanting to see how my practice as a photographic subject as Barbara, would translate to having "his" picture taken. As an acknowledgment to Barbara's help with this issue, I wore a pair of red velvet panties on under. Dee was encouraging a smile and whispered "Pretend you are wearing panties!" I told her "I AM!" with a big grin that she describes as a leer.

Pasta Pounds

2007-10-07T14:46:00.000-07:00

Years ago I weighed 107 lbs and sought the advice of the nutritionist at the gym I belonged to about gaining weight. She gave me a xerox copy of a diet plan. The title was "Pasta Pounds" and it involved eating about 5 meals a day to include pasta in a couple of them and drinking couple of banana-egg-protein-powder-icecream-milkshakes.

I bought the $35 a can powder. The label reveled it to be basically whey from dehydrated milk and some dehydrated eggs. Probably $2-$3 worth of product inside. Sadly, unlike more modern formulations of flax seed oil for athletes it contained no anabolic steroids. Three months of this and similar diets and 2-3 hours day in the gym bulked me up to Arnold Schwarzenegger proportions and 112 lbs

Yesterday I again did a thrift store circuit. It was 50% off day and I was going back for a piece of crystal stemware that matched a set my sister gave me 20 year ago,and a hand crank ice cream freezer. I found next to that a Ron Popeil pasta maker for $6.

I made angel hair pasta last night, kind of clumped together and ended up doughy I decided I added to much moisture. Today I made two batches of rigatoni getting progressively better with each attempt. The angel hair I ate with I-can't-believe-it's-not-butter spray and a little cracked pepper. For the rigatoni I turned it into a goulash. I added two cans of crushed tomatoes, 1/3 cup sugar, oregano, basil, an onion, a sweet red bell pepper, a green bell pepper, a pound of 95% lean ground turkey breast, some hot crushed red pepper flakes and some caraway seeds. Quite tasty.

Since yesterday when I was at my target weight of 135, I have gained a pound. On this diet i figure I will weigh 225 in 90 days without the hassle and expense of going to the gym!.

Driver's License Weight.

2007-10-03T14:59:00.000-07:00

When I was young, short and skinny and concerned those attributes didn't contribute to my whole macho aura, it embarrassed me to put my weight down on my driver's license.

My first license showed me at 5'8" I think since I being a math whiz and understanding significant figures and rounding decided that 67.653 inches tall can accurately be described as 5'8". I was a little more hesitant about the weight box...after all this is an official government document. I put my weight at I think 107 lbs.

I tended to drive a little fast in cars that looked less than roadworthy and managed to get off with a warning or a repair order several times. I could've kissed the cop once though (if not for his bristly mustache) when he estimated my weight for the citation at 135 lbs. Thanking him for his courtesy (and poor eyesight) I felt extremely buff. The 3 hours a day in the gym and 5,000 cals a day diet was paying off if not showing on the scale that refused to budge above 112.

When I lost my license, on the replacement application I decided that 135 was good enough for the cops, it was good enough for me.

I had this license for years. Probably about 10 years ago I actually hit that weight, and more. The next license replacement I found myself at 165 and developing a gut despite my abstinence from the brewer's finest. I put down 150 and there my license has stayed for years. At some point in my diet maybe a month or two ado, I actually matched my license weight.

The last week or so I am back down to the cop's estimate. Maybe its time to apply for an ID with my new weight, and maybe a trace of blush?

Edit: 12/16/2007 Despite adding butter, whole milk and white bread back into my diet I can't seem to get back up t driver's license weight. Once I slid below 130 I can't seem to gain. I have been at 127 for a couple of weeks. Today I stepped on the scale and saw 125 for the first time in probably 12 years. I am burying this in an early post to mark the day. I don;t want my wife to see this because it mustn't overshadow a really nice milestone for her also today. she is sub 140 just today for the first time in probably as long. She is really happy about it, I can;t possibly steal her thunder on this. I plan to work out a bit, lose some fat, gain some lean muscle, maybe settle in at about this weight. When she hits her now new goal of 125, I'll let her bask in it and then she will smile at this entry...Love you dear.

Feeling all male yesterday.

2007-10-03T07:54:00.000-07:00

Funny how these feelings wax and wane. I found another thrift store with all for dollar days. I had planned to go yesterday and pick-up a couple of things I saw the day before. When Dee came back from her part time job she wanted to know if I was still going. I was sort of indifferent,but I went along.

I got the men's suit for the teenager I had seen, an all wool men's waist-coat made in Scotland, and a misfiled size 12 womans double breasted. It wasn't really shopping as I'd spotted those the day before in anticipation of the $1 sale. I half-heartedly browsed dresses and came up with a red button-up shirt dress and a polyester blue choir dress. I just couldn't get into the spirit of it.

Dee found some great t-shirts with that the kids refer to as sarcastic shirts because of the sayings imprinted thereon. She got several more shirts for her layering shirt collection. The pink wool patterned knee length skirt she got me is interesting. She refers to it as a Chanel inspired design. She also found me a brown raw silk skirt in a longer length that I think she plans on borrowing back when her plummeting weight puts her into a size 10.

Coming home I did a little reading on crossdressers.com There is yet another thread there about the fact the women can wear anything and men are ridiculed for doing the same. The original post was off the mark I felt because his example, (a coffee commercial with a girl wearing her man's boxer shorts) missed the point. The point was a sexy woman is sexy no matter what she wears. I had already posted as much a day or two ago on the thread. The thread has struck a nerve with GG's as they insist (rightly) that their wearing trousers, or a t-shirt or even ~gasp~ boxers isn't done to crossdress. Somehow it degenerated to flinging a statement about how men have all the power in the workplace. This "angried up" my blood. I personally have been actively and openly discriminated against at a Fortune 500 company. Over the span of 4 years it went from a job alongside cigar smoking men and hard women, to "kinder and gentler" BILL COLLECTING. I kid you not. New promotions were only given to women and gay men. Only two straight male supervisors were left after 4 years. one out of 4 managers was a male, again a hold-over. When the director was hired to replace the very male director who had personally hired all these women and gays, I overheard a woman saying, "FINALLY! We can now get things straightened out around here!"

Effectiveness during these years plummeted. 10 million dollars a month was sent to outside collection agencies from our center alone. Most of it was collectible. Collection agencies get 25-30% of that 10 million dollars for collecting it. I wonder how those oppressive white male stockholders felt about this grand experiment in kinder and gentler collecting? Oh, wait, I do know. share price dropped from $38 a share to as low as $15. Funny how losing millions of dollars can affect the bottom line.

Anyway, typing up my response post to that, as well as this rant here didn't make me want to emulate women in anyway. Must be nice to be a member of a 'minority' that has higher birthrates, employment rates and survival rates. Its good to have 'majority rules' if it favors you, rather than letting common sense rule.

My Walmart shirt was pretty expensive.

2007-10-01T07:33:00.000-07:00

Yesterday at church, in addition to more worshipful thoughts, it occurred to me that my button-down plain white shirt cost 5 times what the rest of the outfit cost. I wore an all-merino-wool summer-weight sport coat by Cerruti, a genuine Paolo Gucci tie, and a nice pair of olive woman's slacks in a men's cut. $1 each. I did spend maybe $7 for the shoes, the belt was free from a dumpster excursion.

Next week I think I'll wear my Brooks Brother's blazer with an Armani tie. Playing dress-up as Barbara has sure improved my male wardrobe. I always used to wear a pair of tan dockers and whatever tie I could find in the mad dash before church, and was generally late getting there. Now I am actually planning it out the night before. Weird to occasionally be the be best dressed dude in the room.

Eight wardrobes, $175

2007-09-28T07:37:00.000-07:00

Seven people and me having two distinct wardrobes means a lot of clothes.

I had a very good day shopping yesterday..

I was very balanced in my purchases. I thought of my male side, and my family's needs, and "just happened" to supplement my fem wardrobe along the way. I pre-ran the Goodwill Store yesterday and was nose to glass this morning 15 minutes before they opened. (yes I am obsessed)

The reason I was waiting so anxiously? I found a navy all wool genuine Brooks Brothers 3 button blazer, and the tag color meant that by today it would be $1!!!! A $480 jacket is now mine, all mine. I scored 1/2 dozen all silk ties, including a real Gucci, and and just as if "Bob's your uncle" a Nordstrom's tie by Robert Talbot. Gave me a grin. A couple of real nice men's wear trousers including the bottom 1/2 to a men's suit with buttons for braces. I got yet another London Fog wool lined trench, an actual Polo shirt in royal blue, my favorite. I'm thinking of going m-t-f-t-m.

My femme wardrobe increased by an a-line sleeveless dress, a red size 6 gown (Dee hates me for inhaling into it, a brown and white checked golf wrap-around skort, a double-breasted men's cut jacket dress, and a pair of black pointy-toed, low heeled, sling-backs.

Dee came to the first and third store with me and combed the kids jean sections and came up with a dozen pairs for the middle two kids. I combed the size zero-two section for the twelve year old.

I looked high and low for skirts (not the hemlines, the racks). I found Dee a really nice plaid knee length lined wool, a 75% silk and 25% linen melon colored one, a light weight wool one in that trendy cocoa color. On her own she found several additions to her current favorite genre, nice fitted layering shirts. I found a couple of really good quality additions for her.

The 12 year old (who just glued on fake nails tonight) is the easiest to buy for. She has a fun sense of style, and everything cute comes in her size. I found a princessly size 4-6 gown that fit my perfectly and lit up her face when she saw it.
We found her a couple of short jackets that the girls wear with long layering shirts showing below. She has plenty of layering t-shirts so we found fun tops for over.

We did well for the hard to buy for 10 year old girl. Her rules include, no pink, no sparkles, no shorts, lots of pockets, soccer and sarcasm are a big plus. Dee really combed the t-shirt racks and we "splurged" on some 1.99 shirts even though it was dollar day. I think we even went $2.99 for an especially sarcastic saying on a shirt. She was so happy with it that we slipped a purple (her favorite color) Sunday-go-to-meetin dress that is beautiful on.

Dee found a small cheerleader skirt and offered it up to the girls if either wanted to use it as a Halloween costume. (the 12 year old would have glammed it up, the 10 year old would have gone with 'dead cheerleader'). Neither were interested. Dee said she'd add it to the dress-up box.

Right on cue the 8 year-old announced that he looked forward to it. He also liked his dinosaur t-shirts, new jeans, his sarcastic shirt, and some striped polos.

The teenager, sho used to skateboard in my tailored to my size all wool suits, is now too much of a teenager to express outward enthusiasm for anything as pedestrian as clothes. He did seem to like the shirts and pants we got him. I am going on the positive inflection in the grunts issued. He seemed indifferent to the nice double breasted black blazer I got him. On the other hand it was probably close to 100 degrees yesterday. Not the best time to imagine oneself in a coat but ag great time to buy one.

We spent less than $175 and got probably over 150 individual articles of clothing.

My spectator pumps.

2007-09-19T15:14:00.001-07:00

Loved these shoes when I saw them in a thrift store. I need a conservative business suit to wear with them. Or a nice wool skirt and plain blouse maybe. I put them on with the cocktail dress just because I have been wanting pictures of those (and other shoes).

You can see my zippers on my right shin from my losing car/motorcycle argument. My Orthopedist did good work just so I could walk, let alone look good in hose! He might have had a plastic surgeon assist if he (or I) had any idea at the time I would later wax my legs, put on sheer hose and sexy shoes and show off his work to the world.

Make-up by Barbara.

2007-09-19T13:57:00.003-07:00

I have been cheating on my make-up by having Dee do it for me. She was leaving for her part-time job for a couple of hours and the cable was out. If I can;t talk about dressing up, I guess ~sigh~ I could ACTUALLY dress up.

Last time we did pictures, Dee got pretty good results without a planned layer of liquid foundation (we forgot to bring it with us)

This time she suggested I add that layer this time. I did and turned my face into very soft, gently cracking leather.

Trying to salvage some self-respect before she got home, I donned my wig, and a cute little cocktail dress Dee found me. The make-up isn't good at close range, But I haven't dressed in ages, So when she got home I had her take some pictures. My spectator pumps don't really go with the party dress, but I have been wanting some pics of them, So we combined elements to take some pictures.

Feeling pretty Butch lately.

2007-09-12T21:16:00.000-07:00

To Illustrate:

On a forum I belong to, a woman who hunts with her family for Deer, Hog, Squirrel and Coyote mentioned her happy anticipation of the season opening.

Someone who I presume doesn't hunt, hasn't hunted, and is not a vegan. This person I assume feels that they eat is more honorable if it was killed by someone else and better still that domestic livestock's death was inconsequential because unlike say the deer the animal never lived free, so it's life one presumes was worthless. I could ask these questions but I'd get more bumper sticker animal "rights" morality.

They said:

To deliberately take the life an innocent creature for any other reason than to eat it or as a last resort of self-defence is an anathama. Those who do not respect life deserve no respect themselves.

I fumed and typed and began the search for their inevitable post previously where no doubt they defended some other idiot's right to think something ridiculous because they "feel" a certain way. I realized before hitting enter that this troll was one of those overly clever in their own mind types that will defend and parry with silly arguments and diversions without in anyway even considering the substance of my refutation of their premise. I decided to put my thoughts down here in case I feel the need to respond to the next idiot I can just cut and paste.

I was going to respond:

At least you didn't resort to the usual tripe about "defenseless" animals. (As all animals not extinct have been given many and varied effective defenses.)

As far as innocent, what does this mean in terms of an animal? My dogs occasionally looks guilty when they apparently know they have been misbehaving. People who actually study animal behavior even at slogan rich universities call this phenomenon anthropomorphism. These are attributes that we as humans imbue on animals in order to equate their learned behaviors to human motivations.

I find it fascinating that the very people that cry the loudest when their ox is being gored are the first to sharpen their horns when it is a subject that they basically have no experience with or real vested interest in. The best example I ever saw is a car with many bumper stickers. Two that the person's highly enlightened mind decided were in harmony with their philosophy of life (literally life) were "Meat is Murder" and "My Body my Choice" . This person values the potential of an animal of the potential of a human being. Worse though was the self righteous pronouncement that no one can tell them what to [I]take out of their body[/I] by violent means, but she could certainly look down on anyone that puts a burger [I]into their body[/I].

Especially in male mode I consider myself highly opinionated and argumentative. There have been so many threads where someone has posted something that defies logic and just begs a reasoned response. When someone feels their lifestyle choices or sexual peccadilloes are being 'judged' the response is always, If you aren't interested, don't read the thread, don't comment, and if you do, use kid gloves. Somebody needs to jump on the soapbox and defend the feelings of the hunters.

Those who do not respect other peoples opinions deserve no respect for their poorly formed opinions.

The place I read this? A site for crossdressers. My apparel at the time? entirely male. I really should slip on some hose at the bare minimum.

Edit: So I went back and tried to ignore it, but my fingers flew of their own accord. The next version:

I am feeling a bit relieved to find that the bumper sticker is wrong then. Meat in fact, as you 'judge' it is NOT murder then? Great! Save me a venison stake, some ribs, and a little squirrel stew.

Innocent? Anthropomorphism aside, what standard shall we hold the animal's behavior to? Beyond a reasonable doubt? By the preponderance of evidence? What if the coyote has an "innocent" lamb in it's jaws, should one convene an inquest to determine whether he was a predator or a scavenger in that instance, I mean if you don't have an actual witness of the lamb-o-cide? What if the lamb was asking for it? :tongueout

Good thing this was so well reasoned, I'd hate to think anyone on here would jump in rashly and make a judgment about anyone else's lifestyle or activity.

What my "Male Side" finds sexy versus my "Femme Side's" tastes.

2007-09-11T01:03:00.000-07:00

Someone on the forum posed the question:

"Why do so many TVs insist on showing stocking tops and suspenders in their pictures? How often do you see real girls flashing upper thighs unless they are on the game on a street corner?"

My response was:

"We often mistake the quick accidental flash of just a hint of the stretching of a stocking that suggests that a women is wearing a garter belt, with the pure fantasy that she showed us the tops of both stockings.

This is a purely male construction. It is fed by the male posed, male photographed "gentleman's" art that is of course designed for its consumers, horny men.

Less (er well maybe more actually) is definitely sexier on many levels, but that doesn't stop some from taking the quick jump from the suggestive to the bawdy.

In context though, such posing by TV's for other TV's and their male admirer's is in and of itself a perfectly valid niche er "art form". But no, lesbian or even the bi-curious woman, would look at such a photo and say, mmm, give me a piece of that.

(hmmm of course why does my wife salivate at the shirtless Beckham?...things to ponder...)"

In real life, on exactly one occasion, I caught such a glimpse.

No, not of Beckham's abs. The distended ripple of stocking as it was tugged upward by an unseen suspender. The woman was tastefully attired in a business suit and unadorned heels. I first noticed as she arranged herself into her car after work. I was awestruck at the sight and stood in reverent silence for probably too long after she modestly slid her legs into the car and shut the door. On the bawdier side, Dee used to delight in my pleasurable discomfiture at knowing that under her modest office attire was something designed by Frederick himself. Possibly in or near Hollywood. She used to delight in tormenting me with the snap of a garter strap through the fabric.

Once the girls who worked near her were passing around fashion circulars. The one getting the most comments was the Victoria's Secret mailing. At one point several were crowded around it commenting on some of the racier items and men's fascinations with them. Her attractive and none-too-prudish supervisor commented, "Can you imagine a woman actually wearing a thing like that?" pointing out a sexy black merry-widow. Dee laughed inside and quietly snapped her garter strap.

My closeted femme side mostly had access to, and experience with intimate apparel. This is probably common to many beginning CD's. I thought initially of sexy playboy poses when I thought of Barbara's potential appeal. Now that I have expanded her wardrobe to outerwear it is interesting to see how pretty I feel in more modest apparel. This holds true even as my dieting figure makes baring more certainly achievable.

I'm thinking I need to do more sit-ups both to make sure Beckham - the ultimate soccer mom fantasy date - does not steal Dee away, but also to flatten the tummy for borrowing back a merry-widow sometime.

Deportment or "How to Stand like a Chick"

2007-09-08T01:50:00.000-07:00

My first rudimentary attempts to pass as a women occurred only about 3 months ago. I took photos to see for myself how the clothes looked and to be able to get some feedback on what I could do to improve. This was all in preparation for my big plan to wow my wife with my loveliness.

Since then with Dee's help there have been some major improvements. There are indefinable cues that say to the human eye, "That is a female" or "That is a male". One of the things she taught me was how a woman shifts her body slightly, really without thinking about in in a way that is slimming to the camera. She showed me countless examples of stars on the red carpet and you could tell which saw the camera and which were caught off guard. My first example of the pictures I took I wasn't sure what was wrong with the pose. I laughed to see the pose men make when standing in front of a urinal.

I long ago dumped many photos that were frighteningly unflattering. Yes, even worse than that, ~shudder~ far,far worse. One where I wore some glasses and a prominent set of double chins looked like my dad in drag. This was not a pleasant sight to say the least. The double chin one was deleted in the camera. A couple of more pictures survived the later digital purge.

Recently, a new member on crossdressers.com Alena from Minsk posted a link to their home page. Stunning photos. What really struck me, and Dee when I showed her was how well the posing was done especially the most recent few photo sets. I asked about it and was told that the secret for them was to take lots of digital pictures to practice, and learn from the "male" looking ones whatnot to do and to remember to repeat the poses of the "female" appearing poses. The results really speak for themselves. I highly recommend a look.

Another great resource for CD's is Rene Reyes page. For posing tips her section on posing is really useful. Dee read it and got some insights on what it is that I was doing wrong that she could see was off but just couldn't then put her finger on what it was.

I should include an after pose that resulted from Dee's coaching just a month after the first were taken, This one was from our first photo shoot together and after our first thrift store splurge. The make-up was (well is) still a learning process so a little B&W filter and some clever photo-shopping helped with beard shadow. Improvement, but still needs work. A couple of photo sessions later was better still. I have high hopes of continuing the trend of self improvement until I can sing with confidence, "I Fell Pretty..."

Further retail therapy.

2007-09-02T09:40:00.000-07:00

Dee and I hit a couple of Goodwill thrift stores Saturday. We spent much too much but got some cute things. In the first store, I got mostly things for my manly side. With my diet I am no longer snug in size 15.5 necks, I am actually comfortable in 14.5 which was my size for years. Good to have less chins to accommodate. I got two short sleeve dress shirts and three polo style shirts, two with new tags on them. None over $4. I also got a pair of male running shorts by Adidas. I was reluctant to spend the $7 for a pair of used shorts but I only have male knee-length and girl shorts. I am more likely to run en homme than en femme. Turned out that color tag was 50% off.

I almost got a shirt for the 12 year old that said "Will work for shoes" but decided that was more about me than her. Speaking of shoes, Dee got some red strappy heels, a pair of tie on sling backs, some spectator pumps. We got a dress to share, and one for me and a couple for her. I got a handful of ties but they didn't make it home :( not sure why I think I set them down.

Passed on a handmade desk with a repair done to a broken hinge. The hinge repair has to be 40-50 years old at least. The actual piece looks like something someone cobbled together out of old really wide floorboards. It was kind of rustic but interesting details. It had little cubbies and drawers and slots under the angled lift top. I noticed the piece was actually nailed together, but what made it interesting was I think the nails were hand-forged. really interesting, but what to do with somehting like that. Plus thats 40 pieces of clothing on dollar day.

Barbara's shopping continues unabated.

2007-08-31T15:56:00.000-07:00

I had field work to do in an adjacent town of our metropolis. I forgot cameras batteries. Searching for a store that I could get some, I ran across a Goodwill thrift store I hadn't seen in years. I made a mental note and went back to finish the inspection. Afterwards, I went in and told myself I was just going to find an Asian collared dress to trade Dee out of the dress I like.

I took pictures of the dresses I thought she would like but none were quite what I needed to effect a trade. I was browsing the dresses when they reminded by loudspeaker that all purple tags are $1. Changing tactics, I started grabbing everything with a purple tag that was my size or Dee's. I got a pair of black silky pajama pants and a dress for Dee as well as a couple of fun items, one of which is probably the right size. Most of the dresses Dee's size were pretty picked over, none of the relatively cute ones were purple tags.

I reluctantly passed on six little black dresses in my size because we bought me an LBD the other day, and I can't really see where I am likely to wear one, but they looked cute. I grabbed several dresses for me including one that said size 14 but looked smaller than that. It turned out to be a girls 14 so it became property of our twelve year old tho loved if. I got two men's sport coats in 100% wool. I got a size 8 brown leather skirt that I can squeeze into if I don't breathe. I got a pair of size 10 black slacks that are too big in the hips, but with padding, might help my proportions. I got a size 8 pair of pink slacks by Talbot's, so of course I had to get it. Even though the name I chose had nothing to do with the store, I find I do kind of favor their style.

In the dresses a three fit great, one fit ok at top but was a little chunky looking lower and just wasn't that cute on. One totally isn't going to fit but I insisted Dee zip me up. It looked so good on. I was convinced that another 5 or 10 lbs would squeeze me into it. Dee, without being catty about it, explained that it isn't going to fit right even if I lost more. The binding is mostly in the ribcage area and although I am almost an 8 on my lower 1/2, the size 14 top even with-out any padding isn't likely to shrink much. I think this is just one of those male frame / female frame things I'm going to have to live with. One red bandanna dress feels really good on, just snug in the right places. I am going to have to re-visit my sewing skills at some point if I am ever going to get good fitting clothes.

I am hovering at 142-143 lbs these days down 25 from when I started dressing en femme about 3 months ago. I think that may be about as light as I realistically can go and stay healthy. I would like to swap about 15 lbs of fat for 10 lbs of muscle. Its going to take exercise to do that, and I am too blasted weak from being calorie low to do that. The hottest summer on record here hasn't helped either. I think I'll go make myself tat rib-eye steak I have in the fridge and do some sit-ups while it cooks.

2 girls, all new wardrobes for $43.

2007-08-29T19:28:00.001-07:00

I love thrift stores. Dee had to run an errand and I convinced her there were several thrift stores on the way. We never made it to any of the others after the first one.

It has some "siddifi-cent" racks out front of the about to be dumpstered, picked over, clothes. Dee really enjoyed going through them and saying, "Too big", "No that's a large", "Oh no, thats MUCH to big!". Her diet is going fabulously well. We have discussed that since Barbara's coming out we have both done really well.

We found some staple tops, Dee found a cute zip front sweater top. As we were about to leave they brought more out, and then more. We kept trying to keep up with the ugly stuff, and THEN they mention that it $1.01 day EVERYTHING in clothing is $1 and we are wasting time on the 65 cent junk. Grabbing a cart we went in.

We each got a little black dresses. Mine was a little small maybe a size 8, but really stretchy fabric so I went with it. Dee got her a little small as an incentive to keep on her diet. Dee got a really beautiful midnight blue full-length dress with an offset back slit and a Asian collar. It is a little small for her for now so I generously offered to model it. She seems to think I am planning on stealing it. It is a great dress, but she did say it is more my color, If I can find a similar dress in red, she'll trade me. That dress will be mine!

Dena found the cutest little red hooded poncho. "Little Red Riding Hood, I really don't think you should..go walking through the deep dark woods alone..." I found a guys thinsulite lined, trench coat misfiled with the women's coats. Then I found a classic women's overcoat, pulling it out I checked the tag, 100% camel hair for $1! then I found another in a wool mohair blend. Dee got a great womans navy pea coat.

OK it was not shoe day, but as Dee says, I am a shoe whore. I really tried to feed my male side, but none of the shoes were even remotely interesting. I settled on the least offensive some white loafers, that Dee assures me they are hideous.

I found a nice pair of basic white pumps in a medium heel, a pair of strappy white mules. Dee got some great classic black patent leather pumps that remind her of the clothing from "Mad Men". Dee found a pair of 9 1/2 inch womens loafers which she tried on and said fit her because they were narrow. I said go ahead and get them when she pointed out they were from Talbot's which has become an inside joke because of Barb's last name. I figured I would borrow 'em. I misunderstood she did mean them for me so that $10 to the Barbara side of the column.

I found a tennis racket for an upcoming photo shoot idea we had.

total $43. The fun we had..priceless.

A couple of more pictures

2007-08-26T22:34:00.000-07:00

Still from our photo shoot yesterday. Just wanted to add them because I am an attention whore. Funny Barbara likes the camera, and the other guy can't stand posing or pictures of himself. Dee's evil plan is to desensitize me en femme mode to the camera so she can sneak up en homme and get me to pose as my handsome self. I think I'll play hard to get for a bit longer. Tell me I'm pretty...

How to get from A to B fast with heels.

2007-08-26T22:16:00.000-07:00

Carry them!
Last week I was thinking gender bending in my clothing choices. I wore women's dockers to church (I know weak) but I did pair them with women's loafers in a glove leather. While putting that together at a series of thrift stores, I came across the perfect en femme 'Sunday shoes'. Mind you I would NEVER wear them to church, but its a giggle to think about it. They are spectator pumps I came to know after the fact. (Thanks, Stephanie). Black toe, black heel with wide ankle strap, cut-away instep and white band above the toe with a punched hole detail like on wingtips.

4" heel but a little wider heel than I like, but I found I cant even walk in actual stilettos yet. I have spent a lifetime noticing women's shoes and watching them move in them. Turns out that doesn't help with actually wearing them.

So a few days ago I strapped on the spectator pumps. Next I wriggled into my black leather skirt, briefly arguing with Dee that yes, I know the tag goes in the back but there's only one slit and that wouldn't put the slit in either the front or the back. She explained that on short skirts the single slit over the leg is better at making it walkable than a slit in the middle which actually doesn't help. I slipped on a cute "dove for" stretch top that I nabbed out of the bag before my 12 year-old clothes horse. Finally, I hopped on the treadmill for practice.

I found that anything over 1.3 mph and my gait gets really awkward.

"So," I ask Dee,"how does your gait change in heels when you have to move quickly in heels? What do you do differently when you have to move fast?"

Simple she says..you take them off.

For the record I managed 4 mph without breaking an ankle or (worse) a heel.

I didn't maintain that pace of course. I worked on my deportment for a while.

I haven't yet walked a mile in a GG's shoes, but I did manage a 1/2 mile. Most surprising thing was how little ones calves have to do with walking in heels, Ironic because calves look so nice and athletic in heels.

When we did the photos yesterday, I brought the spectators also even though Dee frowned on the pairing with the dress. The shoes in the pictures I like,but I once tried to walk 1/2 a block to the mailbox and came home crippled. I found this time after the treadmill practice and wearing thicker hose, they were tolerable, and more importantly, cute.

I started walking down the slope with the thin heels spiking into the soft, wet ground and with a grin followed Dee's advice and took them off. I asked Dee to get a shot of me heels in hand to prove that I indeed can learn.

Wigging out...

2007-08-26T14:28:00.000-07:00

Ok, I don't even know where to start.

We had a day out in the sun taking pictures. I put the wig in a dove for Samsonite make-up case and wiped off the make-up before coming home to the older kids. The kids had seen the wig in the closet before, and been told to leave it alone.

Today they were exploring and found the wig in the make-up . They knew that I had found the case out diving some night and somehow got it in their head that they had "found" a new play-toy and were in process of playing dress-up with it.

We retrieved it, Dee dodged questions about whose wig and why we have it. The smart answer would have been it's Dee's and its for fun or when she doesn't feel like styling her hair.

The kids suddenly said nearly in unison, "Put it on Dad!!!" Dee looks at me for ascent which I give. I play dumb and put it on backwards. Our least femme child points out how it should be put on. I turn it around, and Dee reaches for the camera. Always on the look-out for a family photo. "OK kids pose with Dad...."

The kids HOWLED wit laughter. Then the 8 year old (boy) says, "Me next! Me next!". Dee said NOOOO...go on now, shooing them out. We talked and (as I thought) her objection was they were ruining my wig not of course the fact that the boy wanted to try on a wig. I told her I had no objection and didn't want him to feel like we were saying no on the basis of being a boy. We called him back in and he just BEAMED when Dee placed the wig on his little round head. He rushed to the mirror and said I look just like __________ (the 10 year old who is currently opposed to all things femme.)

What about a dress? He pressed further. Dee and I were Dying laughing inside exchanging knowing glances and wide open mouth gestures when his back was turned. First he wanted the peach jacketed dress Dee wore to church. She explained it was too large for him, so glancing around the closet he ZEROED in on a butter cream jacketed dress that Dee and I got for me at the very same time that we got the peach one for her. We steered him away from the only dress that would fit a little black cocktail dress of mine.

As an aside if you aren't a regular reader here, I also like dumpster diving. I recently had several boxes and bags of clothes, we donate the ones that no one can or will wear. We had some really frilly things that out 10 year old girl won't consider in the to be donated box. Dee grabbed that. I expected that it be a little much for him,. He couldn't wait and pulled it on. He wanted shoes Dee suggested a conservative pair. He wanted my clear 6" stripper heels.

Dee asked him how he felt in the dress. He said, "MMMOMMMM, I wear dresses ALL the time!" Shocked, but trying to hide it we casually asked, um, when is it that you have before. He explained that they didn't have a wig, but that he used to play dress-up with his sisters all the time from the costume box. We had forgotten about that but he hadn't. It has been at least 2-3 years since his sister had any interest in playing dress up with him but both his sisters from when he was 4 or so and they were 6 and 8 used to let him play with them. He even asked for and got his own Crissy doll.

I was moved at seeing his exuberance at being able to dress-up. I don't really think this is a truly transgendered issue, but him being able to have fun with it meant a lot to me with my horrific experience at 3 or 4 trying the same thing. Dee had a glint of tears in her eyes as she saw his big smile and pointed out that that could have been my joy if I had been allowed to express myself.

The 12 year-old wanted to get dressed up before she tried it on and now wants her own wig. The 10 year-old wanted to try it on and practice some Dave Grohl inspired head banging moves, but was VERY upset at the 8 year old saying he is her long lost twin (they are the same size roughly) because as she pointed out she would NEVER wear a prissy dress like that!

Hot, Medium or Mild?

2007-08-25T15:32:00.000-07:00

We were out taking pictures and worked up an appetite. I suggested a drive-through. I cleverly had Dee order. I un-cleverly didn't think about the fact that they were going to ask Hot, Medium, or Mild. Feeling meek, I said mild, not even attempting a femme voice. Dee snapped a pic when the girls back was turned. She said nothing but you could definitely see in her eyes that she clearly knew I was not what a glance would have thought. We left just laughing and laughing. I really didn't mind bing read, it was actually kind of more fun that way.

Dee turned as we left and caught her looking after us with a bemused expression she said. Dee claims if I hadn't spoken I'd have passed. She is being kind.

Barbara sees the light of day!

2007-08-25T15:31:00.000-07:00

Finally went out dressed for some pictures. Had fun.