Odds and ends - nothing uneven or ending about them.

 

 

First, I won't say much about a conversation I had today.  But if handled wrong, it could have led me (and the other party) down a rabbit hole of accusations, as someone else's problems reflected issues related to me that should have been addressed in the past.  Luckily, I managed to avoid the rabbit hole, and not get stuck with indirectly referencing my past.

Next, something my immediate supervisor said at the office today leads me to believe that they are gradually planning for my exit.  If that's true, I won't cry much.  In less than a week, I'll probably be happy about it, as I will have the freedom to book a "bucket list" cruise.  No, it's not the cruise I really want to take.  Instead, it allows me to get most of what I want out of a trip to Hawaii without breaking the bank.

Now that I've talked to the custodian firm for my 401k, I'm ready to take a couple of one-time distributions.  However, I must talk to my tax lady and a financial planner before I start this process.  If I were closer to the age I could start collecting Social Security without early penalties, I'd do so.  However, it pays for me to take some money out of the 401k, and let my SS benefits grow by 8% per year.  But this is not the only issue I have to deal with.  I need to find out what are my best options involving Medicare, as well as whether I can find affordable Long Term Care insurance.

Last night, I went to visit an ex-girlfriend.  No, I'm not talking about my most recent significant ex.  Instead, I'm talking about an ex with whom I broke up about 20 years ago.  We are still friends, and this was the first dinner we've had together since before the pandemic hit.  So we had a lot to catch up on - and catch up we did.  Although I had tasty leftover BBQ ribs to take home, they didn't make it to my car.  Sadly, I left them on top of the parking pay station before I went upstairs to fetch my car from the lot.  It was just as well, as the food in this place was a touch salty, and I didn't need to have any more.  If anything, I'd have liked to chat more with my ex.  Hopefully, next time, her husband will be there as well.  He is a great guy, and I know that they are better together than we ever could have been. 

Lately, I've been looking at taking a Hawaii cruise.  The 11 day cruise tour offered by NCL is way over priced, as they have taken actions which should help reduce the spread of the virus on their ship.  Unfortunately, reducing available cabins to limit the number of passengers has also resulted in excessive price increases.  So a cruise I could have taken for about $5,000 (after all expenses) before the pandemic would not cost me about $12,000+.  There is no way I plan to spend that kind of coin for a 10 day cruise tour with the route below:

Instead, I am looking at the following cruise being offered by Holland America.  This seems to be a much better current value, I could get 18 days on a cruise ship, but only 6 days in Hawaii instead of the 10 I'd get on Norwegian.

This cruise would still keep me in the $5,000 base.  But I would still need to deal with transportation, gratuities, and excursions.  Yet, this is the trip I will likely take, as I don't see the Norwegian Cruise becoming cheaper anytime soon.  I mentioned this to a friend, and she sent me a link saying that people of our age shouldn't be going on cruises at this time.  The one issue I have regarding this cruise might be the air travel needed to reach San Diego.  I hate flying, with all the TSA headaches.

However, I have a plan to help me minimize the effect of TSA on my travels.  If I can't avoid security theater, I can make sure I'm not on stage for long. There are two TSA Trusted Traveler Programs that I am interested in: Pre-Check and Global Entry.  For the extra $15, I'm leaning towards Global Entry - even though I've never flown outside of the USA.  (I have a niece that now lives in London, UK.)  With a trusted traveler number, I can breeze through security - and reduce the number of interactions I have with people who can hassle me at key points on my trips.  So, do I spend the $85 for Pre-Check, or do I spend the $100 on Global Entry?

As I now write this entry, I am watching "When the levees broke", a documentary on Hurricane Katrina and our government's inadequate response to the needs of the people in New Orleans and the rest of the region.  Why do I mention this?  We recently started evacuating American Citizens (and a few others) from Afghanistan, and we're showing a similar ineptitude.  Americans have short memories, and we do not learn from our collective past.  A hundred years ago, we suffered from the "Spanish Flu" pandemic, and we forgot those lessons.  And now we are making the same mistakes we made a century ago.  I've come to believe that we need the power of big government, but limit the size of the bureaucracy to allow leaders to implement quick and informed decisions.  But, if we get rid of the bureaucracy, we run the risk of incompetent, corrupt leaders steering America towards an authoritarian government.  

You'll note that I've rambled from short and simple things to ideas of a complex scope in this entry.  My brother complains that I can't help but talk of politics, and he is right.  As long as humanity has existed, our ability to communicate well has affected us at both micro and macro levels.  Communication skills and thought are involved in each of the items mentioned in this entry.  In the first case, I understood the hidden message meant to trap me into a discussion on someone else's terms.  In the case of the 401k, it illustrates my need to communicate with people who have information I need for planning my future.  In the case with my ex-girlfriend of 20 years, I realized that I couldn't communicate well enough to have a good relationship with this woman. With my cruise, the internet facilitates communication that I would have once depended on a travel agent to supply for my decision making.  And lastly, regarding government, we see that these issues affect all of us at both micro and macro levels.  There is a limit to how much information each of us can process, and not all of it makes us feel comfortable.  Last night's conversation may not have made me feel more comfortable about things which have happened.  But they made me more appreciative of what I have accomplished in my life.

 

 

 

An acquaintance has cancer.

 

The following is from an acquaintance in our TG community that I only had the pleasure of meeting once....

Ok so I guess it’s finally time to tell the whole story.

 

Let’s get the big thing out of the way first: About two and a half weeks ago, I found out that I have stage 3 lung cancer. That means it’s treatable. Stage 4 means get your affairs in order and say your last goodbyes. I’m hoping I get through this but really who knows?

 

What it means in the immediate practical sense is that my new full-time job is seeing doctors, I mean like basically daily. It also means I have very little income. Not a great combo as you can imagine. To top that off, I managed to blow out my voice last week so talking on the phone isn’t easy, bordering on the near-impossible. It’s starting to come back but soooo slowly. 

 

I’m fortunate enough to qualify for some social programs but juggling all the appointments isn’t easy. On top of all that, I thought I’d lost my debit card so I ordered a new one, and am now waiting for a replacement. While I wait, I can only pay for things with PayPal. Also not easy.

 

In some ways, I’m lucky. I have good friends who check up on me to make sure their friend is not only still alive but not cracking under all the pressure, which I’ve come much too close to more times than I’d like recently. The people at the hospital and my regular doc and therapist have been wonderful and an incredible help in helping me learn what I need to know to deal with all this. 

 

It’s so hard, and thus far I’m not doing that great a job of it. Sometimes, it gets a bit overwhelming, and if you’ve been reading my recent posts, you’ve seen what I’m like when that happens. 

 

The truth is that I still don’t know how to deal with all this, though I am learning. Today was my first and I’m told the worst day of radiation treatment. Chemotherapy begins Wednesday. That’s gonna suck.

 

I’m not exactly living on Xanax but I am taking it more than I used to, to a point where I’m becoming a little concerned about becoming dependent. I know I won’t OD. I know this drug backward and forward. I do, however have an addictive personality and was a pill popper back in my punk days. I use Xanax when I need it. It just seems like I’m needing it a little too often right now.

 

It’s just not a good time for me right now. The treatment will be six weeks, five days a week. Like I said literally a full-time job. I can’t shake the feeling that things are going to get worse before they get better, and I’m not even sure they’re going to get better. To merely say it’s fucking scary would be putting it mildly.

 

Now that my closest friends and family know, I figured it was time to tell everyone else, you, my extended family. I have no idea how this is going to shake out, other than I’m going to do my best to try to keep my shit together and get through this somehow. 

 

I know what comes next and yet I don’t. This is hard.

 

This acquaintance showed me that if one has a will, she can find doctors who will perform her Gender Confirmation Surgeries at a low price. She suffered a lot of discrimination because she is transgender.  Her personal style may have isolated her from some of her family - our mutual connection mentioned that this acquaintance didn't keep up with her correspondences.  (This forum is not the place to discuss that issue.)  But I will say that our mutual connection seemed thankful that I forwarded this message on to her.

 

I would have liked to know this person better before she moved away from the NYC area.  Hopefully, she will recover, and be a stronger person on the other side of this adversity.  Until I know more, my thoughts and prayers are with her....

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

                   

It was nice to see a friend today.

 

Today, I met a friend for lunch.  Although we met via OK Cupid, we knew from the beginning that we'd be friends, and not much more.  And this is a good thing.  She would be a little bit out of my league if we had tried to start a relationship.  As friends, we can overlook things that we could not overlook in a romantic partner.

My friend and I have been trying to get together for a while.  Her health and her business has gotten in the way, and I hadn't had the opportunity to get together with her since the beginning of summer.  So we decided to meet somewhere in the middle (we live 90 minutes from each other), in Beacon.  

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No, we didn't go to the restaurant above  If we did, we probably would have gotten very sick. In fact, we may have needed the following maneuver performed on us if we choked on our food:

Instead, we went to a place called Meyer's Olde Dutch for an early lunch.  It WAS FILLING!  My friend, who barely weighs 100 lbs. soaking wet, was filled on her salad.  While I was filled on an oversized, overloaded bacon cheeseburger.  Yum!  I'd go back there again. Over lunch, we talked of many things, such as one Catskills area property not selling.  My friend had sold her place for just under $1 million, and within 18 months, it has recently been flipped for $1.700,000.  Right now, a place either has to have character, enough vacant land to build a place with character, or be cheap enough for someone to tear it down to build a place with character.  The unsold place fits neither of these conditions,  So it remains unsold - for now. For the most part, we talked about her business and her upcoming vacation with her boyfriend.

Next on our list of things to do was picking up some gluten free goodies for her boyfriend and his daughter.  For this, we made the mistake of walking a little over a mile to a store on the other side of Beacon.  And neither of us thought the heat would be getting to us.  To make things worse, I was wearing the wrong shoes for this walk, and my right foot loudly announced that this was a big mistake.  We sat down for a few minutes, then returned to our cars.  Hopefully, she will be able to make her overseas trip soon, as I just learned that her destination country has enacted new quarantine requirements for United States residents.

Once done with my friend, I drove to Poughkeepsie to pick up some stuff at Target.  I've been intrigued by the above dress for a while, and to drop $20 to see how it looks on me.  It looks comfortable, and it is something I can wear on hot summer days.  After I was done with Target, I stopped into Walmart to pick up some food on the way home.  It was strange to see an empty space where the in-store McDonald's used to be. But I guess Mickey D wasn't making enough money in their Walmart outlets, and prefers to make its money off of franchisees by renting out the land their franchised restaurants sit on.

Eventually, I made it home and decided to take a nap.  Even after 2 hours of rest, I didn't feel rested.  I could have easily gone back to sleep.  But I decided to stay awake and call up MWL to chat for a little while.  While on the call, one of my OK Cupid ladies decided to call me (very late), and I wasn't going to break off my call with MWL to speak with someone for the first time.  I was glad when MWL decided to end the call, as both of us were tired after our long days.  Hopefully, I'll have more energy for tomorrow's Brunch Meetup in Peekskill.

Guess what came in today....

 

Guess what I unexpectedly found on my doorstep today.   A box!!! 

But what could be in it?  You may ask....

Inside, I found two boxes like the one below:

 

 Hmmm...  This is getting interesting.  Could it be something useful?

So, I opened one of them, and saw the following goodies, plus an instruction sheet:

 

This looks amazingly familiar....

But what could it be?

 

Yes, miracles do happen!!!   It is the replacement control unit for  my air conditioner!  YAY!

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As you can see, some disassembly/assembly is required.  And I do not plan to do this while the NYC Tristate area can expect several days of 90+ weather.  So the boxes will sit for a while, waiting for a "cooler" day for me to work on this project.

 

Getting out and about as Marian

 

Like many transgender people, I was very nervous when I went out in female clothing for the first time.  To transmit femininity, I always erred on the feminine side of things.  But this wasn't always the best thing to do.  Like many people of our "tribe", I had to learn how to be comfortable in the feminine equivalents of male garments.  In short, I had to learn how to wear feminine trouser like garments that say "female" without overdoing it.

These days, you'll find me going out in a pair of women's slacks, with a feminine top.  It says "female" without having to shout it out loud.  In the ugly picture above, you'll note that I am wearing leggings under that top.  And they are comfortable.  Now if only I had the curves to do what I wear justice!  Depending on what I wear, I can look good - or, look like a watermelon packed into a sausage casing. Either way, I am not happy with my appearance.

In the end, none of us look as good as we hope to look, nor do we look as bad as we fear.  I live in an area that tolerates people like us as long as we do our best to blend in.  I'll never be that pretty, but I make my way around.  And that may be the most important thing....

Interesting Reads

 

 

I'd like to  describe the job I now will likely hold for a few more days (at least, until my immediate supervisor returns from her Hawaii vacation.)

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Unlike my position at the US Census, people at my current job see me as an oversized older woman named Marian.  Only one person in HR officially knows my legal identity is that of a male named Mario.  Most of the tasks in the office are highly repetitive.  For example, I did QC on scanned documents.  This meant that I scanned the documents for blank pages, poorly scanned images, and other flaws that would require operator intervention.  Now, I perform document indexing.  This means that I will inspect a document such as (Disciplinary Suspension of Rudolph Guiliani's License to Practice Law) and then enter indexing data into a database where this document resides.  In both cases, I had the opportunity to do a little more than just do my job.  I took the opportunity to learn things people wouldn't normally learn by keeping my eyes open - and then keep my mouth shut about the details of what information to which I once had access. (I'll never be able to talk about personal data I may have gathered as part of my duties at the Census Bureau, and I treat the non-public data I've seen on this job in the same way.)  Privately, I might say a little bit more than what I've mentioned here - but not much.  The reason I reference the disciplinary action taken against Rudy Guiliani is that this is a public document, something which has been published in the New York Times.

Unfortunately, I can not say much more than I have done so far.  It has been a good experience for me, as it has shown me some of my shortcomings and my limitations.  Since I expect to be leaving this job soon, I am glad that I have been there for 6 months (so far), and I wish them all the best luck going forward.

Three meetups in less than a week.

 

This isn't going to be a long post.  But it notes several things which have happened in the past few days.  Take them for what they are, and read into them what you will:

1. Sunday, I saw someone at a meetup who tried her best to keep me away from several meetup groups she claimed as her own.  It was a pleasant interaction, and went better than I expected.
2. Wednesday, I decided to drop into a meetup where my "Hiking Partner" from Thursday night games was there for Trivia night.  I only wish I could have gotten there earlier.
3. Thursday, I went to a new meetup held on City Island.  It's been over 25 years since I've been to this restaurant, and the food was good enough to want to return much sooner than that.

In all cases, I went to these meetups in Marian Mode, and it was easier for me (and the group) for me to appear as a female.  At the Sunday meetup, I was surprised that one person complimented me on my dress AND noted that I looked happier than I've looked in a while.  (Compliments will go far with me. 😃)

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Over time, I've developed a more natural manner being out and about as Marian.  I'm hoping that newly out transgender folk can see my posts and learn from my hard experience....