Xmas came early for Anna

Well, I didn’t get any proper presents of course, but I got the next best thing, a present from my doctor. A few days before Xmas I had to see my GP about prostate shrinking medication that they want to put me on. I asked the doc if they shrink other bits of the body, and so he looked the drug up in his book. I’m on hormones. Probably not as strong as the ones they give us when we want to transition, but hormones never-the-less.
The GP said ‘discomfort in the breasts with some growth can be experienced.’
‘That’s OK’ I said.
At the chemists, a woman came and saw me, and said I was not to let anyone near these pills who is pregnant, especially if the protective coating has been rubbed off. I didn’t realise these drugs were so powerful. All of which pleased me no end. It will all take several months to happen though, the shrinking – and I hope, the growing. When I first got diagnosed as genderdysphoric, and taking to all things girlie like a duck to water, I tried to enlarge my breasts with exercises and massaging. It did make a bit of difference, but my nipples seemed to be in the wrong place – so I stopped. I guess, they’ll still be in the wrong place, but who knows – LoL.

I didn’t think I would do my usual under-dressing and make-up while the kids were about, but in the end I thought – ‘Why not?’ and did it anyway. I just had to make sure I didn’t leave any underwear about. As you know, my make-up consists of a small amount of eye-shadow, not enough to show, but enough to be known to me. People don’t see past the male body, it seems, and don’t notice girl stuff, as they aren’t expecting it. I’m very tempted to escalate the coverage, but it’s probably sensible to remain low key – LoL.

I wish you all a super 2012. Keep those lovely blogs coming – I get so much fun reading them. Hugs. Anna x

Merry Xmas and a sad Farewell

I’ll start by wishing you all a happy and merry Xmas, and a super 2012. Although Xmas is a religious event for a lot of religions, it was actually borrowed from a Pagan festival I believe. I must check with my youngest, who is a Pagan, and they share gifts a few days earlier or later than we do. Anyway, don’t let the religious significance spoil the party if you are not of a religious nature – and whether you have a god or not, may you all be guarded and guided safely through the next year, in one way or another.

We have been close to the gods recently, because my adorable, but stubborn, clever, interesting, frail, aggravating, funny, and nice and normal 96 year old mum, passed away. She suffered from short term memory loss, which is a form of dementia. It started four or five years ago, and went from benign to chronic, Two years ago she couldn’t remember anything beyond the last five minutes – except really old stuff. We used to get her talking about the old days, and she had loads of amusing tales, and this took her mind off the present. Because she knew she couldn’t remember anything, she was in a constant state of anxiety, as she was always imagining that she had forgotten something very important. Telling her she hadn’t only calmed her for a few minute, and this shortened to seconds as time went on. !6 months ago we put her into a care home, and she improved a bit with the constant care, because she was eating and drinking better.The desease took it’s toll though, and in the last few months she ate and drank less and less, until it was virtually nothing. Her last few weeks were tough on her, and her carers too, watching her die.

Mum on a good day, after a day out from Park View Care Home

So I’m mum-less. We had a nice funeral service, and her ashes are going to be buried at a pretty little church on the downs, at Crundale. I thought I was ready for this, but seemingly I wasn’t. Every nice word, and nice wishes from friends, close or from the net, sets me off. If nature had been kind (and I realise that nature is neither cruel or kind, not having a soul), she would have died when she was more healthy. Mum was in Kent, and we live in Wales, so we went down for a week at a time, every six or seven weeks or so, and we still had some lovely moments with her, even in the last few months. Some visits were heartrending of course, depending on how she was on each day. If our last visit before coming home was a good day, then that was nice, but when the last day wasn’t,……

I never got to tell her about Anna, but I don’t think she would have batted an eyelid. She made up her own mind about things, and our kids adored her, and she them, so her Xmases with us were lots of fun, and she had no problems with them being gay. Mind you, Jay didn’t either, but then she can’t cope with my genderdysphoria.

Life goes on, and we will be fine in while. I’ll do what I do best, just roll with the feelings and weepy bits, until a new status quo settles down, and we’ll remember and reminisce over her life with much laughter.

Thanks to every one who has left nice comments and thoughts on Facebook and Transliving International – you are all wonderful, and I appreciate your caring immensely.

Hugs Anna x

Anna gets a Holiday

I always take some girlie stuff on holidays, and usually under-dress on the journey home. Wearing anything at all on other days isn’t possible, as getting things cleaned is out of the question when we are away from home. I use eyeshadow daily, but only subtle shades, and not a lot of it so no one notices. I have my lipstick, which I’d never dare use, but I have it with me, just like a normal girl would, plus some tights of course.

The make-up cache

We arrived at our self catering cottage on a Friday evening, and nipped out to Lostwithiel for some food for the next days breakfast, before an evening of games and bed. Saturday we went to Bodmin for a big shop up, and passed a school (I think) with a model railway exhibition going on, so of course I wondered if Angie had been there. We had some nice days out when the weather was good, about one day in three, and lots of beautiful autumn colours about. We chose this time of year because it was the first two weeks of the cheap season. Our little group concisted of Jay, Emm and myself. Emm is Jay’s older sister by a few years; she’s a bit batty, but is lots of fun, as she likes the same kind of stuff that we do, and she’s mad keen on photography. We compare pics using the Wii picture show utility, (it’s so brill) each evening. The good news was – Emm likes watching the soaps. Jay, you may remember has gone off the soaps, and so I get very little unhindered time for doing things Anna, but with Emm leading, the soaps were back on.

The bedrooms etc were down stairs, so I headed there, spent a minute or two doing a sedoku, and then stripped and put towel on, girlie style of course. I put some lipstick on; filed and buffed my nails; plucked my eyebrows back into shape, and got the silky mitt and dehired my hands and feet and knees. I usually use wax strips for the hands, knee, and feet, but I hadn’t thought to bring any. Finally, I finished removed the make-up and showered. Back up stairs, when Jay asked what I’d been doing, I replied that I’d laid on the bed doing sudokos, and had a shower – perfectly truthful. I got four lovely sessions of pampering myself Anna style, and it felt so good.

The only drawback was – hardly any wi-fi for the phone. The laptop picked it up, but I have no Anna passwords on that. I got all your updates, blogs and Facebook stuff via emails, but no wi-fi meant no replying to anything. Perhaps I shouldn’t whinge, as it was a super break.

Hugs Anna x

Waxing is the new paint

Have I mentioned this before, waxing has the same problems as painting? I do my hands, feet, knees and underarms, and then I don’t want to stop; it’s so addictive. My legs are naff, as I’ve been banned from doing them anymore, but so much hair has stopped growing completely, that the few patches left are – well, naff. Even Jay thinks they’re naff. The vee in my chest is kept short by plucking them as hairs reappear; that’s one area that hasn’t been banned yet, although Jay keeps a close eye on it, so it doesn’t expand – LoL.

I tend do things on the spur of the moment, as I’m not brave enough to plan rebellion in advance, and every so often I’ll wax the legs anyway. Jay thinks I shave my knees and legs, so I haven’t told her otherwise. My dream Xmas present would be a body wax – fat chance of that.

We are off to Cornwall soon, and we’ll have a super time, as we always do when we’re doing things together, it’s just that there’s a bit of togetherness missing in this important area. As usual, I’ll have a collection of girlie stuff, which I can’t possibly wear or use, but having them near me, feels like a normal thing, like normal girls would have, and makes me feel normal too – LoL.

I had an email from a girl, who I’ll call Andrea, as that’s one of my favourite aliases, asking about a family photo on the Bob Flickr site. I passed her on to my sis-in-law who is the family genealogist. S-i-L tracked down the missing link, which pleased her no end. She had trouble to begin with, until this lass mentioned a pub her granddad owned or ran, and success quickly followed. S-i-L rang for a chat today, and told us about her successful work. It appears Andrea was born male, and has changed gender, and it seems this is a first for the family tree – LoL. Andrea and S-i-L had a giggle, as before long Andrea can have all previous male stuff removed from her history – ‘That’ll mess up things for future genealogists’ she said.

Tafarn Ty Gwyn

A pub in the village near the Menai Straits. Lannfairpwllhwyngyll has three pubs, two Chinese takeaways, a fish and chip shop, and Pringles which has a nice self service restaurant. We’re not going starve here.

A Transistor radio in the hand

We were sitting around the dinner table, having had a delicious roast lamb cooked by Jay. We had some GUKs (grown up kids), their partners and my niece-in-law and her partner, and we were reminiscing about our teens. Jay said that she used to visit my mum every evening with her trannie in her hand. Transistor radios were called trannies in the 1950s, the latest invention, and Jay, working as a nanny to our neighbours, (we lived on the country, and our nearest neighbours were a couple of hundred yards away), had used her wages to buy one.

Everyone burst into peals of laughter, and made fun of Jay. Me, I just smiled, thinking that she still has a trannie as we often hold hands and cuddle. I looked across the table and our niece (who is 50 plus and has a figure to die for) was looking straight at me. I’d been throwing in girlie mannerisms, as I try to do anyway, with my long fingernails in view, and I suddenly wondered if she had put two and two together?

I’ll never know most likely. How can we capitalise on these moments? Sadly, never, I guess.

Apple lion shoot

So much for saying how nice my iPhone is, but I upgraded the Mac Lion, and the phone to what ever, 5 something or other, but now the App store doesn’t recognise me, even though I’m using the same name and password. God, I hate you &£@@&£ software writers.

Don’t get me wrong, the phone is brilliant, it’s just Apple being as rubbish as Windows software writers. I won’t use the word developers, because that implies the @&£(:s are intelligent. I would so like to plant an un_ladylike fist into someone’s monitor – actually, that;s just a dream, I don’t like killing bugs and slugs – LoL.

Pictures in WordPress

Apologies for being so ‘off the scene’ for a while. I’ve taken on the job of being a moderator for a group in Bobsville, and I’ve found it to be so much fun. As I’ve gone along, I’m having to learn things about Flickr; formatting text; HTML codes and EXIF data etc. I don’t have to understand them, just to know where they hide and how to use them. This has been a lot of fun, and I’m a photo-holic anyway – if I was pretty, I’d be in front of a camera all the time – LoL. I spend loads of fun time doing things with my own photos, and just looking at every one else’s. Since the day Jay caught me dressed, I’ve toned down the amount of Anna time, and in fact, I’ve gone out of my way too, (as a sort of PR exercise) to make it obvious that I’m not sneaking Anna time. I suppose, as I’m back here chatting, PR is now discontinued, LoL.

We’ve had loads of lovely visitors over the last two months, Sis-in-law stayed for five weeks, that I’ve been posting on the Bob Blog. I have found the picture insertion routine with WordPress very clumsy, and they often end up in the wrong place. I’d uploaded a lot of pics on the Bob Flickr, and I thought they would be ideal, so I was wondering if the HTML code in Flickr would paste into Worpress. It is BRILLIANT. And they all go Exactly where I want them. Medium size pics are a nice size, and don’t need clicking on to enlarge them, but if you do click on a picture, you go to the original in Flickr, so you get extra info and stuff.

Buffy Bear, showing how it looks

If you are a whizz with computers and things, then you probably won’t find this information handy, but there may be other girls like me, who will find this easier and nicer.

My next trick was to see if it worked on my parallel blog on Blogger? Blogspot? or what ever, I can never remember the silly name of the site, Anna’s Blogmobile anyway. I know, I don’t really need a back-up anymore, but I so don’t want to dump it. Anyway – my password wouldn’t work. It took a week of requests – questions, answers, refusals to give a password change link, denials that I even existed, when I found an old email with my proper user name, not the log-in name which was my email addres, and hey-presto, link materialised, and in I went. So I’m cooking on both blogs again.

Hint of the week – those emails they send you – the verification ones, Keep them. If I’d kept mine I would have been back in straight away.

As Anna, I’m still under dressing; Jay keeps manoeuvring me so I’m out of her sight as little as possible, (I’m sure I’m not imagining it, but I may be of course); I still think as Anna 100% of the time, and I still have yearnings to be out and up front with everyone. My lovely sis visited for a few days, and I was saying that I’m torn between being Anna with her, which could ruin her and Jay’s relationship if her knowing ever came out, and making her relationship with Jay safe by cutting Anna off from her.

Have fun every one, enjoy being yourselves. Hugs Anna x

How to get a Dressing Down

I’d hardly got the words out of my mouth – about not needing to crossdress – when Jay headed out for the health centre. The poor girl had tipped nearly two litres of nigh on boiling water down her legs, and as her DIY treatment wasn’t working, she decided to get help. She did it four weeks ago, and the nurses have done a super job with dressings and things, so although her skin is very red still, it looks pretty healthy now, and is pain free; still some weeks of creams and light dressings before she’s fully fit though. I took over all the house stuff, cooking and all, for a whole week, which was so nice to do; it was just so sad for the reasons behind it. She soon got her hands back on the kitchen though – LoL.

Anyway, Jay heads to the health centre, and I thought, ‘Hey, let’s do some dressing’. It was just a quickie thing, so no wig, bra, or make-up. I opened the windows to make sure I’d hear Jay come back, and busied about doing girl things in the kitchen. Yeeeeess, you know what’s coming. I didn’t hear the car. Jay walks in and we sort of had a chat. It seems I look like a prat, and every time it gets more repulsive. Every time? it’s only the second time in eight years she’s actually caught me en femme; she’s such a drama queen. After that chat she didn’t say much for a few days, except please and thank you when I got her anything. Hence I shut down Anna’s communication with the net, and stayed away from the computer, and anywhere where she couldn’t see what I was doing, just to stress what a ‘good boy’ I am. I’ve had enough of that, so here I am.

I’ve been keeping up to date with you girls as usual as I get your posts on my iPhone – that phone is just so gorgeous, I can’t believe it took me so long to get one. AND – wait for it, I’ve got Dlan in the house. Ok – I wanted it because my wi-fi is so naff, the hobby room computer (upstairs) wouldn’t log on and get Anna on the net. I went to PC World, and they had a 2 plug Dlan with it’s own wi-fi pickup; he did say anyone could set it up!! but the extra wi-fi link sounded brilliant.

So, I’m aback at the house, plug it in, and —– nothing. The window that should self boot didn’t. I left it for a week or two, uninstalled it, re-installed it – nothing. BUT a few days later, I’m sitting here, and click the browser, and POW, 2 milliseconds later it’s on the net. I didn’t believe it, not until I’d gone round half a dozen sites and found new stuff there. Don’t ask me how it happened – it just did.

The wi-fi? nothing. Then my tame IBM relation visited, and Jay said “Andy, ask Pete about your plugs”. We are sitting at the table, post meal, chatting as you do, and Pete asked me for the code to the wi-fi that works, but not upstairs. Fifteen minutes later he’s found the address for the Dlan, which he later showed me on the computer. So both wi-fi work, and I’ve set the password for the new one, it now has the same password as the week wi-fi. How cool is all that?

Have fun every one. Hugs Anna

Soaps put the skids under Anna

Well, sort of. Jays stopped watching the soaps – my usual time for doing things as Anna, cross-dressing, nails, practicing make-up and stuff. I haven’t actually done any cross-dressing for ages, but I’m sure it’s not just the rubbish story lines that have got up Jays nose, I reckon she thinks it’ll curtail my Anna stuff. She’s wasting her time. Well actually not, as we’ve been going out for walks in the evening, and doing some geocaching. I like doing things with Jay, and I’m still Anna inside, so at the moment it doesn’t matter – but watch this space.

I’ve always got something femme on, and I have femme clothes in various hidey holes – including my male underwear drawer in the bedroom, suitably hidden at the back of course. I’ve been using my green eye-shadow this last week, and it looks so nice, especially after using the brown for so long.

I was wondering if not beeing keen on cross-dressing at the moment, is because I would really like to go on a shopping spree for some fresh clothes. As Anna, I so adore shopping, so that means all the time really. I guess I need some unchaperoned time again – LoL.