I was mulching with the Wrecking Crew again today. We were doing one of the owner's houses in town. Both of them actually have several houses... Er... well, this one was more of a mansion.

Okay, admission time, I've fiddled with my herbal concoction a bit since the last time I talked about it. I'm no longer taking any kind of phyto-estrogen at all. I've balanced and counterbalanced a purely anti-androgen formula and that's all I'm taking right now. Getting hold of strong enough doses of isoflavones was costing waaaay too much.

I just worked a nine hour day straight, no lunch, and I'm completely bushed.

The fridge at work has been smelling awful for a long time, when I went in today, it was so bad that the entire shop literally stank and you couldn't tell the stench in the fridge anymore for the odor permeating the entire place. Towards the end of the day, 'Thal decided to once again clean the fridge. This time, he took it in his head to actually take the shelves out and REALLY clean it - that's when we found it. The reason for the stench. The odorous villain. The... Black Mold.

Seriously.

I know, it's been a while since I blogged last... Honestly, my life's gotten pretty boring of late. It's the same story day after day, I go to work, eat, play some games, read some stuff on BCTS, occasionally try to write my stories that I'm really horrible about updating... And I'm getting absolutely no where with my transition goals. I'm not getting any closer to being able to afford health insurance (that covers transition), and my family and close associates still insist this is just some "phase" at best. At worst, they're like my mom and are refusing to believe it's happening at all.

So yesterday a telemarketer called my cell phone -again-. I really wish I could figure out a way to get that to stop... Anyhoo... I answered it with "Hello", and they asked if they could speak to my male name as though there was no way on earth he was already speaking to them. I said speaking. And they were seriously shocked. They asked, in a disbelieving tone: Are you really Andrew? As though there was absolutely no way on earth I could possibly be Andrew.

OK, so while OYH's hiatus will continue for a bit longer, a new character has grabbed my attention and wants to be heard.

This character will be a cop from a town called Atlantia, which doesn't exist. Atlantia is a hidden town of magic and superpowers that once you've entered, you cannot leave. It was founded by refugees from Atlantis, whose history according to my story might be a little different to what you're used to.

Afraid I don't have any gifts to give to the folks here, but I just took another big step, though I suppose in a way I'd already done it unofficially anyways by simply not logging on...

Many of you may recall that I've mentioned I used to be a massively addicted MMORPG player. I had what even other players called an "army" of alts.

I haven't played these since June.

I just gave them all away.

The majority of my army was given to the last guild I'd been active in, and the lone remaining bard went to the guild before it.

Where did the time go? It seems just yesterday was the middle of summer still. OK... not really.

Though this year does, in turns, feel like it went by awfully fast, but that an awful lot happened.

Well... the situation at home has pretty well stagnated. Every time I try to push any further, my mother about bites my head off and the heads of anyone who she feels is supporting me too much.

I've decided to move out. First, because I want to. Second. Because I want to. Third... ;)

OK, real reason out of the way, some of the rationalizations:

This entry is inspired by LittleKatie's entry Monstrosity.

What I'm going to do here is take us all on a short photographical journey down memory lane, presenting - though old photographs - the path of destruction I'd been on before finally facing myself. I'm going to start in High School, since that's really where things started to escalate.

"That girl was hot!" whispered the lad to his friend as they walked past me. It was just shortly before three, and the busload of high schoolers who live at the apartment complex had just been dropped off.

"That was a boy!" his friend whispered back.

This is a very emotionally and spiritually charged piece. As such, there will be references that those outside Mormonism and Christianity in general will not get. In this entry, I will attempt to explain some of these references.

Sorry, you all should know by now that I can never resist a good bit of linguistic fun. I consider the Japanese phrase that roughly equals the English "Long time no see" much more linguistically pleasing. But I'm strange.

Work yesterday sucked. Rained all day, cleaned off a back patio of a recently vacated townhouse that they are getting ready to start showing first thing, then just blew wet leaves about all day with the blower. Wasn't the most efficient use of time, but it was the most efficient I could do with the rain, and the leaves just had to be blown away from the walkways, rain or not. Nothing terribly interesting happened, though I have mostly written a psalm in my head that I just need to mesh out in writing, which I intend to do tomorrow.

So what do you want to hear first? The Good Stuff? The Not So Good Stuff? The Next Big Step?

I think some small part of me is still resisting the changes I'm beginning to make. I think I'm, in some small corner of my mind, still afraid. Afraid of what I don't know about being female. Afraid of how people who don't or can't understand will treat me. Afraid of change. Someone replied to Heather's entry about losing her pet that it's a bit of a "system shock", after 16 years, suddenly losing a dear friend and companion, her dog. I kind of think that's what's happening to me now.

Another Episode Of...

Silly Motorists

or...

The Male of the Species

So. The family meeting had been tonight.

This morning I had too much laundry to do and couldn't make it to church, when my mother found out about this, she was all like "what about the Bishop?"

I was like, "what, about the Bishop?"

She was, "Weren't you supposed to meet with him at church today?"

I was like "no..."

She said, "you told me I'd find out today, at church."

I know she's brighter than that, so she selectively misunderstood me back on Friday. I said, "No... I said you'd find out today - at the family meeting."

Holy crapoly, I DREAMED last night. No, seriously, *I* DREAMED! I *HAVE* been dreaming!

You're probably all thinking I'm nuts right now, and perhaps I am, but you have to understand, for nearly two decades, as my fortress has been in place, I have never once dreamed.

The last time I can remember dreaming while sleeping was around 10 or 11. That's 15-16 years of NO DREAMS.

Had dinner with just my mom and I last night at a Japanese restaurant in town.

The restaurant was excellent. It was my first time there, though my younger brother had been there and told me it was very authentic.

What he hadn't told me was that it was also very traditional! The cooks even come to your table and do the whole show thing if you order Habachi! We didn't, but we observed this taking place with customers who did.

My author name and account name have been changed to Abigail Drew, all three chapters of Open Your Heart, along with my organizer pages, have been changed as well.

Author page has been the most thoroughly edited of them all.

If only real life were that easy,

Abigail Drew.

I hope you all can understand that with what I am going through right now, I really can't even begin to think about writing Open Your Heart.

Don't worry though, I do not plan to give up on it or stop writing it! I merely need to work out my own life before I can help Pattengale with their life.

Even when I do start pushing chapters out again, they will likely be very slow in coming.

Abigail Drew.

Incomprehensible.

Even when I was trying to be one, I never really did understand the "other guys". Is it really so important that yours is bigger, or better, or stronger, or whatever? I'm competitive, sure, but mostly against myself. I don't really care if I keep losing to a more skilled FPS player - if I can manage to snipe him even 1 more time than before, I feel good about it. If I can manage to stay alive even 1 second longer than last round, that's great success. If I fail, I laugh it off.

(Another title which is a line from Fiction, the song has especial meaning to me right now, which I think you can imagine why: http://www.kovideo.net/fiction-lyrics-yuki-kajiura-810763.html)

So I talked to the other fish yesterday. Remember, my sister just older than I and myself were called Fish in high school? Because of the massive amounts of water we'd both drink.

Anyways, I'm not sure why I did it, in retrospect I probably should have waited until after the family meeting and just hoped if things went south no one beat me to it.

I am not imagining things. To be honest, I was slightly concerned after my mothers stunt last night that perhaps I'm merely seeing what I want to see. That my own measuring is the measuring that's wrong. That she was correct in measuring my loose flab as waist - loosely.

But this morning at work, my boss was all like, "So now you've lost all that weight, when are you gunna start bulking up?" Several other comments, and then, the bombshell: "You're starting to get a bit of a girlish figure." Damn. That felt good. Scary too though.

Take to flight, like a foolish angel!

(Lines from Yuki Kajiura's "Fiction", title song of the album that "Open Your Heart" is contained on.)

Today was an eventful day. Chose my new name this morning - Abigail Drew - shared it with my older brother at work, and towards the end of the day I finally got up the nerve to do something real major: Talk to my bishop. By the end of my meeting with him, I'd worked up the nerve to do something even more major: Set a date for telling the family.

Just went to a local thrift store where no one pays much attention to what others are doing and tried on various pant sizes. 30" mens relaxed fit slip off my waist and sit around my crotch, 29" mens relaxed fit compress my hips and still want to slip off my waist, just can't with the hip compression going on.

Sizes 4-6 womens though... depending on style, are almost perfect. There was this pair of size 5 skinny jeans that were practically molded for me...

I didn't want to write this in with the other entry, since this is a much different sort of topic. The previous entry today was much harder to write, so I decided to do it first. Anyways!

My weight loss goal of 140 pounds was reached as of yesterday morning. I lost roughly 45 pounds between late June and now.

I still have a little bit of remaining pudge in some areas, but that should go soon enough as I move on to the next stage of my get healthy plan: muscle toning.

I came out to my older brother at work yesterday. I'd been debating with myself internally over doing so, but since we were about to go off-property for a while to do another properties shrubs, and it got over 80 degrees quickly, I really wanted to take the uniform t-shirt off. Problem was, I was wearing a bra with straps and a thin tank top underneath.

I know I could have told a half-truth about gynaecomastia and nipple chafing, but I wanted to be fully honest with him. To be honest, I think I was hoping in some corner of my mind to find some local support.

Not literally. My entry titles are often not literal.

Remember, though, how in Cinderella, the way they determined who she was, was by finding who the missing glass slipper belonged to. They determined that by trying to find who it was the "perfect fit" for.

Well, you may recall that I'd never been able to find gloves that fit until I couldn't find mens small and tried womens, finding that, for the first time in my life, I could actually understand the phrase "fits like a glove".