sisterhellfyre

Dreams of Flight

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 12:21:01 GMT

I had another flying dream tonight, and I just woke up from it. I wanted to write this one down and share it directly while it's still fresh in my mind. I've had dreams about being able to fly for many years. They only come occasionally, but when they do, they are amazingly refreshing. Like now, I can wake up from one of those dreams after only 3 hours of sleep and feel like I have slept deeply all night. It's a wonderful feeling. When I'm done typing I'll go ahead and go back to bed, and go back to sleep. Even if I don't have to, strictly speaking, I'll enjoy the next few hours of sleep that much more.

This dream was a little different than most of my dreams. It was very lucid, very crisp and clear. The details were so sharp that as the events unfolded in my dream, I remember saying to another person in my dreamscape that I didn't think I was dreaming, this time. This time it was really happening, and my world would never be the same again afterward.

In this dream, my friend Suki and I were substitute teachers at a large local urban high school. The building was huge, with lots of brickwork and clean linoleum floors and overhead fluorescent lighting. Now that I think about it, it reminds me of the high school I attended in Denver, Thomas Jefferson. The student body around us was largely composed of white kids, white teenagers, and mostly girls. I didn't question or wonder where the boys were. It was just an awful lot of pony tails, shorts, and smooth tanned legs.

Suki and I were there on the last day of the school year. As the bell rang to end the day for us and our students, I met her in the hall outside our classrooms. We both had double armloads of books and other materials to return to the library on our way out of the building. To get there, we had to cross most of the building. We started walking, and reached a large room that we had to cross to the stairway on the other side. The room appeared to be a student lounge of sorts, like I later saw in college at the student union building (where the cafeteria was located).

This lounge area was full of students relaxing and chatting. For it being the last day of school, they didn't seem terribly in a hurry to leave the building. It was more like they would leave when they were ready. There was no authority figure pushing them to hurry out, and so they were taking their time, enjoying the moment of their freedom to talk about their plans for the summer break. For many of them, it wasn't really going to be a summer break at all: they were seniors, and when they left the building, they wouldn't ever have to come back.

With all this going on, the students paid virtually no attention to me and Suki as we walked thru the room. Some girls we walked around, as they sat or laid on the floor in their circles of conversation. Others moved out of our way, with just a friendly glance to see when we'd passed and they could go back to their original positions. The room was not exactly crowded, but it was fairly dense in population.

As we got closer to the stairwell in the corner, I got tired of stepping over and around the girls in my path. I decided, instead, to just pull my feet up and see if I could "float" over them. I had a feeling that I'd been practicing it for a while, in private and on my own. This would be an opportunity, and a good one, to see if I'd gained enough skill and mastery to actually do it. To pass over and around someone else without falling on them.

Sure enough, it proved to be pretty easy. I just folded my legs up behind me at the knee while I walked, as if I were in a kneeling position, and continued on in the same direction with my head at the same altitude. It was just that I was now floating along, rather than walking and stepping over the girl laying down on the floor in front of me. She paused in her conversation and looked up at me oddly, as if she knew something different was occurring but she wasn't quite sure what, and then went back to her conversation.

When Suki and I reached the stairwell, it proved to be a spiral stairwell with an open center, leading down directly into the high school library (where we had to return the books and other materials we were carrying). The stairwell was packed full of students, again all girls, led by their teacher who was taking them to the library for some sort of graduation rehearsal or function. There was some reason, in any case, that the stairwell was full of students, and they could not leave the stairwell. They could, however, all scootch over to one side, making room for me and Suki to get by. Their teacher, a young blonde woman, volunteered to escort us down the stairs and into the library.

That was fine with Suki, but for me I decided to do something different. Rather than walk down the stairs, I floated over the inside railing. Hanging in the air in the center of the spiral stairwell, I matched the pace of the blonde teacher and glided down the height of the staircase. As we chatted on the way down, the blonde teacher's eyes gradually got wider as she realized there was something distinctly different going on in front of her. It was hard for her to accept because it seemed so matter-of-fact, so much a part of the everyday reality just going on all around her. There was nothing dramatic, no Hollywood special effects, just me casually gliding down the column of air, turning in spirals around the inside of the stairwell, matching her pace. It was just that there were no stairs under my feet, and I was on the inside of the safety rail.

When we reached the bottom, I put my feet down and started walking again. There was no reason in particular that I had to. It was just a good time to do so as the blonde teacher was about to ask me what had just happened. When she did, I didn't confirm or deny or even say anything at all. I just smiled enigmatically and looked down at the floor, where my feet were supporting me as they usually do. With that, Suki and I went about our business to return the books, check out of the building and end our day's assignment.

To leave the building, we had to retrieve her car from a three-story parking structure. It seems silly that there was no connection or walkway between the school and the parking structure, but I had the feeling that the carpark had been added at some time later, after the construction of the school, when the needs of the student body and staff required it. I'm assuming that Suki either took an escalator or an elevator, or she might even have climbed three flights of stairs. For me, as I stood on the ground looking up at the third floor landing of the stairs on the side of the parking structure, I decided to see if I could. With a simple decision, the choice that I could do it, I glided up thru the air.

As I reached the level of the third floor landing, I called Suki's name. She had been focused on her on progress, but I wanted her to see this as I stepped out of the air onto the concrete of the landing. The action, for me, was very like that of stepping off an escalator. She was surprised, and her jaw dropped, to see me stepping off the air from three stories up.

She was even more surprised when I told her this wasn't the first time, and recounted how my feet had not touched the ground all the way from stepping over that last student thru the crowd and down the stairwell into the library. Yes, I said, the teacher had noticed something but she wasn't quite sure what. She seemed slow to admit it to herself, much less ask if that had really happened. I'd been working on this for some time, and wanted Suki to be among the first people I shared it with. Life, I said, was never going to be the same again.

There was an additional element to the dream that I almost forgot, too. I'm not quite sure now, looking back, if Suki and I were teachers in the high school or if we were also students, fulfilling some sort of "teacher assistant" roles. When I met Suki in the hallway after our classes let out, I had to go back into the classroom because I'd forgotten something. Besides the books and other stuff to return to the library, I'd left my wallet behind. It was the same large black leather ladies' wallet that I use now, and I'd left it sitting on a window sill. More than just my wallet, I thought of it as my credentials: I'd almost gone off and left them behind, so I had to go back and get them. There was another teacher in the room when I went back, but I wasn't clear if I'd been working for her or with her, or if she was simply coming in to use the room for her next class. If there was one, as I had thought we'd reached the end of the day. But maybe it was just the end of the working day for me & Suki, and there would still be other things going on.

In any case, Suki and I talked for a few minutes more, then prepared to leave the school together. I told her how the other teacher thought but wasn't sure what had just happened, and how I thought some of the other girls around us had also noticed something. They might not be quite sure what, at first, but as they figured it out, because of the ripple effects of their observations their lives, too, would also change forever. They would have to question the nature of what they had considered the reality around themselves, the basic rules of the universe for what was possible and what was not. Someone had just done something in front of them that was supposed to be impossible. They'd have to accept it, or not. In doing so they'd have to ask themselves some questions that are normally resolved by the age of kindergarten, about how the world works and what's possible. They'd have to ask the questions again, and one way or another, answer them. I said to Suki that I hoped some of the girls would, in the process of asking, wonder what might be possible for them too. If someone else, could they...? Or what other talents or abilities might they have, each of their own? If not flying, what?

Suki and I were going home to my place, and then had plans of some unspecified sort for the evening. I suspect that we were going to attend a party that night. We'd probably pick up something for dinner at Taco Bell, but decided to stop by home first and see if my Mom wanted to join us in eating. If not, we'd just head out again.

At this point I remember saying to Suki that it didn't feel like a dream. This was something that was only supposed to happen in dreams, but this was real life. It was happening around us and to me, here and now. Dreams had crossed over into reality, and I'd really done... it. Done something. Something that was also going to change my life, cuz I had to deal with it too, just as much as the students around us and the blonde teacher. This also changed my assumptions, and I could never say again that it was impossible for me to fly. Or do... what else? If I could fly, then what else might be possible?

Just after that, I woke up. Sparkie, my roommate's cat, was squeaking and chirping in my room fr me to get up and go to the front door. Ginger had been outside for several hours, but now wanted to come in again. This is pretty common, really. It's almost part of our routine. If Ginger is still outside when I go to bed between 11 and midnight, Sparkie will wake me up between 3 and 4 am to let her back in. Ginger comes to the door and meows, telling Sparkie that she's there, and Sparkie relays the message. I have a drink of water and go back to bed. After a few mouthfuls of kitty crunchies (Meow Mix), Ginger will generally come snuggle up to go to sleep, warm and dry with food in her stomach. It's a cat's life, and it sounds pretty darned good to me.

(Sparkie squeaks, by the way, rather than meowing. Part of his vocal range is so high and soft that it's beyond human hearing, so he'll open his mouth and look at us, then gradually drop his voice into the range that we can hear. The sound is very much akin to the high-pitched sound of a cupboard door hinge squeaking. He can be louder, like if I'm slow to get up or he wants someone to come play with him -- not likely at 4:00 am, but he can be quite loud about it.)

This time, while I was up, I decided to write about the dream. Like I said, I've had these dreams of flying on and off for years. With something else I read recently, and some other stuff going on in life, I think I might finally be starting to understand what they're about -- beyond the simple enjoyment and pure hedonistic pleasure of the sensation of flying. Sometimes in these dreams I swoop and soar on the wind currents like a large bird. This dream, tonight, was much more matter-of-fact and everyday in its routine, and how the act of gliding thru the air fit into the rest of my life.

Just recently I read an article, posted by an acquaintance on a bulletin board, about a new theory of dreaming. The new theory suggests that dreams serve a function as rehearsal of planned behaviors, in the same way that visualization of desired actions and outcomes can help us shape events and responses to the way we'd like them to go. In the theory proposed, that would especially apply to nightmares and dreams about threats of various kinds. The theory suggested that in ancient times, our evolutionary predecessors might have dreamed about fleeing from fires on the savannah or in the jungle, or about being chased by large predators. Dreams about these all-too-real events gave our ancestors a chance to try different responses to these events, and a chance to desensitize themselves somewhat to the adrenaline rush of fear associated with the actual event. In the rehearsal they might train themselves or their muscle memory, in the same way as martial artists rehearsing the patterned motions of a kata, to gain an extra split second or two in their responses. When running from a tiger or something, that split second could mean the difference between life and death.

The theory suggested that the content of our dreams has changed as our life circumstances change, but the mechanism is still the same. Rather than dream about predators and wildfires, we dream about embarrassment in front of our peers because we're naked in public. The dream mechanism is the same in that it gives the opportunity to respond to and deal with embarrassment, practicing it in our own heads for the next time something happens that is, well, embarrassing. The real embarrassing event probably won't be as radical as being naked in public, but that's part of the dreamscape too: that things in dreams are similar enough to real life that we recognize them, but also different because they're larger than life or somehow scrambled together with unfamiliar, random or fantasy elements in unpredictable ways. So all the different and possibly repetitive dreams about being naked in public are practice, over and over again, for the ways that we deal with embarrassment when it really happens.

Or the dreams could be practice, if we didn't get stuck in them. But maybe one day, or one night, instead of getting stuck and feeling helpless in the dream, we'll have a breakthrough of some kind or do something different to deal with the embarrassment.

That's what I think this dream of flight was about, tonight: it's not so much a rehearsal as a precursor. Between the dental work coming up in just a few days, the prospect of being on the transplant list, and the further prospect of fulfilling my years-long dream of going to Thailand for SRS, there's a lot coming up in my life that will change me for the better and forever. After any one of those things, my life will never be the same again.

The question is how I'm going to deal with those events. This dream gives me the opportunity to see that I can be matter-of-fact and accepting of these changes, and build on them smoothly. That's how I responded to being able to fly: I just accepted it, decided to test my ability to use it, and I did it.

At least some of the other girls around me in the high school represented other members of The Crew. As I change, and as these things go on around them, I hope that perhaps Sylver, Kelly, Arrapkha and some of the others may notice, and begin to wonder too what changes or possibilities of growth they might find too.

And with that, I've been typing for over an hour, and I'm going to go back to bed. Good night and dreams of flight to you too.

Happy New Year

Wed, 02 Jan 2008 05:07:02 GMT

Hi, all!

It's been a long time since my last post, and I have to apologize for that. It's been a busy few months. For now I don't want to go into all the details; let's just say that I have only one or two days a week that are *less* than 11-12 hours long -- and frequently longer, between work, commuting on the bus, and dialysis. I'm hoping that sometime in the relatively near future I'll see an end to riding the dialysis carousel, because I'll have a transplanted kidney. We'll see. I'm on the list, and I have a couple people who have volunteered to be evaluated as possible live donors, but nothing is going to happen very fast. I have to get some dental work done first, and that will take until at least the end of February. After that, there's the waiting list (assuming that the live donors are not approved). So it's onward & upward, if slowly. After almost four years on dialysis, I can see a light at the end of the tunnel. As long as it isn't a serial killer with a flashlight, I'll be fine. :-)

So, just a couple comments on assorted stuff for tonight's entry:

* At this time last year, I was transfixed to the TV screen by the storybook ending of Boise State vs Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl. I was hoping for more of the same this year in Hawaii vs Georgia in the Sugar Bowl, down in New Orleans. No such luck: this Goliath is pounding David into the Astro-Turf. The score is 38-3 late in the 3rd quarter. The Hawaii QB has been sacked 8 times so far, and Hawaii's offense has turned the ball over 5 times. I don't see much prospect for it getting better, so I'm kind of mentally tuning it out.

* I stayed home last night for New Year's Eve, watching "The Hogfather" with Tauni. (Funny show: look it up if you haven't seen it.) We reached the end of the program just a couple minutes before midnight, so I turned on ABC to catch the "Rockin' New Year's Eve" annual shindig from Times Square. Dick Clark is almost as big a part of NYE tradition as champagne and Auld Lang Syne, right? That's what I figured, too, so I turned it on.

The first time Dick appeared on the screen, I wished I hadn't changed the channel. Or at least that I'd chosen some other program. Dick looked awful, and sounded even worse. He was like the male equivalent of Joan Rivers, with so much plastic surgery coupled with so many layers of makeup and tons of industrial-strength hair dye that he looked animatronic. He truly did appear to be some sort of ghastly caricature of himself. He sounded even worse. His lips barely moved as he spoke, his voice was high-pitched, reedy and hesitant, and he seemed to be perpetually out of breath. My best guess, if I didn't know better, was that Dick was paying the health consequences of 40-some years of smoking unfiltered cancer sticks.

The only word I can think of, truly, is "stunning." This year's NYE was more introspective and quiet than anything else, as I've used the holiday to catch my breath from some of the changes going on the last four months or so. Seeing Dick in this undead, zombie-like state sucked much of the vitality and joy that I might have found right out of the holiday.

Remind me not to turn on that show again next year.

In the meantime, to all a good night and a Happy New Year, for whichever year it is according to your calendar of choice.

http://isotropic.org/date/

This Week In My Alleged Life

Sat, 19 May 2007 06:46:04 GMT

18 May 2007

Dear Diary:

What a day, what a week. :-) I want to hit some of the high points, the low points, and some of the points in between, and share with you some thoughts about books I've read recently. Plus music, movies, or whatever else I've come across to entertain and amuse myself. Knowing me, that just could get downright bizarre at times. :-) Or possibly just entertaining... or even of no conceivable interest to anyone but myself. We'll see, huh?

The week started off with the RCDC 14th anniversary birthday bash. The central feature of the annual occasion is a birthday prize table. A number of local vendors and suppliers donate merchandise and crafts, and a number of just plain folks open their drawers, dig into their toy bags, or go shopping for that special "something" to donate to the table. This year was a little light on knives, which have been prominently featured the last couple years, but many of the "standard" kinky tools & toys were well represented. A couple floggers, a Chinese cupping set, assorted paddles, dildos, a sex swing -- and then from the divine to the bizarre: how about an inflatable latex sex cow? Complete with mooing action! I'm not kidding: the cow included a plastic widget to be inserted into the cow after inflation. No, not for THAT! [LOL] But with any kind of vigorous thrusting action -- yes, this time I do mean THAT! -- a weight slid forward in the widget to push a button and complete a circuit to make a mournful electronic "mmoooOOOOO".

There's a quirk in the rules for the birthday bash that takes it from fun to pure chaos: each gift opened can be stolen by one of the next people to be called (by number from 1 to 100, in random order). Each gift can only be stolen one time, so someone getting one of the nice gifts early on had very little chance of keeping it. Things get pretty crazy, but it's all in a fun way.

I've been to several of these things, but this was the first time I can recall that I came away with something that I really liked and could use. One of my girlfriends, p, received a pewter-colored pleather halter and mini-skirt. A cute set, and I decided on the spot when I saw it that if it was still available to steal when my number was called, I was going for it. It was, I did, and p went up to the table again for another choice. It worked out well for all of us, I think. The outfit does fit me, and it will look great. Before I can wear the skirt, however, I need to take it in for a bit of repair. One of the side seams is split for about an inch. I'm concerned that if I wear it before repair, the seam will split farther and damage the material that much more. Come to think of it, I believe I'll put the halter in at the same time, to have some parts re-edged or hemmed.

Moving right along, Tuesday evening saw the official "end" of the quit-smoking support circle. We all gathered at E's home over in Vancouver for dinner & a soak in the hot tub. It was just a couple or five days short of my 3-month mark without nicotine. We pretty much had to get together that night, cuz Ms.C flew out on Wednesday for one of her month-long adventures overseas. I'll miss her, but I do hope this one goes better for her than the last one. The last one was kind of a bust, where she found far more frustration than enlightenment. The skewed energy colored her mood for weeks, if not months.

I find that I don't have any particular feelings one way or the other about the disbanding of the group. We are all still friends, we will continue in contact, and (obviously) I'm continuing to write in the aftermath. Plus we are definitely "ending" on a successful note of Mission Accomplished. I've gone 3 months without smoking. This third month is identified in all the cessation literature as the third of three critical points along the way. Curiously enough, they all come in threes: the first three days, the third week, and the third month. Something like 80% of the newly ex-smokers who return to the habit do it within the first 90 days. I've made it past that point. I'm still not taking it for granted that I'm "home free" or that I'll never have to deal with it again. I still have some occasional urges or desires to smoke, sometimes strong enough that it's sort of an itch that WANTS to be scratched. It demands some of my attention and energy to deal with, but it's not an instant all-consuming annoyance on the scale of, say, a mosquito buzzing right around my ears. (Don't you just hate that high-pitched buzzing whine? And how can something so small make a sound so perfectly predatory?)

The other mitigating factor is that I've already done my emotional processing about the end of the group, from the period when our online traffic slowed down to the plain old pressing demands of life. In a folder on my webmail server I have stashed away something over 250 messages from the last three months, as we all worked together. I'm still not quite sure what I'm going to do with them all, but it's too valuable a record to dispose. :-) And it's sure not costing me anything to let it sit out there on a hard drive somewhere in Arizona. :-)

As a final (for the moment) concluding note on the cessation journal, I can definitely feel a major improvement in my breathing, sinuses, endurance, and everything else related to lung function. Lora, the head RN at the dialysis center, used to exclaim in exasperation that I was the shallowest deep-breather she'd ever examined at the center! This came up a couple times a week, every time I went in, because part of the setup ritual involves listening to my heart & lungs. I tried to tell her that I *was* breathing deeply, or at least as deeply as I ever did. Or as deeply as I could. Now, three months after quitting, I think I see what she meant. My best guess is that my breathing capacity has doubled in the last 3 months. I'm simply amazed at how much more easily I breathe, and how much more I can exert myself. It's a dramatic contrast to the state of affairs just a few weeks ago, now that I can run or jog across a busy street without thinking twice about it or stopping on the other side to catch my breath.

(And jogging across the street is a treat in a whole 'nuther way, too, cuz I believe that my bust line is growing again! The hormones are becoming more effective now that I'm not effectively blocking them with nicotine. Just in the last couple weeks I'm seeing more subtle but definite changes in my appearance. I'm continuing to go more toward a truly feminine version of me -- and I love it! Just flat out love it! Working out with the cupping set I bought last weekend probably isn't exactly impeding my progress in that area, either.)

On top of those very concrete dividends, I've also got a whole 'nuther brand spanking new shiny motivation to NOT go back to smoking. Last Thursday, 8 days ago or a week ago yesterday, I had my first appointment with the transplant program at Good Sam. It was a long appointment, over 2 hours, and at the end of it I was VERY glad that BOTH Tauni and Ms.C were able to attend with me. Having both of them present made a very good impression on the social worker, and they were also able to help handle and retain a truly overwhelming amount of information.

I'm not going to try to recap it all here & now, tonight. That would just take too long and increase the size of this entry to truly unmanageable proportions. (I'm longwinded enough on my own without trying to overload the subject line!) Plus I'm quite sure I'll be coming back to this subject over and over again for the next few months. Or even longer than that... The short version for tonight is that I signed all the assorted release forms for the doctors of the transplant program to gather my records from the several individual physicians I've seen over the last three years or so. I should hear from Debbie, the office support person, within the next two weeks to schedule my next appointment. At that one I'll sit down with the transplant nephrologist to review my history. He'll set me up with a list of which medical tests, lab exams, blood tests, and who knows what else to determine my suitability as a transplant candidate. It's at that point, after the next appointment, that I'll officially be a patient of the transplant program. At that point either Tauni or my brother Jeff can begin testing for suitability as possible living donors. Which is an awesome thought in itself, and will be the subject of a later post all by itself.

Fast forward a day or so, to Thursday night.... I had a moment last night that I just had to chuckle about. Kristine, who is one of my favorite dialysis techs, came over to chat a bit last night. She's one of the several staff members who really "gets it" about my transgendered state; she never fails to refer to me as "she" and "her." After we'd been chatting for a bit, Kristine commented that she just loved my makeup, and I'd done a perfect job of it. This came as a complete surprise to me, cuz truth was, I wasn't wearing much makeup at all yesterday. I'd been running late in the morning, so the sum total of my cosmetic efforts was mascara, eyeliner and lip gloss. No foundation, powder, blush, or anything else... and yet she'd complimented me on it? On what?

After I stopped chuckling and she stopped blushing, I figured out what it must have been. The last few days I've been working more with my leftover Liquid Laser depilatory products. (I've got a whole box of them that I received but haven't even opened yet, plus it's easy to get Magic Shave at Walgreens. MS works just the same as LL.) I've been working with it a little differently, and a little more carefully. Instead of relying on it, I take the time to first shave with a manual razor, and shave just as closely as I can manage without cutting myself. (At least, I hope without cutting myself.) After cleaning up from the shave, THEN I apply the Liquid Laser and let it go to work on the hair follicles, to attack the remaining parts of the whiskers below the surface of my skin. (God I hate applying that word "whiskers" to myself!)

I'm thinking that giving myself this double-punch of hair removal should lighten up my skin tone by reducing the 5:00 shadow, and making it slower to grow back. Based on Kristine's comment, I'd say it's working. :-) Now I've just got to keep it up for a while, and also begin some other and more regular skin care routines.

(Which reminds me, I also want to shave & depilate thoroughly tomorrow afternoon, all over, for the party Saturday night...)

Today I felt really good about myself, how I dressed and how I looked. About a month ago I bought several skirts at Value Village: a black-on-black rose brocade, a grey "business" with slit to the knee at the back, and something else. Today was the first time I've worn one of them to work. I chose the grey one, and put it together with a black scoop-neck top, hose, and flat-heeled black Mary Janes. I'd gotten up early enough, too, that I had time to do my makeup and do it well. :-) I looked good, I felt it, and I knew it. It was amazing how much that did for my self-confidence and how I felt just walking from one bus stop to the next, downtown. Not to mention on the bus itself!

My good feeling about myself was reinforced a couple different ways through the day, too. Amy at work generally lets me know when she feels I've put myself together well, and she had a nice comment early on. Linda also made a point of complimenting my look twice today. And three drivers passing by let me know, too, as I walked to the bus stop at the end of the day. I remember that Karen used to get on my butt sometimes about responding too positively to someone checking me out, honking on the driveby, or taking a long second look. I understand that I'm not supposed to respond well to "objectification," especially casual assumptions of objectification like in these street scenarios, but come on. Sometimes, as a woman, it just feels good to have that good feeling about myself reinforced.

And, somewhere along the way, I think I may have stumbled across a fashionable work-around for my self-consciousness about my hairline. It started to fill in again for a while under the influence of the hormones, then thinned and receded again for a while as I was anemic and exhausted from overworking myself. Now I can feel that it may be thickening up again a bit, and it's definitely growing longer again. ('m feeling it further down my back, or further down my front when I pull it forward, than it has ever reached before.) But that still leaves me with a rather unfeminine high forehead, that just seems at times to go on forever.

I've got a couple solutions in mind for that. For one, except for under the most extreme circumstances, I'm not going to pull my hair back into a ponytail any more. Pulling it back draws it back flat across my scalp, and makes my hair look even thinner than it might be. Secondly, it's not flattering for my face: makes me look WAY too masculine. And, third, I don't think the tension helps any with trying to keep as much hair as possible. The extreme circumstances I'm thinking of are either extremely hot days, or really miserable days (due to dialysis or otherwise) when I just don't have either the time or energy to wash, condition, & blow-dry. As I've recovered from the anemia & exhaustion, those days are becoming fewer. They're also becoming fewer as I'm making a point of deliberately reminding myself how much better I feel when I face the world on MY terms. :-)

In the meantime, I've also been playing around with the placement of my part, and how I brush my hair during & after blow-drying. Instead of doing an arrow-straight part to one side or the other or down the middle, I'm doing an angled part along one side. It's actually giving me more hair to work with on the side with the part, so I can do a more effective job of disguising the high forehead. I just thought of this in the last couple days, while observing how one of the girls at work does her hair. She's a bit older, 60 or so, with short hair that is definitely thinning. Probably even thinner than mine. She also wears it shorter than I do mine. I'll continue experimenting with the angled part, at least for a while, until I decide to either have my hair done (cut & styled) or Ms.C gets back from her trip. She's mentioned wanting to take me out to a salon for a great cut & style, and it's something I'd love to do... but it may have to wait a while.

I think I'm going to skip the reviews for this time, except to give a double-thumbs-up plus a high five to www.pandora.com. If you haven't tried it yet, you simply HAVE to try this site! It's a streaming audio or Web radio service, supported as a free service by advertisements from Scion, Budweiser & others. Pandora asks you for the names of artists or titles of songs that you like, and then sets out to find matches according to their more-or-less proprietary list of hundreds of musical characteristics. You'll probably already be familiar with some of the artists it brings back, but I guarantee that some you'll have never heard before... but you'll like them a LOT.

Here's an example: I seeded one of my "stations" with a song by Sisters of Mercy. Classic goth rock, right? Here's what Pandora had to say about "A Rock & A Hard Place," by the Sisters:

"Basic rock song structures, electronica influences, punk influences, a subtle use of vocal harmony, extensive vamping, a vocal-centric aesthetic, and minor key tonality."

Or this for The Chemical Brothers:

"disco influences, a tight kick sound, synth bass riff, a variety of synth sounds and a highly synthetic sonority."

And you know what? They're right. Those are both good characterizations of the two different bands.

When Pandora brings you a new track, it gives an opportunity to vote thumbs up or thumbs down on every song. Over time, your votes will shape its choices for which artists it brings you in the future. I'll be hunting up more work by the following bands that Pandora brought to my attention:

Zeromancer
Bif Naked
Coriolis
Thoushaltnot
Spidersuit
Diva Destruction
Psyche

And that's not even counting others, like Bella Morte or Beborn Beton, that I'd already heard and enjoyed but Pandora brought more exposure to wider percentages of their work.

It really is a great setup. Now let's just hope the RIAA doesn't find a way for their pawns in Washington DC to kill it. They're looking...

Regards,
Morgan

The Zombie Hour

Sun, 13 May 2007 10:32:58 GMT

Argh.

I hate nights like this.

It's 3:30 in the morning. Officially "Oh-Dark-Thirty" for those of you day-birds who rarely see this hour. We're way on the far side and gone past the witching hour, and even past the bar-closing hour when the lonely, the bored, the desperate and the horny (not to mention the desperately horny) look at each other through beer glasses. The fallout on Sunday morning gets interesting as they smooth down the fur on their tongues and unwrap their eyeballs to see what gifts they've brought home for themselves. The good news is that if the gift is one that should be returned, there's no receipt required.

I call this the Zombie Hour, and it seems like as good a description as any. I actually, really do like this time of day. The world is quieter, simpler, but at the same time more mysterious. When there are no daylight vistas stretching on to blue infinity, I have to focus more on the details of the things immediately in my field of vision -- but the darkness creeping out around the edges like a negative backlight blurs some of the details and subtly changes the shape of things. I have to pay more attention to what's really there rather than what I assume I see. Daylight is the time for assumptions, not the night.

The assumption-free space extends inside as well as outside. When I'm asking questions and truly paying attention to the answers, it's very difficult (if not impossible) to draw a line beyond which my questions will not reach. I can't say "this I will question" but "this I will not." If the daylight hours are given over to assumptions, then introspection rules the night.

And speaking of introspection and the night, if I'm going to be up & around, I'm going to go enjoy it. Time to get dressed and go for a walk. :-) Talk to you later...

Haley's Abyss

Sun, 13 May 2007 10:09:36 GMT

Hi again, y'all... whoever out there is reading this... and I know there aren't all that many of you, but what the heck. I'd like to say that I'm not doing this writing *for* others to read, but I'm not that good at kidding myself. Nor am I that altruistic, in the sense of doing it for "free," or that narcissistic, for that matter. I don't generally talk just to hear the sound of my (our) own voice; it feels distinctly odd on those all-too-frequent occasions on my mailing lists when I post an idea or an opinion and it goes -thunk-. Appears on the list and then disappears without a trace, having drawn no visible replies or reactions. It makes me wonder, sometimes, if I'm that good of a conversation-killer. But that's getting back into the territory of wondering if I'm paranoid because the soft-voiced conversation stops when I come into the room... or if they really are talking about me. I'm kidding... mostly... but which of us has not had that experience? And which of us hasn't wondered about it, too?

But anyhow, now that I've started off by wandering all over the map, let's pull back more or less on subject. Nah, why bother, when we haven't even declared yet just what the subject will be? Oh yeah, we did, that's in the title line, "Haley's Abyss." Now who was going to write about that? Drag your hind end over here to the keyboard, would you? There's lots to write about tonight, and we're all waiting for you to get on with it, right?

(Yes, you are getting the stream of consciousness effect for what's going on in my head right now, pretty much as fast as I can type from one word or one thought to the next. Just for fun, cuz it's fun to write this way sometimes and see what comes out -- who comes out, or who says what -- and because I don't feel like putting in the effort to be all analytical and organized. Structured into proper expository paragraphs. Maybe later, but not right now. The one thing I regret about recording stream of consciousness in this format is that it's not possible to record the intonations of the various voices which may contribute. Except for those occasions when it may be appropriate to type in the vernacular or dialect. Or it may show up in the phrases, words and sentence structures that the various voices take. I wonder how different they may sound?)

SO anyhow again... as part of the effort of the last couple months toward quitting smoking, I've been writing a lot. I've set it as a goal, too, to continue writing. So, with that in mind, I'd like to share with you a vignette I wrote expressing the thoughts and emotions of my primary D&D character, at the conclusion of a recent battle. I didn't write this bit expressly for this venue or this format. If I had, I would have made more of an effort to include physical descriptions of the character and the city, and also filled in some of the "assumed" blanks in background knowledge. Necessary information that I (as the writer) would either assume you already knew from reading my work, or that I'd supply to you within the first 3 chapters.

Her name is Inwe Helyanwe, shortened to "Haley" as a nickname in human company. By blood she's a half-elf, a huntress by trade, and an archer by specialty. (And shaping up to be a pretty darned dangerous & deadly archer, at that!) She's currently 9th level, after her and her companions have pretty much come out of nowhere to tackle a series of increasingly dangerous and difficult tasks. Some of their success, frankly, has been due to pure luck. Some day that luck may run out...

(The one thing you should keep in mind is that Haley always, always refers to herself in the third person. Never does she say "I," "me," "my" or "mine.")

Plus I just want to share this piece of writing, cuz I think it's pretty good. It's one of those things that I posted to a mailing list, in this case the mailing list for our game group, and it disappeared without a trace. Bummer, so I'm posting it here too. :-)

========

Haley's Abyss

Mirabar was a place of beauty, after its own fashion,
in accord with the craft of the dwarves who built it.
The great central hall is gone, scattered in shattered
stone across the streets and rooftops. The visage of
the city is scarred and corrupted, tho still visible
at times and in places like the head of a broken and
corroded sculpture in a garden gone to weeds. The
visible remnants of the beauty that was carry a
greater tragedy to her heart than had Mirabar been
razed altogether.

She mourns what is lost, never to be regained or
rebuilt. She wonders about the sanity of what goes on
around her, and of all this that she does. No, she
knows that is not correct. There are times she
wonders, and there are times she knows without
question: the world goes crazy around her, and she
descends into insanity with it.

How does she find herself come to this point? To
standing in combat against strange creatures from
other planes, things she would not have imagined just
three months ago. To matching the skill of her bow
against spells of fearsome power, curses, blades of
eldritch force that cleave armor as skin. To running
the streets of a burning city, while all around
dwarves and humans rise together in rebellion against
a ruling caste of... of... serpents? Serpents that
walk?

The insanity is made flesh, to kill and bleed and die.
Has she joined the insanity? Or has she merely stayed
too long in the company of humans, to fall prey
herself to their odd delusions of "good" and "evil"?

She is tired. It is all she has done, these last three
months, to walk from one place to the next, to fight
and kill lest the targets of her arrows first kill
her, and then to do it again. How many has she killed
in this short period?

To her shame she confesses she has no idea. She has
lost count. She recalls of course Bellak, fallen to
the sound of her bowstring. The half-orcish priest
that lost first his fingers, for violating her flesh
with his touch, and then his life to the blades of her
arrowheads. She does not care to recall his name; it
was a waste of his parents' breath. The black slodh
paid dearly for turning his back on her.

That is three. How many others? She does not know.
And, truly, she does not find it within herself to
care. How many others, who they were, what race, what
kind, for what purpose or cause they died aside from
standing too long in front of her bow. For now, she
lives and they do not. That matters most, and it is
her sole concern.

As the battles in the streets draw to an end, the dead
on all sides unravel their lives in threads of blood
ground into smears on the cobblestones. This could be
a moment of satisfaction, even triumph. Yet in this
moment she hears again the voice of her grandfather,
his words bringing her praise through the flames of a
campfire. She looks around her at the fires of a city
wrecked in war, and with each fresh burst of heat she
waits in dread.

He has not spoken. In the silence she hears the cold,
hollow whisper of the abyss before her. If she finds
that she cares not for those she has already killed,
what then of a hundred? Two hundred? A thousand? To
steel herself and hone her skill to match the cutting
edges of her arrows: at what cost does she gain and
keep her life? Or the lives of those around her?

For the first time she begins to understand what may
have driven her father, and her greatest grandfather
before him, to defy the natural cycles of life. And
death. And so she recalls, too, the encouragement
given her by the elven scouts of the Second, ere she
left Kilmore the first time. "Remember who you are,"
they said, "and yield not to temptation. Be true to
the blood."

Now more than ever she wonders just what that means.

Long Time No Nuthin'

Tue, 08 May 2007 07:09:14 GMT

Hi, all --

Oy, it's been a long time since I last posted or updated anything here. It's not that I haven't thought about it, but my energy and my efforts have been running in other directions for the last couple months. In the first part of February, I proposed to a group of four friends (NO, silly, not THAT proposal!) to serve as my support circle to finally, once and for all, quit smoking. It was going to be different this time when I did it, for a couple reasons. The biggest difference was that this time, I was doing it for myself: making my own choice and taking the additional steps to make the choice stick. To that end, I promised to write to the folks in my support circle at least once a day, by email, to discuss what I was doing and how it was going. In addition to the email contact, I had permission from all of them to phone them up at any time as I felt the need in those really difficult, killer-craving moments.

I'll write more about all this later, but to make a long story somewhat shorter, IT WORKED! More accurately, I stuck with it and *made* it work. My official Quit Day was 20 February. At this point, I have gone more than two months, and closing fast on three months, with NO nicotine. None, nada, zero, zip, zilch: no cigarettes, no smoking. Not even a puff bummed from a friend. I'm very happy, feeling better for it, and I'm confident that I can and will continue to stick with it.

In the meantime, along the way, I've built up a file of over 250 email messages from me to the Gang Of Four and back from them to me. Besides chronicling the journey to freedom, these messages contain the beginnings of some good general writing. Observations about life in Portland, still-life vignettes of various places and times, stuff like that. As I broke free from the nicotine, some creative energy started to flow again for me. That creative energy sparked off a renewed interest in observing the world, now that I was no longer beaten down between the ears by nicotine's bio-psycho-chemico-logical effects. I'm writing again for the first time in several years, and it feels good.

I don't know just what I'm going to do with all those emails, or the bits & fragments of this, that and the other thing. Some of pieces may end up, posted for you & the world to see. My friend and mentor Ms.C has suggested that the emails back & forth might make up the structure of a pretty darned decent book, or at least a series of articles, relaying what it felt like step by step and day by day to beat the nicotine habit. She also points out that I'm a complex critter, and have probably got at least four solid autobiographical tales to relate: me & The Crew, quitting nicotine, going through M2F transition, and going through kidney failure and dialysis to pursue an organ transplant (starting that process later this week). I'm also filing bankruptcy, dealing with a bunch of old tax issues, and probably juggling a couple other things as well. And tracking my spending for the last two months, working to counter an adult lifetime's worth of bad money habits to get my budget under control and actually begin saving some money.

It's quite a mouthful, and I am interested and willing in writing about it all, as I can. The biggest difficulty I face at the moment is finding the time to write. My average work day, with commute time, runs about 12 hours. Even longer if I make any stops on the way to or back home from work. My first goal, for the money I'll begin saving this month, is to buy a basic, cheap, used Windows laptop computer that I can take to the dialysis center. With that I can use those several hours in the chair, three times a week, to write. I've got a couple months' experience under my belt so far at tracking my budget and cutting my expenses. I'm doing okay at it so far, by my own reckoning at least, but I can do even better. And I can make this "saving up" thing work, too.

So, over the next couple weeks, I'm going to be catching up with myself a little bit at a time. Some of the entries in this blog will be real short and to the point, while others may ramble on to cover a wider territory. It will just depend on how the days have gone and what I feel I have to say. I've learned a lot about myself these last couple months, and I've got a gut feeling I'm not done yet. Here's a short list, mostly for my own reference, of things I'd like to write about soon. This is to make sure I don't forget:

* going to the dentist for the first time in years
* dealing with a broken tooth, and the fallout of same
(no pun intended)
* going onto dialysis 3 times a week rather than 2
* health problems: blood pressure & water weight
(should be improved by more dialysis: what a trade)
* the Salvadoran gentleman I met at the bus stop
* my chat buddy girlfriend on the morning bus
* budget stuff: learning how to control money instead of running out of control
* teenage "Suburban American Princesses"
* a comment from the boy barrista at Starbucks, or the fellow entering the men's room at the Multnomah library
* Sylver, Tauni & Suki

There may be more that I'm forgetting at the moment. That's okay for the moment, cuz I really have to get to bed. It's been a long day, with work & grocery shopping afterward. Plus it was the first genuinely almost-HOT day of the year (yay!). Even for that, however, the most stressful event of the day was this evening. Tauni's kitten, Sparx, got outside while we were bringing groceries in from her car. We didn't notice until we were just about done with the putting everything away, at which point he'd probably been out the door for a good 30 minutes. We spent roughly the next hour searching back & forth through the apartment complex, looking for him and calling his name. It's all been to no avail so far: haven't seen hide nor hair of him. At my suggestion, Tauni wrote up a sign asking for help finding him, and posted it in the central courtyard area by the mailboxes. That's the one place in this complex that *everyone* goes, and regularly. I hope the sign will help.

In the meantime, I'm not giving up on him. He could very well show up at the door again at any time tonight or in the morning. I can recall at least three occasions in the past year when Ginger went outside and disappeared for extended periods -- overnight and into the next day. I panicked, and I wasn't the only one: we had reverberations of that all up & down through The Crew. Eventually, tho, she came home. I'm hoping that Sparx will too. Wish us all luck. :-)

That's all for this time. Good night and good luck. [wink]

Tue, 06 Feb 2007 07:40:16 GMT

some of us gits to rite on the keeobrd and some dont but thats no fair so i want a turn. i have a kitty her name is ginger and she laid down on the bed. this is fun, when you pres on a key it max a letter on the tv but i like coloring better. thats all for now bye thankx. mary

It Does Not Compute

Tue, 06 Feb 2007 04:50:26 GMT

There are things we don't understand. In that lack of understanding, we are reduced to incoherence. Is it simply because we have not the language to speak of them? Or that we truly do not have a grasp of the concept? That it is beyond our experience, and so forever beyond our reach?

And what, really, is "forever"? Is it the cry of a child, lonely and afraid in her tears? Or the soul of a lost teenager, convinced that she is beyond the pale, now and for all time? Could "forever" be the hollowness of a Christmas betrayed, a holiday destroyed by the touch of brutality? All those have their echoes, down through the years, that will always be heard as the harsh clang of a cowbell, struck at the crescendo of what should have been a symphony. It is the thunderhead without silver lining, the leprous spots hidden in the glowing face of the sun, that which causes the moon to hide its face in horror behind a convenient passing cloud. How convenient for the moon, when for those of us who live with it, there is no escape.

And still the concepts haunt us: those for which we yearn yet cannot grasp. One of them, for us, is childhood. What does it mean to be a child? We haven't even the words to frame the questions that we must ask, yet the concept is an inescapable whirlpool drawing us in. To our own destruction? To reliving the fears, the pains, the terrors of those earlier times? How can we reach again now, for the safety and innocence of being a little girl, when that was once denied? Is it possible to learn again to play, when once we did that only in peril and fear? We can escape the vortex, this possibly fatal attraction, but at what cost?

We have the implements, the coloring books and crayons, and yet we know not how to use them.

-- Richard, for The Crew

The Zen of American Idol

Thu, 01 Feb 2007 06:27:59 GMT

(While I'm typing, why not go for two entries tonight? :-)

It's that time of year again. The silly season, when thousands of people flock from all over the country to a handful of destinations. They chase a fleeting dream of fame & glory (or at least immortality in infamy) by singing... or doing their best to sing... or doing something they call singing... on American Idol.

I confess, I watch only the first few weeks of the show. I watch the audition shows from around the country, for the good, the bad and the truly awful. When they work down the pool of contestants thru the group shows to the dozen finalists, I lose interest. I might tune in again for the last couple or three weeks of the season, for the final two or three rounds of the competition. But then again, maybe not. Here's what I know about American Idol, the talent competition, for its first five years. I know that Kelly Clarkson won the first season, a grey-haired spastic pseudo-geezer named Taylor Hicks won it last year cuz hard rockin' Chris Daugherty got screwed out of the title, and someone named "Fantasia" placed high in the competition two years ago. I think. All this time, I thought Fantasia was an old, corny Disney movie with dancing hippos in ballet tutus, best viewed under the influence of psychedelic chemicals. (But Fantasia 2000, the sequel, was even worse. Believe me, I saw it, on a bad blind date.) And someone out there named their daughter "Fantasia?"

Oh, the horror, the horror... but anyhow...

During one of the audition shows, I think in Minneapolis, Ryan Seacrest said 9,000 people showed up to audition. Of those, about 200 made it past the initial screening to Randy, Paula & Simon. I thought about that a bit, and did the math. If the three judges saw 200 performers in two days, allowing for an eight hour day of taping and production, that means each contestant got roughly 3-4 minutes. Probably about half that in many cases, by the time you allow for lunch breaks, restroom or beverage breaks, and just the normal transition time as one contestant leaves and the next walks in. I'm sure that out of those 200, the 20 or so that made it onto the broadcast shows were the most memorable: the very best or the very worst. Like the backup singer from Memphis, who even Simon said was "brilliant," all the way down to Big Red from Seattle, mangling "Bohemian Rhapsody" in a cracked falsetto.

Two to three minutes: that's not much time. I've read the fan comments that the show seems meaner this year, the judges less compassionate, the comments more cruel. I think there's something to it -- but I don't think it's the fault of the judges necessarily. They give us just what we asked for: not only the next American Idol, but the next American Anti-Idol as well. The nerds, the geeks, the fat chicks, the borderline (or not so borderline) neurotics who've clutched this dream to their chests as their one fantasy, their one source of personal validation, that the fairy tale will come true for them. It's the light at the end of the tunnel of their sad, sorry lives. They'll sing, the judges will love them, television viewers across the country will vote for them, and the ugly duckling will turn into a swan performing across the country for thousands of screaming fans.

That's how the fairy tale is supposed to work, isn't it?

Unfortunately, it doesn't happen that way. The judges don't love them: the judges ridicule them. They crash and burn, embarrassed to the point of tears before the unforgiving eye of the national camera. I'm right there too: sometimes I laugh. I have to admit, more often I laugh AT the awful performers than WITH them -- but that's because the performers aren't laughing. They're facing the brutal denial of their fantasies, and it hurts. As one girl put it, she gets so tired of always hearing "no." It's not funny... but it is... and I laugh too. Because I know I would fare no better. I can't carry a tune in a bucket either. I get up for karaoke every now & again, but I have to brace myself each time I walk up to the stage. I know that when I clank that high note, or my tone slips into a drone, the PA system will make sure that everyone in the room hears it. That includes me: I'll know, too, exactly how bad that sounded.

I can't imagine clanking it that way before a panel of professional judges -- much less in front of a national TV audience. I have to admire the guts of these losers, these nerds, these freaks... they stuck with it far enough to try it. But we as a people want Anti-Idols to jeer as much as we want to cheer the next Idol. They give us a safe outlet for our own embarrassments by providing a safe canvas for the projection of our own fears and self-consciousness. It's the reverse of put-down comedy as practiced by Don Rickles, once upon a time: instead of one man standing up to insult us and make us laugh by embarrassing us from a safe distance -- because surely he doesn't mean "me!" -- it's all of us venting our collective scorn for the outsiders, and our collective fears of being outsiders, on a selection of funny-looking, vulnerable targets.

American Idol? The name of the show should be American Scapegoat.

If there's fault to be found with the show, though, I wouldn't lay it on the judges. I'd lay it on the producers, who're carefully choosing the best of the worst and setting them up for sacrificial ridicule. The audition shows have taken the place of the circus sideshow, with the collection of freaks and oddities whose first function was to make us feel better about ourselves: we could always say "at least I'm better than that" or "thank God that's not me."

If you have any doubt about the freakshow element of the audition episodes, check out the costumes and gimmicks of the contestants. Some of them may be hoping to get on national TV for a minute or two. They may even harbor fantasies of being discovered as the next William Hung, who turned an awful audition into a CD deal and a two-year career "singing" at basketball games, state fairs, and the like. I don't have much sympathy for the Hung wannabees: they have brought the ridicule on themselves, and sought it -- set themselves up for it -- in hopes of cashing in. Personally, I doubt that we'll see another William Hung story of anti-success. It's sort of a one-trick pony, and the trick has been played.

I do feel... something... for the losers. The geeks with dreams, or maybe just fantasies. I'm embarrassed for them and with them, and I feel guilty for laughing at them. But you know what? Next week, at about this time, I'll tune in again for the next auditions. I'll watch, marveling at the lack of musical talent, and I'll wince at the bad notes and awkward dance steps.

And I'll laugh, too. Cuz I need my Anti-Idols, too.

January: The Longest Month of the Year

Thu, 01 Feb 2007 05:13:29 GMT

And not in a good way!

I'm surprised to find that it's actually been a full 30 days since the last time I posted here. I keep meaning to get to it, and to catch up with myself, but my energy level has been at a low ebb most of the month. A lot of it's related to the anemia that I inflicted on myself with that whole two jobs shtick. The doctors told me it would take about six weeks to get to feeling better, feeling like myself again. They were wrong: it was actually about 7 weeks. It's just in the last week, since the 24th or 25th, that I've started to feel good again when I get up in the morning. I still tire out easily, but I've actually GOT some energy to do stuff around the house, to go out every now & again, to have regular contacts with friends. To actually think seriously about dating again. :-) These last few days are the first time in at least 3 months that I've taken the time to put on makeup for work. It's not that I didn't want to do it. I did want to, and I missed it terribly when I didn't... but it was all I could do, for a while there, to drag myself out of bed, put some clothes on, and get out to catch the bus on time.

I'm settling into something of a routine now; I know from past experience that's important to me. I've discovered that I'm more of a creature of habit and routine than I thought a couple years ago. Nothing wrong with that, as long as I recognize it and I'm willing to break out of it every now & again. My work days, from the time I walk out the front door in the morning 'til the time I get home, generally runs almost 12 hours. I leave to catch my first bus of the morning no later than 7:25am, and I generally put my key in the front door's lock at about 7:00pm. That's assuming I come straight home, without any errands or shopping along the way. That honestly doesn't leave a whole lot of time in the evening for anything beyond dinner and basic housekeeping. Especially cuz I try to start getting ready for bed at about 10, cuz the alarm clock is set to go off (the first time) at 6:00am.

Tuesdays & Saturdays are even longer days. On those days, I'm due for dialysis at 7:00am. To catch the very first bus across town, I set the alarm for either 4:00 or 4:30 (depending on if I want to shower). With work in the afternoon and the regular "end" part of my day, getting home at about 7, that makes for a 14 or 15 hour day. No wonder I'm tired at the end of it, huh? I usually sleep for the almost-4-hours I'm hooked up to the machine, but that extra snooze time is offset by the physical effects of the process. Saturdays aren't quite as demanding cuz I don't go to work afterward, but that also means I don't suck it up and endure the physical effects quite as much: I let myself feel it more. It's been pretty common this month that when I get home, generally around 2:00pm, I sit down on the couch and doze off. How long I nap depends on just how hard the dialysis session hit me: it could be anywhere from 1 to 4 hours.

Working around these long days and the daily routine, I really don't have much to complain about. I think things are finally actually starting to look up a little bit for me. After several weeks of hunting, I've got a roommate lined up to move in gradually thru the month of February. Assuming that all works out, I'll start to have some real financial stress relief starting in March. In the meantime, I've got the February rent covered. Sunday I spent a good portion of the afternoon getting my stuff cleared out of the room that she'll be moving into. There was more of it than I really thought, but with clever re-arranging, I think I'll make it all fit into my available space.

I'm not sure yet what I'm going to do or how I'm going to handle the electric bill. These last few weeks, when it has been exceptionally cold, have played holy havoc with that bill. At this point I've got about a week to figure it out. I gave myself a couple days' worth of "breathing space" before tackling it, but that expires tomorrow (the 1st of Feb). I'll figure out something, I'm sure. And I'm not too proud to ask for help where I can get it. At least not any more. That's been one of the hardest lessons for me to learn over the last couple years, since my kidneys crashed: to accept help when it's offered. And, even harder, to actually ask for help when I need it.

There are other bills and stuff brewing, too, but I'm mostly focusing on taking things one day at a time. I could drive myself right around the bend into despair & depression worrying about them, but why? What good would it do me? I'm doing what I can to deal with them, one day and one step at a time. And that's about it.

Speaking of daily routines, settling into habits, & stuff like that, I did have an interesting dream last night. In the dream I was driving through semi-arid desert country, like southern Utah in the spring. It was rocky, rough, wild ground, but the cactus plants were in bloom and the air smelled good. Fresh and clean with the spring rain, and also spicy with the fragrance of the desert plants growing in wild profusion as they took advantage of the rain. The vehicle I drove was some sort of large Ford 4x4, a 2-door model, painted red and white. It was big enough that I had to step up and climb into it. I was on the way to... somewhere... a town that I knew was out there, but I'm not sure what for. Or why I was going to that town in particular. As I recall the dream, I also wasn't real sure of the route to take to get there: I was kind of exploring the back roads, the county lanes and state highways. As long as they took me in the right general direction, I was content that I'd get there.

There came a point where the road I was on dead-ended at a boat dock or some sort of ramp leading down into a lake. Or maybe the road was just washed out by the lake, as it grew from collecting that spring rain. I stopped the truck, and started to back-&-fill on the narrow road to get turned around and try a different route. Perhaps foolishly, I wasn't quite careful enough about keeping the truck on the road as I turned it around: I went over the shoulder of the road and into the lake's mud flats.

When I felt the front end of the truck beginning to sink into the mud, I stomped the brakes and slammed the transmission into reverse to get out of the mud. It was already too late: the front wheels were sunk into the mud up to the front axle, and the mud sucked at the oilpan, undercarriage, and bottom of the engine block. Somehow, with a last convulsive lurch when I stepped on the gas pedal, the truck freed itself... but the grip of the mud was so strong that it tore the entire engine and transmission right off the bottom of the truck. All I had left was a mangled bit of the drive shaft, torn hoses, and an empty engine compartment. The truck rolled a few feet backward onto the road, and stopped. Never to move again.

A couple people came out from houses or stores beside the road (like a convenience boat-bait-&-beer shop) to see what had happened. I raised the hood of the truck, and showed them where the engine had already disappeared, sinking into the deep mud without a trace. There was no way to dig it out, no way at all. Looking down the road in the other direction, I could see the town that I wanted to reach... the distance was still the same, but now it looked much longer. But I could still get there, if I found it within myself to set one foot in front of the other and start walking.

As I've thought about this dream today, it seems like a pretty clear statement from my subconscious about the current state of my life. On some things, I've stopped cold. Or been stopped cold, by adversity. I haven't done much of anything with clay, fire or my artwork since last July. (That was when I took the first and biggest of the financial reverses, so I had to try working 2 jobs.) The bills are still out there, and not going away just yet. Metaphorically speaking, I about ripped my own engine out by overworking myself to the point of creating a severe anemia. But... my destination is still out there. I can still get there. There's still relief ahead, still better times to come... it's just going to take me a little longer than I had planned. It hasn't been smooth sailing, but the most important part is that the journey goes on. One step at a time.

I think that's probably about enough rambling for one night. I really didn't have much concrete or significant to say tonight. Just that it feels good to start feeling like myself again, and I'm really trying to live the perspective that was hammered into my skull about three years ago: any day I wake up is automatically a good day.

Don't sweat the small stuff.

It's all small stuff.

Ciao.

First Time for Everything

Tue, 02 Jan 2007 07:25:56 GMT

I've been watching football for my entire adult life, and then some. I genuinely like the game. From August thru January, I can't get enough. College or pro, live or on TV: I've gone to Portland State and University of Oregon games, and even considered going to local high school games some Friday night. (And this with NO connection at all to the local school system!) I've cheered the good guys, booed the bad guys, and always rooted for whoever was playing Oakland or Dallas. I've been horrified by the injuries, and watched in awe as players pushed themselves to the very limits of their physical capabilities -- and maybe just a little bit beyond. Sometimes I've grumbled that watching a particular game was a waste of my time. Other times I've gotten so wrapped up in the outcomes that when "my" team lost, I wasn't fit company for man or beast for two days afterward.

The one thing I've never done, tho, is cry at the end of a game. Not even when the Denver Broncos (yes, "my" team) got blown out of the Super Bowl by San Francisco, 55-10. (Yes, Virginia, that is a total ass-kicking.)

Not, I guess, until tonight.

I've just finished watching the Boise State Broncos beat the Oklahoma Sooners 43-42, in overtime, in the Fiesta Bowl. This game will go down as an instant classic: it has all the ingredients with a disrespected, lightly regarded David slugging it out toe-to-toe with a heavily favored big-time Goliath. Boise State scored early to suprise Oklahoma, but couldn't hold the giant down. Twice, at the end of the 4th quarter and in the overtime period, Oklahoma's players and coaches thought they had struck the coup de grace to finish off those pesky pretenders. Each time, the Boise State team dug a little deeper and found it within themselves to strike back, first scoring with 7 seconds left to force a tie and then snatching away the victory for themselves. The arrogant Sooner fans were just as stunned as the players: I've never in my life seen so many long, sad, disgusted faces in the stands.

At the end of it all, when the clock said 00:00 and the game was over, the sideline reporter interviewed Ian Johnson, the star running back for Boise State. He answered the questions, then turned to the head cheerleader... got down on one knee, took her hand, and asked her to marry him.

She said "yes!" and leaped into his arms. Shoulder pads, sweat-stained jersey & all.

I was completely overcome by the emotions of the moment. Still with the blood singing in my veins from the adrenaline rush of the finish, I found myself laughing with delight and crying for joy at the purity of the moment. It was truly one of the most beautiful moments I have ever seen on television because it was REAL, not the precisely scripted, carefully managed dream romance of some so-called reality show. These were ordinary people making all their dreams come true on one magical night.

I couldn't tell if I was laughing or sobbing as the tears ran down my face. It didn't matter. It still doesn't. I'm just glad to have shared this bit of hope, life and joy. What a way to start the new year. :-)

What Happened on Christmas Eve?

Thu, 28 Dec 2006 06:51:48 GMT

A crisis.

A flashpoint.

The sound of doors creaking open... that haven't been opened in years.

It's hard to describe, even tho I've now spent two days thinking and processing and feeling about it. When an experience transcends the bounds of time, space and ego, is it possible to just nail it down to a chronological order? It seems to be part of the human condition, part of what we do, to tell ourselves the stories of our lives as narratives, coherent from start to middle to end. We like best the ones with archetypal characters on which we can project ourselves. But what do we do when the archetypes are personal, echoes from the past, and they come roaring into the present with voices, accents, and four-letter words of their own?

On Christmas Eve, I gathered with some friends to create and participate in a shared ritual space. A sacred space, where we could seek and find the light within, as the darkness turns toward spring. In music and company and guided imagery, I found the state of altered consciousness that I sought... but it didn't stop. It just kept altering... and altering... and altering some more.

I heard voices in my head. I always hear voices, it's part of the territory of living with The Crew. We seem to have had a good laugh about it, later in the evening, when one of us said "I am never alone." The difference, this time, was that I didn't recognize some of the voices. Especially the tough guys, the angry voices, all male, speaking out loud with British, Scottish or Irish accents to curse and swear at the other people sharing the circle with me.

I dimly recall some of what they said, in the sense of hearing them from a distance. It's the same way that you might overhear the words of a conversation in a crowd, when everyone's talking -- shouting! -- at once. One of us said to our host, "We're all here, for the first time in a very long time."

Where did these voices come from? I don't know them, haven't heard them before. I'd remember that kind of anger, that degree of pure venom. The guide expressed his willingness to speak with anyone who might be present, only to be rebuffed that he was "assuming we want to speak with yew, now in'it?" (That's the best I can do at recreating the accent in print.) I hope our host doesn't bear a grudge that one of us, at some point, told her to "FAHK OHFF!"

As the experience continued, I was overwhelmed with voices, sensations, feelings. I lost the ability to distinguish what was happening inside from what happened outside. I lost touch with my body, could feel nothing from the ribs down, and even what I could feel was no more than a lightweight plastic frame of drinking straws and Saran wrap. I remembered how to drink water, but then looked down to check that it wasn't running out of an open end of the plumbing somewhere. Swallowing food was out of the question: I couldn't remember how, and feared I'd choke on it.

Then came the melting into the carpet...

Finally, I just shut down. I had to go away, because I couldn't keep up with the rush and press of sight, sound, smell, taste and feel. I held onto one person's hand, my anchor, the one thing that I knew was real and solid and outside my self. Selves.

There was more to it than this, too. A dissolving and blurring of ego states: we mixed and blended like watercolors in the rain. Yellow to green to blue to purple to red... The changing of our colors, the free-form flow, catalyzed similar changes in some of the other folks around me. I don't know how it was for them, cuz I was so caught up in trying to keep my head above the drowning rush. I was terrified, for a while, that I would be caught and lost in the crowd inside my head, that I wouldn't be able to find my way back.

Welcome to the jungle, indeed.

I remember looking into the faces of my friends, studying their eyes, and feeling my own facial muscles matching and mirroring their expressions. I remember not being sure -- being completely unable to tell -- if I was looking into their faces, my face, a mirror I couldn't imagine, both, neither -- or if it mattered at all. Their faces were beautiful, and hideous, and familiar, and alien... all at the same time.

I remember a bond formed, from an unexpected source and in an unlikely direction, between one of my others and one of my friends. From a distance I heard a heavily accented voice, who speaks only rarely, challenging my friend to be worthy of her name. I remember saying to her that it was one of those bonds that would have instant recognition, with just a fraction of a look or a split second -- only to be interrupted by another voice, one of the others from inside, saying "Oh shit no, not another one of those!" We already had one of those bonds, one of those relationships, going... now we have two.

I vaguely remember what I call "word salad," when we switched voices and personalities -- and even ideas or intentions -- from one part of a sentence to the next.

Much of that time, tho, I don't remember. In a very real and literal sense, I wasn't there.

It was intense, exhilarating, frightening, disorienting: caught in a riptide of voices and faces inside my head. And all reaching for the freedom and the power to express who they are, to make themselves heard and known, as they haven't been for many years.

The good news is that peak experiences like that can't last forever. Or even all that long. Thank the gods for that relief. Eventually I was able to swim against the tide, ask for help, make my way back. I owe my friends for making us all welcome. I don't know just what to make of the gift we were given, what it will mean in my/our life or where we go from here... which doors will remain open and which will, in their own time, close again... but I have decided to be grateful for the experience rather than overwhelmed by the fear.

Isn't that what birth is all about?

Thanks, all of you. And Merry Christmas to you, as well.

(NOTE: I ain't yet done with this subject, this experience. I've already had a couple more thoughts I'd like to add in followup, but I'd rather add them as separate entries than try to edit them into this text.)

Four to Six Weeks

Sun, 24 Dec 2006 07:56:09 GMT

Just a very brief entry tonight. The effort of trying to organize my thoughts tonight bears a very strong resemblance to herding cats. I'm taking that as a sign that I should bag it & go to bed. [sigh] Okay, I confess, I'm over the hill & done for: 45-yo single woman sitting at home on a Saturday night, typing, when I could be out... oh, I don't know. Strip-searching Santa's elves at the nearest shopping mall.

Gee, that does sound like fun. :-)

Anyhow... back to the subject line.

I talked with the nurses this morning at the dialysis center about these very annoying anemia symptoms. Any sort of physical exertion at more than a moderate walking pace, right now, leaves me out of breath after just a couple minutes. The nurse told me that, per doctor's orders, they are "pounding me with Epo," meaning the drug to stimulate production of red blood cells. It'll take a while for the results to show: I should be feeling better in 4 to 6 weeks.

On the one hand, that sucks. What a godawful pain in the ass. On the other hand, I did it to myself, and this will force me to slow down and actually give myself the time I need to rest & recover. It's kinda nice, too, in an ass-backward way, to find out that I was right in my estimates. I've been telling folks "several weeks to a couple months" to get my strength back fully. Sounds like I pretty much nailed it.

Ohwell. It still beats the alternatives. As I said to Frank at work the other day, the only thing worse than getting older is... not getting older. :-)

"Merry Whatever" to all my friends, for all the different holidays that we celebrate. Right off the top of my head, I can think of folks that do Christmas, Yule, Solstice, Kwanzaa and Hanukkah. With all the vicious PC crap in the media this year about appropriate holiday greetings, I've decided to keep it short, sweet, and heartfelt. I'm thinking of you at this time of year. I hope the holidays bring you as much joy and pleasure as you've brought me by sharing my life this last year. To varying degrees, as our lives have permitted, we've been there for each other: for the laughter, the tears, the hugs, the dirty laundry, and all the rest. It's my hope that we can continue to share all of those for many years to come. Thank you for all that you do, and all that you are. You are all blessings to me. My prayer for myself, for this New Year, would be that I can in some way return some of those blessings to you.

Thank you.

We Don' Need No Stinkin' Subject Line

Thu, 21 Dec 2006 05:31:38 GMT

Random thoughts of the day...

* Saw a real neat ad on the side of a bus this morning, while I was waiting downtown for the #6. It seems my bus connections come in one of two flavors: if I hit it right and they're running on time, I get to work 20-30 minutes early. If the timing is off, tho, I get to the office about 10 minutes late. Nothing in between.

Anyhow... the ad was for Kaiser Permanente, their new "Thrive" campaign. The photo was a super-closeup shot of a cat's head, with part of a woman's face out of focus behind the cat, as if they were lying down together. The caption on the photo was cool: "Anti-Depressant." I know there's a lot of research on the subject, that pets are great for people recovering from illness or whatever. I know it's made a huge difference to me, having her around so that I'm not coming home to an empty box. It helps that she has a lot of personality. (She's laying on the desktop, licking & grooming the back of my hand as I use the mouse. Yes, Ginger, I know: it's bedtime.)

*I've wondered, for a while, how it is that women can wear skirts in the middle of the winter and not freeze their legs off. After careful observation on the bus the last couple days -- cuz I wanted to learn how it's done, cuz I want to wear skirts too! -- I think I have at least a partial answer. Tights, rather than pantyhose... and multiple layers of them. The most popular combination I've seen is a fine-grained patterned style in black, brown or blue over an opaque white or skin-tone. Now I know what I'm looking for; I'll have to try it.

* TIME magazine has done something really cool with their Person Of The Year issue, this time. The winner is... me. And you. And you. And you over there. Everyone who blogs, posts videos, or otherwise creates some sort of content for the Web. The professionals call it "amateur hour," but what it amounts to a truly democratic revolution in the mass media. They marked the occasion by placing Mylar mirror sheets on the covers of six million magazine issues. How cool is that?

Insult to Injury

Tue, 19 Dec 2006 05:37:06 GMT

I just had to sign back on for a moment. The last thing I did before going offline was check my email. You'll never guess what I found: a spam announcement from "Matthew Smith", who was delighted to inform me that I was eligible for...

...a $500 Target gift card!

Go figure. The universe has a strange sense of humor.

My favorite spam of all time, tho, was actually a combination of two separate messages. They arrive back-to-back in my inbox, offering to...

Grow Your Penis Size by 3"!
Increase Your Bra Size from B to D!!!

I stared at that combination and just had to laugh. How did they know...?

Slowing the Pace

Tue, 19 Dec 2006 05:06:20 GMT

Just a brief note tonight, as I still have several things to do (including dinner!) before bedtime.

A SIGN OF PROGRESS
I took the bus to work this morning, which means a walk of anywhere from 2 to 4 blocks from the stop to the office (depends on which bus I take from downtown). This morning I was able to walk a whole block at a time before having to stop and catch my breath. This may sound alarming to you, but it's actually encouraging for me. It's an increase of a whole half-block before having to make that rest break. I'm starting to feel better, starting to sleep better... and that's a real good thing. I have absolutely hated how rundown, tired, cold and weak I've felt these last several weeks.

I brought it on myself, though, and I absolutely have to take credit for that. When I started that 2nd job at Target back in September, over Labor Day weekend, I said to myself and everyone else that I didn't know if this would work, but I had to try it. The answer proved to be a definitive NO. The amazing thing is that I lasted at it as long as I did: 3-1/2 months, give or take a couple days.

Two weekends ago, I had a consultation with one of my doctors at the dialysis center. She showed me some blood test results, indicating that the hemoglobin level of my blood had declined by a good 25-30% over the last 3 months. I'd been having some problems with shortness of breath, being cold all the time, etc., and had mentioned them to the nurses at the dialysis center. Trying to do a better job of taking care of myself by actually talking about things that didn't feel right, you know? I thought it was my asthma kicking up because I was tired, and using my inhaler did seem to help some. I hadn't guessed there was more to it than that.

I got that word from the doctor on a Saturday. The next Sunday night, I was scheduled to work. Instead, I walked in at the appointed time, found my boss, and told him that for medical reasons I was resigning immediately. It didn't seem to come as much of a surprise. The last time I'd worked, I'd had to bail out on them halfway through my scheduled shift cuz I was light-headed, dizzy, and not feeling well. (Big surprise now, huh?) I think it actually came as a relief to him; it saved him the effort & paperwork of firing me. (I thought I'd been doing alright, but they weren't real happy with my attendance record. I'd missed a few days in October to illness with severe bronchitis, plus bad dialysis days here & there.) Thus, my streak is still intact: I haven't been fired from a job since my very first one, the summer after my 8th grade year.

Kicking the Target habit has had interesting repercussions through the rest of my life, too. It meant an immediate loss of income, of up to $600 per month. Most of that money was going to my car payment and operating expenses. I've been seriously wrestling with that since this summer, so I made the decision it was time to throw in the towel. I called the finance company last Tuesday, told them to come get it, and the repo guys showed up on my doorstep at 11:15pm last Thursday night. Two young men in beards & hoodie sweatshirts... I think they were surprised that I was at least polite about it. Part of that may be that I wasn't entirely awake yet.

I thought I was ready to look out the window and see the empty parking space, that my '95 Cherokee was gone. I'd been preparing myself mentally for that sight for months; I did any crying, grieving, and/or raging about it weeks ago. Still, it was more upsetting than I expected. I'm not used to the feeling of failing, of giving up on something important. In some ways that's a good thing, as the refusal to give up has saved my life on at least two occasions. Other ways, it has gotten me in trouble as I've stayed in harmful relationships far too long. It took me hours to settle back down and calm my emotional state; I never did get any good, restful sleep that night.

Losing the job and losing the car is forcing me to slow down, not do as much, give myself time to actually rest and recover. Several nights a week, I'd race home from across town and fall into bed at the earliest possible minute to get as much sleep as I possibly could before getting up and working all night. It was brutal on me, and I wish now I hadn't been so stubborn.

I expect this will probably take me a couple months to fully recover my strength. I'm letting myself be more flexible about cancelling plans, or just not going out, if I really don't feel up to it. I've also come to really appreciate some of my friends, who have stepped up to help out these last couple weeks. F'rinstance, my apartment had gone to hell over the last couple months as I just didn't have time or energy to keep up my housekeeping. Then I had a guardian angel visit last weekend, to help tame the clutter, clean the dishes, & etc. I appreciate that more than I can readily say.

RANDOM THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
I've heard that when large numbers of women live together, they tend to synchronize their menstrual cycles. I wonder if it's possible to share habits across species, too? I've noticed that most of the time when I'm home and Ginger needs relief, she'll go to the door and ask to go outside. When I first get home from the bus, however, I generally stop in the bathroom first. While I'm in there, she comes in and uses the litter box. The litter box is usually her last resort, only for those times when I'm not home and she's indoors. It's kinda cute, actually... :-)

Frustration

Wed, 13 Dec 2006 12:24:57 GMT

Last night
I opened the window
to listen to the wind and rain.
But the storm
stopped.
Damn.
I hate it when that happens.

Cigarettes taste terrible
at 3:30 in the morning.
But that's what I get
for eating them.

Closing Thoughts

Tue, 28 Nov 2006 01:23:52 GMT

Giving back my collar
was the second hardest thing
I've ever done.
Taking back my heart
was the hardest.

===============

Now that I've left this up for a few days all by itself, with no explanations, so that my friends are thoroughly freaked out, I thought I'd best explain what this post is all about. 'Bout time, huh?

This is by way of... not a parting shot, or a last word in the sense of "getting the last..." There's an implication that the thought might be directed to someone unnamed. I really don't care if this thought ever makes it back to that person; that's not the point. The point is that this is my personal summary. My way of finally closing the book on a relationship that ended almost 3 years ago.

It has taken me this long to get to this point. I think that was a measure of the relationship's intensity. When it was good, it was very very good... and when it went bad, it went very bad. And the same things that made it good, made it bad. The good parts were volatile and hot; the bad parts equally volatile, and painful.

But now I'm done. :-)

Working at Target

Tue, 14 Nov 2006 06:34:53 GMT

Dear Diary:

For the last 2-1/2 months, since Labor Day weekend, I've been working the graveyard shift at Target. I work generally 3 or 4 nights a week, starting at 10:15 and ending at 4:15 or 4:30 the next morning. The pay is okay, just a bit above minimum wage, and the work isn't too bad. I'm part of the "flow" team, which means that my worknight splits into two parts. The first part generally lasts about 90 minutes, and involves unloading the freight truck for each day's incoming shipment. That part is hard, physical, fast-paced labor. Two or three guys work on the truck, pulling boxes down from stacks and putting them on a manual conveyor belt. The boxes vary widely, from tiny boxes of rubber nipples for baby bottles (weighing less than nothing) to full-sized TVs and furniture weighing 60 or 70 pounds. The case counts for each shipment vary, from a low of about 1700 to a high of about 2200.

As the boxes move up the conveyor, there's a crew of generally 5 to 9 people (including me) sorting them out onto pallets to go to different parts of the store. When there are only 5 or so of us, the work is rough. It's just the math: with fewer people on the freight line, each of us has to handle more boxes. I'm generally responsible for corraling boxes for three pallets: electronics, laundry chemicals, and home decor. I try to keep a positive attitude about it all, that I get a great aerobic workout and they pay me for it... but it can still be very wearing. Very tiring. Most nights, I carry a liter bottle of ice water around the store with me, and I generally drain it at least once. That's a lot of water considering that with my kidney problems I can't get rid of it in the normal way, but it's a rarely a problem. I sweat it off, even on these cool fall nights in a (sort of) air-conditioned environment.

After the freight line, it's out to work the store, restocking shelves. I like it best when they send me over to work the shoe department; whether I get there or not depends on how many people actually show up for work each night and how much new freight comes in.

Getting the job, back in August, proved to be a major ordeal. Like most other corporate employers these days, Target wanted to do a drug test and background screening on me before offering a job. The drug test was tougher than I'd expected: they set my appointment for the drug test on a Tuesday, right after dialysis, when my body fluid level is at its very lowest. And, of course, wouldn't you know it, they wanted me to pee in a cup! That first time, Tuesday afternoon, I couldn't do it to save my soul. Or get the job. Fortunately, they let me come back Wednesday morning and try again.

The background check was even worse. When I changed my name in court a little over two years ago, I completely changed everything. Every part of my name. (If you don't already know what my original name was, NO, I'm not telling!) Somehow, the big three credit bureaus fumbled and mishandled it. They've got two entirely different names for the same Social Security number, and it has them all weirded out. I either have no credit history at all -- not necessarily a bad thing, considering how poor it was -- or my name comes up with "High Risk Fraud Warning!" stamped all over it. I was finally able to get them to figure it out, and to make a long story somewhat shorter, I got the job. At some point I'll have to go back and wrestle with the credit bureaus to straighten it all out, but that's not my highest priority right now.

I wondered, going into the new job, just what was going to happen and how it would work out, being publicly transgendered at work. I've been pretty out and open about who I am and what I'm doing, but it's only natural that much of my "exposure" has been within the confines of supportive environments. Going to work at Target, tho, was a whole new setting and probably my most extensive, sustained contact with the straight vanilla world. Hell yes, I was nervous! Would my new coworkers accept me? Would I be harassed? Laughed at? I'm doing better at "passing" from a purely visual standpoint, but these people would get a whole lot more than a brief glance at me going past on the sidewalk.

What's more, I'm still working on my voice training, and I've got a long way to go on that. (BJ said, last time I saw her, that I'm about halfway there sometimes, when I pay attention and work at it. That still leaves a long way to go, and she wants to work on it with me more. I'm looking forward to that, when I can get in and see her again.) Worse yet, when I'm picking up and handling 50-pound cases of laundry detergent or 60-some pound televisions, I still growl with the exertion in a very masculine register. I have no idea how to do that in a feminine tone, or even if it's possible.

The results have been pretty mixed, about as you might expect. A small percentage of the crew has been friendly and open. The "open percentage" is primarily composed of women, with a couple of men who're also willing to relax with me. With the women, I'm more or less one of the girls, to the point that we talk pretty openly about "girl stuff." This group is probably about 20%, maybe up to one-third, of the graveyard shift crew. It's about the same split that I've experienced everywhere: in most places, women are more open and more accepting than men -- at least up to a point, on those occasions when a woman has gauged me as "potential competition," in the way that women also size each other up. That's happened on occasion too.

(On a normal night, when everyone shows up for work, there's about 35 people in the store. The managers are trying to double that number for the holidays, but seem to be having trouble finding people to work the night shift.)

Beyond the "open percentage," there's another small group that I don't really actively talk with, but we're mutually courteous. "Hi, how are you?" or "Ola, com' esta?" is about as far as we get, but that's pretty good in itself. These are folks, mostly, that I don't work directly with or in close proximity to during the night.

That still leaves about half the total crew that I'd charitably describe as "cool." Actually it varies, from cool to cold to downright hostile. These are the folks that don't (or won't) make eye contact, don't speak to me at all, and don't respond if I speak to them. A couple even go so far as to avoid me: they won't even work on the same aisle with me, stocking shelves, if the cases to unpack are piled high and deep.

There are times I'd like to just get up in their faces and explain clearly that I don't bite and I'm not contagious. For the men, it doesn't mean they're "gay" if they speak to me. Having a moment's conversation doesn't that I'm flirting or hitting on them. I'll be honest, there are times that it's awkward, or even a bit painful. Painful in the way of a good paper cut: it's not life-threatening, but it's sharp and annoying. And if you get enough papercuts, does it add up to the death of a thousand cuts?

And within the first week of my employment there, the managers asked me to please use the handicapped/unisex bathroom down by the pharmacy, rather than the main women's restroom. (There's only one women's restroom for the whole store.) It seems they had been "approached" by some of the other women, who expressed "concerns" about having me in there. I can understand that, up to a point, as the Great Restroom Divide is still probably our culture's biggest gender taboo.

The irony of it is that just the day before, I'd stumbled across a Web article (following a link from a mailing list) on workplace discrimination against the transgendered. At least here in Oregon, it's illegal: I could not be fired just because I'm M2F -- tho that could conceivably be small protection if someone really wanted to get rid of me. The document I read did include a section on "restroom privacy issues" in the FAQs. The law requires that employers make an effort at a "reasonable compromise" between the needs of the trans employee -- my need to NOT use the men's room! -- and the sensitivity needs of the genetic genders. A "neutral" bathroom, like the one they asked me to use, is a reasonable compromise under the law. I agreed to the request, and I think I managed to be gracious about it... but I also wasn't happy about it. My hope is that someday, as the rest of the workcrew gets to know me more, that might change again. And it certainly will when I have my surgery done! (If I'm still working there, which I hope not to be anyhow.)

(This stands, btw, in real contrast to how things are at my Friday night bowling league. The league officers there have made it clear that they fully support me and my freedom to use the women's room. They've made it clear they'll take it up with the bowling alley's management if need be. It hasn't been an issue yet, but could conceivably be. More on a related subject in another journal entry, sometime.)

The graveyard shift managers and team leaders, on the other hand, have been very cool. Respectful and supportive as they can be, tho they do occasionally slip and call me "sir" rather than "ma'am." We've talked about that, and when it happens, I will gently correct them. They apologize, and they do try to get it right the next time. It's clear that regardless of whatever personal feelings they may have, they're committed to treating me with personal respect and dignity. I really do appreciate that.

I think part of it, honestly, may be a cultural thing. At least half of the night shift crew, probably two-thirds, are people of Hispanic descent (if not actually immigrants themselves). At our nightly "huddle" staff meetings, the managers wait every few sentences for their words to be translated into Spanish. I'm even picking up a few words and phrases of Spanish myself, and that's something I've never done before. I don't know all that much about Hispanic culture -- just enough to know that it's probably a misnomer to speak of a single "Hispanic" culture, tho the different peoples tend to share certain common elements, like the Catholic faith. Which tends to be pretty conservative... and without a whole lot of room for the transgendered.

And some people that have warmed up to me, and they're friendlier now than earlier. I think that has something to do with longevity on the job, proving that I'll be around for a while and that I can do the work. I think I surprised one of the "cold" guys, a few days ago, by pitching in and helping with the dog food aisle (next to the one he was working). Twenty to forty-pound bags of dog food? No problem! But then, a couple days ago, when I offered to assist him with an aisle, he chose to move on and work a different one. Eh, whatever. [shrug]

In any case, whether it's personal, cultural, or whatever, I try to just take it in stride and treat my coworkers with the courtesy that some of them don't show me.

On the whole, in the balance of everything, I'd say it has actually been personally liberating to work at Target. I know that at times I've been plagued with doubts and self-consciousness about my appearance. There are times I've seriously wondered about this course of change I've chosen. It's been nice to see and experience, first-hand, that split and the degree to which there are people who accept me for who I am. It's been nice, too, to be in a setting where it officially Does Not Matter. I'm evaluated first and foremost on my ability to be there and to do the work, to be a cog in the Target machine. Believe it or not, that's actually a good thing. It's a blessed relief from the feeling of being on display, of being front-&-center at the freak show, which can so easily become a perverse form of egocentrism.

I think the next step, assuming that I'll be around there for a while longer, will be to ask my managers or the HR department about the Target GLBT business group. I've heard that they have such a thing, but I don't know anything more about it. What it is, what it does, when or where it meets. If it's something where I could put in a little volunteer time, it might well be worth the effort.

Yours in flames,
m.

I'm Baaaaaack

Tue, 07 Nov 2006 07:09:04 GMT

Dear Diary:

It's been a long time since I've been able to write. I just looked at my last LJ entry, and it's dated 26 June -- almost 5 months ago. I sure haven't been sitting still since then. In fact, it's been one of the more trying periods of my life over the last couple years. I'd say it's almost up there with breaking up with L or dealing with the whole kidney failure thing. (Wow, were both of those really almost three years ago?) It's been just one damned thing after another, sort of like life in a beaver colony. Or so the old joke goes.

To start things off, shortly after my last entry, I received a nasty, hysterical, demanding email from Someone Who Shall Remain Nameless for purposes of this entry. (Let's shorten that to SWSRN.) I don't want to go into all the details here, as I don't think it's necessary or constructive, but there was precipitated a crisis that damaged two of my friendships (one apparently beyond repair, and possibly both) and brought an abrupt end to a friendship that had lasted up to this point through thick and thin (mostly my thickheadedness) for better than five years. Maybe even almost six. It's a shame when shit happens, and especially when it gets spattered all over people who had nothing to do with the situation. I know I'm being elliptic and vague, and that's intentional. Those who were involved know who all the players were... and if you weren't involved, you don't need to know the gory details.

Right after that, at about the mid-point of July, my trusty reliable old PC blew its brains out. The motherboard shorted out, which also fried the CPU, zorched one of the RAM boards, and completely scrambled the contents of my hard drive. All my artwork files, all my email correspondence going back almost 6 years, all my collected software: GONE in a split second. I'd walked out of the office to have a smoke. When I came back, there was a thin haze of smoke in the air and a thick smell of scorched plastic. It didn't take long to figure out that the system was gone. The half-dozen blown capacitors were a dead giveaway.

Back to back with this, I got a letter from the IRS. It seems the person handling my tax affairs had given me some really BAD advice. Setting it straight, as the IRS required to be done immediately -- and I don't mean NOW, I mean yesterday -- scooped $400 a month out of my budget, right off the top. There goes my car payment and my car insurance, right out the window. If I couldn't come up with some way to fill that hole, and do it in a hurry, the car itself would follow the payment and insurance money right out that window, via repossession.

I seriously considered just letting them have it back. I came to realize that as much as I enjoy the car, I'd made a bad decision in signing that sales contract in the summer of '05. I'd gotten caught up in the possibilities of what I *might* be able to do with it. In doing that, I overlooked that my budget was hanging on by a shoestring. I could afford the new car if everything went perfectly from there on out: no budget mistakes, nothing adverse, no new bills, etc. I'm not sure I can even say I've enjoyed having or driving the car. The effort of paying for it has drained my budget to the point that I haven't been able to make the coast runs and other things I hoped to do with it. I've spent most months scrambling to make the payments, which are far too high. (24.99% interest -- but that's actually an improvement over my previous auto loan, which was at 29.99%. Yes, Virginia, there are lenders in Oregon who get away with charging that rate.)

The worst part was that I realized I also could not afford to let them have it back. If the car was repo'd, it would be sold at wholesale for whatever they could get out of it -- and then the loan company would sue me for the balance of the contract. I'd end up paying good money after bad for a car I didn't even have any more -- so I had to find a way to come up with $400 more every month.

The answer? A second job. Or, as one of my nurses recently put it, a 3rd job: there's my day job, and being on dialysis practically counts as a part-time job in itself. I was sort of fortunate to find out that the Target store 1-1/2 blocks from my apartment was hiring. Getting the job proved to be very difficult: my name and gender change have been misreported to the credit bureaus. Every time my name comes up in their computers, it's with "High Fraud Risk" warnings. (We won't even begin to discuss what in the world is going on with my IRS and Social Security records.) The long and short of it, tho, is that in the end I did get the job, and started work over Labor Day weekend. I work the graveyard shift, 3-4 nights a week, stocking the shoe department.

In the meantime, tho, I'd lost the entire month of August to the considerable stress of trying to resolve all this. I went thru my days in a state roughly equal to zombieness.

With the 2nd paychecks starting to roll in, I get paid by one job or the other every Friday. Things were starting to look up, like I might actually get caught up and get ahead... until three things happened. One is that, I have to confess, my spending discipline slipped. I started to fall back into some old habits, especially in regard to eating out too often. Cooking for one can be a hassle, and as often as not I'd just rather not. (Ginger doesn't eat enough to count or offer any help in that department.) The 2nd thing was that all the stress caught up with me, and I caught a nasty case of bronchitis around the end of September. I was seriously sick for a week, and it was almost 3 weeks before I started to feel "right" again. In the meantime, I'd lost a full week's pay from Target. The 3rd thing was that in mid-October, my car decided that it needed a new battery for the upcoming winter. Between the illness and the battery, that was a bit more than $200 off the top -- again.

Can you say "ruh-roh, Rhaggy?"

So here I am, right back where I started with this whole budget mess. I'm scrambling to figure out how I'm going to pay my November rent, which is already overdue. That means there's a hefty late fee penalty attached. I know -- believe me, I know! -- I've made some bad decisions over the years financially. I came to realize a while back that I'd grown up with similar conditions of financial chaos all around me. My Mom worked sometimes up to 3 jobs at once; she was a real pro at robbing Peter to pay Paul while distracting the wolf at the door. After my stepfather, she had to be. I grew up with those conditions, and it's possible I've come to regard them as normal... and so I've recreated them for myself.

If that's the case, I think I've got the lesson now. Can we try something else now? The good news is that I AM trying something else, and I'm getting better at it. I've been starting to step up, make phone calls, contact people, and deal with at least some of my own financial affairs beyond the daily basics. I do have some positive feeling of accomplishment in doing that, and I try to remind myself of that. But for where I am on the curve of getting caught up and getting things under control, it's hard at times to hang onto that positiveness. For all that I do, there's more that has to be done. Now. Yesterday. And they want answers I can't give to questions I really don't want to hear. It's tempting at times to pull the covers back over my head, ignore it all, and hope it all goes away.

Am I not dancing fast enough yet?

One way or another, I'll get through all this. I always have in the past. It's just that right now I can't yet see how. In the meantime, due to the generosity of friends donating computer parts, I'm back online and able again to tell you all what's going on.

Now that I'm back, Diary, I'll write more often. There's been a bunch going on in the rest of my life, too, outside of dollar signs and checkbooks. Some of it good, some of it not, some of it fun, some of it -- you get the idea, the usual mix. I've been reading a lot of nonfiction recently, and I'd like to share some of those ideas with you.

What say we do this again soon?

Yours in flames,
m.

Sybil & Surgery

Tue, 27 Jun 2006 05:23:45 GMT

I don't have a whole lot of time to write tonight, so I'm going to try to sneak in as much as I can. There's a lot of ground to cover tonight. I should be shaving my legs or doing something else to get ready for work tomorrow, but I feel like this is more important. I've gotten off to a slow start on this blogging thing, but I think it's going to become more and more important to me as time goes on as a way to explore my self -- all my selves. And my emerging identity as a woman named Morgan instead of a man named Jim or Alan. (Gods, how I hated those names!) Already there's more to write about than I could possibly fit in tonight, unless I stayed up all night. That's really not an option.

First: I had some surgery done last Friday, to break up the kidney stones and remove the calcified urethral stent. I haven't talked at length with Dr. Kaempf yet, but I gather that the procedure was successful. Successful, tho the operation took a lot longer than it was originally scheduled. The original schedule was for 2-1/2 hours in the OR; I gather it was closer to at least 4, maybe 5, maybe even longer. Karen said that she ultimately ended up spending 11 hours at the hospital on Friday. I spent the night there, and was finally released to go home at about 4:00pm Saturday afternoon. Tauni brought me home, then spent a couple hours watching over me to make sure things were okay. Zan and Silke both stopped by yesterday afternoon to check on me, keep some company, and bring me some food. Zan brought food, anyhow; I hadn't really expected her to do that.

That the surgery worked is a huge relief to me. This procedure was ultrasound, directed from outside my body, and done by scope, inserted up through my urethra. It was only the first of several options, which would have gradually become more invasive. The last option, if nothing else worked, would have been to just remove my left kidney. I really didn't want that to happen, as it would have meant the end of any possible hopes I might still have of my kidneys getting better. I know, I know, I've heard it from all the doctors a hundred times that I cannot count on that happening, and it probably won't. At the same time, I do hear from Mona (my dialysis liaison nurse at Providence) and from other folks that it does occasionally happen. It's just that it couldn't happen, for sure, if one of my kidneys was removed.

There was, apparently, one genuinely funny moment along the way. Dr.Kaempf left prescription orders with the nursing staff, for my overnight stay, for painkillers. In practical terms, that meant I could get morphine or oxycodon when I needed them, just for the effort of asking. Sylver emerged to "front" at some point on Friday evening, while Karen and Tauni were there. (At least, I assume both of them were there, as they've both shared some familiarity with the incident.) Karen started teasing Sylver about being a drug addict, and Sylver replied "I am not an addict, I'm a connoisseur!" Good for her: that sounds to me like the perfect comeback, and just like something she'd say. She has a knack that way, for coming up with perfect thing to say right on time when she needs it. I, on the other hand, am far more likely to spend hours ruminating on what I should have said, and eventually come up with something "right." On the other hand, I do puns and wordplay. As far as I've been able to tell so far, Sylver doesn't.

This brings me right into the second subject I wanted to write about tonight. I just finished reading Sybil for the first time in years. I used to binge and purge on all the books about multiple personalities that I could find. Sybil, Eve, Billy Milligan, The Troops ("When Rabbit Howls"): I quite likely kept those publishing houses in business by how many copies of their books I went through. I'd periodically buy new copies, read them avidly, devour them word for word, and then get rid of them again when the contents scared me. I got rid of them because there was SO MUCH in the books that I could identify with: the lost time, the confusion, covering for things I should know but didn't, covering for things I "forgot," the gaping holes spanning years of what should have been my memory. They were, for me, more horrifying than any novels about space aliens, werewolves, vampires, or all the conventional creepy-crawlies. The only stories that came as close to scaring me that much were the Cthulhu stories of HP Lovecraft, August Derleth, and the other writers who mined that vein. Those stories gave me the creeps because they also dealt with the inexplicable, the incomprehensible, the strange "otherness" from beyond the realms of our normal space-time fantasy.

(That, by the way, also explains why my favorite movie of all time is Apocalypse Now, by Francis Ford Coppola. It deals explicitly with the horrors of random violence sequentialized as "war," and the efforts of one man to deal with the insanity. He's not a good guy, not a hero, not a bad guy: just one guy trying to an insane job as best he understands it in an even more insane setting.)

Tauni loaned me her copy of Sybil when I asked her to loan me some books. My budget has been running tight -- again -- and I didn't have the money to go buy some new ones. Riding the bus back & forth to work at least 3 days a week, I had read and re-read everything in my permanent collection. Time for some new ideas, and so I borrowed from her.

This was the first time I've picked up any of the MP classics since learning about The Crew several years ago. Reading Sybil, this time, hit me right between the eyes. There were SO MANY places in the book that I said "yes, that's it!" or "I know that feeling." I was tempted to go thru the book with a highlighter, or with sticky notes, to mark all the places and all the pages that resonated with me. Or with us, plural: I could feel, too, that some of the Crew came and went as I read, looking over my shoulder. There were places, too, where THEY said "yes, that's it, we feel that way, now do you understand?"

(How very odd: as I'm sitting here with the keyboard across my knees, Ginger is sprawled across the top of my desk. She wants attention, wants petting, and wants to go to bed, not necessarily in that order. It's warm in here, cuz today was a scorcher. As she laid on the desk, she suddenly started panting. I have never seen her do that before, but I know it means she's hot to overheating. We'll go to bed soon, as soon as I get this cranked out.)

I can't really begin to pick out some of those OMG YES! moments from memory; I think I'm going to have to go through the back again, scanning it just for those juicy bits. They'll eventually end up here in my blog too. For the moment, here are a few surface recollections and how they compare to my own experience with being multiple and being in The Crew.

* Sybil had 16; Vladimir says we are 18. I haven't met about half of that number. The ones I have met are me (morgan) (of course), Vladimir, Sylver, Kelly, Arrapkha, Mary, David, Charlotte, The Recorder, and Victoria. That's 10. In addition to these 10, I know there is a man and a woman, both of whom speak with British accents. I haven't met them, but Tauni had an encounter with the English girl while staying over the night at my place earlier in the year. In addition, Karen says that she has met several others that she has opted not to clue me in about so far. She says it's a matter of respecting their privacy. I can sort of see her point, but at the same time... I do understand that it puts her in an awkward position.

* Sybil's total length of therapy with Dr. Cornelia Wilbur, to resolve the traumas leading to multiplicity, was 11 YEARS. The text doesn't ever quite come out and make it clear, but it seems pretty evident that at least some of those years in therapy were with sessions every single day. Sybil wasn't working, and she was supported in therapy by her guilt-ridden father. That, of course, is not even close to an option of any kind for me. My therapeutic experience, mostly in working with Dr.Georgia and with Aniko back in 2003 before I got sick, was a series of 40-something sessions meeting once a week.

* Sybil was described by her others as the "waking self" or the "depleted self." When her others came into being, for whatever reason under whatever circumstances, they took part of her emotional capacity, along with her memories of the creating incident, with them. That's sure how I feel at times too. In The Crew, I think sometimes that I (morgan) am basically a robot of sorts that was created during my high school years, by the other members of The Crew, to be the "working face" with the outside world. In that capacity I did okay for a while, but then when I left high school and went to college, I was way outside "my" environment. I crashed and burned, hard, for the first semester of my collegiate career. Looking back, I think I'd call it "psychotic depression." Eventually, with a lot of help, I got through some of it, enough to buckle up and carry on... but I don't think the "talk therapy" I had in college went nearly far enough. It got me going, but there was a whole lot more to learn and resolve. I say that I got started in high school because that's basically where my coherent memories begin: about halfway through my junior year at Thomas Jefferson (Denver). Before that, all I have are what I call "snapshots": some incident, usually of something horrific happening, and then I fade to black. I don't remember anything else until the next snapshot. I haven't yet spent a whole lot of time analyzing or studying the snapshots, trying to figure out when or in what order they occurred; I think that's going to be a next step in my/our personal processing and healing. I know that there are huge gaps, of whole months and years, between some of the snapshots. I wonder which of The Crew has those memories? And how much of the snapshots that I do have are really "mine," when even in my own head they feel like movies of watching something happening to someone else? The other great question that I'd like to know is, if at least some of the other members of The Crew were already up & going at that time, and they knew that life with Dick was horrific, why do I have ANY snapshot memories of that time at all? Why did I, or some value of some person that I sort of recognize as "I", come back at all during that time?

* This sort of parallels another question I realized a while back in therapy with Aniko. If I'm sort of a meat robot that has exceeded its original programming, then by definition I am not the original core personality. Where did that entity go? And when? More importantly, who will be the resulting person that emerges if we in The Crew do somehow manage to integrate? The closing chapters of Sybil indicated that the new "whole Sybil" didn't really resemble ANY of the original 16, in the way that a beef stew is more than the sum of its parts. That... scares me. I've done a whole lot of work, much of it painful, to get this far. If we were to proceed toward some mythical goal of "integration," would we be putting that at risk?

* The first thing that any of the Crew said to either one of our therapists back in 2003 was when Kelly emerged and introduced herself to Dr.Georgia. Dr.G asked Kelly if she was interested in integrating and somehow becoming one with the rest of the gang. Kelly's answer? She basically said why should she be interested in that, since she essentially just got here, in terms of finally winning free to the right to express herself. Besides, Kelly said, she couldn't imagine such a thing cuz we're all so different. Working with Aniko was different: her declared goal with us, right from the start, was "the highest quality of life possible for as many as possible." We've gotten somewhat better on that, but there's still a long way to go.

* At one point in the book, Sybil is suicidal. Vicky pulls her back from the brink of jumping into the Hudson River. As I learned about The Crew, and my whole world got shaken, I too was suicidal. This would have been back in January 2003. I even took a couple days off from work to stay home and cry, which I *never* do. At one point, I heard the siren call of the traffic on I-5, which was only a block away from my apartment in North Portland. How easy it would have been to walk down the embankment and end it all by stepping in front of a truck. If I closed my eyes or looked the other way, I would never even see it coming. I don't think the others would have allowed me to do it, but in the end, it was my own decision that pulled me away from that brink. However much I wanted to do it, I couldn't because it would not have been fair to them. I couldn't kill them, too, just so soon after their "unveiling."

I'll write more next time, and soon, about how that "unveiling" happened. From the very beginning, Dr.Georgia and Aniko suspected that we'd find that The Crew and my questions about my gender identity were very closely intertwined. They were right.

That's all for now. I've got to get Ginger out of this stuffy room before she overheats seriously. Good night.

Counselors & Surgeons & Stones, Oh My!

Mon, 12 Jun 2006 03:39:02 GMT

11 June 2006: Health Stuff Again

Gosh I've got a lot of ground to cover to get caught up here, and I don't want to spend all night typing. So I'll just try to hit the high (or low) points.

* Spent most of the Memorial Day weekend in the hospital, at Good Sam. It wasn't a whole lot of fun, but if I had to be there, at least most of the weekend was grey & rainy so I didn't feel like I missed much. The eventual diagnosis was a staph infection of my left kidney, plus a whole new crop of kidney stones and calcified obstructions of my left ureter. Argh.

Wednesday night or Thursday morning before Memorial Day, I got up to use the bathroom and noticed that my lower back hurt. A lot. After using the bathroom, I went back to bed and tried to go back to sleep. Not much success: the pain got worse, and started to wrap around the inside of my left hip and down into my groin. The pain started off, when I got up, as about a '4' on a scale of 1 to 10. Finally I called Ms.K, and then called Dr. Petrillo's office. By that time, the pain had reached about a '7', and it was becoming pretty severe. They patched me right thru directly to him, and he said to go to the ER. I got to the ER probably about 2:45 or 3:00am. About 7:00am they made the decision to keep me.

Somewhere along the way I got introduced to a very powerful painkiller, Dilaudid. Great stuff! For my body weight, about 165 pounds, the effective dosage for pain relief was ONE-HALF of a MILLIGRAM. Can you believe it? The nurse told me that it's one hundred times more powerful than morphine -- which is pretty good stuff in its own right.

The "calcified obstructions" in my left ureter are my own fault, really. Back in March 2004 I had 2 ultrasound procedures to break up my first batch of kidney stones. After each ultrasound, they put a stent in my ureter, from my bladder up to my left kidney. the stent is basically a hollow plastic straw, inserted into the ureter tube to keep it open so kidney stone fragments can pass through and out. The withdrawal of the first stent was VERY painful. The doctor numbed my privates somewhat with a Novocaine gel, then inserted a tube -- while I was AWAKE and there was NO effort to numb my internals -- and fished the stent out. I knew from my time in the hospital, with a urethral catheter, that it was going to hurt, and hurt a lot. I asked the doctor for more complete pain relief before pulling the stent out. His answer? It boiled down to "shut up, suck it up, and let's get this over with."

When it came time to have the second stent withdrawn, after the second ultrasound, I said basically "no way." No way was I going to put myself through that again. So it's still there... about two years after it was supposed to come out. In the meantime, it has grown crusts and deposits of calcium and other minerals from my body, that are normally flushed out in urine.

The upshot of all this is that I have more surgical procedures scheduled on Friday, 23 June. Ultrasound and laser, under general anesthetic, to try to break up the kidney stones, break up the stent calcifications, and draw it out. That's the bad news. The really bad news is that IF the ultrasound & laser are successful, the doctor will put in yet a THIRD stent... which I'll also have to have taken back out some months from now. [sigh] Just call me Princess Valium, when that time comes. Or Princess Dilaudid... it almost sounds elvish or something.

* On June 1st, which was a Thursday, I had my first appointment with BJ Seymour, a gender counselor here in Portland. I've been working on my sex transition for some time now, but this was really the first time that I've come to "official" attention. It was something I put off for a while to save myself the expense, but there are standards of certification from therapists that I have to get to keep the process going. I don't mind saying that I was really nervous going into this appointment. As I caught the bus to work that morning, I all but hyperventilated as I considered the possibilities. What if she said "no"? I viewed BJ as a sort of official gatekeeper... and she does have the authority and licenses to write ALL the letters.

As it turns out, the appointment went great. BJ is literally a little old lady, and probably barely comes up to my shoulder. (I'm 5'11", just under 6 feet.) In contrast to other counselors I've worked with, talking with her really felt like getting to know a new girlfriend. We spent a LOT of time talking about each others' personal history, hers as well as mine, so I really felt that I got to know her on a personal level. Kelly even came out to visit for a while, and came away feeling that yes, we can work with this person.

At the end of it all, BJ concluded that yes, she is satisfied that I am genuinely transexual. There was one diagnostic criterion of the Benjamin Standards that I couldn't meet, but she wasn't too concerned about that as I don't remember most of my childhood years. She said that I've done a lot of the work on my own that she generally does with new clients. There is still work for us to do together, and she'll be satisfied at this point with seeing me once a month for the first several months of our working together. It may eventually turn out less than that.

In the meantime, I have a couple of homework assignments. One is to prepare a series of index cards, giving BJ all the information I have about the various members of The Crew. The other is to rent some old Lauren Bacall movies. BJ says my feminine voice is not bad when I think about it and try to use it, but there's still some work to be done. Part of it is to practice, practice, practice and use it more until it becomes second nature. Not just my "feminine voice" but my all-the-time voice, period.

The best news of all is that I came out of that first appointment with the letter for DMV, to change my driver's license code from M to F. I cannot TELL you how EXCITED I am about that! Finally, I won't have to wince inside every time someone asks me for my ID. No matter how well I dressed up, polished up or made up, there was always that damn M on the license. I can't tell you how many times I saw store clerks' and other peoples' facial expressions change, uniformly to the hostile or contemptuous, when they saw my license. I faxed a copy to my doctor, along with a request to increase the level of my estrogen prescription, for his records.

Finally, I have the letter to make that change... if I had the money to do it. I have to find out how much it costs to replace my license again, for the second time in six months. (I had to replace it earlier this year after my purse was stolen out of my car the weekend after Thanksgiving 2005.) My budget has gone straight down the crapper again, as I miscalculated my funds available to pay bills earlier this month. The hole is not quite as deep this time, tho, and I think I'll have an easier time climbing out of it. For one, I'm not even attempting to drive my car most of the time for work or other purposes. By itself that's saving me at least $30 to $50 each week. Don't even get me started on the raping of the American public by the major oil companies!

One more note and then I'm done for the day: while I was in the hospital, it was really cool how sensitive and respectful the staff tried to be of my gender status. As I was checking into the ER and being admitted, I asked if we could change the code on my ID bracelet from "44-M" to "44-F". The admitting clerk was very accomodating to that. Afterward, for the entire weekend, just about every new nurse or aide that I met made a point of asking if I wished to be addressed as "Ms. Blackwind." I let them know I'd appreciate it if they would, but I also wouldn't be nasty if they slipped. (I knew I looked like crap most of the time, with no makeup, my hair a mess, and beard stubble). The only person I met who really asked what was going on was a bipolar schizophrenic young man that I met in the 3rd floor smoking area. He asked if I was gay or "just had a whole lot of style." (By that time I'd asked a friend to bring me a feminine nightgown to wear instead of the little hospital johnnies.) I explained that I wasn't gay, that I was in transition, and he took a long slow look at me, and then nodded. "You're lucky," he said. "You've got the right face type to make a goodlooking mature woman."

One more note again... as I've talked with my coworkers about the DMV letter, I was surprised at how flummoxed a couple of them were about how I could get the DMV change before I got the actual surgery. Diana seemed really concerned about what would happen in a medical emergency, if the EMTs pulled my license and then found male anatomy under my clothes. I just said I was sure it wouldn't be the first time that had happened, and how much did it really matter? The one that really surprised me was Dana. She had the same question, but she used to work in a private hospital where sex-change surgeries were done, and she found it touching how happy the women were when they woke up. I guess it just goes to show that she wasn't all that close to the technicalities of all the procedures and certifications to get there. Just goes to show me again, I guess, that I can't make assumptions about how much people know even when they seem to know a lot.