New Year Message

The last two years around this time I have sent a mass emailing to all of my internet friends, saying happy holidays, and giving them an update on my life.  I don’t have the energy for that this year.  Instead, I’m just going to post my message on various sites and hope that lots of my friends stumble on to it at some point.  In a post last month, I listed off lots of these sites.  I’ll list again here the sites where I’m posting this message.

• Crossdressers.com (in “Writer’s Society” forum)
• Drag Watch (blog entry)
• Facebook (wall note)
• Hi5 (journal entry)
• MySpace (blog entry)
• MySpace For T-Girls (blog)
• Susan’s Place (in PMS zone!)
• TransSpace (blog entry)
• URNotAlone (journal)
• Yahoo (guestbook comments)
• Yahoo 360 (blog entry)

Ok, those sites are done.  I’ll do Flickr, YouTube, and Podomatic (if I can figure out a way to do it) later today or tomorrow.

And now, the message that I’m posting on the above sites,

Hello friends, each of you is more dear to me than you know.  I wish I could send direct emails like I have the last two years, but I’ve been so slow on the computer lately that I know I would never finish that project this year.

2008 has been a dark year for me.  I’ve made little progress at resolving my legal problems, and consequently I’ve spent time in jail, time under house arrest, and I’ve lost my right to have a bank account, a job, health care, a driver’s license, or a passport.  I’m wanted in two states.  I haven’t checked, but in one of those states, I suspect my photo is on a “ten most wanted” poster.  I’ve been essentially homeless for all of 2008.  No, I haven’t been living on the street or in shelters, but have been totally dependent on friends and family for whatever roof I’ve had over my head.

I learned early this year that I have cancer.  I was near to dropping dead in my tracks by the time it was finally diagnosed, the diagnoses being delayed by six months or so by my legal problems.  Obviously, I survived that close call.  I got radiation treatments that treated the cancer very well and gave me a new lease on life.  Only a lease though; I should have started chemotherapy by now, but that is delayed for the moment as I’m focusing on resolving my legal problems.

Most of you know me as a transsexual.  (Apologies to those of you not exactly in the transgender community.  This paragraph may sound a little strange to you.)  2008 was my first full calendar year to live as a woman, and I’m happy to report that being a woman has continued to be wonderful for me.  Due to both legal and health problems, I haven’t been able to make much progress in “physical” transition, but if you’ve got to pause somewhere, “full time” is a great place to pause.  My “mood” status on one of my social networking sites currently says “Peaceful” and that really sums up how I feel about my current place in my transition.  Yes, there is much, much more I would like to do.  It can wait.  I’m not suffering terribly from “birth defects.”

One happy diversion I found this year was photography.  After being away from Sisters of Boston for months, I was badly missing weekly photos of myself from Ashley’s omnipresent camera.  I fussed and delayed for months more before finally buying a pocket digital camera, in July of this year.  I took a few of the vanity photos of myself I had been missing, then realized what an amazing instrument I had for creating art.  A pocket digital camera, vintage 2008, is incredible for its capabilities.  I began taking *lots* of photos, learning creative photography by just doing it, and also learning from studying the ocean of spectacular examples on Flickr, and before long, from meeting a few of Boston’s most enthusiastic amateur photographers, watching them work, and listening to them talk about what they do.

I’ll end with an invitation to everyone to write to me, just to say hello.  But I have to also end with an apology to so, so many of you for not writing to you this year.  I’ve failed to return emails to a vast number of my friends this year.  My only explanation is that I’ve been just overwhelmed by my problems, my situation, and haven’t had the mental energy to…to just return friendship, awful as that sounds.  I do love you, each and every one of you.

Best wishes, love, and peace to all in 2009,
Sonia

Say hello to Shenna

Shenna is a new addition to my blogroll.  I met her at Randolph Country Club, and she’s a wonderful person, fun, if a little shy at times.  Anyway, she’s just starting a blog and sent me the sweetest email today telling how my journal here was an inspiration for her to start her blog.  Click on her link at left when you have a few minutes.  Bookmark her or just leave a comment.

Blast from the past

After posting that video yesterday, I thought of a voice recording I made over a year ago.  It had been safely squirreled away in the files section of an obscure Yahoo group, that is, in a non-public place.  I retrieved it tonight and posted it to podomatic for all to enjoy.  (cough) Here’s the link: Voice Sample July 7, 2007

First YouTube

Still suffering a form of writer’s block, here I am with a somewhat random post.

I’ve been hanging out recently on MySpace For T-Girls, a web site with lots of members from the midwest.  The site just yesterday activated a new video chat feature so I was playing with that.  I don’t have a web cam here, or even a microphone, so it was no more that text chat for me.  It was just something different to try.  It’s a wild life I lead these days, hm?

Now, my digital camera–my point & shoot digital camera that I use for my Flickr photos–does video, it just won’t pipe live video out the USB cable to provide web cam functionality.  It’s frustrating to know that the hardware of the camera is capable of doing this, but the camera maker simply didn’t provide software support for it.  Makes you think that it’s a marketing decision to make you buy multiple gadgets.

Thinking about video though,  I got out my camera and for the first time, made a short video and posted it to YouTube.  Instead of posting a pointless “test 1 2 3″ sort of video, I used the occasion to make a little thank you card for a Christmas present I received this week.

I would have liked a longer camera angle, but when I moved the camera farther away, the sound quality was unacceptable.  Lighting is a little harsh.  Hey, it’s my first video, and was done just on the spur of the moment without any planning.  Ah, that might be obvious as well by my lack of makeup, fingernail polish, and so on.  *sigh*  This is me, my homely every day look, and my unpracticed voice as well.  Gosh, video tells the truth.  It’s…eye opening.

Experiments with video chat and video production went on while Mom happened to be out of the house.  She was going to the theater with my Sister and her family, and my ex-wife and her family.  Performing in the play was my son.  This is not a school play, but a local professional theater company.  I wasn’t invited to attend.

Pizza

Friday finally, we found a pizza place for dinner.  Lunch had been relatively light.  Mom suggested going for a short walk early in the afternoon, and during the walk I suggested we find pizza for dinner.  Back home 3ish, I think she would have gone for pizza right then, but I pointed out it was rather early for dinner.  She went upstairs to work on the computer, I snuggled into the sofa with a book I was reading, but it wasn’t but an hour before she called downstairs that she was getting hungry.  Whew, I didn’t know how long I could hold out either.  Not wanting to aimlessly drive in circles again, I grabbed the phone book and went upstairs.  She was already googling for pizza places.  We picked Jerry’s Bait Shop in downtown Lees Summit.

Fun choice.  It’s a bar.  They did have good pizza, but also that cozy bar atmosphere.  We had pizza and beer, and had fun watching the locals in their natural habitat, meeting the resident pacu, and–surprise–listening to some nice live music.  On the way out the door, I was struck by the santa’s workshop-like decorations of the square and stopped to take a photo.  That’s it below. It’s not much.  I would have loved to wander across the street and take more photos, but mom was freezing and vetoed that idea.

Home, she picked out some movie for us to watch.  Now I can’t even remember what the movie was–I’d had two beers at Jerry’s and couldn’t really muster the necessary concentration for a movie.  Baking seemed within reach though so I went in the kitchen and made muffins.  We each had a warm muffin with butter then, I made myself comfortable on the couch to watch the rest of the movie, and woke up in a dark living room sometime later.

Black Friday

I was actually up before noon today.  Had a little bit of pomegranate juice, sat down in front of the TV with a book until mom got up.  We made sandwiches and then she suggested we go shopping for boots for me.  “You know what you’re suggesting” I said with a raised eyebrow, and continued: “… that we go shopping on the busiest shopping day of the year?”  She paused.  I think she might have forgotten about that.

We went anyway.  Went to Summitwoods Crossing first.  Payless had some cute rain boots that I liked.  Famous Footwear had some nice clogs.  Target had nothing in my size.  Kohl’s had no shoe department at all!  We decided to leave.  Problem.  The “Holiday Traffic Pattern” was in effect, meaning there were barricades to reroute traffic around the shopping center.  We drove in circles for ten minutes at least trying to figure out how to exit the shopping center an get back on a major street–any street.  How someone thought this was a good idea is beyond me.  They actually did have signs up.  They were tiny little things with print that was only readable if your car was immediately next to the sign.  A sign would say that you could or couldn’t turn a certain way at the intersection you were at, but by the time you had gotten close enough to a sign that you could read it, you were in a cattle chute requiring that you go a certain way, the sign basically informing you that you are screwed and must drive around at random some more before being allowed to exit the shopping center.  I do hate cars.  I want my subway back. 

We went to Independence Center next.  Ha, no silly holiday traffic patterns there.  The place was designed for holiday traffic.  We wandered in and out of lots of shoe stores, but ended the day buying nothing.  Mall shoes were just a little more money than we were hoping to pay.

Mom was hungry for pizza by then.  I was willing, but after driving around a bit, she didn’t find a pizza place.  The grocery store, finally, came through for us with frozen pizza.

This post must surely rank high in the contest for most boring post ever.  Such is my life.