I forgot to mention the funny part about winning bingo at Tortilla Flats on Monday night. I was already halfway through my second margarita when they passed out the bingo cards, but I was very careful to mark off the right numbers - if you called bingo and had it wrong, your entire party was disqualified. Two people had already called out bingo before me, but both were wrong. When I called out that I had bingo, we overheard from another table:

I am depilated. It took an entire tube of Nair and some leftover Sally Hansen, but it’s done. I pretty much never get all the hair off my legs anymore, but I did it. It’s the societal pressure thing…if I’m going to be romping around in a bikini (which I am), I don’t want to have hairy legs. I used to get waxed sometimes, but that takes both time and money. So instead I spent a couple of hours doing it at home for $7.99. My legs may be covered with hives and still burning in places, but I still got it done!

I’m a bit ticked off, though, because that stuff eats your fingernails, too. I spent so much time with the cream on my hands and washing and so forth, that my nails are now paper-thin and won’t last. This pisses me off because I’ve been keeping them nice for a few months in expectation of getting a manicure with a fancy color of nail polish. A says I can just get tips put on and it’ll be fine, but I’m annoyed with the Nair anyway.

We waxed my leg last night. I say “we” because A was the one doing the actual yanking, and I say “leg” because we only managed to do my right leg and only below the knee. Now, I’ve been getting waxed for about six years. I detest shaving so much, and I’m so bad at it, that it’s been worth it for me to spend the money to have it done professionally in a way that will last longer. But for some reason I decided I wanted to try it at home, and A agreed to help me. It was much stickier than we realized; she had to wash her hands afterward with mineral oil. The wax was also purple, which was weird - in salons the wax is usually honey-colored, but theoretically this had lavender in it, so they made it purple. I also had to take it back down to the microwave twice during the process, so next time we’ll probably just do it in the kitchen and keep the wax on heat by putting it in a pan of hot water. It took about as long to do that one part of my leg as it would have for a professional to do all of both legs, but it didn’t hurt any worse than getting it done in a salon.

Anyway, I got my usual hive reaction when we were done, and it’s still there almost 24 hours later. For some reason I felt like taking pictures of it, so now you can all see too.

I am so not ready to leave for Alaska the day after tomorrow. I have some errands to run around town but I probably won’t get them all done before I leave; one of them is picking up a script for a bone density scan. My doctor is in my town, just a couple of miles away, but I have to have the car home by 6pm tonight so :MK: can take it to work (the feelings of resentment that they won’t adjust schedules are back). I am going to call ahead on the way home and pick up Chinese food for dinner, and then I have to pick up two pairs of shoes from the cobbler. We are going to dye my hair tonight, and I have got to get the dark laundry done so I can finish packing. Plus there is a ton of other stuff that I want to do but it floats out of my head before I get a chance to write down what it is. I am just tragically not ready for this trip. Vacation is supposed to be fun, and I’m looking forward to it, but I’m also freaking out about the things that are not yet done.

Okay, the rest of this might be kind of girly, so I’ll hide it. Read the rest of this entry »

Scarlet Shimmer,
originally uploaded by woofiegrrl.

As promised, here is a picture of my hair after it was dyed red. It still just looks “dark” but you can see a bit of the color around the top of my head and the bottom of my hair.

Scarlet Shimmer,
originally uploaded by woofiegrrl.

You can get a better sense of the actual color in this picture.

I walk funny. All of my shoes end up with the heels worn down at at least a 25° angle, sloped down to the outside. This is a rather sharp angle, so I wind up having to get my shoes reheeled at least once before the rest of the shoe is anywhere close to wearing out. I have no idea why I walk the way I do, but it’s caused me to run down a lot of shoes - including soles that are mostly just flat. Because I don’t like buying new shoes all the time or getting them reheeled all the time, I’ve been thinking about trying to correct the root of the problem. I’ve been doing this by deliberately pulling my littlest toes up toward the ceiling while walking, but that makes the muscles in my feet complain. I find it very difficult to walk this way and I can’t keep it up for long. I don’t understand why the way I walk is wrong. When I walk, it feels normal - and yet I can tell by the wear on my shoes that it’s not! I’ve thought about getting custom orthotics made to force my feet into a more appropriate position, but those are so expensive and I’m honestly a little scared of them…I could spend a bunch of money and then they might not even work!

I’ve been browsing AlterMD.com [via savage love] this afternoon, looking at photographs of both male and female genital surgeries and reconstructions. The ones that are worth remarking on are a 15-year-old girl who had a labiaplasty (at fifteen!), corrections of some interesting penile deformities, and graphic photos of both MTF and FTM genital surgeries. (Warning: none of the pictures on this site are safe for work, and they’re probably not safe for the squeamish, either.)

After I finished looking at all the genital surgery photos, I clicked over to the cosmetic surgery pictures. This took me to a different site altogether - GaryAlterMD.com…I guess he doesn’t want his Botox injection patients getting scared off by wee-wees and hoo-hoos. Anyway, I was looking at the rhinoplasty page, which has front and side views of a woman pre- and post-operation. I thought “gee, she looks familiar” and went back to the transsexual facial surgery page. Sure enough, the first woman on the MTF page is the same woman pictured on the rhinoplasty page! Why is this amazing? Because the rhinoplasty page - the one sanitized for the public - makes no mention of the fact that this was part of transitioning from male to female. You’re supposed to notice the nose (it’s a nice nose, go ahead and notice it), not the person behind it, and that’s what the rhinoplasty page calls your attention to. When looking at the transsexual page many people would have “that’s a male” in their minds for the before picture…but it doesn’t matter for the rhinoplasty page. (Personally, I think she was attractive before the surgery, too, though I do agree the androgynous look has turned more feminine in the after pictures.)

I’m just really impressed at how well this doctor seems to treat trans issues.