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4:33 a.m. - Saturday, Aug. 10, 2002
Ms Leslie drops a couple of pounds and rattles her tin cup.
I�m really impressed with myself today. I finally, finally got back into new territory with my weight loss efforts. I thought I could quit smoking and still keep losing weight during July. I�ll never admit it in public, but I was wrong. I quit smoking alright, but I did so at the expense of my weight loss efforts. Is it possible I was smoking to keep from eating? Does science know about this; that people who stop smoking can gain weight?

That�s alright. It was worth doing. The last thing I needed on the long flight to Thailand with my mother, my sister and my own worries is that ugly old Camel Joe hanging on my back. I�m feeling like I�m back in control of my diet again. I actually had lunch with Sandy and Kimberly at the Bombay Bicycle Club and was able to have a wonderful walnut chicken salad instead of the family-size deep fried house seafood barge. I had a great time, wonderful salad, and couldn�t finish even half of that�. And I still show a loss for the day.

My mother�s sister died from her cancer the night before last. This is the aunt who laughed at me all those years ago when I told my cousin I wished I was a girl. It�s a funny thing: Even though she was one of the nicest people you could ever meet, I never did get close to her after that. Partly from that deep sense of humiliation and partly because I can really hold a grudge, I�ve kept my distance from her and her family. It�s my loss. If she had known more about me, I�m sure she would have been accepting and supportive. I think she would have felt terrible to know that her laughter had had such an effect on me.

Oh yes� while I�m here, I need to do a couple of things. Sillers suggested a week or so ago that I talk about my surgery fund and how it is progressing, and several people have asked if I�ll still have access to my dairy while I�m in Thailand.

I�m not taking a computer with me, but I know there are places near where I�ll be staying that have computer time for rent. While I�m not able to get out, I hope to have my sister go there and enter an update or two here. Ann will be here in Mississippi picking up my mail and taking care of my ornery fish. She�ll have access to my e-mail and diary too, and I plan to talk to her by telephone from Thailand as well, so she may also add an update to my diary. I�m sure there�ll not be new entries here daily, but there�ll be some information placed here intermittently while I�m gone.

Now the surgery fund�.

I never did expect much in the way of donations for my surgery. I only added the little PayPal thingy at the bottoms of my pages as an afterthought. I felt that, you know, if a hundred thousand people eventually saw my site and one in a thousand decided to send me a dollar, well that would be a hundred dollars; about what I pay for the domain name each year. I would never rely on donations to completely fund my surgery. It�s too important to me.

As it turns out, it�s a good thing I didn�t rely on it. To date, I�ve received a grand total of zero from donations. I did get some e-mail from a man who told me he was sending a dollar via PayPal, but it never did turn up. This was the one and only guy who�s ever written to me along pornographic lines too. Even then, it wasn�t all that special. He just wanted to tell me how he likes to dress up as a woman alone in his bedroom and� well.. you know.

I plan to make three trips to Thailand. I�ve saved the money for the first trip, during which I�ll have surgery to change the appearance of my genitals from marginally male to female and to install breast implants. My cost for this is a little less than ten thousand dollars plus travel costs and lodging for a couple of weeks after I�m discharged from the hospital. I�ve already saved this money. I�ve done it by buying very little else over the last couple of years. I drive a 1982 Chevy van, live in a cheap one-bedroom apartment, do without most of the things you take for granted, like furniture, and I buy as few clothes as I can� although I have to say, I do love to buy clothes. I�m not rich, but I�m not poor either. I just have to make choices in my life and for now, I choose to spend my money on surgery and little or nothing else.

Within a year, I hope to have enough money to return to Thailand for some specialized surgery to feminize my face. This is, believe it or not, probably the most radical and painful of the three surgeries. The bones under my face will be modified in a number of ways to make my face statistically more female. For this, I expect to pay another fifteen thousand dollars. How I�ll come up with that money, I really don�t know� but I know I will.

And then, after allowing six months for healing of the first surgery, I plan to return a final time for more plastic surgery on the soft tissues of my face. This will be the more traditional surgery that many women seek as they get older. Again, I expect to spend somewhere in the neighborhood of ten thousand dollars, but I�m not sure at this point just how much I�ll need.

All in all, I expect to pay the price of a pretty nice Cadillac to make the revisions I seek to my body�. Somewhere between thirty-five and forty thousand dollars. Of that, I�ve already saved the first ten. If I can do ten, I guess I can do the remaining thirty.

So that�s it: Donations 0.00, Personal Funds 10,000.00. I�m not good at asking for help, ever. I learned a long time ago that the only person I can rely on is me. And I sure don�t beg. I�d rather die. But for that rare person who WANTS to help, I offer the PayPal logo at the bottom of the page so that person can transfer funds without disclosing any personal information, like a credit card number, to me. I don�t need to know and I don�t want to know.

I also put some links to Amazon.com on my website. If you want to do something for me that won�t cost you anything, just make any of your purchases at amazon.com by going to my website first and clicking through my site to amazon. They�ll sell you whatever books you want at the same price you�d pay anyway, and then they�ll credit a small percentage of your sales price to my account.

Or.. best of all� just keep making those great comments and sending me that positive energy. It�s worth more than you know to hear from people who respect and support me. I can�t get that kind of help any other way. I love you all for that.

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