After a fairly uninteresting day we headed into town to attend our first ever LGBTI get together,I thought since I satisfy 3 out of the 5 categories I would be sure to find someone to talk to!. I went with a very open mind, with no idea what to expect but had a feeling it could be a very unorganised affair, badly attended and with no real structure but was completely wrong. We arrived at the Goose just after 4 pm went into the bar and ordered some drinks, there were a group of people to our right at some tables, the multi coloured balloons gave away the fact that this was the group we were looking for, we took our drinks over and we’re met by very friendly faces, at this point I wondered, as they don’t know us from Adam as it were, how did they know to get into conversations with us but it soon became a very friendly chat and as a bonus the girl I was speaking to was from Newcastle, just 100 miles north of my home town in the north of England. It’s always a great conversation starter and very easy to pick as the accent is strong. From that moment on I was in constant conversation with someone, everyone made us feel really welcome and I was surprised how many people attended, there must have been the best part of 50 people there over the evening, the other surprise was that there was only three guys and the rest were girls, of various ages but we were probably among the oldest. Everyone was sharing stories and I indeed shared mine with several people. Denise had made a b-line for two of the guys as she had been told they were from Wales, indeed very close to where Denise was brought up so after I had sort of finished my conversation with someone I thought I would head over to her and introduce myself, firstly to Andy, what a lovely guy, we chatted for some time and it came out that we had both been in Philadelphia at the same time, I thought Denise would have explained why we had been in Philadelphia but obviously not and after some time Andy asked me what made us choose Philadelphia as a place to holiday, he was quite blown away when I told him the reason why we had been there and wanted to know all about my experience. He mentioned that his partner was a landscape gardener so when he finished talking to someone and came over to us, I introduced myself and we got talking about the job, I explained what my business was and we had I lovely chat about each of our businesses. I can’t say I have ever been to an event where I have instantly made so many friends, what a revelation! Invitations to stay with people, immediate Facebook friends and just a great evening. Sadly I am not at full strength yet by some way and being on my feet or sat on hard stools is not very comfortable for me at the moment plus the fact that we had arranged to FaceTime my brother later meant the evening was not over long but such a good night and we will definitely go to more, there were so many friendly people there I’m sure I could have made a night of it if I had been fully fit but there will be many more occasions like it I’m sure.
We returned home and it had come in quite cold, fortunately I had lit the fire before we left so was confident that the house would be warm when we got in, what a lovely feeling that is when you walk through the door and a lovely warmth greets you, a wood fire warms your home like nothing else, sure there is some work attached to it getting wood, splitting it, making kindling, cleaning the ash out and not to mention the dust but it is all worth it ten fold so I just gave it a rake, added some more wood and called my brother and his wife. It would have to be one of the positive FaceTime calls we have had with them since telling them of my decision to transition in January, for the first time they both seemed really interested in how I was doing, in how my party went last Saturday and how life was in general, we in turn asked about their weekend last week as it was Polly’s birthday and about the triathlon they are doing between them next weekend so all in all a lovely end to the day. On the down side I was in quite a lot of pain when we got home but it soon went and I was feeling ok.
Yesterday was the day of my 6 week post op Skype appointment with the team in Philadelphia or Heather to be more precise, it was fairly short and sweet really, we had sent some photos over the previous week so she had had a chance to check on my progress and seemed happy with it, I had a few questions which she answered very easily, has given me the ok to do some light exercise and have a bath which I have really missed. We also spoke about the dilation schedule, I had mistakenly thought that after my 2 months of dilating three times a day it was scaled down somewhat but I read the schedule before the appointment and to my dismay, it goes on much longer than I thought, after the 2 months of 3 times a day there is three months at twice a day then 6 months at once a day (just in case you have lost count that brings us to 1 year after the surgery!) then after that I goes down to once or twice a week for a while then even less but never stops for the rest of my days!!!!! I am hoping that when I am fully healed it will become less of a chore, maybe even a little pleasurable? Who knows but it certainly goes on for longer than I thought! At the end of the day, it’s not a problem as it is all part of my being a girl and that so outweighs any negative things even now when it’s quite painful to do. I can honestly say that never in my life have I felt this peace within me, I just can’t wait to get out there fully fit again, working and building the house at Nannup but above all being Stephanie, the person I have wanted to be and should have been from the start!