Further adventures in "girling it up"

I went to a music festival for my vacation. A week of camping, hundreds of bands, and the sweltering midwest sun are not really ideal places for daily facial hair control, makeup, and whatnot, but I did manage to do it for two or three days out of the whole trip. I know I must have looked pretty rough at some points, but hey, everyone looks a little rough at these kinds of things. Apparently I wasn't too horrible looking. I managed to catch one guy checking out my chest at a show. Between that, and random guys begging all the girls walking by their campsite to accept their offer for "free kisses," it was definitely a set of foreign first experiences over the course of the week. I'm not used to that kind of attention!

The next time presenting female was after the festival, during a trip to drop a friend off at the airport. Public bathrooms are still one of the more awkward places, in my opinion. At one point, I was futilily waving my hands in front of a broken automatic paper towel dispenser. Someone standing nearby me offered that the one on her side was working. I cracked a nervous "thank you," got my paper towel, and high tailed it out of there. Really, I'm probably being harsher on myself than strangers would be, but meh.

The more time I spend out and about while presenting female, the more comfortable it feels. At least from what I can tell, I don't seem to strike anyone as out of the ordinary, which at the moment at least, is something I like. That does bring up some other issues, though. I've noticed that to look "normal" (ha) I've felt like I needed to look or act at least a bit girlier than I actually am. I definitely need to think about that more, and maybe talk about it some.

For now I guess I'd say that I'm slightly conflicted; being recognized as the gender I want to be perceived as, and expressing gender as I feel it still aren't always meshing (while they are closer than in years past.) With either friends or strangers, it's nice knowing that you are perceived as something at least a little closer to yourself. I'm seriously contemplating going full-time once I move (well, almost, as there is still some friends and family that aren't in on the news just yet.) I can almost see it as something that would work out, though I'm still iffy on how it'd turn out job hunting.

Finally, for one slightly related thought. I've noticed that I am "girl-me" in my dreams with increasing frequency compared to months past. Maybe it's because it's something that is easier for my mind to work with while sleeping, now that it's become more than an abstract idea or possibility. Either way, it's really cool, and in my opinion at least, some sort of sign that maybe I'm doing the right thing here.

Woopwoop

I really need to talk about the last two weeks sometime soon. In the mean time, I wanted to note that my spiro refills finally came in. When we got home from the trip, the replacement shipment had made it to my door; that was three days ago. Then today, the original package finally showed up as well.

The pharmacy had already apologized, and told me to just keep the extras if they ever made it here. So I have 300ish dollars worth of spironolactone, for only 145 dollars. It sucked to be without it during the trip, but I've got to say, this is pretty great.