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And you are seeing the world while you do it! So many people never go beyond a 50 mile radius of their home, even for vacation, it's kinda sad. Especially since the modern era gives us the physical ability to see it all like never before, an 8 hour plane jaunt to Britain vs. months on a ship. So many people just...don't. Explore your insides through exploring your world my Emma!

As some of you may know I'm on a rather extended road trip through the end of February, having stayed in San Diego (Chula Vista) for a couple of weeks, and am now in Mesa, Arizona. Why am I on this trip? My wife and I felt that it would be good for both of us, to provide some space for us to clear our heads and consider our future. The first week and a half were pretty emotional and rough for me. I kept falling into a funk as I felt lonely and sad. Traveling by myself isn't the best (no one to share adventures with) and leads to all sorts of mind games, rehashing the past, assuming the worst for the future, all that. A few days ago my fog lifted and it's not returned. I'm not manic or whatever, just calm and centered. Part of it is that I am simply accepting my transgender nature. (Yeah, I know you've heard it before but I mean it this time!) At the risk of upsetting the karma I am liking myself and how I feel, as a trans woman who may not need to present as such outwardly but knows who she is internally. I've been reading Harry Benjamin's "The Transexual Phenomenon" which, while over 50 years old, offers helpful insights into the spectrum of transgender people. I wish there was a similar book published more recently. (If you know of one please let me know.) I'm also grateful that I can even have this experience. Most people probably can't afford it. I'm staying in KOA "Kamping Kabins" that are about $65/night, and I prepare almost all of my food so I'm keeping expenses down. It does get chilly at night so I bundle up and get cozy. I've driven over 1,200 miles so far and spent about $100 on gas; thanks Prius! I'm also grateful that I've been receiving such warm affirmations from friends and family lately: Bree, Michael, Monica, Jack, David, Paul, Dara, Joanna, Rob, and Glenn. It helps so much to be able to talk to them on the phone or via email from time to time and not just about TG stuff. That's about it for now. I'm in Mesa until Friday and then driving to Flagstaff, which while more northern appears that the temperature will be livable for me. Best wishes to all, Emma

I realized yesterday how much this kind of exploration really works for me. I love traveling without much of an itinerary, allowing myself to enjoy the experience, confront challenges, and go with the flow. For example, I'm finding that Mesa is a little chilly for me and decided to move this coming Friday. I used the weather app on my iPhone to look for warmer areas within a couple of hundred miles and was surprised to see that the Flagstaff area (Grand Canyon, Sedona) is about 60 degrees so I made a reservation there. But yesterday on the radio I heard that it's 30 degrees there, and snowing! Brrr. I did some more work on the iPhone and I don't know why but it shows the wrong info for Flagstaff, so I cancelled the reservation and am now heading to Santa Margarita, California on Friday. And yes, the time for introspection is wonderful. I keep coming across things serendipitously. Yesterday while driving around I heard the TED Radio Hour on NPR, a show that discussed the 5 senses we have. One interview (on vision) featured Isaac Lidsky, who started losing his sight starting at age 12 and was completely blind in his early 20s. What a remarkable man. When he first heard his diagnosis he literally thought his life was over, that he was doomed to a lonely and unhappy life. Somehow he realized that he could approach the problem by reframing, especially with two questions: 1) Precisely what problem am I experiencing now? 2) What exactly am I going to do about it, now? I found this very moving. All too often I get caught up in my worries and fears, and feel lost. I can't help but recall Lidsky's situation and find his questions so convenient and useful. In case you'd like to listen to the NPR show, here's a link. Look for the show about the 5 senses: http://www.npr.org/podcasts/510298/ted-radio-hour

So much for best laid plans. Thanks to a sick cat spewing over the ENTIRE staircase top to bottom, Nikki and I had a quick meeting to figure out how best to deal with this mess, and the staircase IS on the renovation list...so... RENOVATIONS HAVE BEGUN! I repeat, they have begun! This is not a drill! Grab your emergency breathing masks! *laughing* At this point it's easier to just start early and toss the carpet than to clean that up, poor cat really didn't have a good night last night. The vet thinks it's lingering damage from his starvation period, he's never been quite 'right', and while all cats are puke machines to some extent or another, this one apparently aspires to be an Olympic specialist in the sport. So...we did not get a pleasant surprise under the carpet, I admit I had a silly hope maybe it was nice under it, it wouldn't be the first time a homeowner removed carpet to find something pleasant underneath. But it wasn't a horror show either, it is just a set of aging painted stairs in need of cleaning from sitting under slowly disintegrating padding. Then probably it wouldn't hurt to trowel on some wood putty to smooth out all the nicks and tack holes from the carpet, and we can paint them so they don't look quite so bad. The good news is that they do seem to be in decent condition, and the website I saved on how to redo them doesn't look like it will be necessary at this time, unless, of course, Nikki drives that hammer through them into the basement or something.

That sounds great! Introspection can be a scary thing, but it is the only path to authenticity 😀

Hugs! I'm so glad you're starting to love on our adventure! When you get home you have got to find a time we can chat and tell me about all the things you saw and did! Are you going to hit up the Grand Canyon while you're exploring the great south west? I've never been myself, but I hear it's amazing!

So, in my ongoing quest to improve the new budget and live better on what we have now, and my growing fear that Trump is going to throw us back into 2009 or worse when all the jobs vanished, I have been working on one of the biggest expenses that IS mutable, unlike the mortgage, internet, etc. And that is...food. Most advice seems to always stem around don't eat out, cook yourself, but groceries are stupidly expensive, and the whole process of fitting cooking into a busy life isn't that intuitive. Add in a rage issue with planning like I talked about earlier (I know, I'm nuts sometimes) and not eating out doesn't REALLY fix the issue. SO....I have found two solutions that work for me, and want to share them with the other potential cooks who want to get a handle on their food expenses, especially with the prices of food going up all over the place now. The first is going to sound dumb, but pinterest.com is your friend. It brings you to a HUGE amount of cooking blogs and food sites that you might not find just googling, and offers pictures of foods you might not have been exposed to before but could be interested in trying, and an easy place to 'pin' things to look at later. MOST of all, it's free and no need to spend money on a cookbook, make one in your computer. Then, start a free account at http://www.foodplannerapp.com This site has a pro paid version, but most of the features are available in the free version, there are just ads you'll have to ignore. Or there's another one that is $5 a month, I forget the name but I could find it again if any one wants it. I prefer free because my goal is both organization and spending reduction, but if someone is just organization, I think the other site looked a little spiffier. The free one seems a bit more awkward to use than the paid one, but it's not overly difficult once you poke at it a bit and figure it out. So how this site is affecting my goals - It allows me to import recipes from websites, and enter my own. So I'm bulding up a catalog of everything I actively cook now and want to try. Sounds like just a cookbook, I know. But then it has a meal planner option where I can easily create a two week plan by going to the recipes, clicking 'add plan' and it asks me for the date and breakfast, lunch, dinner, or snack. And then I can also add it to a grocery list that I can then print out or put on my phone and take with me. It considerably cuts into how LONG it takes to meal plan, and those advice sites are right, I am reducing the amount of money I'm spending on food by planning everything and living on a 'schedule'. Yes, I have some internal resentment of the time it takes to plan things and losing my rights to whimsy, but I am slowly countering that with the fun of having money to save for the big things we need and to spend on entertainment because the food budget is shrinking. I'm wasting less, spending less money, and spending less time trying to figure out what to do for meals or what my 'mood' is. I'm not entirely sure now that my issues with giving up the 'freedom' to do whatever I like whenever I like isn't some form of my add or self-destructive part of the dismorphia disorders trying to control my behaviors, or if it's a normal emotional reaction. I really can't tell. And I'm sharing this because I have picked up on that there are people here also struggling with money like I do, and maybe this can help someone else like it helped me. Maybe not. But I have a perspective that the legion of every day things I wasn't taught growing up which did NOT magically morph into this mythical 'well this is just common sense, you should have figured this out the minute you became a grownup!' Some people do figure things out they weren't taught and their brains have no reason to conceive of, I don't dispute this. But just as many are like me and these basic living skills don't magically pop up in our minds and we need to be exposed to them to learn to utilize the strategies to improve our lives and counter the others we were taught.