Michelle's Blog

Well it’s documented in lots of places that starting on hormones will cause one to get teary, or upset from time to time, but until now I hadn’t experienced it, and naively thought they wouldn’t affect me like that (particularly as it’s been 3 months already).  Well tonight the hormones really got the better of me.  It was really rather silly, but lots of little things upset me at the same time, and it left me doing everything I could no to cry in the very public, Batemans Bay Bowls club.

The answer was for me to hide in the toilet for half an hour or so until I got control again, then quietly leave and head for some fuel.  Problem was by the time I got to the petrol station (NZ Translation: ‘pitrol station’ USA translation: ‘Gas station’) I was crying fairly uncontrollably, and I continued all the way back to the accommodation.

Curling up in my sleeping back with a large whiskey mac in front of the fire, was the solution, and I was soon asleep.

Well tonight was a busy night, finishing work, and getting my gear together to go diving tomorrow, not to mention popping my head in to say bye to my Boss James at his leaving party. Well I couldn’t resist could I? Michelle had to meet James in All Bar Nun it was pretty uneventful and very short lived as had to drive 2 hours to Batemans Bay and I really didn’t feel like doing it tired. I felt a little odd though, something was not quite right, and I realised when I got to the Bay and looked in a mirror. You could just see the 5 o’clock shadow that I failed to hide, no wonder people were looking at me!

Today was the day I made the dreaded call, to tell Mum.  Earlier my sister phoned to say mum was there, and would I talk to her (we had arranged this a few days ago), so I talked to mum about general things for a few minutes, then dropped the bombshell.

Both my sister and I were worried that mum might get upset and just pass the phone away and not speak to me, but she did not.  She spoke to me, and in so ways she understood, in others she didn’t.  Not surprisingly she, like others, commented that out of all the people, I was probably last on her list.  We talked for a while and I reminded her of how dad was, and that there was no way I would have given any clues about myself whilst he was still alive.  She agreed by saying, “Your Dad was very black and white, he would not have understood”.

Well tonight was the night to tell my lil sis, I had to be a little more delicate as I knew she wouldn’t appreciate getting the details the hard way.  It was interesting, as I hadn’t got a clue on what to say, I’ve told hundreds of friends in various different ways, but didn’t have a clue how to talk to my own sister!   The conversation was similar to that with my brother, but we set a date to tell mum.  I’m dreading it already, but Thursday is the day.

Well today was work as usual, well not as usual, but it was work. Seems that the project manager who doesn’t want to manage is still not managing. After leaving me a calendar invite with no information about the customer except that I am meeting them at 10am Monday, last thing on Friday afternoon (which was something that I already knew about Friday morning), I rejected the invite with a message saying, “it would be helpful to know where I am meeting the customer, rather than that there is a meeting which I already know”.

The response was to come to me in person, and drag our manager along and ask the status of the job as if I hadn’t completed it. Really rather ridiculous as if I have a problem I tell the project manager (eg if a change request needs prioritizing, or if I don’t have the right hardware). Of course sometimes, where appropriate, I resolve the issues myself by talking to the people concerned directly, these tend to be where there is a technical part of the problem because the project manager rarely understands enough to pass the detail on directly.

Anyhow enough rambling, the pettiness is continuing and really has been there since the whole company got to know about my transformation, so I have to ask the question, “Discrimination, prejudice, coincidence or just stupidity?”