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a quick little writeup about our trip to LA! i gotta get better at writing post-event summaries of stuff like this, i have a terrible memory so writing about stuff helps me to not Forgor.

anyway, we (me+husband+friends) went to see Ghost, because of course we were travelling just to see Ghost lol. we saw two shows at the Forum--which i fucking refuse to call the Kia Forum absolutely not--and they were filming these shows so we weren't allowed to have our phones or cameras out. they made us put them in little magnet-locked security bags when entering the venue.

we had VIP tickets because we were worried about not getting good spots and i'm glad we did that, because even with VIP we still had a ton of people ahead of us in line when we got there at 8 AM. still got pretty good spots tho! we were on the barrier, off to the side. at the second show we were wayyy off to the farthest corner of the barrier but that gave us plenty of room to dance our asses off and make fools of ourselves lol. we ended up being filmed a LOT, so i can't wait to see the embarrassing footage they put in the DVD, or whatever it is that they were filming for....

while we were in LA we took the opportunity to explore a little, since we arrived a couple days before the shows, and had an extra day after. it was VERY HOT out so we didn't have the energy to do as much as we would have liked, but the things we did see were neat. i particularly enjoyed the Medieval Torture Museum, which was suggested by my husband because he saw it on YouTube a while ago, lol. it was really gory, goofy, macabre fun, just a bunch of fake-bloody mannequins being brutalized by various historic torture devices with spooky gregorian chant music playing in the background the whole time. the exhibits are all in a downstairs basement area, so it's all dark and ominous down there for added atmosphere. overall an experience i would do again, even though i disliked that touristy Hollywood area-- it was too loud and crowded outside for me. the museum was actually very peaceful in comparison!

on our second day in LA we went to visit the church used in MCR's Helena video, at the request of one of my friends who's a big fan. i don't know much about MCR (i didn't hear any of their music until i was in my 20s) but the church was very pretty, and the staff were kind enough to let us take pictures inside. i may be a devil worshippin' queer but i do enjoy looking at churches :p this place had that wonderful wooden scent that you only get inside an older church building.

we made it to the natural history museum on the same day, and my husband and i broke off from the group for that, with just enough time to walk through the dinosaur and gemstone exhibits before closing. we kinda speedran the dinosaur section because there were way too many screaming children, but it was still enjoyable. but i think the gemstone gallery actually outshined the dinosaurs for me, there were some truly incredible rocks in there. i wish i'd gotten pics of the gems but we were too distracted just ogling at them.

the only other big touristy spot we had time for on the last day of the trip was the Griffith Observatory, which we also arrived at just before closing. that was pretty cool, although most of the exhibits were closed or shut off for the night. still, it was cool to see the city from the balconies up there.

i'd like to make another visit to LA in the future, just to see more stuff. there's a lot of goth and spooky stuff that we didn't have time for on this trip. but overall we all had a great time, and got very sunburned :D

i've been meaning to make a post about new developments in my Mental Health Journey...the summary is that lamotrigine is good shit!

after SEVERAL weeks of trying to get psychiatrists to stop cancelling on me, i finally had my intake appointment and second followup with one. he agrees that i have something in the same neighborhood as BPII, but the exact diagnosis is a little unclear because while i do experience mood cycling, my depressive symptoms align with BPII but my manic symptoms are less potent and less frequent than would be "typical". but i'm lucky to have a psychiatrist who isn't hung up on me matching an exact, specific diagnostic criteria; he recognizes that i have enough symptoms to qualify as someone who may benefit from a BPII treatment plan, so that's what we're doing. my current official diagnosis is still "unspecified mood disorder" but will probably change in the future as my psych and i learn more about my symptoms.

the first order of business was strongly advising me to seek out a therapist who offers DBT. i HATE talking to therapists and i've never had a good experience with one, but this time i have a diagnosis and a specific type of therapy to pursue, so maybe going in with more "direction" will make me hate it less. right now i'm still waiting on responses from any of the therapists i reached out to, so i guess i'll write more about therapy when it actually starts happening for me, lol.

the second thing on the agenda was to get me a prescription for lamotrigine, which i've been taking at 25mg daily for about 2 weeks now. i was apprehensive about it because i have pretty severe medication anxiety (oh, i also was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder, lmao) and the Scary Death Rash That Kills You sounded terrifying to me, but i have several people in my life who take this med at much higher doses and they reassured me about it. i'm still anxious about the rash--it doesn't help that i already have dry and itch-prone skin--but wow i noticed an almost immediate difference in how "normal" i feel. i still have my moments, but i've noticed that they're a little less intense and long-lasting? it feels like my brain is quicker to lose interest in sustaining really intense negative emotions, compared to unmedicated where i would just stew on anger or depression for hours or days at a time. i can almost physically feel a release of pressure on my head when i lose steam on a spiral or a meltdown.

anyway, over the next several weeks i'll be steadily increasing my dose up to 100mg daily so we can figure out what works best for me, so we'll see what happens. but currently i'm very pleased with how it's been going so far. the only unwanted side effect i've had is some nausea at night, because that's when i take the pill so i guess i just get nauseous when it "kicks in", but it only lasts about 30 minutes or so and then i'm fine. i just came back from a week-long vacation that normally would have seen me going crazy with stress-induced mood swings, but with the medication i was able to be Normal and have a really good time without any major crashes or spirals :)

also, i picked up the word "lam-lam" from someone on the lamictal subreddit (because of course there's a lamictal subreddit) and i can't stop calling it that lmao

skipped a post last week because i was travelling! i tried to keep up with my routine but i missed a couple doses of minox, but i still managed at least one dose a day. i think i might have missed a finasteride or two as well.

but regardless i think i'm starting to see more new growth. it looks like it's growing in an irregular pattern; it's just kind of patchily filling in, especially at the back of my head. i re-shaved right before the trip, so this is a little over a week's worth of growth. i can say for certain that the hair that i already have is definitely growing faster than it used to-- i'm way fuzzier than i usually am at this point after a shave. it's also super soft because i've been doing great at remembering to condition it every day :p

from this point forward i'm not going to be shaving my head. with fall approaching it'll be Beanie Season soon, and i can just hide the awkward inbetween phase under a hat :) so hopefully it keeps filling in and by the time next summer rolls around i'll have a presentable head of hair!

no notable changes this week except that my scalp is super dry and flaky, which is probably the minoxidil's doing. i'm prone to dry scalp and dandruff anyway so i've been doing daily head massages with cream conditioner in the shower to help the issue. the scab on my forehead is a cat-related injury lmao

today marks week 2 of my Hair Adventure; i dermarolled for the second time and it made my scalp a little itchy like last time but it's nothing terrible. it's way too soon to see any kind of progress yet--i don't expect to see any noticeable changes for at LEAST a month--but i'm just trying to be consistent with updating so i can have a clear record to compare/contrast in the future.

i woke up in the middle of the night last week with some pretty intense cramplike pain in my lower back that i think might have been uterine cramps triggered by the finasteride? they lasted a few minutes and then i was fine again, and it hasn't happened since, so i guess my body was just getting used to the medication. my hormone situation is kind of weird because of my PCOS so anything that messes with my hormone levels usually triggers cramps.

my hair's shorter than the last post because i buzzed it back down a couple days ago. the last pic in this post is a macro shot of the apex of my scalp where the hair is thinnest. i notice that i have a lot of hairs that are thinner, lighter, and don't seem to grow past a certain point, and i've done a little reading about hair restoration that taught me the word for that kind of hair but i can't remember the name as i type this lol. hopefully the minoxidil will help those follicles produce normal hairs again.

applied the first dose of minoxidil today, so i figured i should document what my head looks like now, for future comparison. my scalp is still a little red and itchy from the dermaroller.

this is the problem i was talking about in my previous post, where the density of the hair on the sides of my head makes the top look very bald in comparison. zooming in on the apex of my head you can see that i do still have hair there--enough that it feels fuzzy to the touch with no smooth spots when it starts to grow out after a shave--but it definitely needs help.

i looked at my scalp using the macro mode on my phone camera, and i can see the little black dots of hair follicles under the surface of the skin. i think that's a good sign, meaning that those follicles aren't completely dead? i guess we'll see if this treatment can reactivate them.

i've decided to give hair restoration treatment another try....i tried minoxidil and finasteride about 4 years ago, back when i had long hair, but i didn't see immediate results and got impatient so i gave up after about a month. but i really really miss my long hair :( seeing the top of my head get visibly thinner has been devastating to my confidence. especially as i've become more comfortable in my femmeness, having raggedy balding hair is horrible. i've been shaving it for the past year just because i feel like there's no other option and i hate hate hate it.

i'm not completely bald, though, and this is the reason why i'm giving hair restoration a second try; i do still have hair on the top of my head, and the hair that is still there grows quickly, but my sides are very densely-haired so the top looks super sparse in comparison. i don't have any totally bald patches and my hairline isn't receded too much so i'm tentatively hopeful that i can get a little bit of coverage back up there. i don't expect anything miraculous, but i don't really need anything miraculous-- just a little bit more density so i can grow it back out again without feeling self-conscious.

so i got back on finasteride and i'm starting topical minoxidil tomorrow. i'm also adding a dermaroller to the plan this time because i've read tons of good things about them, so i figure it can't hurt. i did the roller for the first time today and my scalp's been a little bit itchy ever since. it actually felt really nice when i was doing the rolling, but i'm a fiend for any kind of scalp stimulation.

with summer coming to a close it'll be beanie season soon, so i think i might just stop shaving my head next month, after some concerts we have planned, and we'll see what happens if i keep up with the treatment! i should probably document the progress on here or on my site. if i have a visual record of the changes i'll be more motivated to keep up with it.

aimless rambling post about gender identity ahead!

been thinking a lot about the way i clothe and present myself to the world lately because you have a lot of time to think about that kinda crap when you're unemployed, lol. and i've come to really enjoy the word crossdresser, as a descriptor for myself...ever since i started medically transitioning, a funny thing has been happening to me where i want to wear Girl Clothes more and more often. especially after top surgery.

my day-to-day "casual" outfit is always women's pants (usually hot topic joggers because their plus size bottoms actually slap) and a plain men's tee, but whenever i feel like dressin things up a little bit i'll wear women's shirts as well. i went to a sorta-formal event recently, wearing men's suit pants and a women's top+pretty velvet cardigan and i loooved that outfit. if only my disabled ass could walk in heels it would have been SO cunt. i've also started playing with makeup again and pretty much always wear it when i'm going out. sometimes i even want to wear skirts and dresses, but i'm nervous about that because i'm very hairy all over including my face and, yknow, being perceived as a man in a dress is a lot riskier than just wearing women's pants. it's extra risky as a fat person because people already stare at and ridicule you for that.

anyway, i know i don't vibe with the word nonbinary. for a while i did identify that way, but not because it felt right; i was living with my parents at the time and had to closet the FTM part of myself, so i was going by they/them to my online friends as a sort of coping mechanism, but that was never really me. now that i've been transitioning for several years i'm very confident in my identity as a queer man...but i'm also much more comfortable unseriously referring to myself as a girl (my husband loses it whenever i refer to myself as a PAWG or his housewife)...but i have no desire to identify as a woman. i'm effeminate but don't feel female in any way! i'm just a he/him femme, i suppose. i saw someone use that phrase on social media once and it felt very correct, lol.

crossdresser is a word i kind of...forgot existed? or it at least had faded into the back of my mind, until seeing a tumblr post a while back that said something like "as far as i'm concerned everything i do is crossdressing" and that's kinda what got the gears spinning in my head. like....yeah! crossdressing is what i'm doing! no matter how someone understands my gender they will always see me as a crossdresser. i like the vagueness of the word. and i like that it's kind of playful. everyone should do a little crossdressing once in a while, i think.

i seriously need to learn how to walk in heels, though, fr. maybe when i get myself a new cane it'll be easier. but my relationship with using a cane is a whoooole other can of worms......

MOOD: thoughtful

been having a really hard time with my mental health for the past few weeks, and got so low that i decided to ask my doctor for a psychiatric referral. this is something i've needed for.....my entire life, basically, but you know how it goes. i never felt worthy or like it was "bad enough" that i needed to talk to somebody about it. don't really know what changed my mind this time, i guess i just finally got sick of being Like This, lol. i'm downplaying how bad my mental state was because right now i feel better, but this was a particularly turbulent episode of The Agonies.

i'm waiting to hear back from the psychiatry office, but my primary care doctor definitely thinks i have a "mood disorder of unknown type". i've always wondered if i had bipolar disorder, but i definitely don't have BPI and my symptoms are never quite as extreme as how BPII is described. but about 2 weeks ago i somehow stumbled across the word cyclothymia, which i had never heard of before, and i was like "holy shit that sounds exactly like me". i think that's also part of what convinced me to talk to a doctor; i've never found an actual named condition that sounds like what i experience.

it felt good, which i wasn't expecting, to have my doctor say "yeah there actually is something wrong with you" after living almost 30 years on this planet thinking i was just, like, a shitty person. i thought i was going to feel bad about having something confirmed "wrong" with me, but it's actually a pretty freeing feeling, knowing that i'm not actively choosing to have my brain work like this. i'm very very anxious about talking to the actual psychiatrist, but i think the outcome of that appointment will be another pleasant surprise.

forgot to post about my second attempt at coco bread!

i used the exact same recipe, and managed to get the yeast to rise better this time by sticking it in the oven next to some hot water. it still didn't rise quite as much as i wanted it to, but i think that's just because the weather was too damn cold. it was still fine to use, so this time i attempted to fold it into the traditional coco bread shape, but i wasn't very good at it :^D they look like fat pussy, tbh. i think i was subconsciously making self-portrait bread pussy art. i am not the only one who thought this; one of our housemates came downstairs to the kitchen and also said "these look like labia".

well, everyone ate my bread pussies, and they LOVED 'em this time. the recipe uses a little too much sugar, for me, but it's really good bread. this is the kind of bread you bring to a party to impress everyone with your baking skills. since i'm so bad at the folding, next time i make them i think i'm going to try to form them into more of a round dinner roll shape, because this bread is the perfect type to eat with gravy or sauce.

overall....a bread success :)

last night i attempted to make bread for the first time! a few days ago my husband had been telling me about Jamaican coco bread, and how much he loves it, so i followed this lady's tutorial:

Watch on YouTube

for some reason the yeast didn't rise properly for mine, though. i tried adding more yeast and it raised a tiny amount, but still not as much as it should have. i think it was too cold in the kitchen :^(

we didn't want to waste the dough, so instead of making several small coco breads, we decided to form one large, monstrous Mega Coco:

it was denser than it was supposed to be and a tiny bit undercooked in the middle, but the taste was SO good. we devoured the whole thing in like 10 minutes and then passed out afterward. so....not a massive failure!

i still had plenty of coconut milk left over, so i decided to try again tonight. this time i put the dough in the oven with some boiled water underneath to try and make a better environment for proofing. we'll see if it turns out right this time!

not a joke title, i actually did see a man die today. what a weird fucking day. it started out great-- i was volunteering for a local queer event, the vibes were good, and when we were done for the day i decided to walk to a nearby sex shop that i like to buy from. as i got near i noticed that there were a ton of police cars going the same direction as me, and cops aren't an uncommon sight in that area, but this was enough cars that something was obviously Happening in that direction.

the store i was going to happened to be right next to the scene so i stopped to see what was going on, and i walked up just as the cops were dragging a guy out of his car. at first i thought he was being arrested, but then they laid him on the ground and started cutting his clothes off and doing chest compressions. there was no blood on his body (from the spot i was standing in i could only see the lower half of his torso and his legs, though) but he was the particular kind of..."floppy" that a person is when they're in extremely bad shape. the cops were moving his body around while they treated him and he was like a ragdoll, just totally limp and heavy.

after they pulled the man out, they then pulled a young boy out of the car. they had to drag him because he couldn't walk, and then they put him down on the ground, obscured behind a car so i could only see his feet. i stuck around to watch and see if the kid was okay; it was a relief when i saw him start moving his feet after a while but the adult was still not moving. people around me who were watching were like "jeez i hope he's okay" but i was like....nah that man looks super dead, yikes

a big crowd of people had gathered to watch by then and some people were saying that there had been a person on an electric scooter who shot into the car after it accidentally bumped into him, and i can't fucking imagine shooting at a literal child over that? a couple ambulances showed up at that point and they loaded the man in first, with his head covered by a sheet, so i assumed he had been shot in the head or face. the kid was taken away second, but he was sitting upright and was awake, with one leg bandaged up and the shoe on his other foot covered in blood. he was very quiet and calm, like he was obviously in shock. poor kid looked like he was only about 10 years old :(

after they took the victims away i just kinda carried on with my business and went home...kind of a weird vibe buying lube right after witnessing such a violent scene but we needed it and i rarely get a chance to go to that store...i called my mom while i was heading home to tell her what i saw and she was freaking out as if i had been personally involved in the incident, lol. then when i got home we were having a little mini-party for my friend's birthday so it was kind of a mood whiplash again.

we saw on the news later in the night that the kid was in stable condition, but i was correct in assuming that the man was dead. he was the kid's uncle. the news said he died in the hospital, but i figure it was probably a situation where he was "alive" when he came in but there was just no saving him.

i haven't been outside much for the past few months because winter weather sucks, so what are the odds that the one time i spend a day downtown i see some crazy shit like this? and i wasn't even planning on being in that area...i had actually started to head straight home from the event i was volunteering for, but i decided last-minute to go to the sex shop. i'm not sensitive to violence so i'm fine but man what a just.....weird fucking day and how terrible for that kid and his family. i was planning on attending all three days of the event to volunteer, but i think i'm gonna skip tomorrow and go back on Monday because i need a little break fron people after all that :|

unrelated to the greater context of this entry: i'm gonna try to use my DW more often! i experimented with hosting a journal on my own website, but DW is a more elegant system. plus i like the ability to comment on other people's stuff!

anyway, husband has been showing me some DC animated universe stuff lately. even though i'm a millennial who watched Cartoon Network, i never saw any of the classic DCAU shows because i was a stubborn little animal of a child who would pointedly avoid things i didn't have an interest in (editor's note: surge would later come to realize that this was a symptom of The Autism) so i outright refused to watch anything with DC characters in it, because i wasn't interested in DC. i thought Superman and Batman were boring. and i hated Lex Luthor because he was bald, and i have a bias against bald men.

WOW was i ever wrong about literally all of that! we started watching with Justice League, and i went in assuming Superman was gonna be my least favorite character, but by the end of Justice League Unlimited i was actually sad that it was over because i could have watched several more seasons of his "tired dad" energy. and Lex, oh my god, what an absolute icon, legend, and star. he is That Bitch and he knows it. i didn't think i was gonna care about him much, but now i KNOW i'll never care about any other interpretation of his character because he was so entertaining in this show. the way Clancy Brown voiced him...chef's kiss. the episode where he builds a whole city literally just to make Superman look bad was a level of pettiness and cunt severity that i could only ever hope to achieve.

the character i was surprised to find myself disliking so strongly was actually Hawkgirl— she's a cop who acts like a cop, and that's all i have to say about that, tbh. couldn't stand her ass by the time we finished JLU.

after JLU we started watching Batman: The Animated Series. we just finished watching The Underdwellers...WEIRD ass episode, lmao??? but overall i'm, like, extremely into this show so far and i feel like a Damn Fool for never watching it before. there have been moments when i'm literally saying "oh my god, this looks so good?" out loud at the animation, like, the Clayface and Two-Face episodes in particular would have changed my life had i seen them as a child. i need to mention how extremely difficult and rare it is for me to be invested in a TV show; i have a chronic disease i like to call "not wanting to watch anything ever" so a show really has to hook me in immediately if i'm gonna be invested in it at all, and right now i'm actually eager to watch more Batman every night. i make dinner and then me and my husband sit down and watch a few episodes and i'm captivated every time. there are maybe two other TV shows in the history of media that capture my attention like that.

i have so many Thoughts and Feelings after each episode that i wonder if i should journal about them when we watch. again, this is extremely rare for me, to actually care about a show enough that i'm thinking about it afterward, so i'm like...i should write this stuff down, lol. the episode Perchance To Dream got husband and i thinking about how perfectly-suited Kevin Conroy was to play Batman, as a queer actor. people have talked about this a million times over, i'm sure, but i just can't help but notice how good Conroy was at portraying the way Bruce is more of a false identity than Batman is; the way Bruce speaks in that corny, 1950s-esque "howdily-doodily, neighborino!" voice that contrasts so starkly with how every other civilian character speaks like a regular human being. it's something i immediately noticed because it is such a deeply familiar behavior to me. the Queerness of your phony "normal" self being universally liked while your trve self is seen as something dangerous and scary....oough....ough ough. i have monkey brain just thinking about it. only the gays can fully comprehend this, imo.

as masterfully as his pain and Agonies are portrayed, i also really enjoy that this version of Batman is a lil silly sometimes, too. it's so funny when he smiles after saying a one-liner. the episode where he realized Killer Croc was the one behind the crimes and it cuts to him learning about crocodiles at the zoo with a big self-satisfied smile on his face, that had my husband and i scream-laughing on the couch. he's too cool to admit that he thinks he's cool and i love that.

i don't know how to close out this entry so please enjoy this image of Harvey that i've been laughing at since we watched the episode

MUSIC: Cold - Crossfade

this is an older post transferred from a different journal onto my Dreamwidth. long story don't worry about it :)

husband and i have been back from Vegas for a few days, but i'm just now getting to writing about it! i didn't have time to write during the trip because we had so much to do and so little time. i think anything more than a few days would be too much Vegas for me, but i do wish we had stayed one extra day. mostly because i wanted more time with the amazing bathtub in our hotel room.

we stayed at the Venetian resort, and holy crap it's BIG. i had watched some videos beforehand to prepare myself, but the scale of this place is truly insane. and i'm saying that as someone who grew up going to Disney World often! i've heard vegas described as "disney for adults" and, at least in the Venetian's case, i agree. the level of theming, cleanliness, room size, and service at the hotel was better than what you get at Disney for twice the price these days. not that Vegas wasn't expensive, but it's still cheaper than a disney trip, lol.

i wish i had taken a picture of the glorious bathtub in our room. it's rare for me to find a tub that i can comfortably submerge my big fat white ass in. this tub was deep enough that i floated in it! it also had handles on the sides which made it easier to hoist myself out. the only thing that could have improved it would be jacuzzi jets. the resort had a shop that sold really cute food-themed bath products, so i grabbed myself a "milkshake" soaking solution and it was fantastic, 10/10, literally would go again JUST to use that tub.

there's a wax museum at the Venetian, so we went there late at night when there was nobody else around, and that was fun. i love this pic i got of kore with the Prince figure because they're literally the same size and someday i will get him to do a Prince cosplay i s2g.

the other two big things we did were AREA15, specifically the Omega Mart experience, and kore and i went and got last-minute tickets to see the RPDR live show. Omega Mart was really cool but a little too crowded, probably because we went later in the day, so it kinda felt like sensory overload after a while, but i would like to go again to see it more thoroughly.

the Drag Race show was the best part of the trip for me, tbh. amazing show with some crazy shit going on— queens were dropping from the ceiling and throwing fire!! Jorgeous had this routine where she dropped down from the ceiling attached to nothing but a wrist strap and a pole and the whole audience was screaming. there was a ton of love shown for Eureka, too, which made me happy as a fellow fat trans person. also, the seating in the venue was tables rather than theater seats, and kore and i shared a table with this group of young straight girls who were, like, visibly uncomfortable in the presence of us as two scrunkly little faggots that didn't fit their palatable idea of glitter-dusted Disney Gays, and that was really funny.

oh, and we also went to Rainforest Cafe! i took a picture of this little hanging ape statue that all Rainforest Cafes seem to have. i love this ape.

it was a short trip, but a fun one! the flight over there is super short so i would definitely visit again.

MOOD: cold

SURGE'S JOURNAL

on our trip to LA

on the lam-lam

hair week 5

hair week 3

hair week 2

hair, day one

beginning my Hair Restoration Journey

crossdresser

Mental Problems™

Bread 2

bread!

saw someone die today...

batman...

our trip to vegas!