Alive and sittin' (and rambling)

Hey Internet, long time/no blog!  What's new with you?  Oh that's pretty cool!

As for me, well it's mostly more of the same.  Here's the latest:

Due to some scheduling changes in my household, I have three mornings home alone.  I know some of you out there would think I'd be going balls to the wall with dressing.  I have been dressing more, but not like every possible minute.  You forget that I'm fairly lazy and some days that applies to not even having the oomph to dress cute.  But I will say that I've been taking decent advantage of the alone time.

Blue mascara?  Why not??

After not taking decent advantage of this alone time for the first few weeks, I've gotten into a decent groove and actually have been trying to incorporate makeup at least once a week.  The thing is, I get a much better shave if I wait 2-3 days so if shave day aligns with other things like life stuff and my job, then it's a makeup day.

I had not bothered with makeup for like a decade.  No makeup other than lipstick that is.  Like any other skill, you just gotta start small and keep practicing.  Something clicked with me and makeup a year or so ago - keep it simple and have extremely low expectations.  That has served me well.  And as such, the handful of times that I've done makeup this year, I've actually enjoyed it.

My makeup organizer

One other thing that has really helped with the makeup is for me to get it organized.  I used to have the stuff in a bunch of little cosmetic bags stuff in a tote.  I never felt like digging through it.  The engineer side of me kicked in one day and I bought an organizer for the makeup.  I love this thing!  I can grab one thing and head to the bathroom to play.

Last week when I wore makeup it took me 17 minutes to apply it.  I was not striving for perfection.  The quality of my front facing camera on my phone is decent enough but is also bad enough to not show my flaws.  Case in point, I do not shave my legs.  I do have lighter color hair and keep it trimmed and with suntan or darker hose, it pretty much does not photograph.  Similarly, as long as I don't do a complete hack job on my makeup, it looks good enough for pictures.

Anyway, like I said, my makeup expectations are pretty low.  I know the basics from having a friend who was an Avon sales lady many years ago (her husband was a crossdresser).  In fact, she hosted a makeup party for handful of us from our Tri-Ess chapter.  I know enough of the basics to get by.  People are pretty complimentary of the results on Flickr which is very sweet, but I know I could do so much better.  I know that the more time I spend, the better I'll get at it.  In fact, the last time I put on eyeliner, I think it was actually pretty decent.  I have a hard time keeping still and steady for that.

The last time I had two classic blunders.  First, for some reason I poked my eye with the mascara.  The result of that was a tearing eye and I had to keep wiping mascara off my lower eyelid.  The second problem was that I decided to wing it and darken my brows.  A year ago I bought this brow kit which has a stencil so you can hold it on your brow and paint the proper shape.  Did I use that?  Nope, I never have.  I just grabbed an applicator and applied some dark stuff.  Well, they were more Groucho Marx than Julia Roberts.  Thank goodness I wear glasses, I think they hid much of that blunder.

That's the other thing about my laziness with this stuff - did I wipe off the brows and start over?  Nope.  It wasn't too horrible, I just left it alone to get outside and take some pics.  They weren't that bad it turns out.

Speaking of taking pics, I take a bunch.  For those of you who do visit my Flickr page I'd like to know if I'm posting too many pics of a given outfit.  I try to limit it to at most 4 public pics and 4 friends only pics.  I only post that many if I'm really happy with that many different poses.  I don't want to wear out my welcome.

The other day my selfie stick was acting up on me.  When I came in I saw video recording.  Apparently, earlier when I started a video and clicked stop, it didn't stop.  So when I clicked start on for a second video it stopped the first.  Then when I thought I was stopping the second video it was starting one.  The second video was total garbage.  The first one is kinda funny so I posted it anyway.  And when I went to pull the pics off the phone, I saw that I had taken some 350 pics.  Really?  Am I that insane with my picture taking?  No, the selfie stick goofed up and shot 280 pics in burst mode.  LOL. 

Breaktime on the deck.  Next time at Starbucks?

There was one very cool thing that happened.  After I came into the house to work for a little while, I decided to pour a cup of coffee, grab my phone and take a break outside on the deck.  You know, dressed up and in makeup.  I cannot believe I've never done this before.  I gotta tell you, it was glorious.  Just me, doing all the same stuff online on my phone, but out on the deck on a cool fall morning.  It was delightful.  In fact, I edited and posted a picture on Flickr while I was out there.  As I was sitting there I realized that not only is this good for my soul, it was good practice for being me out in the world.  I was imagining that I was having this cup of coffee at Starbucks.

With my alone time right now, a goal of mine is to get out into public again.  Ideally, I want to get on makeup and an appropriate outfit, go to Starbucks and enjoy my latte there.  I need to work up to that, the first time I'll just use the drive thru.  The next time I might order in the app and just walk in to retrieve my beverage and scoot back home (or stop at a park on the way home).  Eventually, I want to go in, order at the counter and then enjoy my beverage in the store.  The coffee break on the deck felt like a nice stepping stone for that.

And that my friends is what I've been up to during the Fall of 2019.  I welcome your comments to this blog or feel free to drop me an email.  Thank you for reading!  Be well!!

Adventures - Dressing at the office - Part 1

So there I was dressed in a cute dress, pantyhose and heels going about my work business and I hear the office suite door being unlocked and I realized that it was Mr. Bob the cleaning man.  Oh sh*t!!!

Let's back up a bit.  I used to work in a small office with four other guys.  They all left promptly by 4:30pm and I typically left around 6:00pm.  Since we had a small office, I used to direct my online purchases to the office.  These purchases were 50% girl clothes & shoes and 50% computer or audio gear.  The coworkers used to give me a hard time as at least once a month something came for me.  Thankfully the FedEx guy knew us by first name and walked into our respective office to have us sign for the package.

The office that we had was in a complex that had five 1-story buildings with between 3 and 10 office suites inside each building.  There were common entrances, bathrooms, kitchen and hallways but then inside of our suite each of us had our own offices with doors as well.  It was a great office compared to these days of open concept cube farms.

I kept a box of clothes and shoes under my desk for dressing in that 4:30-6:00pm time frame.  With all the packages coming and going, I figured (hoped) that the coworkers didn't pay much attention to it.  I wonder if they ever looked in that box in the morning before I got there since they started earlier than me.  If so, they never said anything and that's fine with me.

The rest of the office building would empty out by 5:00pm.  Here and there I would walk the halls dressed up.  A few times I would unlock the back door and walk out the sidewalk to the parking lot.  That first time it was drizzling out.  I walked up to the glass door and confirmed there were no other cars in the parking lot.  I unlocked the door walked out and locked the door with my key.  I walked along the building to the parking lot shaking like crazy but thrilled beyond belief to feel the mist hitting my hosed legs.  I got to the parking lot and thankfully there was no one in sight.  I reversed course, let myself into the building and made my way back to my office.  My heart was racing and I was immediately struck with the thought, "OK, what next?  I want more!"

There were a few times that I took this one step further by throwing my guy clothes in a bag and after a walk around the hallway and ensuring the parking lot was empty except for them, I walked to my car, got in, and drove on home.  I was just as lazy back then as I am now with regard to wearing makeup, so for all these adventures, I was wearing none.  I figured for the drive home it was better that way in case I saw someone I knew along the way.  There is nothing like that feeling of freedom of driving down the road wearing a cute dress and heels.

The only hiccup with the 4:30-6:00 dressing window was the fact that Mr. Bob would come and clean the offices once a week.  If I remember correctly, it was Tuesdays and Thursdays, usually.  USUALLY!

There was that one day that I was dressed in the office minding my own business and snapping pictures with my phone propped up between a coffee mug and tape dispenser and my chair at the other end of my office so I'd fit in the frame to include my shoes.  I hate it when shoes are not in the photograph!  I do not recall specifically what I was doing exactly, but...

So there I was dressed in a cute dress, pantyhose and heels going about my work business and I hear the office suite door being unlocked and I realized that it was Mr. Bob the cleaning man.  Oh sh*t!!!  In that split second I thought, do I close my office door, lock it and yell out something to Mr. Bob to tell him to skip my office?  Wait!  My office has a closet in it, so I dart to the closet which I can barely fit into with all the old computer crap in there and quickly and quietly close the bi-fold door.  Yeah, that's the ticket, I'll wait him out in the closet.  I hear him calling out "Cleaning time..."

While I'm standing there in the closet I realize that all the lights were on, heck my computer screen probably hasn't locked or gone to sleep and my car is right outside the door.  He's gotta be wondering what is going on?  All signs point to me being there but there was no one there.  Don't mind the crossdresser hanging out in the closet - literally!  Holy smokes - I never got that irony until today writing this blog post.  Oh that's fantastic!

My heart is racing away as I am watching through the crack in the door as Mr. Bob emptied my trash and ran the vacuum through my office, turned out the light and moved to the next office.  And a few minutes later the hall lights go off and I hear him leave and lock up.  I did it, I didn't get caught.  Now how long do I wait before I leave the building to go home.  I don't want to bump into him.  I probably waited another half hour and then quickly darted to my car and left.

That was the only time I almost got caught dressing at that office complex.  The pictures I've included with this blog entry were taken at that office.

Have you ever dressed at work?

Patiently waiting...

It is a bit jarring going from having the house to myself for four days of living mostly full time to having the family back and waiting for me next one or two hour window of opportunity.  I get a few days alone maybe once or twice a year.  I don't NEED to dress all the time, but I sure like to.  This is a good time to take stock of the highs and lows of last week, have I moved the ball down the field at all, and what opportunities did I miss out on.  I also want to start thinking toward my next outing.

Why not spend more time like this?

It will be interesting the next time I dress to see if I feel content or restless as I'll be confined to the house.  I'll be hitting the back deck for pictures for sure!  I've been thinking about spending more time on the desk as opposed to snapping selfie's and darting back inside.  As long as no one is in my neighbors yard working, I'm safe.  I think it'd be lovely to start spending time out there for a coffee break from work or even take the work laptop out there and just be!  I just realized that the pest control people come around here and there, I had been keep on top of that schedule.

Speaking of the deck, something that I realized that I missed out on was spending some time out there after dark.  I could have easily done that as my neighbor goes to bed early.  I would have been out there without the lights on.  Gosh that would have been nice to light up the little fireplace table thingies and have a glass of wine.  Next time!!

I have been thinking about other things that I could have done last week and that I need to focus on for next time.  Here's a brief listing:

• use a drive-thru to get a burger or coffee
• a quick shopping trip to a corner drug store
• go to a movie
• have a meal at a restaurant
• shopping - but where?  Mall?  Burlington?  
• get out in the daytime

I truly want your input on this!  Where have you gone during your initial public outings?  What worked well?  What was a fail?  What did you learn?  Please share with me in the comments below.  If you have blogged on this, drop me a link to your blog so I can read all about it.

A few minutes after leaving Target.

Lastly, I have been tinkering with an idea for a couple of years now.  I know when I go out it will not be to the places where I frequent in guy mode - the risk is too great
for me to stomach.  So I have been thinking about where is Tanya's neighborhood?  The Walmart and Publix that I have taken night time pics in and the Target I visited are about 20 minutes from the house.  I consider this area to be one of "my" neighborhoods.  I have also identified another area where there are a few restaurants, Walgreen's and Startbucks which is 22 min from the house.  This "corner" is my new area of interest.  Now that Starbucks has the online ordering option, I plan to order a beverage, walk in and retrieve it.  The first time will probably just be a grab and go, but as I feel more comfortable, I plan to stay.  I'm sure it will only be a matter of time before I ditch the online ordering and interact with a human!  That's my next frontier. Waaaahhhhh?!?!?!?

Write me!  Comment!  Ask me a question.  Is this thing on?

Home Alone - Days 4 & 5, Epilogue

I stayed up way too late on Day 3, but can you blame me?  Therefore Day 4 was another one of those sleep deprived, just simmer kind of days.  I didn't take a ton of pics, but what I did take rank in the top 10 of any that I've taken.

Day 4 was really cool as I spent more time just dressed and enjoying that fact while I worked away at home.  There was not a mad dash for picture taking, there was not multiple outfit changes to try different combinations.  I just hit the point of being dresses and living that way for most of the day.

Talk about living out of a suitcase!

I had plans for the other side of life with a friend that evening and so I set about to repacking the totes.  It's a good thing I rechecked the house, there were a pair of black pumps still lingering in the kitchen, oh that would have been embarrassing.  My friend is someone I met at church and I would rather not open this side of my life to him.  In the context of living as a Christian I should not be afraid to be authentic with anyone, but let's save that topic for another day.  It's not simple.

I also took a good swipe at what shoes are going to Goodwill.  I had been holding on to these for years in hope of selling on eBay but I was too lazy to make that happen and honestly I just wanted to be rid of the baggage.  It turns out I took 15 pair over there on Saturday afternoon.  My clothes totes are still jammed and overflowing as I never did get around to a full clothing and shoe pow-wow to identify the bottom feeders for the donation pile.  I'll have time once school starts to get to that. 

So yeah, the trip to goodwill.  I had a huge open top box with 8 pair of size 12 heels for all to see, and the rest were in a paper grocery sack and a couple pair still brand new in their boxes.  I was a bit nervous as to who might be walking past while I'm unloading the box or worse yet that I drop it and the shoes scatter.  Thankfully it was totally low key, I plopped the stuff on the donation cart and was on my way.

I truly wish I had a local friend who could have adopted the shoes and helped her expand her horizons.  I tried to find someone in a couple chat rooms and had pictures up on Flickr of the shoes but nothing really materialized. 

Day 5 was super low key - I probably made five passes through the house to ensure that no clues were left behind.  I've made that mistake before and it had very unpleasant consequences.  It worked out in the end, but it was a hard few months that followed.

In looking back at my time home alone, I'm fairly pleased with how things shaped up.  I did get away from the house twice, not exactly the four times I was hoping for though.  I got rid of some lingering baggage of old shoes, I did organize my jewelry better, and I've made a plan for how to rearrange my totes better for future dressing sessions.

The deck has become the photo studio!

There is one other really cool thing from last week, I've turned the corner of being nervous about going out on my own deck to take pictures.  It's become second nature now.  Once I'm dressed I glance in the neighbors yard to make sure there is no one working in the garden or pool and if the coast is clear I'm out the door.  That feels like a huge improvement - there is no more hesitation.  In fact, the other night when I was leaving for Target, I hit the garage door and then walked to my car.  That means that my neighbors across the street or anyone passing by would have seen me in my garage.  I didn't mean to do that, but once I hit the button I said to myself, "no big deal..."

And I freaking went to Target!!!  Hot damn!!  I want more public time.  I don't know where or when, but I'll be posting about it here no doubt.

I'll leave you with a picture from Day 4.  I just adore this look.  After seeing nice pictures like this, I'm motivated to take down some of the earlier pictures on my Flickr feed.

Please feel free to email me, leave a comment here or check me out on Flickr.  I love make friends!

Home Alone - Day 3 - Get it together!

[Note to the reader, this blog entry is kinda long so get comfy...]

The first shoe pairing - 2.75" wedges too much for late night Target?

I hit the ground running the morning of day three, I showered and shaved first thing to be ready for anything today!  I dressed right away, you know, in cute clothes!  I took some photos and posted them to Flickr right away.  I did a some work; changed my skirt; photos; Flickr.

My plan for the day was formulated: run errands at lunch, supper, family chat and then hit the road baby!  I like this plan.


Well, the lunchtime errand plans were derailed with issues at work.  Hey, no worries, I'll run errands after my late afternoon call and before supper and family call.  BOOM more work derailments hit at 4:45pm.  Ok errands will wait for another day.

How's about these sneakers?  But I want to wear hose too!

The family call kept getting pushed back later too.  Drat!  It was almost nine before I was first going to get ready.  I hadn't done makeup in months and I had not thought through it yet for tonight.  rats.  Do not get derailed now!  Deep breath, I can do this.  I wash my face and take a close look in the mirror.  Shoot look at that stubble!?!?!  I shaved this am, WTH,  I never have stubble, right?!?!  I guess I never look THIS closely in the mirror...

Shannyn gives me great advice, "Scrape it again!"  Doh, I shave with a blade and have this 15 minute routine.  I'm not doing all that right now...  After a minute or two I decide to be flexible and "just scrape it!"  Fine.  Three minutes and done.  I was back on track.

My makeup is done at 9:49.  I get dressed, grab accessories, change watch band and phone cover to my girly ones; yes seriously!  And I'm out the door at 10:05.  Shoot, this is so late....  Well maybe it'll just be a drive tonight after all.

I arrive at Target and drive past the door as I hope there is not a cop patrolling the entrance.  Why would there be a cop there?  I dunno, so no crossdressers would feel comfortable shopping there at night.  OK, no cop.  Park the car.

The original plan was to buy a few things like pantyhose, orange juice and a birthday card - you know the essential pickup items that I needed before the morning.  But now that I'm here so late and I'm not sure how I'm feeling about this, I'm just going to grab a bottle of water and self check and leave.  No shame in that - this girl is thirsty.  I'd have shopped in public.  Big win!  To the store!

As I approach the door, I see that inside there is 12-14 year old boy bouncing a ball around probably wasting time waiting for his folks.  Oh crud - I don't want to have to walk past him.  And a family of five just walked out the exit door.  Well sh*t.  Keep walking.  Do it.  Walk into the store.  Just as I'm angling to find the first cooler to grab a water I don't turn at all.  I keep walking straight down the isle between all the womens clothes.  In that instant I decided that only one minute of store time was not going to be enough for me today.  To the...umm...just keep walking.  Posture.  Smile.  Not too fast.  Do I look like a guy?  Hey, this isn't so bad.


I walk halfway to the back of the store and turn down another main isle.  And way off there on the horizon at the long end of the store is the grocery section.  That settles it, I'm getting my damn orange juice.  Ok then, bee-line for grocery town.  I pass maybe a half dozen people on the way.  One employee says excuse me as she came barreling out of an isle.  I just smiled but she whizzed past so fast she missed it.

I reach the grocery section.  Oh there are the coolers.  Hot damn, time for a selfie.  Yes, I'm in Target, time to document it.  Oh by the way, at 10:30pm this place is rather deserted.  I find my OJ and start to head to the checkout.  How would a woman hold a bottle of OJ?  Do I look like a guy holding his OJ?  Just go with it...  To the checkout!

Parking lot shot a few minutes later.

And then I lose myself into just shopping.  Oh there is yogurt on this end cap.  Oooh, yeah I want some.  Do they have cherry?  No?  Too bad.  Oh let's check out these cold coffee in a bottle offerings.  Oh you know, the only canned and cold coffee beverage that I have ever liked is the Starbucks Doubleshot.  Every one of the dozens of others I try I've hated.  But that bottle looks cool.  I spin it around to read the calorie count.  150?  pass.  To the checkout!

But I'm going to walk right past the makeup isles.  ooh, maybe I could find the lip conditioner that I was going to pick up at Ulta.  I don't seem to find anything of the sort.  Oooh what's this eye brow enhancing brush mascara looking thing?  What's my color for that?  Nah, don't waste my money - ask about that at Ulta.  To the checkout!

Alright I'm getting close now.  But oh sh*t, two teenage girls just rounded the corner and are heading directly toward me giggling and guffawing away.  Duck into this isle and snag a bottle of water and buy some time to let them pass.  $1.99 for a bottle of water?  It's for a good cause, keep up the show.  They have not passed yet.  Oh what's this makeup item they have in the random checkout isle of crap.  Boom they have passed.  To the checkout!

As I approach, there is a single 30's woman in shorts checking out at the first one.  There are two employees doing work on terminal #3.  I duck into #2 next to the woman.  Be cool - home stretch, I got this.  When I go to get my card out of the wallet in the purse I feel like a damn klutz.  This is the first time I've used the purse and the wallet.  Meh, I'm sure it is fine.  All set.  To the car!

I was rushing to not look out of place taking a selfie.

I tried to take a selfie with the target sign behind, it didn't turn out and I didn't want to linger taking selfies in the Target parking lot at 11pm.  I'll drive somewhere else for that (and I did).

You know what, I was never really very nervous.  I've talked with lots of CD's over the years and read lots of blogs of people going out.  This was no earth shattering thing tonight; but it was!  I've said for years that I felt like I was at the top of the roller coaster and I just needed a push over the edge and I'll be on my way.  I feel like the ride is only beginning.



PS - big kudos to Shannyn for all the chatting, fashion & outfit discussion, shoe pondering, hose/no-hose debate, and the "just scrape it" from today. Good friends are hard to find out there, people!  Not to mention finding a cd/tg whose sensibilities lines up with your own.