Salon Makeover

Yesterday I had an appointment at the beauty salon. Initially it was for a full bodywax and an eyebrow wax followed up by a makeup lesson.

The bodywaxing didn't hurt as much as it has before. There were some painful bits but generally it was ok. I've got a fairly high pain threshold I think. Mind you after my last waxing the hairs there are fewer hair growing back so that helped too.

Zee tells me that with quite a few of the men that go in to have waxing she has to stop part way through because it hurts too much. The worst bit was actually when she was plucking stray hairs from my eyebrows.
While I was being waxed we briefly talked about electrolysis as that is something I'm going to need to have at some point.

The other thing that we talked about was whether her hairdresser would be willing to cut and style my hair as I grow it out. Her hairdresser had told her that she was happy to take me on as a client so hopefully I'll get a phone call from her when Zee passes my number on. If not then I'll get the details when I go for my next appointment at the salon as in another 8 weeks time my hair should be at the point it needs a cut and is long enough to start doing something with.

When Zee was doing my eyebrows she said that once I'm further along with things that I should think about getting an eyebrow and eyelash tint. I've had my eyelashes tinted before and nobody noticed anything so that is something that I'm looking forward to now.

After my body and eyebrow wax were complete we moved on to the more interesting and less painful part of the session. The makeup lesson.

Normally they do makeup lessons in the main part of the salon but yesterday Zee made an exception and we did mine in the treatment room. While she was getting all the makeup and brushes that she might need I slipped back into tights.

Oh forgot to mention yesterday I wore tights and panties all day, including to work. I'm going to be aiming to wear them to work all week. Its my punishment for not phoning Sam when I was supposed to the other week. Tights and panties to work under my male attire for a week. Friday should be interesting as we have a wear red day for charity. I've got a red thong I'm going to wear.

Back to the plot.

Over the top of my panties and tights I slipped on a top and a pair of jeans. Top was from Tesco, jeans Debenhams.

Zee started off by rummaging through my makeup to see what I had. She found my beard cover and setting powder and had me put that on. Once it was nicely blended she produced one of the compact powder that they used and put a covering off that over the top of my very pale base layer. Now that was something I'd never thought of but it certainly added colour to my complexion again.

Next came the blusher which highlighted my cheekbones nicely but not too strongly. We were aiming for a day time look. Something that I could wear to go shopping but could jazz up for nighttime.

Eye makeup came next. Now I've always done my eye the same way but Zee showed me a subtly different way to do them. A very light eyeshadow all over the eye, right up to the eyebrow as a base. A slightly darker colour for the inside to about the middle of the eyelid and then a darker shade for the outside. So far nothing that I didn't already do. I found out while she was doing this that I can wear any colour eyeshadow. My blue eyes let me get away with it apparently. Yay!

Next though she ditched the eyeliner instead using a dark eyeshadow and using this to outline the eye. Now that was something I hadn't come across but it certainly looked good. Eyebrows were done with a gel in order to make sure that they were tidy.

Finally it was mascara on the eyelashes. I always put to much on. Zee only did the tips of the eyelashes. She said that because my eyelashes are such a blonde colour that having them tinted would help me to not need as much mascara. Since I invariably manage to poke myself in the eye when I do my mascara anything that stops the bloodshot look is good.

When it came to my lips Zee explained about why we use lipliner, to stop the lipstick bleeding from the lips, and pointed out that once your lipstick is on then you shouldn't be able to see the liner, something I end up with from time to time.

Zee used two of my lipsticks and combined the colours to give me a lovely pinky shade suitable for daytime. As my eyeshadows were more of a neutral colour and so didn't stand out hugely then the lips could be made to stand out more. If my eyeshadows had stood out more then we'd have had to tone down the lips and not made them stand out so much.

I was very happy with the finished look. I'd brought my wigs with me so to complete the look I tried on each of them and Zee took some pictures. Same makeup, different wig, different look.

This is me in the wig that I got when I went to the Albany Clinic in Manchester and had the ladies at the Transformation shop across the road do my makeup for me.

 

 This is the finsihed makeup. It took a couple of attempts to get the light right for this close up.

Going lighter. This is the oldest of the three wigs that I have. I like the highlights but its isn't my favourite. Zee did say for both this and the Manchester wig that I could use hair accessories to allow me to play with the styles more.

 

 

Strike a pose. Look at the size of my hand in that picture! I've grown a spade from the end of my arm.

  

Both Zee and I agreed that this was our favourite wig of the three. I got this because I wanted something a bit longer and which I would be able to play around with and do things with. Hopefully I'll be able to get my own hair this long so that I can do lots of girly styles with it.

 

Last but not least this is what Zee said was me being playful. It my favourite of all of the pictures. 

I've still got a long way to go before I feel that I could really pass in the street. I need to practice with my makeup more and also need to look at some of the clothes I wear, I think that top would have looked much nicer with a cardigan or something hiding my arms. They aren't my best feature by any stretch of the imagination.

Before I got changed Zee took some pictures for her portfolio using the camera on her phone. I might try and print of some of these pictures and let her have some.

It was lovely having the makeup removed as Zee was so gentle as she applied the cleansing lotion and then removed the makeup with warm flannels and cotton wool pads. I could have laid there all day.

I can't think of when I've had a more relaxing and enjoyable time than yesterday morning at the salon. 7 or 8 weeks until the next session is going to feel like a lifetime but at least by then I'll know what is happening with regards to being referred to the gender clinic.

Assessment

Three weeks until my assessment to see if my local NHS Trust will put we forward for GRS.

On March 15th I get to meet with two therapists.

I've been waiting several weeks since I saw my GP and she agreed to refer me. Yesterday morning I phone up the doctors to see if they had heard anything. The receptionist told me that they hadn't received anything but did give me a contact number for the hospital and suggested I give them a ring to see where I was on the waiting list.

Well yesterday was busy and I didn't have a chance to ring the hospital.

When I got home last night though there was a letter on the side with Private and Confidential stamped on the front. The envelope looked as if it either it hadn't been sealed properly or someone had tried to open it.

When I opened it inside was confirmation of my appointment. I might need to think about being more patient in future.

The worrying bit about this is the fact that the envelope looked as if it might have been opened. Hopefully the wife didn't open it to have a nose inside. She hasn't said anything, not even about the letter itself. I'll have to see what develops there as its still a bit too early to explain to her what I'm doing.

Favourite pics

Just read the post by Staci at Femulate about the Blogger pages facility.

Doh, sometimes I have some real blonde moments. I really should have remembered about them from another blog I did the year before last.

Anyway, I've added a page with some of my favourite recent pics. The outside one was taken at Transformation in Manchester just before I went to the Albany Clinic. All the rest were taken at home.

Hope you like them.

Following rather than leading

Now that my GP has referred me for assessment I'm in the process of stepping back from some of the things I'm involved with leading.
Part of the reason I'd decided to do this is because I'm a Christian and although I have a strong faith at the moment I feel like I'm in not in the place I should be with regards to my relationship with God.

The other Sunday I visited some friends to tell them that I had visited my GP and asked her to refer me to a gender clinic. Although they could have tried to pursuade me not to do this I told them at the outset that I wasn't there to discuss that but what I was going to do with some of the things that I'm involved in leading.
I'd already come to the conclusion that I needed to step down from some things as it would be difficult to carry on with them in a leadership capacity.
As a result last week I had two meetings, one with the coordinator of the group I'm a volunteer with helping deal with people who are out clubbing on a Saturday night and who get into difficulties through drink or such like.

The other meeting was with one of the vicars at my church and his wife who is one of the other leaders in our Junior Church. I explained that I was stepping down from helping but didn't tell them why. They didn't really need to know and there are already four people at church who know, my two friends I chatted with and the other vicar and his wife.

Yesterday I was my last session with Junior Church and I had 5 minutes at the end to tell the children  and the other leaders what I was doing.
Stopping doing Junior Church was really hard. I'd have loved to have carried on doing it but most of the children are less than 8 years old. Even the oldest child there is only ten. Its going to be interesting enough for their parents explaining what is going on when I go full time without me teaching them as well. I suspect that there would be uproar about it and a number of the children would have been pulled out of Junior Church. The children are too important to me for me to allow that to happen.

Telling the children that I wasn't going to be teaching them anymore was difficult enough. If I'd been on hormones already I would have been in floods of tears.

The really hard part though was when one of the girls, the 10 year old, looked at me as I was telling them and there was a look of complete shock on her face. That was really hard because she likes me and we always have a chat when she sees me. She lost her father about 18 months to 2 years ago and I think in a way sees me as a father figure. To be honest if things had been different then her mother would have been someone I would have liked to get to know better because she is intelligent, funny and I enjoy talking to her. I'm hoping that we can be girlfriends at some point because I'm sure that I'll be able to learn a lot from her.

After telling the group yesterday, including the other leaders, one of them came up to me afterwards and asked if I was ok. Much as I would have loved to go into details I just gave that old standy - "Yes, I'm fine" - which is guaranteed to kill off any conversation i have unless the other person is a lot more savvy and keeps questioning. I expect that the other leaders will catch me at some point to ask about things.

After the service my friend and our vicars wife caught me and dragged me into a room for a chat. They were a bit annoyed with me as they've offered me prayer ministry to help me out with all this. I sent back an email last week saying that I would have prayer ministry but only under certain conditions, one of which was that any prayer is to support me and not try to change what I'm doing. That's what got them annoyed because they know that I know they wouldn't do that. They both reinterated the point that they will support me because they love me for who I am.
A couple of things that did surprise me though that came out of the conversation was that when I'd been around to see my friends the older day they had said that they realised that something wasn't right with me a few weeks ago.
When I asked about this I was told that I had seemed withdrawn and not my usual spiritual self. Hmm, it really would take someone who knows me to spot that one.
The other thing that surprised me was that the vicars wife told me that they needed people to help out with our prayer ministry at some of the services and was wondering if I would volunteer.
Ok, I've just told them that I'm looking to become a woman, I'm in a dark place with my relationship with God and I'll asked to help out with praying for other people. Sometimes my relationship with God really doesn't make sense.

Anyway, I'm going to take them up on the offer of prayer ministry once I've had the assessment at the local hospital and seen what they say.

I am so glad that both of these wonderful ladies are also going to be there to provide support to the rest of my family.

I am so lucky that I have friends like these who really do love me.