Fuelish

April realizes how little $20 bucks of gas is....the shock literally blows her mind....notice all the hearts and flowers falling out.....not a puppy dog tail in sight. 

Sure I looked wicked cool cruising around town in my seventies luxo yachts. I can drive in plush isolated splendour or burn rubber like any muscle car.

Unfortunately I have lately realized there is a draw back to five thousand pound Detroit dinosaurs powered by big block V8's….. 

Despite my not working a regular corporate gig (freelancing etc) I still need to drive everyday. I pick up my girls from two separate schools and to after school sports meaning stop and go trip across town., which plays havoc with my fuel economy.

The Ford 460 cubic inch V8 is perhaps the least fuel efficient engine ever, returning  16 mpg highway and sub 9 mpg around town. My 455 powered Buick Electra and V12 Jaguar are marginally better. 

To be fair these cars are relatively efficient on the freeway with the cruise control on.

My pocket book has been taking a pounding at $1.20 plus cents per litre, which works out to approx 16 l  or 4.42 US gallons from a twenty. At 8.7 mpg that will allow me to squeak by almost two days of driving though the low fuel light on the Mark IV glows like Rudoplh's red nose. ….perversely it refuses to burn out.

My calculations showed that with the distance travelled daily I should have more than enough fuel until I realized that in winter fuel economy drops anywhere from 12 to 28%!!! 

Why, well fuel vaporization for one, oil companies switch to winter gasoline that provides better cold vaporization characteristics but results in less available energy for combustion, lower engine temps means a richer mixture, lubricants are thicker, tire pressures lower both creating more resistance and requiring more energy. Even the air conspires against you, a vehicle’s aerodynamic drag is proportional to air density, and the density increases as temperature drops. For every 10 degree F drop in temperature, aerodynamic drag increases by 2% 

As I like to say OPEC never fails to send me a Christmas card. 

Buy a econo box I hear you say dear constant reader, well all my cars are paid for and after years of driveway tinkering they are relatively bullet proof. Come the inevitable zombie apocalypse I know I would choose my Mark IV to start every time.

zombie ready

Sure I would love to tool around in a cute MGB or Spitfire but they don't allow any room for children, are not suitable for the rigorous of Canadian winters and as our roads are still populated by huge SUVs and 18 wheelers not very safe.

I do own a very fuel efficient 1985 Cadillac Seville (my most modern car ever), 30 MPG highway, but as she is a rust free southern belle, I don't like to expose her to road salt.

looks full of gas, someone should invent something that tells you how much gas is in the tank 

Update:

I had written this blog last week when we had a warm spell and I enjoyed a Sunday tuning the Lincoln and getting the Jaguar and Seville out for a run round the block. As the weather looked good for the rest of the week and rain had washed all the road salt away. I decided to drive the 1985 Cadillac Seville with its fuel efficient 4.1 litre V8. 

I had a meeting with my editor Monday morning, in the rush to get ready I forgot I had used the Seville the day before to take my oldest daughter to swimming practice. As I pull into late morning rush hour traffic on the QEW I feel a hesitation, transmissions problems? no I realize with mounting horror.....I forgot to put gas in the car. I roll helplessly to the side of the road. I quickly call the auto club and the magazine in that order. 

In a prior life I would have scaled the fence and hot footed back home to get a gas can, instead I wanted to cry. Also no way I was walking all the way home in high heeled winter boots.....I would ruin the heels.

Luckily my good friend Genni choose that very moment to text me and was quickly on her way with the precious gasoline (say it like they do in the Road Warrior movie).

This less said about running out of gas later that same day very close to home the better. 

Hugs,

April

Because I'm Awesome

A beautiful day in Southern Ontario, the sun was out and the temperature was above freezing making it seem all the world like spring.

Pale citizens ventured forth blinking at the strange ball of light in the sky. Couples walking hand in hand, convertibles with their tops down, even a few motorcycles.

If it were an Elvis movie I would have burst into song.

Having survived a tough week I felt as if I had received a reprieve from the governor. Perhaps even a little giddy at leaving the depression behind.

Last night I got out with friends and I was able to realize how far I had come and how lucky I am.  There is still a lot of anger in me ( I would think this is common with anyone born transsexual) that often threatens to boil over into self hate.

I am trying to appreciate and enjoy what I have now while striving for an even better future.

Here is a tune by the Dollyrots that sums up my rediscovered positive but oh so humble belief in myself:

Hugs,

April

Shameful

Awfully tough two days that saw me back to being seriously depressed and utterly without hope. I wanted it to be over, the struggle to put one foot in front of the other seemed unbearable. Another year of being unemployed too shameful to face.

I love the television show Mad Men, it was so sad when last season the British character Lane commits suicide, his first attempt foiled by a Jaguar that refuses to start despite his best efforts to correct the problem. It occurred to me that morning that I had a Jaguar in the garage too and one that would start. 

A close friend came by and we talked most of the afternoon away. We are not ourselves when depressed and can do things that we might not have the opportunity to regret.

The next day we talked more and I spoke with a close friend and blogger here on T Central. By the end of the day I was back to my "normal" self. 

Thanks to my friends both near and far for being there for me.  

foiled by Lucas

Gutted

What a miserable day, that started with such promise.  Over the holidays I had been preparing, researching and honing my interview skills for a senior marketing position with a company near me.

The job description was near to perfect (without involving cars) as I could have wished, the commute short and the pay great. I was sought out by a headhunter, as the position was not publicly advertised.

This was my express ticket back to the corporate world.

All signs were good! The job would have cut the Gordian knot of my life and solved multiple problems….so I should have known I wouldn’t get it.

I dressed conservatively but well, hair done and as far as I know passing with flying colors. According to headhunter and my own appraisal of the one on one with the president I aced the interview with my “winning personality” but fell short when it came to manufacturing industry experience.

Got the call I didn’t make it.  I knew that I would be depressed if I didn’t win the position but wow. …gutted, as you’ll in England say. Vile depression rushed into the void left by hope. I felt like this was my last chance at a normal life. All I want is to hide in my room and cry, pathetic.

It has been a challenge to keep functioning but I have other responsibilities and must continue. Sorry to be a downer but writing about such events does take some of their power away and even inject a little perspective.

The Heartbreak of Sleep

As a child at boarding school I suffered terrible insomnia, no doubt brought about the stress of my surroundings. 

I rarely suffer from sleeplessness as an adult, in fact I can usually down a cup or two joe in the evening and then sleep the sleep of the innocent, my lights going out as soon as my head hits the pillow.

The problem is that in the innumerable years in between I developed a bad habit of being a night hawk. Going to bed at two in the morning and getting only four hours (sometimes less) of sleep a night.  

Freelancing means that I have to devote most evenings after the children are in bed to getting in my second shift.  By 11 PM I have got my second wind, if I am on a roll I will push it till the early hours. Sometimes I will try to squeeze in some exercise in those evening hours too.

It used to be working outside on cars in all weathers, I always found a reason to tire myself out and never be in danger of being all alone with my thoughts....hmmm wonder what all that was about ;)

As the children  have been off for two weeks and I have been spared the early morning routine of being the family alarm clock, breakfast maker, a lunch bag packer I have let  myself get to bed later and later…sometime after three am. 

Last night was no exception, I had to edit an article that proved a little more difficult than I expected. The thirty minute job stretched into three hours. I should also mention that I am enabled by fellow scribe and inveterate insomniac Cassidy http://cassidysquest.blogspot.ca/. We will trade off musical and cultural links well into the night.

School begins again on the 7th so wish me luck in my attempt to better manage my schedule. 

There is still hope science will eliminate the need for sleep, think how productive we could all be. Of course we might all go crazy from the lack of REM sleep.

Does anyone remember that X-Files episode, "Sleepless" where the intrepid Mulder and Scully investigate strange deaths surrounding a group of Vietnam veterans, guinea pigs of a secret military project that eradicates the need for sleep.

 "sleep is where demons are released in our dreams."  The characters in "Sleepless" were haunted by their memories in real life because they were not able to sleep".

When I first saw the episode I thought, where can I sign up!

2013 Predictions

OK kats and kittens another Christmas has come and gone. Its time to look ahead to 2013 (jeez hope it was better than 2012) with my first annual predictions for the New Year:

1.Mini skirts will make a come back:

2. Detroit will be sold to Omni Consumer Products for $1.

3. Aliens will return Elvis:

4. Lincoln will release a Mustang based Mark IX with a 600 HP Coyote V8, well that is if I am made Lincoln brand manager, Ford you can contact me at this blog. Don’t forget to add lots of chrome boys.

5. Zombie virus will break out in China finding its way to our shores via infected leopard print mini-skirts sold at Walmart.

 And knowing is half the battle....

Hugs,

April

Trip to the Salon

How is that for the world's most unimaginative post, well that is what you get for blogging before your first cup of coffee.

Thanks to a Christmas gift from my mother I was able to pay a long over due visit to my favourite salon for an electrolysis appointment and to get my hair done. I had been very upset with recent photos as I hated the way my hair looked, not that I can do much with it as it is so straight.

A little bragging,  a regular client who had seen me in guy mode when I first started coming to the salon  (and at the time asked why a guy was there) remarked to stylist about how nice that woman looked.

Highlights and a cut made it look much neater in preparation for an interview and some important meetings in January.

Busy since Christmas working on a series articles due in January. Nothing too exciting, most automotive business stories.

OMG where did I put my arms

Hugs,

April

I Hate Snow

only the beak of the T-Bird visible

On Wednesday we had more snow fall than we had all of last year combined.

Driving back from Hamilton after coffee with friends was particularly challenging. I avoided the high winds on the Skyway bridge over the entrance to Burlington harbour. Instead I took the unplowed and unsalted road along the lake. Slow going but the Lincoln handled it with relative aplomb, as long as one had a delicate touch with the accelerator.

The next mourning, two plus hours of shoveling and car moving about, oh and in heels. Wouldn't want my crazy neighbour to think I am nothing but a helpless woman.

Seville's bustle back filled in by wind and snow 

Poor Lincoln lived its early life in Florida

Opened as a toll bridge in 1958, paid off and toll removed 1973

This song seems appropriate:

Hugs,

April

You Trashed My Christmas

You call that mistletoe...looks kinda small to me

A last minute Christmas gift from the Primitives:

In case any of you are still looking for gifts for little ol' me (nothing that makes me look like a grandmother OK? already feeling old and haggard enough) here are some ideas:

Russian SST

1966 Duesenberg

self explanatory

I am a woman of simple tastes.

Merry Christmas bitches

All I Want For Christmas Is To See You Die

Last week was unmitigated hell, I was seriously depressed for a week which was damn close to me seeking professional help. All I could do was lie on my bed and imagine inventive ways to do myself in. Every time I attempted to pull myself out of it something would go wrong and I would be two levels further down in my personal Inferno.

I wrote a very raw blog post that I chose not to inflict upon you dear constant reader.
Finally on Friday evening I managed to break free of the darkness and start work on a writing assignment. Actually I am feeling rather proud of myself right now. This afternoon I was even dancing around the basement rec room with my youngest daughter. No my heart didn't grow two sizes that day but I am hell of a lot less grinchy right now!

I even survived a rather painful fall on a freshly washed kitchen floor, less haste more speed. Still hurts like the Dickens though.
Oh don't worry about the title of this post, its a line from my new favourite Christmas song:

Merry Christmas to all the guys and gals out there who didn't start that way. I hope Santa brings you a GTO.

I've Had It

Sometimes it is the straw that breaks the camel's back. I think I have reached the point where I say I have had it.

But what can that mean, there is no going back, not that I would ever want or attempt to. The way forward seems not difficult but impossible sometimes. To be stuck in no man's land after so long a struggle is heartbreaking.

Bureaucratic road blocks, the difficulty in finding a job, too many carrots dangled in front of me maddeningly out of reach.

Perhaps I will feel differently tomorrow.

The following tracks are from Alex Chilton's 1979 album, Like Flies on Sherbert produced by the other worldly Jim Dickinson (I enjoy spinning the Jester's Cadillac Man in happier times) in Memphis. The music is both new and old, broken, disjointed and captivating. Long a favourite of mine, its confusion and anger mirrors my own feelings better than I could explain.   Here are two tracks, I've Had It a cover of the old Bell Notes hit and the archaic No More the Moon Shines on Lorena:

 

Antidote

I know I am being hypocritical having posted a series of mostly secular Christmas songs last year at this time but this season the endless drivel of 'holiday" standards croaked by an ever changing retinue of aging pop stars makes me want to drive my Thunderbird through a shopping mall like Jake and Elwood.

Gosh that felt good to write.

I am not a church goer…..I think I have authority issues. I have belief, though my faith may be lacking.

Two different religious themed videos held me in their sway this week and both made me cry……I blame the hormones.  One the post apocalyptic movie Book of Eli, succinctly summed up by a friends teenage daughter as Denzel Washington and a Bible, the other a hymn that a younger me once sung at school.

I offer both as an antidote to the endlessly cloying December to Remember commercials.

Added bonus:

Do you have a Miss Piggy?

Let Them Eat Cake

Having trouble shaking a apocalyptic feeling, so I made a chocolate cake with ingredients left in the fridge. 

not my 59, I am a slightly better parallel parker

The Cadillac on top of the cake is a homage to Ant Farm's art installation history of Cadillac tail fin in Amarillo, Texas. The cars are half-buried nose-first in the ground, at an angle corresponding to that of the Great Pyramid of Giza. Created in 1974 the Cadillac Ranch cars are from 1949-1963 but to truly represent the full fin era they should include a 1948 and 1964 model. 

God its been a hard couple of weeks, even my normal happy go lucky facade (that's a joke, I am more morose than your average Russian poet) has begun to crack. I spent a part of this morning alternately crying and screaming into my pillow. 

Managed to pull myself together to get some work done then pick up children and make dinner.  

Oh and the cake….delicious. Not the musical choice you might expect, this one is for commentator extraordinaire, Cass:

You know what they say better get yourself a Cadillac now because you are going to ride in a long black one eventually…..

Trying to be Thankful

Time for my annual bah humbug post.

Every idiot who goes about with Happy Holidays (PC don't cha know) on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. (Scrooge)

Christmas has always been a difficult time for me. The forced consumer happiness of the season never meshed well with someone so unhappy in their own skin.

Working freelance has been rather hand to mouth so I cannot even anesthetize myself with a glut of gift buying. Quite a relief not to worry about finding the perfect gift when you can't afford it :)

I did put up the Christmas lights more out of a sense of duty rather than seasonal joy. The artificial tree goes up this weekend. It even snowed today much to the delight of the children and snow plow operators.

always wanted a metallic white or pink Christmas tree, maybe next year

At the grocery store the piped in carols were doing nothing for my morose mood, a dwindling bank account and sense of rejection on the employment front made me want to stick a gun in my mouth….yeah what a drama queen.

What I miss most of all is a sense of purpose, of being useful.

As I waited in line silently cursing Christmas Muzak, the cashier, gently woke me from my revelry, saying Mam your next? 

Shouldn't I turn this post around and make it about being thankful:

I should be thankful that I pass. It is hill we all choose die on. I expect to pass now with both men and women. There is still a little residual fear but that too I hope will disappear with SRS. I am no Amanda Lear but I know some guys look at me and their attention is not because I look like a freak but they may actually like what they see. An idea I still find hard to accept.

Make no mistake I have a lot to be thankful for, I am still at home, have my children, friends and my health.  

Here are some very beautiful but rather sad Christmas songs by the Ravonettes:

Bad Day at Black Rock

Long meeting this morning with lawyer as part of "J's" and my mediated settlement. Both of us were emotionally drained after the session, sorry no gory details to impart but we did do lunch afterwards. And neither poisoned the other….though I do admit to feeling a little woozy after my first Big Mac in many moons.

It was very emotional, it finally sinking in that we are separated, that the relationship and marriage is over. Of course it was done almost four years ago but this felt like Lee at Appomattox….it was over!

We took separate cars and I parked the T-Bird on the street so I could leave a little later to pick up children from school. As I sat in the car listening to the ticking of the big block 460 cool in they winter air I noticed my reality challenged neighbour step out of his house and take a photo of me in my car.

No I was not illegally parked or blocking his driveway. Then he stands in his living room window video taping me sitting my car while I checked my phone messages. I did my best to ignore him though I really did want to confront him and his stalker behaviour.

His behaviour is really worrying me, I think he is one more incident from me calling the cops. After a trying morning this really put the icing on the cake.

sure its a cool car but why all the video attention

oh yeah me!!!!!!

back to factory wheels for winter

yes that is an Abba 8 track cartridge!

Hugs,

April

PS. thank to all who read or responded to my lonely post, your support means a lot

The Night Birds of Paris

A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots. 
Marcus Garvey 

Transsexual history has remained largely unwritten, those who survived the early days since the late fifties naturally went stealth, they did not become activists, they did not march in the street. Transsexuals were at the forefront of gay liberation of the late sixties but they too have been ignored. All their history and contributions forgotten or co opted into a larger LGBt narrative.

Nothing wrong with going stealth, I hope to do the same, to some degree.

As transsexuals we are outsiders and often exiles from our families, society and culture. An understanding of our history can provide a foundation to be build a new identity. I am not advocating separatism from the larger culture but to take strength from those who faced even greater challenges than we can imagine. 

Being transsexual is a curse but we should still take pride in the early achievements of our "sisters" and our own journey.

I wrote about Christer Strömholm's beautiful photographic record of the transsexual prostitutes of the Pigalle back in May. Here is a link to my published review in Frock: 

http://frockmagazine.com/frock018/#/30/

Sorry if you were expecting the History Channel....but who knows, one day.

A friend and great artist called it gorgeous and fierce, I hope you think the same.

Hugs,

April