Crossing T’s

Here we are at the start of a lower case “t” transitional week, the strange time betwixt holidays high and a new year nigh.

Christmas was lovely and white here in Dixie, a light blanket of snow lays still on the ground. Enough of the stuff to make a displaced northerner feel nostalgia, but not so much as to make travel a travail or render high heels impractical. For those of you presently ploughed under in the North East, or perhaps recently liberated from a miserable airport in Europe, I hope you are warm at home, or wherever you planned on being.

The big day was quiet and enjoyable Chez Bellejambes, although I must confess that I earned a few Cross Dresser Demerit points with the gift giving. The big hamper of things I picked up for Mrs. B certainly had all the color, cache and cut characteristics desired, but I was positively spastic on sizing. I am a little ashamed, really, someone with my eye and experience should do a little better. We will therefore sally back into the mall melee sometime this week to remedy things. It stings a bit, you know.

General busy-ness with the holidays have kept me away from the blog too, and also from activities that would create compelling new stories to share with you. I did keep a little busy following the ongoing series of guest posts at T-Central featuring the perspective of Cross Dressers and their loved ones. Following my own post, old friends and new names Sally, Aeify, Alice, the indispensable Stana, and most recently from The Wife, of The Cross Dressers Wife fame, all published great efforts. I believe there are another couple of essays yet to come in this series, which I look forward to as much as I enjoyed the warm, welcoming, inclusive and positive tone of the earlier posts.

Going by the comments the essays spawned, it would be fair to say that a few T’s were crossed though. My word, but things got a little heated. If you did not follow along, go spend some time while you have it. Passion is something that is not lacking under our big tent. Strongly held opinions neither. I stayed away from the fracas in part because life is short, but also because of other demands on my time.

Par example, my budding fashion journalistic career. There are a few new posts up at my other home, Guilty Pleasures, which is a lingerie blog for the more mainstream (i.e. non-part time) woman. Recent posts include a brassiere review for newish vendor Top Secret Society, some chit chat about luxury French hosiery brand Gerbe and, most recently, a roundup of Leopard print tights featuring purring entries from Hue and Wolford (ed. amateur model and critic pictured left). I can provide assurances here that none of my academic or vocational advisors ever suggested that I give this line of work a serious look. Well, none of them had my figure either, so there. This work, dear friends, is a blast and a privilege. Perhaps as well, a little cheekily, a little seditiously, these posts auger a day in the future where gender norms and standards of presentation are a little more fluid than they are today.

Other busy-ness comes from clearing the mental deck for a really new and challenging year. It is official that I am going back in to a formal workplace setting after a multi-year, pajama clad consultancy / sabbatical phase early in January. No details here other than to say that the work is something I am genuinely interested in and skilled at, that the work is with people I genuinely like, and that the work is something that I am still young and energetic enough to do well. The office is really close to some terrific shops too.

Part of the mental prep for this new undertaking will include taking stock of yet another year of integrating Petra into the whole me, and vice versa. Much of that work is done via this blog, and so figuring out the extent to which I will be able to do both the blogging and integrating in the upcoming year will occupy much of my thinking this week.

I will have fewer luxuries of time and opportunity in 2011 for the exterior life of Petra. And as much as I have had great good fortune in expanding my range in this past year, the best gains have been in the interior. I understand and love myself better here now than a year or so ago. With that said, I am going to have to be circumspect in my behavior in my newish setting. For example, it will be helpful to periodically stifle the urge to say things like “killer bag, where did you get it?” to smartly turned out clients and colleagues. A fine line exists between personality and liability and it must be walked carefully.

But you know, dear reader, that there is no on/off switch for this stuff, is there? And if there was, I am not sure I would want to fiddle with it all that much. I like the colors, textures and sounds too much. They are integral to me. Subtle adjustments to some of dials can be managed though, and I suppose must be. While I figure out how to tune things for new realities, I do hope you will tune in here time to time to see how it is all going.

I will get a Best of Petra / New Years Frockin’ Eve retrospective of the year posted up before we all turn 2011 later this week. In the meantime, thanks for your shocking, flattering and more welcome than words can render visits here to Voyages en Rose.