1 year Anniversary

Today started out is such a awesome way, as I was working the plane Kristie my co worker hugged me and wished me happy rebirth day J   One of the rampers that was helping us load our airplane sang happy birthday to me over the intercom.   WOW I about cried!   How sweet, so today is my 1^st year anniversary of gender confirmation surgery.    As I look back on it a year ago I was in the hospital all juiced up on morphine in a daze.  It was a scary time, but so well worth it.   I have been blessed beyond belief with a spouse and children and job that are so supportive.  Without them I would have never made it to where I am today.   I find myself today in Seattle full circle, about 6 years ago we were living here and I was working over 100 hours a week at work to keep myself consumed and my mind off my struggle and deep drive to be a women.   Now here I am working at the airport as a strong confident woman.    6 years of struggling and now I am who I always should have been and truly the happiest that I have ever been!  

Thank you to all that have helped me along the way.   I rarely show photos of my prior self but given today is a special day I figure I will show you a few.

Traveling

Well I’m off working again; I’m not doing the normal driving to work this time.  I’m getting the pleasure of working in Seattle so I’m riding on one of our company plane to work.   It only feels like yesterday that I got home as well and here I’m heading to work.   I was able to pack in a fair amount of things to keep me busy while I was home.   Between working at the churches food bank and catching up on the lawn and family things I was pretty busy and the 12 days home went by so quickly.

I got a nice surprise yesterday though.   The plane that I was going to ride ended up being a day late so I was able to stay at my 2^nd home (AKA Fox and Hound) instead of staying by the airport in JFK.  It just made my night being able to sit on the front patio eating some nice pizza and enjoying a bottle of wine as the sun started setting and the fireflies came out.  It is such a calm and peaceful way of ending a day.

This last weekend way really fun, on Saturday Tina, Christa and I marched in the 3^rd annual Charleston Pride Parade.   We were marching with South Carolina Equality group.  We have never done something like that before so we didn’t know what to expect.   Tina was real uncomfortable as we were waiting to line up and go, and to top it off it was way hot morning.   For the 1^st part of the parade route there were not too many people on the sides of the streets.   Christa was so cute and was handing out little American flags out to little kids that were out watching the parade.   When we turned onto West Montague we could see that there was a lot more people waiting to see the parade.   I had to laugh because Tina turned and looked at me and said you are so going to owe me big for this.   I am pretty sure I am still paying her for the last thing I got her into the TV show we did J  But hey isn’t that what spouses are for though.  But all kidding aside Tina really did have a great time.  It was not close to what she expected and was really surprised at how positive of experience it was.   Christa really had a great time as well, after the parade she was out taking all kinds of photos with her camera.  While I was working at the Charleston Area Transgender group Christa and Tina went to all the booths that were set up and bought a lot of things.  One of Christa’s favorite this is a button that says I love my two moms on it.   It was a really cool experience and I think that it’s something that we will plan to do next years as well.

Do we know what people are thinking?

The other night I went out to eat at theTriumph Brewing Company here in New Hope.   We had excellent food and really good service that night.  The best part was the company I was with and the good time we had chatting with like minded people.  What got me thinking of this story was I was asked if I noticed the two younger people staring at me that night?  To be honest I didn’t notice but I also usually don’t notice things like that.  I think over the years I have developed a thick skin to stares as well as I just tune things out.   But it did remind me of what happened when we were visiting Tina’s mom one time. 

We went out to eat at one of Tina’s favorite places to eat when we visit her mom, its called Luigi's.   Their food it really good and the restaurant has a nice atmosphere as well.  While we are eating this couple came in and sat down across from us.  Like usual I didn’t pay much attention, but Tina did and said to me.  Do you see those people staring at us?  I started watching and saw that they were paying close attention to us for sure.  My first thought is are they staring at us because they perceive us as a gay couple, or because they have read me as trans, I really couldn’t tell but they were really intrigued with us for sure!  So I told Tina I’m going to get to the bottom of this and buy them a glass of wine and see if I can chat with them.  Tina was don’t you dare reward them for staring at us, if you do I’m out of here.  They are just going to make a scene.  Brenna our oldest was egging me on as well, so I orders them up some drinks J  Tina, Christa and her mom high tailed it to the car and Brenna and I went over to them to have a chat.  I was on high alert and was not going to put up with any crap, however I thought that I would be tactful to start with.  They greeted me and said thanks, but wanted to know why I was so friendly in buying them some drinks.  I said I saw you staring at us sense you got here and you looked nice and thought I would be nice.  Here is it got interesting, they said that they travel all over the country racing bikes and that they stopped at that restaurant because it looked like a nice one.  They said that they see lots of families out there but not many as nice as us and they couldn’t get over how well  our children behaved and how happy we were as a family.  I think the moral of the story is you can’t judge what people are talking about from afar, and you can’t let your own insecurities cloud into a judgment of what people are thinking or saying about you.