Dotting I's and Crossing T's.

  I don't know how I stumbled onto the above picture of Alfred and Alice E. Newman.  But it illustrates how the true essence of an individual will show through, no matter the gender presentation of that individual.  In my case, my true friends see me as the same person in both male and female modes, although they are sometimes surprised when I show up in the alternate presentation. - - - - - - Planning my gender presentation can be a hassle.  For example, I have a book at the library that I want to pick up, and that requires that I show myself in Mario mode.  Yet, RQS and I plan to get a Mani-Pedi this weekend, so I will need to present myself as Marian for my visit to the nail spa.  This is a typical scheduling problem for me, as I have to figure out ways to do some things that require Mario to be present, while I will be out as Marian later in the day.  However, once I'm wearing nail polish, I'm stuck in Marian mode for the better part of a week (or more). I have other sc

  This is a sample page taken from my online calendar.  It shows the appointments I've made where I show myself as Marian and the appointments where I show myself as Mario.  You'll notice that most of the time, you'll find me out and about as Marian (shown in green). While at other times, I am out as Mario (shown in red).  If I didn't have this calendar, I'd screw things up and appear as Marian when people expect to see Mario. Controlling where and when people see a selected gender presentation is essential for many transgender people who are testing the waters of being out to the world.  It is not always easy- especially when one is employed and has only so much time to present as one's authentic self.  However, my use of an online calendar makes this a manageable issue, instead of one that could blow up at any time. There will always be some risk when one lives in both masculine and feminine spaces.  People are expected to live on one side of the gender binary

  As most of my readers know, I live most of my life as a female these days.  Yes, I'm legally male, but that isn't stopping me from enjoying most of the things that have been traditionally reserved for females.  And yet, there are still things that keep pulling me to spend more time as a male - such as romance.  For that reason, I have my daily calendar marked up with "Red" and "Green" days.  Today, I noticed that I have some "Red" events scheduled after I get home for two weeknight evenings, and have two completely "Red" days scheduled over the weekend. A while back, Fran told me that her decision to "Out" herself to the world happened when she had a meeting that required her to present as a male, but showed up for that meeting as a female.  Since I want to control my "Outings", I've had to develop a good method of scheduling my time to retain that control. (This is part of why I was so pissed off at someone a co

  Tonight, I thought I was supposed to see CWS.  But we got our signals crossed - I thought we were supposed to meet after work, and she thought it was supposed to be tomorrow night.  So I ended up eating Burger King instead of some nice Pad Thai. - - - - - - It was just as well that I had changed into Mario mode to see CWS, as I ended up going to Target to buy a replacement electric shaver.  My old one has a piece which is always falling off, and I lost one of the cutting heads when this happened today.  Given that the shaver is several years old, I figured that it was worth my while to buy a better shaver and use the old one for "rough cutting" when needed.  (There are times where I want to shave off 5 a little o'clock stubble, and I don't want to get the good shaver clogged with both makeup and "beard" shavings.) I think it will take a while to break in the new shaver.  That's good, because it has most of the bells and whistles a person could want - a

  The above picture has nothing to do with the subject of this entry.  I just thought it nice enough to be posted, and a reminder of travels I once made before the pandemic changed everything. - - - - - - Normally, game night is two weeks on, then two weeks off.  This month, the host made a minor mistake in scheduling, and we ended up getting together one week early.  That is more than OK with me, as I was there in time to play a game from the beginning AND play it until it came to a natural end. The host and hostess of game night are good people, and I have signed some papers which should benefit their children if something bad were to happen to my family before I die.  Hopefully, this situation will never come to pass.  But it if does, I know of two people who will remember me even more fondly than they do now.  And this couple accepts me as Marian, not caring that my legal identity is still Mario.... - - - - - - I've been going to game night for the better part of a decade now,

  Yes, a rainy morning puts a damper on doing things outside.  Given yesterday's activities, I only had enough energy to do laundry on a dreary day.  So that's what I did. - - - - - - After I had the chance to wake up, one of my newer acquaintances gave me a call, and suggested that we meet for an early dinner. And that we did, out in Jersey.  Too bad that I couldn't stop by TCL's place afterwards. But that's another story. I hope that I will be able to see my new friend again.  We have similar ideas about what is needed in a good relationship.  However, there are drawbacks which could get in the way of things.  So we'll see what happens in the long term. - - - - - - Later on, I received a text from FCM.  She wanted to get together again. So I'll have to figure out some time that I can squeeze her into my schedule.

  It's hard for me to keep in touch with people when I'm tired all the time.  No, others do it with a schedule like mine.  I'm just a bad time manager these days.  I can't imagine how I did it when I worked in the city and had two or three less hours in my life each day to work with.  But I did. Part of me is trying to juggle too many things at one time.  I want to see as many of my friends as possible, and schedules often don't work the way they need to work to make this a reality.  For example, one friend, MW and I were supposed to get together this weekend.  She forgot that it was going to be Easter, and that she'd be having her dad, her boyfriend and his daughter over that day.  Additionally, she had to help out her ex, who had to go to the hospital for emergency surgery.  Another example is KOL.  LK and I make time for her, but she has a nasty habit of letting things in her life get in the way.  (I won't go into KOL's family issues here, but they ar

  I seem to be burning the midnight oil lately, not going to sleep early enough and waking up too early.  Work is not easy for me these days, as it's hard to stay awake and do a mind numbing job.   - - - - - - Last night, I figured that I was going to go home, relax a little, and enjoy my Zoom meetup with my Texas friends.  Yet, it seemed like Grand Central station to me, as I did not manage my time well.  This is a skill that I think I've lost in the years since I had to work a 9 to 5 job.  (The census had a schedule, but it was not one of these jobs.) The big question is: Will I get used to a schedule where I have to be up by 6 am?  I need to do all the things required of me to present as a female when at work.  In many ways, I am living the life of a woman with a body that was born with the wrong equipment.  And this keeps getting in my way in subtle things such as having to shave every morning.  Yet, there are only a few things I'd change, one of them is living half and

  Well, I started off the day with scheduling issues, and things got worse from there.  No, not "worse" in the meaning of getting closer to a train wreck that's going to happen. But worse, in the idea that things had to drop so I could have dinner with a friend. - - - - - -  I don't get the chance to see my friend Maria up in the Kingston area.  She's the type of friend who accepts me as Marian or as Mario - and has always been good to me in the short time that I've known her.  So, when she invited me for dinner, I knew I was going to drop several balls. First, I was likely to be late in calling FH to confirm our plans for tomorrow. Second, I was not going to be able to make my Zoom meeting with my Texas friends.  Lastly, I was likely to be late to chat with a new online friend in Wappinger's Falls. It was worth the schedule disruption to have dinner. Maria's house is in an old section of town.  Her house was built with materials you can't get anym

  At this point, I'd like to keep my readers up to date on what's going on in my dating life.  For the most part, I've been seeing two ladies, and have had a hard time making a decision between the two.  The woman known as MH has largely gone by the wayside, as I think she has made enough excuses to signal that I am not dating material.  But that's OK, as I couldn't juggle schedules enough to see more than two women on a regular basis.  Yet, this doesn't mean that I won't consider seeing a new woman. Before I met my last girlfriend, I stumbled into one of the women who I regularly met in a women's meetup group on OK Cupid.  Recently, she swiped right on my ad where I'm in a masculine presentation.  So I responded to her.  If she were to be interested in me, I'd have to reveal myself quickly. But this person is not someone I'm really interested in meeting right now. Recently, I swiped right on a retired woman lawyer's ad who lives Manhatta

Most of my life these days depends on a schedule I make online.  I use one color for my events which I must attend as Mario, and one color for my events that I must attend as Marian.  And I've considered using a third color for events I can attend in either mode.  Things are complicated, but not as much so as when I was working full time as Mario. - - - - - - Over the years, I have met other transgender people (like Fran) that while living lives split between male and female presentations, they have had an almost impossible time keeping their male and female lives separate.  Living as one gender made things many times easier, as in the case of Fran, when she finally chose to be "out" to the world. I am not yet at that stage, and I might not ever get there due to the priorities in my life.  I'd rather have a romantic relationship which limits my ability to live life fully in my preferred gender than to live as Marian 24x7. (Too bad my most recent relationship

Today was going to be an unscheduled day in the middle of days where lots of things were marked on my calendar.  So I decided to write another entry to be made public on a weekend, so that I'd have the freedom NOT to write about anything and yet have something for people to read that day. Unlike my last blog, I don't intend to have 20 canned entries waiting to be published on days I can't write anything of interest.  Often, I let many of these pre-written entries go stale, and then had to perform major surgery on them to bring them up to date.  Then, still more were unfit for publishing because what was true at the time was made false by events that happened after the entry was written. - - - - - - Although my alarms woke me up at the usual time, I didn't start to get moving until after noon.  Remembering that I expected a package from Amazon today, I looked out my door to find it was delivered as expected.  So I opened the package, and wrapped the locking dia

No picture can do this artwork justice - it is too large to be captured in a single picture.  To appreciate it, one has to get close to these giant pieces of rolled steel, walk around them and inside them to appreciate them for what they are.  As much as I think the artist ( Richard Serra ) is an asshole for his reaction to people who rejected his work ( Tilted Arc ) because it interfered with with their movement in a congested area of Manhattan, I will give him credit for having made interesting, engaging art with large pieces of steel. You might be asking: why am I starting off with this picture?  It's because my weekend started off with a museum visit with GFJ.  And it's something we used to do more of in the early days of our relationship. - - - - - - GFJ and I planned to take the same train into NYC.  That meant that she had to make it to Beacon by 11:00 for an 11:10 train, and I would have to make it to Cortlandt 30 minutes later.  GFJ was expecting that I would

December.  It's the best month to visit New York City, as all the store Christmas decorations are on display, and it's not too cold to enjoy walking around the neighborhoods.  But it's also the busiest time for people like me, as we use this period as an excuse to excessively schedule our time to meet as many people as possible. - - - - - - As most of my readers know, GFJ and I have broken our routines for the last 5 years.  Whether we will go back to where we once were is up to her.  All I can do is be available. Therein lies an interesting conundrum for me.  Given what happened about a month or so ago, I have started to book my weekends independent of her. Since the beginning of September, our schedules have grown a little out of sync with each other.  I've had my cruise, she's had her vacation in Florida, she will be spending an upcoming weekend going to a baby shower and to see her son, and we will likely be apart for the holidays.  Do I want to invest

Last night, I saw GFJ for dinner to talk about the problems in our relationship.  Some of you can guess what they are.  But for now, I won't discuss them here.  I want to give her enough room to process her feelings - and discussing them here may not help things. - - - - - - Waking up this morning, I felt rested, but lethargic.  Checking my blood sugar levels, I knew why - they were a little bit lower than usual for this time of morning, and I knew that it was time to have something that would pass for breakfast. Once I took care of this, I figured that I'd check my email.  I received a notice from a TV show filming in NYC that I had a confirmed ticket for tomorrow.  This was no good anymore, as I had dinner scheduled with Vicki #1. So I sent a response cancelling my ticket, and continued checking my emails.  It's amazing how much low-priority email is getting tossed into the spam folder.  Since I see them on my cell phone before they are folder-filed, I know that

Sometimes, I screw up things on my schedule and forget appointments.  Today was one of those days.  This was the day that the monthly Arts Westchester arts ambassadors (read: volunteers) meeting was held.  And due to the confusion that's been messing around with my life lately, I totally forgot about the meeting until mid afternoon.  AARGH! - - - - - - Last night, I put on my CPAP mask around 2 am, but didn't get to sleep until (at least) 3 am.  When I awoke at 7:45, I didn't feel as if I had enough sleep. And nothing was going to help - even if I laid in bed for another couple of hours.  So, I got out of bed without checking my schedule for the day and took it easy. Eventually, I decided to look for my Freshly delivery - and it was not on my landing where I expected it.  So I got dressed and found it in front of the mailboxes.  I was too tired to complain, so I brought the box upstairs, loaded the meals into the refrigerator, and then went out to my car to clean i