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Karen's thoughts

A blog by KarenPayne in General

  • Entries

    261

  • Comments

    690

  • Views

    129,831

About this blog

This blog is dedicated to telling those who read the entries about my journey in hopes that something can be learned. 

Entries in this blog

Five days on the road

As many know I love driving my 2016 Mazda Miata and belong to a local Miata club. Last week I spent five days, Thursday through Monday driving with 17 other cars, a total of 22 people, all cisgender except for me. I have never mentioned my past life and transitioning. I bring this up because those who have plans for transitioning need to know when you do things right e.g. work on your female voice and be comfortable in your new skin coupled with mannerism and age appropriate clothing even i

Disclosure

Until present I have told two former girlfriends that I was transitioning and now have disclosed this just now to another one. The interesting thing is, each of these woman have stayed friends with me ranging from 14 years to eight years since we broke up. I am very fortunate to have these woman remain in my life. On a comical note, each of them want to go see me soon after I have recovered from surgery and also two of them want to take me out shopping for clothes while the other one has d

Fun with physicians

I've been on a schedule to have blood work done every four months since starting on hormones where I don't see the doctor, just the tech for drawing blood out. Today I did see the doctor, gained one pound since I last saw her woohoo. She goes over the normal things than says she want to examine me down below. She said I had excellent depth and width but said my urethra was a tad under size. Asked me if I had any issues, I responded truthfully, no issues. When done she said I will see you in 12 m

Clothing style uprooted

Pre-surgery for as many years back as I can remember my clothing style was pretty much short skirts or dresses until the age of 50 then I slowly transitioned to jeans where there was something inside of me that provoked the change. Beginning with the year prior to physical transitioning I might have worn a skirt once or twice and stayed steadfast to jeans then to leggings which for whatever reason were my staple lower body garment of choice. I was wearing leggings with tops appropriate for vario

Meeting the family of an older transgender

In one of the local transgender/cross-dresser groups one of the new members, close to 80 years old brought his wife and two daughters to a club we frequent. I walked in an hour if they got there because of my day long drive with the local sports car club. Said Hi, sat down. the new member, let's call her Jane introduces me to her family and doesn't actually say I'm transgender or post-op I'm guessing that it's assumed since the table is full of cross dressers. When Jane was done talking they ask

Another validation

I was just reading Christie's recent blog post which brings me to the following (it was a jog to my short term memory). My girl friend was watching the season finally of Survivor while I was napping on my recliner. I woke up, she looks at me and says "even with you sitting there with no makeup (she is use to me with mascara as I don't wear makeup) and in pajamas I can't begin to imagine you as a dude and I have known you since 2007." I turn to her, give her a thumbs up and smile. She says No, th

Feminine pads

I always get up at the crack of dawn (well actually way before) and my mind is fully operational. This morning what was racing through my mind Look at Microsoft Outlook calendar, when did I last take pain-killer (range is take one every four to six hours), well I slept six hours so this is a no-brainer but I can not stress enough that if you go thru this to document when meds were taken and for some may want to create alerts for when the next times are. So my cephalexin is also on alerts.

Today

When done here take a nap then walk to the mall down the street. Have checked with the front desk, they will pick me up if for any reason I am unable to make it back. Come back, do my meds and clean up followed by another nap. I am taking extra pads and water with me. Best thing here is exercise for better recovery. :D While at the mall I walked by a nail salon, backed up and had my nails done with shellac. I feel better after having them done which was partly why I went out, exercis

Dealing with law enforcement

I have was not always smart when going out in female mode in that I would wear clothing that the average female would not in a specific locale i.e. high heels and a short shirt when out for a stroll and would indeed draw attention to myself from all works of life in my younger days. From lots of reading on Internet forums it would appear I was not alone with these dressing habits. What turned me around was enlisting the service of a consultant that schooled me in how to dress and feel good about

Permanent cosmetics

Many years ago, I made a fatal mistake of plucking my eyebrows and did a horrible job in that when still moving between male to female then back to male looked bad in male mode but looked good in female mode. November of last year I researched permanent cosmetics for my eyebrows. The research began with a fair amount of time looking at pictures of woman who had their eyebrows done followed by researching who to check out and discuss my needs. At the end of last October, I had a list of five p

Awesome friend and acquaintances

For years, I dated a woman, which I felt a strong attraction too beginning in 2007, but never told her about my female identity. Well in 2009 I gave her a call (she lives 40 minutes from me and I needed to do it right now) thinking that there was roughly a 70 percent chance you would accept me and was scared for the remaining 30 percent. I came right to the point for my call and told her that I was transgender and made my mind up to have SRS in the coming years. I was happy to learn she was f

Personal protection part 1

My life lessons started early on from confrontations on the streets of Philadelphia with no formal training. I looked into various forms of martial arts through the years and found that not one was all-inclusive for real confrontations. Another thing about sticking just simply martial arts in general is that they are classroom based, what I call a close environment as appose to an open environment where you are in street clothes, placed in real life situations. Closed environment training is usu

At the movies

I went to see Lone Survivor at one of the local movie theaters this afternoon dressed appropriate for the weather in a black skirt, white top and ankle boots. While waiting in line at the ticket counter to retrieve my debt card from my handbag I noticed two American Express cards and no debt card. Up to that point I was fully composed but then waves of hot flashes started, where my debt card was, do not want to use my AMEX card. So I stepped out of line to search my handbag and the debt card is

No picnic

Check out my No picnic entry, perhaps one of my most important entries where I write about being overwhelmed when thinking back on yesterday. I will state I am fine, just wanted others to see what I went through which in many ways more then the day of surgery. http://karenpayneblog.com/2015/02/03/no-picnic/

Spent the day with an old friend

Performed my first dilation of the day, zero issues. I did learn that the mirror used to see my vagina could be used for keeping the tool from sliding so I tried this out and worked like a charm. Spent the day with an old female friend whom I have not seen in 30 years. We did a whole lot of exploring and lost track where we went to but some were not tourist attractions as she has been living out here for 25 years. She was very surprised at how I looked and said I looked great and complimented

Healing note

It has been nine days post surgery noticed the following which I really should had mention two days ago. Date of surgery, no black and blue at the site, near end of day two, ugly black and blue. Two days ago, zero black and blue, two tiny areas that are medium red under the site and each day are getting smaller and smaller. Pain, I was out all day where we were sitting 95% of the time, after about six hours or so one side of the public area was bothering me and had to readjust how I was si

Halloween

I use to find halloween a sanctum for no-bars outings before gender reassignment surgery. Would dress up, go to work then out to parties or bars and be extremely happy in that nobody would bother me, a male dressed as a female. My first time in Oregon, I dressed in a just above the knee skirt, white blouse and high heel pumps that I would call very business-like where many employees did not recognize me. Heck even one hit on me. This halloween will be my first as a female and the year before it

Heading home

It is finally that time when I can leave California and so happy. There was one glitch, about an hour ago Alaska airlines diverted my flight from one airport which is ten minutes away to another one which is 1.5 hours away. Called the limo service and they said they would take me to the other airport.

Life after gender reassignment surgery you may not have thought about

A few things that come to mind with humor. You can (or should not) go into a bar without a companion Females include you in their secret chit-chats (that's why I transitioned, just for that) Make sure to read the restroom sign (ooooops I made that mistake already, got some looks) Female products have a "Woman Tax" Pany liners uug You start noticing things like oh, my legs look crappy, exfoliating time Stay way from Victoria's Secret's, you can pass by one and not buy a new bra, panties, lotions

Morning at the my hair salon

I always enjoyed going to my hair salon prior to becoming female but it's so much better now as I am included into chit-chat that only woman engage in. Was there for three hours getting my roots and highlights done so there was a good deal of chit-chat. Two things worth mentioning, one of the stylist who (just learned this today) has been there for 13 years (and I have been going there for 20) ignored me so I thought then the stylist doing my hair said to me, do you know Jean (the other stylist)

Visited with ex-sister in-law and children last night

I texted her last week and said how about we get together? She said, next Sunday and why not come for dinner. When I arrived there was no mistaking that I had transitioned and this was the first they heard of it but she had figured it out from cryptic post I made on Facebook over the past six months. Her husband took it in stride but later confided in my he was very surprised. Her daughter and grand-son were there too who just heard from my daughter. We spent abound two hours chatting in t

Facebook cleansing

Don't know what got me started (Kevin Gallagher account) but I went into my albums and decimated most of my photos of my former self but could not bring myself to remove them all which where the one's I was teaching self-defense with. Think I will wait on those until I have pictures for my other (Karen Payne account) FB account. I did first save the photos off to my backup drive, you never know if for some strange reason I might want them but by all intense and purpose they are now buried in the

Hair salon

Since I am leaving for a week long trip in Seattle I wanted my hair to look great so I went to the hair salon to have a professional conditioning done and bangs trimmed.  They wash my hair, put the conditioner in then under a dryer. When I get out from the dryer one of the regular stylist comes over and says "I didn't see you come in or see your name in the computer, how are you?" We chatted for a bit then we get talking about sex and trade a few stories having great jiggling going on. This lead

Marci Bowers surgeon

I had a session with my therapist today where part of the conversation lead to a junction on a post I did this morning "The Opposite Sex, Rene's story" and she said that many letters being written by her are for Marci Bowers. Then the conversation turned to male to female clients and that in recent months she wrote letters for clients for Marci Bowers.  Even though she asked before, she asked again, where you happy with your results from Marci? No hesitation, yet I am completely happy with the l

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