Well, y'all know how this screwed up life style works. Legs full of
painful bruises or not, eventually I became desperate enough that I went
ahead and traveled pretty again. A pair of tights that made things
entirely too hot and uncomfortable did at least hide the ugliness on my
legs from a casual glance. I figured that anyone that was gonna look
hard enough at my legs to see these bruises through the tights was
probably gonna deserve a good slapping, so what the heck!
One the
way through the Austin airport, I had to walk by two young men who were
seated outside of the security check point, and like it or not, I had
their full attention as I walked by.
"That's a dude." One of them
said to the other, loud enough for me to hear him. He didn't exactly
yell it out, but it was clear he didn't care if I heard him or not.
"Nah,
I don't think so." Replied his friend to my great amusement. This was a
perfect example of what I've always thought and said here - I look just
passable enough that people are not SURE whether I am a cross dresser
or not. Of course I'd rather that I was so flawless that I fooled
everyone all of the time, but I suppose that I'll accept what I've been
given.
This week I was working with a customer in Allentown PA
who has two instruments that have been obsolete for about a decade. The
instruments were made by a company that my company later bought, and so
we acquired it along with them. Almost immediately after we bought them,
it was decided that this product was too expensive to produce and
support, and there was not enough demand for them, so the entire product
line was killed. They trained just one person to work on them before
the last one disappeared and that was me! Now the problem is that this
device uses a LOT of very fragile components that degrade over time, and
we no longer have spares, and so if just about anything goes wrong, the
quarter million dollar machine is nothing more than useless junk. For
this reason, I told the customer repeatedly that they should not spend
their money getting it repaired, and I warned them over and over that
there was a significant chance that I would not be able to bring it back
into operation. Despite my very blunt warnings and advice, they
insisted that it was worth their money to at least try, and so off I
went on a mission that I was reasonably sure that I could not succeed
at.
One of the reasons that they insisted that it was worth trying for,
was because they owned two of these machines and figured that I could
probably salvage parts from one to fix the other, and they were
partially correct. I did indeed have to pull multiple components from
one to put on the other, but in the end, I could not bring either into
operation, despite spending two eleven hour work days trying. Being an
optical instrument, it relies on several very expensive mirrors that
degrade over time, and these components on both systems were in such bad
condition that we had to throw in the towel and give up. So, I made a
lot of money for my company, but had the horrible feeling of failing and
leaving an unhappy customer behind.
Two VERY long days on my
feet didn't do my leg condition any good at all, but still I was in a
fairly good mood on the way home. I couldn't help myself and decided to
have fun with the waitress at Denny's when she asked if there was
anything else that she could get for me.
"Yeah, how about a frontal
lobotomy?" I replied with a grin. She broke out with a laugh, but you
should have seen the looks on the faces of the people sitting around me
when I said that - it was priceless! The shocked looks almost made me
loose it. You could almost see their thoughts on their faces.
"Oh my God, did she have a lobotomy?!"
"Holy shit, is that a nut job?! "
"Do you think she she's safe to be around?!"
At that moment, I was pretty sure that this was going to be my best laugh of the day, but I was absolutely wrong. . .
I
was sitting toward the front of the plane from Allentown to Atlanta and
watching all of the cattle. . . Err. . . I mean people boarding the
plane, when I noticed a kind of frumpy and frazzled looking young woman
in a blue sweat shirt dragging a wheeled carry on behind her. The
problem was, her carry on was wide open and she was leaving a trail of
belongings behind her as she traveled down the aisle, blissfully unaware
of the trail she was leaving. Much to my surprise, the first item I
noticed was a very elaborate and I suspect expensive thong/panties. My
first instinct was to pick them up and return them to the young woman,
but then I kind of decided I wasn't about to handle some strange woman's
panties, and so I reached out to touch her arm.
"Ma'am, I think that you may have lost something that you're gonna miss later." I told her with a grin.
"Oh
my god. Thank you so much!" She said, turning to pick them up as her
face turned a very dark red. I was still smiling as she took her seat,
but not a minute later the peace in the cabin was broken when she starts
to yell at a man who was standing in the aisle talking to her.
"Look, I don't give a shit. My ticket says 4D and I'm not about to move!" She was yelling at him.
"But mine also says 4D!" The man replied with an Indian accent.
"Well
that's too God damned bad, because I'm already here, and I'm not about
to move! There is a whole row of seats here, so you just grab another
one!"
As this argument went on, another woman was entering the plane and holding a tube of toothpaste in her hand.
"I think someone dropped this." She said to no one in particular as she made her way into the plane.
I started to laugh and pointed out the loud mouthed and belligerent woman in the sweat shirt to her.
"We'll, I'd be willing to bet that it is hers since she dropped a few other things on her way in." I told her with a grin.
The
sweat shirt woman was still in the midst of yelling at the man that
apparently was assigned the same seat that she had, and so the woman
with the tooth paste was just a bit put off.
"Are you sure?" She asked me with a look of trepidation on her face.
"Purty
sure! The thing is, the OTHER things that she dropped were a bit more. .
. . umm . . . personal . . ." I replied with a wink.
As for the seat
mix up? Yeah, the loud mouth in the sweatshirt was on the wrong flight,
but at least she had the grace to apologize profusely as she exited the
plane.
Oh, you'll be glad to know that she managed to keep her panties with her on the way OFF of the plane!
Damn but I love my job . . .
A lot of people travel for work, so that's no real big deal, but it gets a bit more complicated when you are transgender.
Friday, October 26, 2012
Monday, October 22, 2012
Gonna save the world! (Just Rambling)
So I took a
trip to Peoria Illinois and had to catch a connecting flight in Atlanta. I had
about an hour and a half to catch that connection and so there was no great
rush and I was able to take my time. After taking the “plane train” to an adjoining
concourse, I arrived at my new gate, but with the overwhelming feeling that
something was wrong. Then it struck me! I had left my back pack on the damned
airplane, and oh joy, I had no idea
what gate that airplane was at! So there was a good five minutes tracking down a
Delta CSR to have her look up the gate for my arriving flight, and then half an
hour to get back to that gate. Just to
make things fun, the Delta rep gave me the wrong
gate and so I literally ended up walking the entire B concourse by the time I
found the plane that I had arrived on. Fortunately they had found my bag and it
was waiting with the gate agent there. I
remember thinking that this was a serious and scary sign of how far my mental
status seems to be degrading lately, and that I’d better make sure that I never do that again.
Yeah, never
do that again you idiot!
Guess what I
did on the way back from Peoria? I kid you not – I got all the way off of the
jet bridge before I realized that I had left my backpack on the plane again! I’m starting to scare my damn self . . .
So this
weekend my wife wanted a little time on her own without the children, and so I
took them shopping for Halloween costumes and stuff. We had about a 45 minute
drive to get there and I was relaxing listening to one of my favorite albums – a compilation of
old TV hits by Ray Conniff. When my daughter asked me what it was, I explained
that these were all songs from movies and TV shows that were popular when I was
her age, and then I explained a little about some of the TV shows.
I was kind
of surprised to realize how many of those shows were ground breaking for
portraying women taking careers and making their own way in a time where it
wasn’t all that common.
I told her
about the series “Police Woman”,
that was all about a female detective, and she wasn’t all of that impressed at
the idea so I tried to put it a little bit in context. I told her that back
then, most women were housewives who were expected to marry and then stay home
and take care of the children. A woman who was not only making her own way
through the world, but was in fact doing it in a very male dominated career
field, was something special and noteworthy. You should have seen the look on
my daughters face.
“Why couldn’t girls get jobs?!” she asked
me with more than a little bit of anger in her voice.
“Well, they
could, but usually not real good ones, and they were usually kind of looked
down on for doing it.” I replied.
“But that’s
not fair!”
“Darn right
it wasn’t fair, but that IS the way that it used to be!”
The next
song that came on was the theme to “The Mary Tyler Moore”
show and my daughter surprised me by asking me what show it went to, and much
to my surprise I realized that it was much the same kind of show.
“Well, that
show was also about a woman who was making
it on her own!” I told her.
“Really?”
she replied, looking kind of skeptical.
“Would I lie
to you?!”
When the
theme to “Welcome
Back Kotter” came on, I volunteered the information about that show before
she asked.
The next song
that came on was the theme From “Laverne and Shirley”,
and before I could offer its story, she asked me about it. I actually hesitated
when it caught me by surprise that it ALSO was very similar to the first two.
“Well, that
was a TV show about two young women
living together and also trying to
make their own way through the world without relying on a husband to do it for
them.”
I dunno, I’m
probably really late to this revelation, but it really did surprise me how many
shows I grew up with that had as a significant part of their story, a woman
making her own way in a male world. Today
most of us , and certainly the young women today, take it for granted that they
are free to have their own careers without being looked down upon.
My hat is
off to “Police Woman”, “Mary Tyler Moore”, and even “Laverne and Shirley” for
helping to teach little girls that it was possible to stand on their own two
feet – that they didn’t have to rely on someone else to take care of them. Well
done ladies!
Believe it
or not, my daughter and I even spoke a bit about how important those shows were
for that very reason.
“So, in a
way they were heroes?” she asked me.
“Honestly, I
think so. They taught little girls what they could do if they wanted to. They
taught little girls that they could be whatever they wanted to be if they were
willing to work for it.”
While my
daughter and I were talking about this, my three year old son was sitting in
the back seat in his car seat, and he perked up at the word “hero”.
“When I grow
up, I wanna be Iron Man and save the world!” said my little super hero. The bad
news is, I think that he has a ways to go. About half an hour later I was
helping the recently potty trained little hero to go potty and he peed all over
daddy’s leg.
I figure we’re
gonna have to hold off on saving the world for a little while yet . . .
Saturday, October 13, 2012
Ouch!
Well
you haven’t heard much from me these days, and that’s probably just as well as pretty
much all that I’ve got to share is whining and moaning. I know that I’ve mentioned
this horrid little skin condition that have before - Erythema
Nodosum. My current bout with this
crap is by far the worst that it has ever been, and my legs are probably 50%
covered in these large and painful bruises and bumps, and this time I even have
about half a dozen “bonus” bruises on my arms, even though the disease usually
limits itself to the legs. Saying that I “hurt” everywhere is kind of like
saying that fire is “hot” – it is a significant understatement. So not only do
my legs hurt very badly, but they are swollen and covered in these horrible
dark red, black, and blue bumps that just look horrible. Needless to say, this
doesn’t really motivate me to get all dressed up and try and pass myself off as
pretty.
This
service call was probably one of the harder service calls that I’ve ever made.
Harder not so much for the work that had to be done, but for the stress that
was involved. The customer had major problems on their end that we had to iron
out, and then after we worked out their
bugs, we found problems in each of the three systems that my company had
provided. Other than the fact that my legs hurt so bad, the physical work
itself was not so hard, but the mental anxiety and stress of trying to
troubleshoot and repair all of these issues at a high profile customer like IBM
was a bit of a bear.
On
this trip, I was stuck away from home for almost two entire weeks and so I did
eventually decide to try and spend some time “as Kim”. Not much I could do
about the pain, but I was reasonably happy to find that a pair of tights at
least hid the nasty colors of the bruises. Believe it or not, this was the
first time that I have ever worn tights, and while I was happy with the look, I
wasn’t all that thrilled with how hot the darn things are!
The first time I got out was over the weekend, and I went to see a couple of movies. The movies must not have been terribly interesting though, because I can’t even remember what they were now. I do recall getting all of the usual grins as I was buying my tickets, drink, and popcorn though.
As I
was getting ready and “putting on my face”, I once again suffered from the
overwhelming feeling that I looked horrible. Every day I see more wrinkles, and
I’m sure that it comes as no surprise to anyone that reads my blog, but I am
pretty much obsessed with my hatred of what age has done to my face. In a pleasant
surprise though, when I was all done and got my hair together, I was actually
fairly pleased with my appearance!
The
next time I got out was when making the trip from Fishkill to Albany New York
the day before my flight home. Since I was booked for a 620 AM flight, I made
sure that I got a hotel near the airport the night before my flight, so that I
didn’t have to get up at 2AM to make the drive. Anyway, I made the one and a
half hour drive “pretty”, and wore a dress and shoes that I had just bought at
a Marshalls that week. Quite honestly, I don’t think that the dress flattered
me too much. I thought that the shoes looked awesome, but I had a lot of
trouble walking in them due to the height of the heels. With the fact that I
just wasn’t used to wearing heels that high anymore, combined with the way one
of my ankles was swollen with one of the bruises I mentioned, I was walking far
less than gracefully. I really should have chosen shorter heels even though I
very much wanted to try my new shoes.
So,
odds are good you wont be seeing a whole lot of activity on my blog for a
while, and for that I apologize, but I’d rather write nothing than to have
folks start thinking that I do nothing but whine and complain! When my skin
condition relaxes a bit and doesn’t hurt so bad, I’ll probably get back on the
horse. Until then, y’all have fun out there~!
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