Mom

100 Things That Make Me Happy [1/10]

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What with the dour weather today, here’s the first installment of my 100 Things blog thing.

1. Sitting at the edge of a body of water, with the sun on my shoulders and my feet dangling in the water.

I was thinking about recent years the other day and this one summer day popped into my head. I wasn’t sure when it was, but I remembered myself and Eva and Nienke, sitting along the canal, our feet in the water, enjoying the sun. I knew I had pictures of this, I remember them, too. Unfortunately, twenty minutes of going through my photo folders later, I still haven’t found those. I do have, however, unearthed a video of that day. Just a short 30 second clip of the three of us. I think we’re discussing summer clothes.

2. The smell of freshly mowed grass.

I love living around a big field of grass. Every time the county’s gardening people show up to mow it I detest them for it since they also come early and use a little tractor type mower that makes a lot of noise and wakes me up. But the smell afterwards more than makes up for it 🙂

3. My cats.

Monkey’s a cat with a definite attitude, but at the same time he can be such a love bug. Tonight he spent a few hours sleeping on my lap, clearly showing the trust he has in me. He was so far gone in sleep he even turned over and showed me his pretty belly, which he almost never does.

Milo makes me smile with with his playing (something Monkey never really does). I love how he enthusiastically plays soccer with various cat toys until he bats it under something where he can’t get at it so he sits down and looks at it with this puzzled expression until I grab the toy for him.  And his high pitched squeeky voice always makes me chuckle. Miew!

4. Lying comfortably outside, in the grass, with my eyes closed, in the spring sun, with just a touch of lukewarm wind.

Related to the first point, there’s just something so relaxing, and safe, about lying there and letting spring invade my senses.

5. Books.

I can’t live without books. It’s that simple. They feed my mind, my imagination, my dreams, my ambitions. They are wings and an anchor, a window and a door, friend and family. They help me make sense of the world, and they allow me to escape; whether it’s a one off that I’ll read once and might have forgotten a year later or an instant classic to me that will stick with me forever.

6. Waking up and realising you don’t have to go anywhere or do anything, you can just lie there and BE.

I love being able to enjoy the quiet and avoid the world for a while in the morning. Especially when it’s early enough that the sun is still coming up. You can hear (and see) the world wake up.

7. Floating in water.

Best mediation style, ever. One of my dreams is to have a house with a small pool (or a giant ass bathtub) that I can float in. It just has to be big enough that I don’t touch the edges and I’ll be perfectly happy.

8. The smell of spiced meat cooking.

I love most foods during cooking, but there’s just something about the combination of meat and herbs/spices together as they cook (or better yet, roast). If they made air freshener in this smell, I’d buy it 😀

9. Cake.

I looooove cake. Of all the more sweet desserts and treats, cake is by far my favourite. Especially layer cakes with cream or whatnot in between. Some of my favourites are Schwarzwalder kirsch cake, nougatine meringue cake, lemon cheesecake or basic cheesecake with strawberry topping.

10. Being taken care of by my mom when I’m sick.

Obviously the being sick part itself does not make me happy, in fact in tends to piss me off. However, whenever I’m really sick, I prefer to hang out at the parent’s place because just being around Mom while she does her normal things and such takes me back to childhood and makes me feel better much faster.

Shrinkage, or, My Family is Awesome

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I saw the psychiatrist today for my gender intake. I was a little bit disappointed, I was (calling all stereotypes) expecting a couch or at least a comfy chair to be present but no such luck. Ms. Doctor and I sat at a regular table with regular chairs and talked for about an hour and a half.

Obviously it covered the gender feelings and when it started and how it manifests and stuff like that, but also more generalised questions about feelings and behaviour, mental health family history, current and past life circumstances etc… All this so they can determine not only if the gender dysphoria is severe enough to warrant transitioning, but also to check if there might be other mental issues that might need attention first, and to see if I have realistic expectations of this whole process and if I can handle it and have a support system and such.

Ms. Doctor is going to discuss this with the Head-Shrink and then I get to come back for another appointment with both Ms. Doctor and the Head-Shrink. I’m very curious about it, the first appointment turned out to be a reasonably pleasant experience.

 

Going back in time a little, last Saturday I (or rather, we) told (a large part of) my extended family about my being transgender. My Mom had already told a few aunts/uncles but we decided that Mom’s birthday party on Saturday would be an excellent opportunity to tell the others. So, during the day we told the family from Dad’s side, and in the evening Mom’s side of the family all showed up so we told them.

It was a really positive experience. I was pretty nervous beforehand (and I imagine Mom, too), but all reactions we’re positive and basically boiled down to “if this is how you feel, and you’re serious about it, then we support you”. I really could not have asked for a better reception. I expect that from here it will trickle down to various cousins (in so far they don’t see one of these posts via Facebook or Twitter).

Off to the Theater: C3

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A few weeks ago Mom saw a review in the paper of a show by C3, called ‘Wil je in ons groepje?’ (Do you wanna be in our group). She mentioned it to me and indicated she’d like to see it. They were doing one show near here, and that was exactly on her birthday. So I asked her, for confirmation, if she wanted to go, and got us tickets.

Since I did have to work before hand, and the show didn’t start until 20:15, we decided to go out to eat as well. For ease, we decided upon the restaurant at the theater.

So, last night was the night. Mom picked me up at work, and we drove the short distance to the Oosterpoort theater. After parking we headed inside. We were a bit early for our reservation, but we could get seated early. After getting drinks served, the waiter discussed the menu with us. Because Cristina Branco was also performing at the Oosterpoort yesterday, they were having a Portuguese menu and were there any dietary things we needed. We both let him know that the starter, a fish soup, was not something we would like. Fortunately, the vegetarian option sounded great so we opted for that.

Shortly after, the starter was served, a truly delicious courgette soup with cheese and cream.  The main course was a skewer with chicken, beef and pork served with roasted veggies, skin-baked potato and salad (nom nom nom!). While we were eating, I decided to check our tickets to see which of the halls we had to be. That’s when I realised something. We were in the wrong theater…

Instead of the show being at the Oosterpoort, it was at the Stadschouwburg, the theater they’re connected with. We had a good laugh about it, what else can you do. I’d had the tickets for a few weeks already but never really bothered to read them properly, and we’d only seen mentions of Oosterpoort near the review so we totally missed it.

Fortunately our dessert (melon slices with orange flavoured ice cream and a vanilla pastry with cream) arrived shortly so that, combined with our arriving early to begin with, gave  us enough time to walk to the Stadschouwburg. We arrived there with about twenty minutes to spare. Had we been on time for dinner, we’d have been late for the show 😀

The show itself was quite good. C3  is a a cabaret/comedy group consisting of Mike Boddé, Onno Innemee and, this theater season, Jelka van Houten. They sang songs, some more comedic in nature, some more serious. It started off with Jelka singing a love song about New York. Not because New York is that great, but because the person she loves comes from New York. Onno sang a great comedic ‘cuntry’ song about being a cowboy. Halfway through the song it became clear through the lyrics that instead of being a real cowboy singing, it was a boy singing about playing cowboy and the patrons of the local cafe getting quite sick of his repeated Hyippi-ya-yays.

Mike played the piano throughout the evening (he is absolutely great at that) to accompany the songs. At some point Jelka sang a lovely song about not being able to sleep and begging Mr. Goldberg to help her. This led to Mike explaining to her the story behind it, and how it had led to this beautiful piece of music, the Goldberg Variations. In short: there was this count who had trouble sleeping so he went to Johann Sebastian Bach and asked him to compose him some music that he could have played by his court harpsichord (klavecimbel) player, Mr. Goldberg.

Mike then elaborated that the Goldberg Variations are basically the hardest thing to play for a pianist, and that he could not play it all. However, he knew the basic chord structure, so he could make his own Variations. Which he then did: Goldberg à la blues, Goldberg à la Mozart, Goldberg à la Chopin… It was very awesome.

He also dit a dramatic reading about a nice smelling man in a language built of archaic words, screwed around current words and screwed around translations of english words. The way in which he read this (as if he were preaching) and the speed with which he could speak all those out of the ordinary words is a total turn-on for me (I looooove words and language).

Too bad there’s no videos of this, or his Goldberg Variations online, even to just show a hint. Mike Boddé is brilliant with a piano and words.

There were also sketches. This was for me a much more mixed bag. I did not much care for most of them. I just found them unfunny and I had trouble finding the through line of the show and I do like me a through line. Random assortments of things without a discernible connection throw me off, especially when a show’s description makes me believe there is supposed to be a through line.

After the show, we quickly headed back to the car and went home for today was an early start. We had a great night.

 

Of Baby Steps and Giant Leaps — The Gender Edition

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After being quiet about the subject for quite a while I feel it’s time to start talking about gender again. And specifically mine. At first I wasn’t going to, at least not yet, but if I want this blog to be a real representation of my life, I need to incorporate this. And I find writing shit down (in addition to vocalizing to myself) helps me process things. Secondary to that, I hope this will make it easier on my friends, family and wider social circle (in a probably mostly vain hope that more than five people read this).

So, last time I spoke about my gender identity, which was March 2011, and before that (with more detail) December 2010, I mentioned how I was growing away from identifying as genderqueer (being beyond and both man and woman) to a more masculine identity. This process has continued, and not too long after the March post I realized the genderqueer moniker no longer fit at all. Woman was not a part of my gender identity. The older I get, and the more I let myself be the man I am in thought, and appearance, the more I realized I could no longer live in this body. At that point I started to seriously think about transitioning, and doing my research. Because, even with a real life example in my friend circle, everyone’s experience is different and my process will be different than his.

So, at that point I came out to myself as a transgender man.

I allowed myself to live with that (silent) label and to experience the feeling and as time went on, I felt so much more at peace on such a deep level. Even though I could (and can) still not look at myself, unclothed, either directly or in a mirror and am in denial of my body whenever I am not binding, I felt myself moving forward.

When the new year came around, I adopted my motto for this year  ‘Just Do It‘  and decided now was the time to start taking practical steps. After all, the process of transitioning can take two, three years easily and I kinda want to be whole by the time I turn 30.

So, early January I went to my doctor and asked for a referral to the Gender Team at the UMCG. She was supportive and seemed to understand at least a little, and she went to make it happen. I would get a letter with my appointment date.

Later that week or early next I don’t quite remember, I received that letter. The appointment for intake was for February 24th, at 13:45. This also meant it was time to tell The Parents. While this was a very butterfly-stomach moment, it went well. They took it better than expected (granted, they were aware of the binder and some related shit so it couldn’t really have been a total surprise). Mom understands the whole thing a bit better than Dad does, but it will come.

I told Nienke the day I’d gone to my doctor for the referral. I told Eva and Ingrid during a game night at Eva’s place along with Jarig who was obviously also there, and Anneke and Julius who dropped by to dress up Ingrid 😀 I told Gert about a week and a half or so before the appointment. I wasn’t sure yet when and how to tell others, so I decided to keep it quiet for now.

I spent the month and a half I had to wait for the appointment being ecstatic and nerve-wracked (in a good way) at the same time. Finally the day came. I’d taken the day off work, and Mom offered to drive me. I really appreciated this, not just in the ‘thanks for the ride’ way, but also on a deeper level as a show of support and love. We got to the hospital plenty on time. After I registered at the front desk, we made our way to the relevant clinic where we sat and waited for twenty minutes or so.

Then the doctor showed up and I went with him. And then it turned out the referral hadn’t quite been processed right…

Yes, the doctor was part of the Gender Team, but he was the plastic surgeon… Not quite the one you need for the intake. So we did a quick history with a basic ‘this is how I feel‘ thing and some medical history and he then wrote a consult for his Gender Team colleague. So this means I will be getting a new letter, with a new appointment some time this week (I hope) and I get to do the giddy nervousness again. Especially since there’s no telling how soon the psych guy can fit me in. I hope it’s soon.

This ending is a bit abrupt, but I’ve been going on long enough now, and I don’t quite know how to knit a proper ending here. Plus I’ve been hovering over the publish button for the last five minutes deciding if I’m ready to put this out there. I hope this will lead to a more gradual coming out, versus having to suddenly go ‘hey everybody, listen up!’

June

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June 2nd was my Dad’s birthday, he turned 68. The party was fun, a good time was had by all 🙂

Two days later I went for a walk at Lauwersoog with Eva, Nienke, Tessa (my dog) and Gregorius (Eva’s dog). It was a beautiful day, the sun was shining, there was a gentle breeze, we enjoyed ourselves, the dogs had fun. Then it got even better when Nienke tossed Gregorius’ fetching toy into a very, very tall tree… Eva and I watched her toss sticks at it for a while trying to get it to fall down. Eventually I joined in the throwing of sticks which led to success a couple minutes later when I hit the branch the toy was stuck on and it came down.

The day after that, I went to Verhildersum with Mom to go check out the Fabric Day. We saw awesome crafts, there was this huuuuge quilt in different purple fabrics, and a guy who makes little tin statuettes of people in historical dress. There was also a lot of felt work, both in felting things (making objects while one is felting the wool), as well as making things from felt fabric.

June 15 I went out for dinner at Pappa Joe’s with Eva, Nienke, Ingrid & Mellien. It was tasty, and nice to hang out with the full group. We crossed the street for awesome ice cream afterwards.

I joined Archive of Our Own, a fan fiction archive. So far I find it a more pleasurable interface compared to fanfiction.net, where I used to post. That has been a number of years though, and in the years between I’ve not spent a lot of time either reading or writing fan fiction. I’m slowly getting back into it. I reposted some of the works I wrote years ago of which I still think they’re good on A3O. The rest needs a rewrite. I’ll keep the originals up on ff.net, that way I’ll have a history and can later compare between versions and responses.

And in minor things, I rearranged my living room, baby-sat the dog for a day while the parents were off on the yearly Sibling Day (where mom and her siblings, plus partners, go out for a day) and we had an awesome! thunderstorm.

Queen’s Day 2011

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For my home town, Parentville, Queen’s Day is not only that, but also the day that the town playgrounds are officially opened again after the yearly maintenance. Since this is a prime opportunity to hang out with my family, I usually spend this day in Parentville. This year was a bit of a disappointment. There’s always a small parade trough town before the opening takes place. The parade consists of a wagon carrying the smaller kids while the older kids ride bikes after it and often followed by a contingent of adolescents and adults as well. Now, Parentville is quite a small town, but there were so very few kids this year (especially on the wagon) it was kinda sad to see. Partly this may have been the weather (even though there was sunshine, the wind was cold) but it seems participation in this town ritual is going down every year anyway. I didn’t even bother taking my proper camera with me, electing instead to just go with my phone. I video’d the arrival of the parade, the playing of the anthem and the opening so didn’t get a lot of pictures. I took some of my parents, and had my aunt shoot me and my parents together. Later in the afternoon Mom and I took a quick stroll around the flea market that followed the opening. This was well populated, both in kids selling their stuff as well as adults and other kids walking/running around and talking and occasionally buying stuff. I bought a couple books from the Famous Five series for 50 cents apiece, so good bargain.

 

It’s Life, Jim, Just As We Know It

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When I got my iPhone last October, my old phone became my Mom’s new phone. However, I think I’ve dropped it a little too much over the two years I had it, since over the last week  the screen started shorting out. Mom figured this would be a nice time to get a new phone, so when I suggested we head to the phone shop together, she wanted to go the next day 😀

So, Saturday The Mom and I took the car to the transferium and from there the citybus to the centre. After a stroll across the market, I wanted to see if Jansen&Jansen had any new fun stuff, which they had. Before I’d left, Nienke asked me to see about finding her a new pair of slippers. I didn’t find any pretty ones at the market, but found awesome ones at Jansen&Jansen 😀 Fuzzy clog-shaped slippers, pink with red hearts on them 😀

Of course I had to bring these for Nienke. I also bought myself (and her) a duck for our collection. After this we headed for the T-Mobile shop to pick out a new phone for Mom. After discussing it with the sales guy, we decided on another Nokia, since she’s used to that in terms of control and looks.

Then we hit the main shopping street, bought some clothes (shirt, t-shirt, hat), shoes, had lunch at Hema and then made our way back up towards the market.

Some more looking around there was followed by a last stop at the craft store to get latex (to make a vampire forehead), some music-themed charms and a paper maché leaf for Florian the Flower Faerie to sit on. By then we were getting a bit tired so we decided to grab the next bus back to the Transferium and head home.

I hung around at the parents for the rest of the afternoon. When I got back home, Nienke was much pleased with her slippers 😀

After some hanging about and watching another episode of Stargate Atlantis, I decided to finally start sorting through my clothes, which I’d been wanting to do for a while now. Nienke took her laptop and accompanied me while I tried on everything to see what still fit, what I still liked and so on. Much fun was had, especially with all the typical female clothes (women tunics, dresses, female tops and so on). It felt like another step in my gender process from gender neutral towards masculine, as wearing these clothes made me feel like a drag queen. (It did give me an awesome idea for a dress-up though: dress up as a drag queen while wearing my binder, so sort of being a woman being a man being a woman again.)

After sorting, it was too late to fold everything, so I stuffed it all back in the closet just so my bed would be free and I could sleep. Nienke had sorted through her clothes a few weeks ago, but not yet put her stuff back either, so Sunday evening, after procrastinating all day we decided to fire up Skype, and both go about folding and putting our clothes back.  It was much fun, although the whole process took hours. Photo was about mid-sorting I think.

Monday I had a day off. I messed around in the house, did dishes and such. Made a cake, made a painting and painted the paper maché leaf I bought on Saturday.

Happiness is…

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Taking a cue from Eva here. I’m usually pretty good at seeing the small things, I can really enjoy the world so much just by seeing things. Lately that’s been overshadowed a bit, but I’m getting back to seeing the small things again, after the system shock that is Winter Time, and am feeling better suited in my own skin again. So I figure I publicly acknowledge some of those small things.

Like the sun over the horizon as dad and I drove to Parentville, or the colours of the fall leaves on the train tracks. And the new gloves mom knit for me. And getting a laugh out of Nienke, who’s arguably more girly than I am, and should thus (stereotypically speaking) be the one to arrange flowers. Except she sucks at it. And I don’t. 😀