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I've been gone a long time, I'm sorry! Got ​really sick, found multiple causes, and started addressing them. One of them was our diet, and Nikki and I are living on the DASH diet as best we are able to right now. It's hard when you are staying at someone else's house (our repairs and slave labor to the house should be done tomorrow, and it should be listed within the week. That took FOREVER!). It helps that Nikki really loves my cooking, and has been visibly on the same page with me when my mom started trying to sabotage our efforts to get healthier. I know that sounds melodramatic, but it's been a struggle while we're staying here. I can't sell that house and buy a new one fast enough. My mom needs me to stay sick and not be able to improve my health and life so that she can keep telling everyone that all her weight and diet induced illnesses arent' her fault. And when I started getting better, so started the pressure to each junk food and salty things again. I resisted though, and Nikki has been great backing me up. It's kind of empowering to realize that I don't have to turn into my mother, that I CAN be successful after all without bariatric surgery (which I was ready to sign on for, but my insurance doesn't cover, and neither did my savings account!) and hopefully will continue to succeed going forward. (If you have hypertension issues, and want to address them without medication in a real not-creepy-anti-science food culty way, I can't recommend DASH For DUmmies enough. It explains how the science works, the research that went into it, how to shop, set up your kitchen, and a variety of starter recipes). I'm still taking my meds, but doctor thinks she's going to take them off once we're back in our own home and the stress of dealing with my mom is removed. I'm a bit stressed out. Nikki has been really great working on the prior issue I wrote here about about not backing me up and being on my page. I can't say enough how awesome he's been about it! I'm not sure I would have been able to deal with the last four months of illness and mom crazy if I still felt all alone like I did back then. I think I'm flirting with depression, and maybe had slipped quietly all the way in for a while when I really sick, but the dash changes having improved how I feel dramatically on a day to day basis is helping me climb out of it. ​So we have our eye on a house if ours sells and no one else snatches it up, but if they do, there'll be other houses. ​I'm sorta stuck on a fireplace, so I did my due diligent Bree researches how to safely own and operate a fireplace. I have learned a great deal about wood, chimneys, laying out the wood for a fire, storage, how to tell a good wood supplier and chimney cleaning profressional from a bad one, and I'm ready to spend a snowy winter's evening cuddling on the cough with Nikki making Smores! I'm ready, so Nikki said okay, we'll prioritize a fireplace. WOOHOO! Aside from my health, Dash has propelled me thirty pounds lighter and I fit in clothes I haven't worn in years! Nikki too, but for once I lost more because Nikki cheats at work and lunches at fast food. I got to see his office environment, and if my last job had been that nice and calm I would still be working! But I like my housewife life. And ​I spend a great deal of it working on increasing our variety of food and compliance with Dash. Salt is the enemy! I was the average American, and WAY overdosing on the stuff. It just never percolated how dangerous it can be in those amounts for me before. Life goes in waves like the tide. But I came out of this down cycle with a long term plan to address my physical issues, and several new coping mechanisms for emotional ones, and I can finally see that at some point there will be an end to this weird "I have a roof, but I feel homeless" limbo. We basically have a bed in a tiny room, and a corner in the sunroom where the laundry is, and that is our entire plot of "our space" here. It will be lovely to move back into our own place! Sell quick little house. I will really miss you, but gotta go. And supposedly one glass of wine a day is good for your heart too. So...bought a cheap bottle of red and I'm going to try to overcome my aversion to alcohol like I did my aversion to broccoli, pepper, and cauliflower in the last few weeks. It promises to taste like a cherry cupcake. I somehow disbelieve. I'm done rambling now. Tell me about any adventures I missed while I was gone!

Trans-Formation This column is about my future, my past and whatever else comes in with it. Welcome to here and welcome to you! As I try to figure out the oldest of Man's questions, boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, boy finds out she is with another. This will naturally involve my dating history, my life and the present, all centred on the person I am enamoured with. The title is basically the spoiler of it all. The girl in question is a transsexual. She was born a boy and transitioned to being a girl. As such, names and identifying information will be hidden to prevent anyone from finding out who she is, because she is still "in the closet" and has not made herself generally known! Not that she has to tell you or me or anyone as if it is anyone's business. If you are privilege to be trusted to know her life story or even a part of it then respect her wishes. She does not need to be anyone's gossip. She is who she is and that is more than enough for me. Formation is a French word meaning learning, or training. The title is my learning about transitional people. I will try to tell you about the things that are happening and my take on them. I have a vested interest here to protect that someone, so don't ask me identifying questions. Protecting her is more important than your questions. We live in Quebec, French and English speaking, she speaks French and I speak English! Two Solitudes by Hugh MacLennan, is a story of Quebec's language wars. It is frankly more of funny comment on my society when I was not in love with the girl from the other side of the wall. We work in shipping and transportation. Basically we move boxes for a living. We work in a warehouse for a company that you have never heard of. And the rest, well I feel no compulsion to tell the truth about anything that will identify her. I will try my best to say what is true and what a lie is. But anything that pinpoints anything to her is untrue. I am a middle age white man with a university education. Why I am moving boxes? Part of that long story yet to come. I am heterosexual. This is not something you normally have to say. After all, are not all of us thus so? Of course not. But until this recently, it was not a question that I had to grapple with in anything but abstractions. Human rights good, gay pride good, Marriage equality act, sounds great to me as I flip the channel for more sports news. I don't watch sport news. You get the point. My life was not something that you would consider extra ordinary. As a white man, I live in the world of privilege, White privilege, male privilege, Heterosexual privilege and I am sure many other privileges that I am not even aware of. Such as being able bodied; another privilege that most overlook, but it is the most glaring of privileges that we are to over look. I am also a member of the elites. In this French province, I may speak English, but my last name is that of the elites of the land. If you have an English surname, you are not discriminated against exactly; you are just treated with suspicious as being an "Other" (Une Autre). Someone who is allowed into society but not quite allowed all the way in. The thousands of digs that he real elites tell themselves they are still superior and in charge. But just as republicans, Donald J Trump and the white Americans are presiding over there coming lost of majority status with absolutely no grace at all, so too in Quebec is the privilege of our French speaking elites who got off the boat with Champlain coming to an end. My ancestors also got of that boat too. He was a blacksmith or so I am told. The difference is, my parents sent me to be educated in English to embrace the world, whereas most elites here just teach their kids French and try to shun outside influences. It won't work, and it never has worked in the past. All too often someone will rip the curtains and allow in the sunlight. Missing the metaphors? Read that again. Thanks. I have written books, don't ask, you have never heard of them. I have a blog, which you have also never read. In fact, unlike this one, not even my mother is reading this one! It has a low readership and yet I keep writing. It’s not much but it is something that I do. You know, waiting for that day when something of mine sells into the best seller list. Until then I will keep experimenting and keep writing. Right now, this is my subject. As I boil this all down, I come to the song by the Pursuit of Happiness, "She aint Pretty" paraphrased of course: "Boy meets girls, Boy loses girl, and boy tries to figure out what went wrong." In the end, that is what this is. A day by day blog of my life around her. And yes she is a she and I love her. The rest is mere details. Here is my journey.

I spent the evening with three girlfriends at a dinner show in downtown Seattle. I should have had a better time. I wore my new burgundy REI sweater dress, fleece-lined leggings, and a silver necklace. If I do say so myself, I looked nice. Nice that is, for me. I'm not sure I should be writing this at all. After all I'm a moderator here. Aren't I supposed to be like a Camp Counselor who always knows the right thing to say, the right thing to do? That's what it seemed like when I went to camp, about fifty years ago I guess. My divorce from my wife is final as of about a week ago. We still talk, we love and miss each other, and I think we will always be in each other's lives. But nonetheless we are divorced. I feel like I should be looking forward, excited about the future. Instead all too often I am so envious of women who get to just be what they are. Sure, they aren't perfect either. But their hairline isn't all receding, they have at least some sort of waist, and their voices are naturally feminine. And oh yeah, they don't have beards. Today I saw my electrologist for our weekly appointment. This week we were scheduled for only an hour because the dentist in the adjacent office is on vacation. She started working on my side burns but after 40 minutes I had to call it quits. It just hurt too much. I couldn't take it any longer. I guess I have another couple of years worth of appointments to look foreword to. I'm so blessed and so lucky and yet I feel so blue. I feel guilty for that, like I shouldn't feel this way. But we know that everyone's feelings are valid. I should approach them mindfully, accept them, don't fight them, and in fact, embrace them. Use them to help point the way I should go, don't let fear and hurt drag me down. If it were that easy... The good news is that I adopted a two-year old cat about a month ago, Peanut, whose photo is below. She seems to like me. I like her too.

My past I am not whole unaware of transsexuals. When I was working back in the 90tys, I knew a guy; my only active memory was talking with "Him" while standing taking a piss. He left only to come back a few months later as a woman. Ok being clueless one of the girls had to inform me that he was now a she! So I was like. "Oh wait... I know him...err her err... ok so a little confused!" So far from being shocked, I was "Live and let live" about the whole thing. She hung out with the lesbians at work. I was friendly with them all so I got to know her a bit. She was nice enough. Friendly even. I did not see any horns growing from her head, no smell of brimstone, no nothing. Sorry Mr Vice President Mike Pence. She was just a normal person. It was weird for the adjustment. That lasted like a day then it was not weird any more. I just accepted her for who she was and let it drop from my world. We played card a few times, had a few parties in a group and then I changed jobs. Never looking back. About twenty years later maybe more, around 2010, I met this girl on-line, so about seven years ago. Call her "May." (Not her real name.) She and I hit it off instantly! We talked everyday about everything and nothing, for many hours. Just enjoying each other’s company. Of course, I fell in love with her. Boy meets girl. It was destined to be. Except someone played a country song, so I lost the girl and my pickup truck sort of thing! She was wonderful. But... there has to be a "But" at this point, otherwise I would have married her. Yes that big M word. She did not have Skype and we could only talk by text. No video or audio. Video chatting was not as prevalent back then as it is now. So I made no notice of it and she lived in Yugoslavia or in the area formerly known as. Note that I have hidden her location while at the same time giving a perfectly valid location you can find on a map. Okay fine, I was enjoying being clever there! Then suddenly, she disappeared. She was not on-line, she stopped answering her emails, and she just dropped off the planet as far as I was concerned. This was strange. It took me years to figure it out but the clues are compelling. At least to my mind... (My so called mind...) She once sent me a picture, we did that all the time, exchanging pictures and videos from YouTube we had found. So this was not something unexpected. But this was a picture of a boy. I asked her who that was and she just said a friend. I was like; "OK?" But she let the subject drop. In my mind, of today, it seems that she dropped off the face of the Earth right after that. I could be wrong but I don't think so. I missed her, sent her emails etc. but what could I do. She lived in Europe and I was in Canada so not like I could drive on over to her house. Not that I ever knew where her house was. I had no phone number, nothing except a chat and email link. This in the end was not really a lot. I still talked to her girlfriend. So I got some news, really very little. "Oh she is busy! Oh she is working! Oh she got a job in Texas." That sort of bland information that left much to be desired; like shall we say information? A few years later she returned home to see her ailing father. He would die shortly after this visit. She was so fond of him, she would tell me about how wonderful he was. But the visit was anything but great. There was a falling out and she never spoke with him again! Rather he never wanted to speak with her again. He died before they could heal the rift. She was broken up over it according to her friend but she never reached out to me I tried but got no answer. You know that has got to hurt, to be rejected by your father. I began to ask myself what could have happened that would wreck what from my sideline point of view was a close, loving, relationship. I drew my own conclusion. The male picture, the dropping off the face of the Earth, no video, no calls and things began to click. She was a "He," she was transitioning from being male to female. No voice cause her voice might be too masculine. No video she might reveal her transitioning to the camera. She showed me that picture because she was trying to come out of the closet to me. If only she had had the courage. Or if only I was a better person? Who could have helped her to come out by being more open, more sympathetic or something more then what I was. I don't know which. The lack of Skype was a mere ploy; she would have a changed voice but not really a feminised voice if she was in transition. She tried to come out with who she really was, perhaps to start a real relationship with me and when she failed to come out all the way, she fled. I can only imagine the fear she must have felt trying to come out to me. Even the failed visit with her father now made sense. Telling a back country male of Eastern European background is not like telling some young hip Hollywood parents who are into these things. Thus the rift with her father was started when she told him who she really was. His son was not his son anymore but his daughter. Her "Job" in Texas was a place for surgery. I am not judging her in any of this. Later on, you will see that I too, would choke when I should have dived right on in. So who am I to cast the first stone? Affairs of the heart are by no means something for the frail or those lacking in courage. This is just a retelling in as neutral manner as I can these events but they lead to some soul searching when I had deduced these revelations. In the dimness of my mind, I had time to ponder this whole strange world of transitioning. *I*, a straight heterosexual going out with a what, a girl, a boy a girl-boy? Who was she? What is a transsexual? What does that even mean to begin with? They don't have any how to guides and the internet was not even nearly as user friendly for people transitioning as it is today; with vlogs, and site and all sorts of information. Back then, there was not a lot of information. Nor were there a lot of documentaries on the subject either. I know I looked hard for there to be some. Being an intellectual geek I started to learn. Not much but some. Since I fell for her, there has to be something in her that attracts me and answers a need I have inside. How could I do that, to fall for a girl like that? So that said something about me right? It did. It said I was a male and she was a female. I was a male in love with a female. No matter where she started from! No matter where she went! And whatever would happen to her, she was not a he! She was who she felt she was inside; a woman trapped inside a male body. A person with the overwhelming courage of conviction in her own sexuality and gender to challenge the societal norms and become who she was, first by living as the opposite gender then as surgical alterations began to shape who she was outside as well. So unlike the stereotypical country bumpkin, I was not freaked out by the whole thing. I was just introspective in my own mind wondering about my own orientation. In fact, men who like Trans women are not gay. Gay porn sites do not even host such pictures because gay people do not like those types of videos or images. They are only to be found on Heterosexual sites. Because women in transition are beautiful period, not in their own way, not in some other way they are beautiful in every way! They just are regularly, plain old beautiful. Many are highly feminine and deeply caring. They grew up in violence, hatred and self loathing. People who have experienced pain, rejection and hatred are some of the most sympathetic people you will ever meet. They know what suffering is. They don’t want to inflict any more on anyone. This journey continues

Fast forward to the present times; I met this girl about 15 months ago. She came in to the unit where I worked, angry, very angry. Her back was up; she was ready for a fight. I wanted to keep my distance, but I was her trainer. Lucky me, I get o train all the new people. So, over time, I became her friend. I think she was just nervous in her new position. She had some bad times before hand in her past positions so she was ready for a fight in this new posting, except no one here was willing to fight with her, not even just a bit. We showed her what to do then left her to do it or not as she chose. She could do the work or not do it or whatever, no one was on her back and the supervisors hardly were seen. They had to deal with me and that kept their hands full. Yes I am a pain in the lower extremes. So they avoided me, (She worked right next to me,) so I would go to their office and alert them to my problems. They would love my visits, as they usually meant more work. I was welcomed like the plague of locus. So she was left on her own to do as she pleased. So she learned her new position in a place where no one was on her back. Her old position they were always on her back. Remember she was small so she had trouble with the heavy parts of the job. Here we either would help her or let her lift what she could and I would do the rest. Once she was accustomed to the world of her new assignment, where people where helpful, Zen like and over all just chill, she calmed down. She is small, Feisty but small, 5 feet tall, very thin, maybe 100-110 lbs. Long hair and very pretty. I would say I am biased on the last part of her being pretty but she seems to get a lot of attention from all the other males who work in other departments so I am thinking she is pretty attractive to the male population. I guess I was "liking her" even before *I* knew I "liked" her. One of the bosses made fun of me for liking "Boi p*ssy" (I think that is what he called it.) because I write poetry or so I thought. Was there something in her file? At this point that was all I could think of. Could have been a stupid comment or was it more than that. I may never know really, not like I can go and ask. Well, I liked her enough to be her friend. Or to try to be her friend she was difficult to be around. She was and is hard to get to know. She was abrasive in some instances and generally not someone that you could get close to or even try to. Or was it just me that she was abrasive to and trying to push away? She seems fine with everyone else but sometimes I wonder. Was she pushing me away even then because she liked me too? Or was it all my imagination? I won't doubt that it is all in my so called mind. What sort of broke the ice was when she asked about my audio books. I was listening to books while I worked and she asked me about them I told her everything and she asked for copies. I was like sure. And I got them for her. I would like to think now, and certainly did then, that I was trying to be nice to her and make a friend. Could it have been an early stage of attraction? Some girls are attracted to bigger guys or so I hear. Don’t you love going back over old memories to see what you were thinking so long ago and see how the past is altered by your thinking today? Or is that just me? Thus began this strange journey into the deep unknown!

Just a quick note that I hit my latest sales target which means an extra $350. in my pocket. I got some help from my Sales Coordinator to meet the goal. He knows how hard I work, and he is as anxious as I am for me to succeed. We work as a team and that is a good thing. I am in a position to hit my next goal a little sooner than this one. I have a lot to learn and will continue to learn as the time goes on. I'm going to spend the weekend getting organized for the week ahead. It might be high time to read another book on sales too.

I seem to have made it through the holidays in one piece and without going into a deep funk. I did it by pretty much sticking to a normal routine and staying busy--not hard with a house and two dogs. I was invited over to Christmas dinner and again today on New Year's Day by my neighbors, Dave and Jeanie. I was the only guest for the first dinner. Today, I was joined by another neighbor who lives next door to D & J, and with whom they have an on-again, off-again relationship. He wasn't drinking tonight so that made a difference, but still the evening felf strained. Also, dinner was awful, no other word to describe it. The corn on the cob was good, but that was it. Jeanie is not the best cook on a good day, at least to my palate. Anyway, I did my duty. I will be happy to be home on my own the rest of the week. I made a big pot of beef borscht yesterday. I found the recipe in the paper, and I haven't had borscht in a long time, so I thought what the heck. It is somewhat of a process to make--lots of chopping--but the end result was great. It was fun to do as well. I did some work-work over the holidays, but I did take some time off too--need to recharge. I got a couple fo gift cards from by step-kids, so I bought a new pair of walking shoes that I can wear when prospecting--after all, I do walk for a living. They are dressy enough to wear with work-casual. I also bought a couple of things for me at Target that had been marked down--a pair of velvety lounge pants, a crushed velvet bath robe, and a chenille cardigan sweater. It didn't break the bank, and they are things I have been wanting to buy for a long time. I am happy with what I got. So, on to the year ahead. My boss wants me to be #1 in new accounts opened this year--I think I can do it. My goal is four for January. Very possible. I'll keep everyone up-to-date. Happy New Year to all..