We Have Been Laughing All Evening Because My Wonderful, Sweet, Lovable Idiot Cat Fell Asleep In The Crook

Lip service

There’s only a handful of hairs left on my top lip; everything else has been obliterated via laser hair removal and electrolysis. All the same, I get pretty self-conscious about the few surviving stragglers and run a razor over them every now and then.

I just did that now, and somehow managed to lop the top off of two hair follicles (which are of course, as is their want, bleeding profusely).

HOW?! This is like playing Minesweeper with a 5 x 5 grid and literally one mine in the bottom left corner, and still somehow hitting it on the first try!

Eyeliner

I ran out! I have one of those twisty little plastic eyeliner pencils, and this morning the tip broke off and that was it - no more eyeliner left in the pencil!

I'm so excited; I used up my first eyeliner pencil!

“Oh boy! It looks like I’m going to make it through the entire night without a single nocturnal panic attack!”

The nefarious 6:41am:

Identity crisis: addendum

As a follow-up to my earlier post:

I have a friend that lives in Texas. He is eighteen; and was in the process of learning to drive when the pandemic struck. He recently visited the state DMV to renew his learner’s permit; and much to his surprise, was given a full driver’s license instead.

I get it; they are trying to keep the system working under a difficult set of circumstances. All the same, my friend is attempting to continue on with his driving education, for what he holds in legal capability, he lacks in actual practical experience and confidence.

This is what it feels like to become an entirely different gender at 37. I’m legally a woman, but I have no idea what I’m doing.

Animal friend #1: Jexer

For the previous six months, I’ve been at the center of a triangle with PTSD on one edge, work stress on another, and transition-related depression on the third (itself a mix of “Why did I wait so long to do this” and “I’m never going to escape the fact that my biological starting point is ‘male’“).

During my first flashback, I instinctively grabbed my (then three) animal friends for support. This became a reoccurring pattern - I would clutch them tightly during each subsequent flashback; hold them at night; and sit them next to me as I worked.

It’s difficult to tease out whether the comfort they bring me is some kind of holdover from childhood (there’s a certain logic in the idea that the trauma I experienced was as a child; therefore the antidote would also come from that era); or if it’s the result of a kind of mythological girlhood (one that never actually took place, and exists purely in my head; a phenomenon that warrants its own post).

Either way, they have been very effective and keeping my anxiety at generally manageable levels during a trying time.

I wanted to talk about one of them in particular: Jexer, my hedgehog friend. He was delivered to me by a crane machine in the Isle Of Wight when I was eight years old; but this suggests that he is some kind of possession, which could not be further from the truth. He’s my friend, and I love him dearly.

(You may notice that he has a blue nose; this is because the original was lost in an incident involving a much loved but at that time, also rather destructive puppy. The new nose was a skilled repair conducted by my dearly missed grandmother.)

Currently he goes everywhere I go. He sits on my lap when I am at my desk, and when I am driving. There is a special compartment in my bag reserved for him when I have to go into places.

I had a little blanket made for him; because he is a British hedgehog, and quite unaccustomed to the extremes of cold weather that pervade the North American continent.

All of this sounds quite insane, of course; but that’s how things are - when life threatens to drown you, no raft is unwelcome.

If you see this you’re legally obligated to reblog and tag with the book you’re currently reading

Charcuterie

Ah, my spouse knows me so well! For Valentine's Day they got me my own charcuterie board, and I had to put it to use right away!

Ahhh, I love them so much! ❤️

Unexpected HRT side-effect #12

In my former life, I was not above eating the occasional calorie-laden novelty food item (”Try our Kitchen Sink Burger!”) or having pizza for dinner and leftover pizza for breakfast. And this was all good and well.

Post-HRT however, I have learned (the hard way! Oh, oh, very much the hard way!) that I can no longer overindulge in this fashion. My gastrointestinal tract is a great deal more sensitive and will rebel in most spectacular fashion if I try to force-feed it some kind of burrito that inexplicably counts among its contents an individual’s annual supply of cheese and over one pound of french fries.

As much as some might mourn this change, I see it as a positive - now I’m eating the way that frankly, I should have always been eating. Still, not something that I was anticipating from a therapy the primary purpose of which is to make me look more girly!

Blue Hair

I popped into the mall today to see if the meat and cheese stall had bacon jam in stock. (They did not). I was deep into the act of perusing the other products when a tiny voice rang out:

“I love your hair!”

I turned to see a little girl of perhaps five years, dragging her parents to a standstill just to impart this critical message. “Well - thank you!”, I replied.

Then, in the indomitably declarative fashion that only young children can manage, she responded with: “IT’S BLUE”!

Yes. Yes it was.

It’s been a long and arduous day; but this one interaction was an absolute highlight, and one I will cherish!

Yet another night terror

The fever dreams continue; alas, taking a turn for the worse. Last night's dream featured my spouse and I perambulating through a cave filled with snow; I kicked ideally at a pile of snowflakes, only for some kind of hag to burst out from underneath and tackle me into what I knew to be a very, fatally deep pit.

Then came the screaming; and waking, heart racing.

I don't know what's going on right now - I keep ascribing these sorts of negative impacts to work stress and ill health - but the effects feel disproportionate to the stressors. Hopefully either I can get to the bottom of things soon, or else they ease up; because this is exhausting.