I hit an important milestone this evening!

I’ve been working on getting my face clear for about a year now. I had six or seven laser treatments, and I’ve been getting electro done for a while now to finish up the rest.

This evening was the first time we were able to clear my face of all of the old growth! There’s still some hairs left and we’ll be at this for a while, but now what’s coming in is new stuff that’s right at the surface and easier to remove.

I had some really deep old growth hairs. My eletrco lady was having to dig down almost a quarter of an inch to get to them. Owwwwuch.

The hard part is over, and I look great!! ❤

Just a real quick note here because something kinda interesting happened yesterday, and I’ve decided to not talk about transition related things on a public forum like Twitter.

Yesterday my folks called. Part of the conversation turned to public transportation options that I have here in Alameda. (BART doesn’t go here.)

I mentioned that while I normally take the ferry, there are times when I take BART to get downtown. When I go to get to BART, I drive to the BART station, rather than take one of the buses. (There’s lot of options if I wanted to travel by bus!) My folks thought this was interesting and were asking a lot of questions about why I’d drive just a few miles to a BART station, rather than take the bus.

After dodging their questions for a few attempts I finally gave in and said, “the problem isn’t a logistical problem, it’s a social one. As a transgender female living openly, there are some things I just don’t want to do. Sitting at a bus stop in Oakland alone for 20-30 minutes is one of those things.”

They got really quiet for what seemed like forever, but I’m sure it was just a few seconds. Finally Dad said “Okay, that makes sense.”

Welcome to my world, Mom and Dad

Yay for life finally settling down!! 🙂

Last weekend I was very sick. I had been hit by a really bad cold. I don’t get sick often, but when I do, I really get sick. I had a fever of 99-something. It finally broke on Sunday evening. (I’m feeling great today, however!)

Compared to the last few weeks, last week was boring as heck, which is good. I needed some down time. Nothing epic happened last week, just life. 🙂 (Other than my actual hard license coming in from the State of California, something I very happy about!)

I have been sleeping well for the first time in ages. Last night I went to bed around 11pm and didn’t wake up till around 7am. That’s amazing, I never sleep eight straight hours like that. I guess that’s part of the reason why I’m feeling so good today!

It’s been like that most of the week, too, other than Thursday when I had some money-related drama going on which kept my head from shutting down as it has a way of doing. I hope this is a sign of things to come… I function a lot better when I’m not sleepy.

My attention for the rest of the weekend is on how to get my little bathroom into shape. This is the smallest bathroom I’ve ever had, and I’ve never needed so much room before. Right now I’m looking for something I can use to get me some extra shelf space over the potty.

So glad things are settling down. 🙂 I’m gearing up for a fairly calm summer… which I very much need after the crazy winter I had!

Just a quick followup to the last post! 🙂

This evening when I got home from work I had a hand-addressed envelope waiting for me in my mailbox. The return address was from the DMV Branch where I got my license at. I started to freak out a little bit, because who in the heck gets hand-addressed ANYTHING from the DMV?

When I opened it up there was a second hand-written note inside saying sorry for the trouble on Friday, AND a real copy of my interim driver’s license… and it says “SEX: F” on it. 🙂 🙂

I am more happy about this than getting my name changed, oddly enough. 🙂

I just finished up one of the craziest and maybe most important weeks in my life.

On Monday, after months of dealing with the insurance company and other nonsense, I finally started on HRT. It’ll take a few weeks until I can feel the effects, but the process has begun. 🙂

That was harder than it should have been because of mistakes made by my insurance company, but it’s all straightened out now. I’m reaping the benefits of moving to San Francisco on this, because I’m seeing a transsexual specialist now. Instead of hearing “you want WHAT??” from my doctor I heard “Oh, neat. Let me give you a referral to Dr. Julie,” and that was that. Phew.

I keep looking at the pill bottles… it’s hard to believe it’s my name on them, but it is. I’m very happy and excited and nervous all at the same time.

Tuesday and Wednesday were just normal days.

Thursday I went to the salon to get my hair done up nicely for Friday. 🙂 I love doing that.

Then came Friday. I took Friday off of work.

I got dressed up very nicely. I had on a very pretty blue skirt and a white blouse with blue flowers and butterflies on it. I also had on a cute rabbit necklace and my hair was still looking good from the day before.

At 9:30am I was in the Department 31 courtroom of the Alameda County court to get my legal name changed. They had some other business to attend to, but at 10:44am on March 28th, 2014 the Judge looked at me and said “Congratulations, you’re all set,” and then signed the order. The part I was dreading the most, going back to the main courthouse to get my certified copies of the order, didn’t even happen. They have a special clerk set up right there to handle things like this on the spot. I paid for six copies (at $25 each, ick) and happily walked out the door a new person. 🙂

From there I went over to the Social Security Administration to get their computer records updated. That was super easy, but took over two hours waiting in line. I had gone to their website the day before and gotten the form I needed and filled it out on the computer and printed it out. When it was finally my turn to see a clerk I handed her the court order and that form, and that was it. It was pretty painless, other than having to wait on a hard metal bench in downtown Oakland for over two hours.

Then, after that, I got into my car and drove 20 miles to a DMV out in the middle of an upscale part of the Bay Area. This is a trick I learned back in Ohio… generally the lines there are shorter, and the crowd doesn’t act like waiting in line in the worse thing in the world. (Which was true, the people around me were very pleasant! They were like “yeah, I hate waiting in line, but oh well.”)

After waiting almost two hours there (but this time on a comfy plastic seat rather than a hard metal bench) things started out okay, but then got kinda weird at the end.

When I got to the counter I laughed and told the lady that was working with me “sorry, this is gonna be complex” and handed her the form to get a new driver’s license, my court order changing my name, and the form my doctor filled out to let me get my gender set to female. She looked at the gender form and said “what is this? Where did you get it?” I replied “The DMV website about a week ago.” She’d seen the one for the complete status before, but not the transitional one. She ended up doing the right thing… she got out the manual and looked up that form and was like “oh!” and knew exactly what to do at that point. So in the end that was no big deal.

Then problems started.

Because it was getting late in the day, she sent me to go take my written test while she did the final paperwork. I handed her my old Texas driver’s license and all my paperwork and went to take my test. I finished the test fairly quickly (there were 36 questions on it, over half of which were on the practice exams on their website, so I knew what the correct answer was straight away) and scored really well. I got 35 of the 36 right.

They hand me back my paperwork, and my Texas driver’s license, only my Texas license had now been invalided. (As they’re suppose to do.) All they really do is punch a big hole in it, but it’s a sign to a cop that it’s no longer good. I knew this was coming, and frankly, I didn’t care, because the person on that ID no longer exists legally.

CA doesn’t issue licenses on the spot, they mail them to you 2-3 weeks later, just like how Texas does. When they went to issue me my temp license, the computer wouldn’t do it. It appears there’s a lag between when the SSA database and the DMV’s database sync up. Since the names didn’t match, the SSA check was failing, and the computer was kicking it out.

They were like “come back in 72 hours” and I was like “How? I don’t have a driver’s license anymore. You just invalided my Texas one.”

Things got pretty bad for me that this point. As they kept calling over supervisor after supervisor to try to “fix” it they kept saying things like “I can’t get his license to print.” I don’t handle this sort of thing well. I don’t get mad, I just shut down. My brain kinda goes into off mode when someone keeps doing that. The lady would say “his .. HER” license, at least, but the man they called over got it wrong over and over again and even called me by my old name once. (He corrected himself on that one.)

In the end it worked out okay. Finally it got escalated up to the person that runs the DMV. She took down all my information and said she’d put it into the computer herself on Tuesday morning and there’s no reason I needed to come back. They went into the back and came out with a pad of temp licenses and hand-wrote me a temp license rather than use the computer. It looks exactly like the one I got back in the 90s when I was 16. It doesn’t say “female” on it anywhere, but it has my correct name, so I’m happy.

I made things worse on myself by not eating or drinking anything for roughly 12 hours. I was just really worn out by the time we’d gotten there, so what would normally just roll off my back (a DMV employee being disrespectful? Ohhh, big surprise!) really got to me. I mean, it was 4:55pm on a holiday weekend. They just wanted to get out of there.

But in the end it was all fine. In two or three weeks when I get my new driver’s license in the mail with my new name and correct gender marker I’ll be very happy and most likely forget this whole thing even happened. 🙂

What a crazy week. I started it as a “boy” with my old name and testosterone in my system and I finished it a girl with a new name and estrogen in my system.

Back when I worked in IT I dreaded it when girls came in wanting their name changed. They’d always be like “now. nownownownownownow.” Guess what I get to be on Monday? 🙂

Wow! Okays, it’s been a while since I’ve written anything down, so I figured I might as well tonight.

Life in Not-So-Sunny San Francisco

I’m still adjusting to being in the Bay Area. The cost of living here is really rough. I almost feel like I’m living paycheck to paycheck (I’m actually not, it just feels that way), which is a change. I need to buy a plane ticket in April for RCFM, and then once in June for MFM, and at this point, I’m not sure where the money is going to come from. (Not to mention the hotel bills. Ick.)

Thankfully there are nice tools like Mint out there that easily let me see the big picture. While I did take on some debt when I moved, overall, my debt is still going down. I’m almost to the half way point paying off my car. Once I get there things will get a heck of a lot easier as suddenly the cash flow numbers work out in my favor.

I don’t use credit unless I have to. I let my checking account get pretty low near the end of a pay period, but it’s because I refuse to use credit for everyday expenses. I would rather go without than do that. I buy things online with a credit card, but then pay it at the end of the month.

Other than getting used to the cost of living things are going okay! I’m loving commuting via ferry. We had a big storm this week and I got caught out in it and had to walk about a mile in rain that was coming down so hard it was sideways. When I finally got on the ferry they came on the speakers and told us to sit down because it was going to be a rough ride, and it sure as heck was. I’d never been on a boat ride like that… I’m glad I don’t get sea sick.

Since I commute via ferry I only fill up my car with fuel about once a month. In Texas I was doing it about once a week or so, sometimes more. I have a TDI Golf which runs on diesel and not gas, so it costs me $50-55 a fillup. I’m not doing that very often now, but I am having to pay about $50 a week in ferry costs, so it all evens out, thankfully.

I’ve been on call a lot at work lately which has kept me from doing a lot of exploring. I’ve been shadowing the on call for the last few weeks, and it’s been great training. My first on call for real is in a few weeks, and while I’m not super ready, I’m not scared, either. I’ll survive, I just feel sorry for the person that’s backing me up. 🙂

New Job Stuffs

Speaking of job stuffs, things are going very well!

They tell me I’m getting up to speed very quickly. It’s been just over three months and I feel like I’m doing okay, but I still get left in the dark at times. We’re in the middle of a giant project right now (we’re moving a data center, with a pretty good financial hit if we don’t make it out on time), and I’m doing my part by doing what I call “running interference” and jumping in and answering questions when people outside my team have them. It’s good practice for me anyhow – if I don’t know the answer I can go look it up or figure it out. Since I’m purposely putting myself on the front lines the other members of my team are able to focus much better.

Our primary means of communication at work is IRC. I enjoy my job so much that I actually log into IRC even when I’m not “at work” just so I can see what’s going on. This is SUCH a change from my last job… at the end of the day I’d just walk out of the building and not want to have to think about work again until the following morning.

I was so burned out at the last place that I was pondering changing careers. What I learned about myself is that I’m just not cut out for life in a large enterprise. There were more people on the eCommerce team at NI than there are in the entire company where I work now! We all know each other and since there aren’t all of the silos we’re able to actually get things done.

Turns out I actually do still love working in tech, I just needed to get back into an environment where I could actually work on tech things and not always have to deal with politics.

I was one of the top system engineers in IT at my last gig, but not so here. I’m just in the middle of the pack now. I work with a few folks that blow me out of the water in terms of raw tech skills and it’s a really humbling experience. I’m really out-geeked here, and that’s okay. I think I’ve hit a point where I don’t need to be the alpha geek, but I want to be respected and liked for my skills and who I am, and I think I’m gonna get there again.

Transition Stuffs

I really don’t talk about this stuff much because, frankly, it’s a very personal and private thing, and I don’t like sharing it with the world unless there’s a reason… but here’s a few of the highlights that have happened in the last few months.

I got my letter giving me permission to start HRT from my therapist a few weeks ago. I have an appointment with my doctor next week to talk about this. I’ve been stuck in insurance company hell just trying to get that appointment, but I finally figured it out. I’ve never had an HMO before (we had a PPO in Texas), and I’ve had to learn how to work within it. The appointment next week is for an exam and then a referral to a transgender specialist to go from there. I’m guessing I still have a number of weeks to go before I’m actually able to start HRT because of the insurance company, but at least the ball has started to roll.

My court date to get my name legally changed is at the end of March. This has been a really long process. I got it started the day after I moved here (I think it was Jan 3rd), and I’ve had to wait almost four months for my court date. In the middle there I had to run an ad in the paper saying I was doing so, etc. This is a very expensive and long process, but it’ll be here before I know it.

It’s so weird knowing that four weeks or so the name I’ve been calling myself for quite some time (and go by at work) will actually be my name. And no, I’m not changing my name to Bunny. 🙂

The State of California allows you to get the gender marker on your ID changed by basically just asking for it, so when I go to get a new driver’s license after my name change I’ll be sure and turn in the form to get that changed as well. In CA there are two options for gender marker changes. One is the permanent one you’re most likely thinking of, which requires “medically appropriate treatment,” and a form by a doctor stating this has been done. (It’s purposely left vague. What is considered appropriate is not up to the court to decide, it’s up to your doctor.)

The second option, and the one I will be going after, is a temporary change. To get this one you have to have your therapist fill out a form stating that your identify and your demeanor match the gender marker you wish to have, and that’s it. There is no medical treatment required. This change is good for five years. At the end of the five years you can either reapply and get it again, or if you’ve had medically appropriate treatment, get it switched to perm. When it’s in the temp state the only way you can tell that it’s not a perm change is by looking at the DMV computers. The license you’re handed at the DMV looks the same either way, only the DMV knows the difference.

I’ve come as far as I can go with the laser on my facial hair, so I’ve switched to electrolysis to clean up what’s left. I found a lady that’s very trans friendly to work with. She’s a throwback to the 1980s. She doesn’t use computers, has fairly old equipment… but…. she’s been doing this for 30+ years and is really good at it. I’m not the first trans client she’s had and I’m sure I won’t be the last. That’s exactly what I wanted. The cool part, for me, is that she still charges 1980s prices. (But she’s cash or check only, no credit cards!)

In case you’re wondering, electrolysis hurts. OMG does it hurt. It’s not as bad as the laser, but my face swells up for a few days afterwards, and I go once a week. I had a lot of blonde and white hairs left that the laser won’t touch, so she’s cleaning me up. It’s working, it’s just gonna take a while.

I’m an emotional wreck some days. (Most days.) You can see a little bit of that here on LJ and some on Twitter. This is a really difficult time for me, and I’m doing to best I can to deal with it alone. I’ve only told a very small handful of people at work that I’m about to start HRT, and they’re totally sympathetic. I hope it stays that way. I joked with one of them yesterday that “there are gonna be a few days when all I want is chocolate and stuffed animals. If you don’t mind me just checking out those days that’d be great,” to which she said “of course.” Outside of the two people I’ve told I am keeping my mouth shut. This is a deeply personal thing for me and I’m just keeping it to myself, but I do like having a few people that understand and can cover for me when I need it.

One last thing to wrap it all up. 🙂

This morning I Tweeted that one thing I really like about my job is that my quirkiness doesn’t make me a weirdo. It makes me unique and valuable to the team. I really do mean that.

A few weeks ago my entire team was here in San Francisco. (Most of them work remote, I’m the only one that’s full time in the San Francisco office.) They were so nice to me the whole week. One night when we were at dinner together as a team I told them “Thank you for being so understanding. This is a really awkward time in my life and y’all are making it so easy on me and I really, really appreciate it. I know you got more than you bargained for with me, but you’ve all taken it with grace and it just means a lot to me.” (When I interviewed I was presenting MOSTLY as male and had my male name on my resume, but only because I didn’t want them calling my employer and getting “Uh? There’s no one here by that name??” I *DID*, however, have a cute purple bow in my hair and used my normal rabbit icon in Skype when they called.)

I am extremely grateful to be working where I am. It’s very easy to be a weirdo when you work for a company full of them. 🙂

Till next time!
Bunny <333

Tonight was the holiday party at work. It’s a tradition where I work to have the holiday party after the holidays are over, and it was tonight.

It was a typical kind of work party with an open bar. There were a few gaming tables (craps, roulette, and blackjack), a bar, and finger foods being served made by really good chefs. Fairly standard faire for this sort of thing.

I went out of my way to look pretty. I had on a nice long black skirt, a cute purple shirt, a purple sweater, and black tights. I also had on a range of jewelry as is quickly becoming my norm. I also took a shower this afternoon and washed my hair really well and got it all fluffy and pretty, as well as put on makeup just right to cover up all the shadow that I had (which is a lot right now sadly). In other words, I went outtta my way to be as girly as possible.

I don’t do well at these kind of parties. I don’t handle crowds well and it was super loud. I pulled out my DB meter (just an app on my phone) a few times and it was consistently 85-92 Db in there. (Pretty darn loud.)

I am very soft spoken. Even before I transistioned I had a pretty soft voice, but now it’s really bad. I have to make a point to speak loudly or else people can’t hear me unless it’s a really quiet room. (I’ve changed my voice as best I can, and moving it up to a higher pitch killed the volume quite a bit.) This means at parties like this I feel like I have to yell to be heard. (Which, for a really shy person, is hard.)

As I’ve talked about before, I’m really shy, to a fault. I will not stand up for myself. See the post about Bothering People if you want to know more.) This came to bite me in the butt a few times tonight.

Despite the fact that I was at a party with my co-workers, and I am completely out at work, a few of them kept calling me a guy. (Remember I was dressed as girly as I know how, within the realms of a sorta formal event.) This made my heart sink real low. One guy introduced me to his wife as April (my real life name) and then kept on calling me a guy the rest of the time. April is a pretty girly name, and I did my best to look feminine. I also come across just completely girly in every way in the IRC chat at work.

This happened several times tonight. The problem is that because I’m just so darn shy and won’t stand up for myself, I wouldn’t go back and correct him. I know all I have to do is say “it’s ma’am, actually,” but I just can’t bring myself to do it. And then I don’t and I feel like crap for not standing up for myself and because I failed to pass under the most perfect conditions possible.

Lots of good things happened tonight. I got to finally meet some people I had only worked with on IRC. I also got to introduce myself to other people and made sure to point out that I’m the “new girl.” Some of the ladies that I *DO* work very closely with on a regular basis came up to me and told me how nice I looked. Lots of nice things. But overall I feel like tonight was a huge failure.

I really need to stop beating myself up. I have a problem with this. 😦

I guess my therapist and myself will have a lot to talk about next week.

My move to the Great Barrier Reef of San Francisco is complete!

The move was not pain free. I chose the moving company that I did because they were able to come pick my stuff up on December 26th. (I had to be here by Dec 29th.) That would have given me a nice three day drive to get here, if I left after they were done on the 26h. My plan was to go to see the Grand Canyon and see what I could see along the way. I even paid a little more because they were going to get there on the 26th instead of the 27th like everyone else had said.

I get up early on the 26th, and as I packing up my bedroom I get a call saying they’re not going to make it to my place that day. The dispatcher said that my contract said they could come on the 26th or 27th, and they were going to take the 27th. I was not happy, but that’s what was on the contract, so I couldn’t really argue much.

On the 27th they didn’t show up until almost lunch time, and when they did, it was just a crew of two guys. The last few times I had moved a crew of 4-5 showed up – most of them would pack while the rest loaded. In this case it was just two. I was not a happy camper. They didn’t get done until 8pm that night. (I will give them props for not stopping for a break the whole time, however – they just kept right at it until they were done.)

So on the 27th I just took off after they were done and made it to Abilene, TX. At least I was able to get a few hours out of the way.

On the 28th I kept on driving and got to Flagstaff, AZ, and then on the 29th I was able to get the rest of the way here. That was a killer two days of driving, but I had made it and I’m here now.

Once I got here all I had was an air mattress, my clothes, a few plushies, and a small TV. I went to Home Depot the next day and bought a TV tray and a folding chair, and that’s what I had to work with for two weeks.

The moving company was late getting here. They had until Jan 11th to deliver, but of course they didn’t show up until the 13th. I need to file a claim with the moving company to get some money back because they missed the delivery spread, but I haven’t done it yet. (At this point I am just ready to be done with this and don’t really want to talk to them anymore, but I know I need to be assertive on this because I spent a lot of money with them and I should get what I paid for.)

My house is still a mess. There’s boxes everywhere. I was shadowing the on call person last week so I really didn’t get a weekend. (We had issues last weekend that needed to be dealt with.) I hope to get a lot of unpacking done in the next few days, but my feet are killing me because I walk a lot and I need new shoes.

Until my house feels like a home again I won’t call this move “100% Done,” but at least I’m here and settling into my new life and role.

Christmas came and went without a lot of fanfare. My birthday is two days before Christmas (the 23rd), and it too was pretty tame.

I drove up to Arlington, TX on Christmas Eve to see my folks and stayed overnight until Christmas Day. I left in the middle of the afternoon to come home to Austin so that I could get ready for my move.

My grandparents came over on Christmas. They really are getting old. It’s kinda hard to see my Grandmother in the state she’s in (she has dementia), but I am happy to get to see them nonetheless. Lunch consisted of stuffed shells and tamales.

Christmas was one of the few times that I’ve gone around “in drag.” (Which to me means Men’s clothes, not the other way around.) I’ve chosen to not come out to my grandparents. At their age and background growing up, there is nothing good that would become of that. My grandmother already has dementia – her brain just can’t cope with change. And my Grandfather… well I don’t even want to find out.

It was weird not carrying a purse after I’ve gotten used to it. There’s a lot of changes I’ve had to get used to, but carrying a purse isn’t one of them. Purses pretty much rock.

My birthday was just a normal day, more or less. I set my title on SL to “Birthday Bunny” so at least people would know it was my birthday. I did the same on Twitter and I received a bunch of people telling me happy birthday. That was kinda neat. Also found out that I share a birthday with a bunch of people on Twitter, too.

I can’t report a list of gifts that I received, because I didn’t receive any.

I took myself out to dinner on my birthday over to a salad bar I like. It was good and I was able to say my goodbyes to a number of the staff there that I had befriended over the few years I was a regular there.

Christmas can be a rather difficult emotional time for me. It makes me wish I had a family of my own. It’s hard to watch other people have lots of fun with their families and stuff on things like Twitter and LJ, when I don’t get to participate. Maybe someday, I suppose.

One interesting thing about me is that I have a crippling fear of bothering people. I’m not sure where this fear came from.

Normally this really isn’t a problem. I guess it leads to me being pretty polite because I’m scared to interrupt people and all that… but right now it’s an issue.

I have had a whole lot on my mind lately. There’s a lot going on in my life. I’m kinda scared to go talk to people about it because I feel like “Oh, they’ve heard this all before. I just sound like a broken record. I doubt they want to hear me talk about this anymore. I’d better shut up so I don’t bother them.”

This is one reason why I’m using LJ a lot right now. Here I can post whatever I want to post, and if someone doesn’t want to hear it… they can just not read it.

I’ve gotten myself really down because of this. I want to go talk about things. I want to talk about some of the things that are going on in my life. I just want to talk to someone because I live alone and a lot of times I just don’t talk out loud… but I’m constantly scared of bothering people. This leads to me feeling all alone and isolated.

Even if they tell me “It’s okay Bun. I don’t mind,” it still bothers me. I start asking myself if they’re only telling me that because they think that’s what I want to hear, or do they really mean that?

Sigh. This is hard for me and I really have no idea why.