Bobbie – Page 22

A little hint

Okay, so I had a little bit of a learning curve with my estrogen patches.

Yes, they’re supposed to stick you your skin. But I found for the first couple of days my patches kept falling off.

And not really wanting to miss out on any of my meds, I had to think of something to do to keep these from coming off.

If I could put them on my upper arms like a nicotine patch, that would have worked, but the estrogen patches have to go on either my butt or my lower belly for the best effect.

So I turned to Tegaderm.

I put the patch on, then I put a Tegaderm dressing over top of the patch. And the patches don’t fall off. which is nice.

I don’t want to miss out on any of the meds.

Coming up this Friday I have my first blood test to make sure that my body is handling the estrogen properly.

Hopefully my body is.

Mentally I like the difference in mood.

It’s almost like androgens are a toxin.

Happy Pride Month?

As I’ve said, I’ve never really taken part in pride, and I really don’t identify with it.

I guess part of it has to do with the environment that I grew up in.

Military communities were isolated. And by isolated I mean that the Canadian Armed Forces had control over the types of people that were allowed to live in the military communities on base.

By way of filtering recruits, the Canadian Armed Forces could control the political leanings of those living on the bases. And it should be of no surprise that these military communities were very conservative and right leaning.

The thing is, when you’re living within these communities, especially if your exposure to the outside world is very limited, you come to see the political leanings of these communities as being “normal”.

Yes, Canadian Forces Administrative Order CFAO 19-20 did no apply to children living on base, it only applied to members of the Canadian Armed Forces. But as has been indicated through various studies, members of the Canadian Armed Forces often had a problems with separating their military careers from their home lives.

As the civilian social worker that dealt with my family noted during various home visits to our PMQ on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach, Mr. Gill orders his children with simple commands and answers their questions with yes or no replies and the children don’t question these decisions.

Being in the Canadian Armed Forces, Richard was nothing more than a cog in a machine that demanded his servile obedience. His was not a position to question. His was a position to do as he was told. And like many men who are stripped of the authority in their lives, he made up for this lack of authority by exerting his authority on those he could.

When it came to me and my issues from Canadian Forces Base Namao he was not going to question the authority of Captain Terry Totzke. If Captain Totzke said that I was a homosexual, that I was exhibiting signs of homosexuality, who was master corporal Gill to question this?

When I’ve talked to other base brats about how things were on base I get this Pollyannish rose coloured view of what things were like on base. This usually comes from former brats that didn’t have “issues” and therefore weren’t exposed to the underbelly of life in the “company town”.

I have encountered a few former brats that don’t participate in any of the social media groups for base brats. They want nothing to do with acknowledging their past. And I have an inkling that the brats who don’t want anything to do with remembering their pasts as base brats vastly outnumber the number of brats that celebrate their past as base brats.

The number of broken and dysfunctional families that lived on the bases was probably a high percentage, especially when you look at how the recruiting process would naturally filter out more liberal minded recruits. The military communities were rife with homophobia, racism, misogyny, victim blaming, victim shaming.

Another matter that played into the sterility of the military community was the fact that military housing could only be rented to members of the Canadian Armed Forces, and that these members had the ability to decide who could live in these houses and who couldn’t. If a service member wanted his spouse out of “his” PMQ, she was booted off the base by the military police. Same thing for his kids. As long as provincial law allowed for it, the serving member could give his kid the boot. The age that a child can live on their own varies from province to province. In Ontario a 16 year old can move out on their own.

I’m not sure what the rules are any more, but in my day living on the bases, 18 was the absolute oldest a base brat could be. Once you hit 19 you were expected to get off the base. There were exceptions to this rule, care givers could live in military housing so long as it was to look after military dependents, persons with disabilities could live on base past their 19th birthday, and students obtaining a higher education could continue to live on base until their 24th birthday.

As you can imaging, there wasn’t a lot of diversity. Everything was sterile. Everything was the military mindset.

Queer kids just learnt to stay in the closet.

Queer kids learnt that they were defective and a national security threat.

Kids on base learnt that there were no victims, that it always took two to tango.

Kids on base learnt that compassion was a liability.

Living on base there were no “others” like us.

Living on base we only had exposure to adults that passed the requirements of the Canadian Armed Forces recruiting agents.

Our view of the world was shaped by the monochromatic views of the world espoused by these serving soldiers that passed the conformity tests.

You know all of those soldier that have been implicated in hazing rituals over the years? Yeah we grew up amongst those people.

I lived on the base that was the home of the Canadian Airborne Regiment. We grew up amongst the mindset and the racism that lead to the death of Shidane Arone in Somalia.

All those sexual assaults that occurred in the Canadian Armed Forces? Those were committed by men of the Canadian Forces, many of whom were our fathers.

The misogyny and homophobia that were rampant in the Canadian Armed Forces back in the day? The men espousing these views were often our fathers.

I grew up in a community that allowed everyone up the chain of command to escape responsibility for the murder of Shidane Arone and allowed a lowly private, private Kyle Brown, to be made the scape goat for the whole sordid affair.

I grew up in a community that allowed sexually abused children to be blamed for the abuse they suffered at the hand of members of the Canadian Armed Forces.

I grew up in a community where the chain of command could determine who was a victim and who wasn’t a victim.

I grew up in a community that had the legal power to investigate itself and its members for sexual assaults against children.

I grew up in a community in which officers with no legal training and no legal background could summarily dismiss service offence charges that had been brought against their subordinates.

I grew up in a community in which a 3-year-time-bar applied to all service offences, including service offences of a purely civilian nature.

I grew up in a community which claimed criminal code offences related to children as service offences to be dealt with solely through the military justice system.

I grew up in a community served by such a compromised justice system that it was dismantled and restructured due to horrific miscarriages of justice.

So no, in the end I have nothing to be proud of.

Whistler BC

I’m in Whistler, BC until Tuesday.

I’m here for two days on my own coin, and then I’m here for two days on my employer’s coin.

It’s the annual Canadian Healthcare Engineering Society.

The convention runs Monday and Tuesday with all sorts of seminars to attend.

I do like the trade show portion, but dealing with people drains the energy right out of me.

Used some of my overtime to take today off.

There’s a cheapie bus that runs between Vancouver and Whistler.

$21.00 each way.

It’s just too unfortunate that North American society is so addicted to car culture. There should be a medium speed train running up the west coast from at least Portland, Oregon to Whistler seeing as there are a lot of Americans that come up to Whistler for skiing.

This place is a tourist trap, and it’s expensive, but it would be nice to be able to stop up for a day trip. But with all of the outta control car drivers racing, crashing, smashing, and dying on the Sea to Sky highway it’s not unusual for a collision on the highway to shut things down, which makes same day travel unpredictable.

This time of the year there isn’t much skiing going on, but the hills are busy with downhill riders and their $10k downhill bikes.

I might take the main gondola up the mountain to the peak. Depends on what the conditions are like up there. Lots of melt and lots of mud up there.

Once the conference is over, it’s back to Vancouver.

Work for three days.

Then I’m off until July 2nd.

Probably do a lot of bike riding this year. Couldn’t ride my bike much last year due to the slip and fall in the laundry room in which I fractured my coccyx.

If that’s one thing you never want to fracture, it’s your coccyx, otherwise known as your tailbone.

There’s nothing to do except suffer through the fracture while it heals. And it’s a slow fucker to heal. It’ll start fusing, and then you move the wrong way or move too abruptly and you fracture it again. It’s actually the anchor point for some of the tendons for your leg muscles, so it’s always being pulled on and flexed.

Because the bone is inside your body, there is no way to put a cast or a splint on it to stabilize it.

So yeah, I want to get out on the bike and get some riding in. Throw the camera gear in a case and go out for a good ride.

My breasts are noticeably pointy now, and they really have a different texture than before.

Nobody at work knows yet, so when I go back to work in July I’m hoping to be visibly showing.

16 days

Okay, so it’s day sixteen of estrogen.

I’m currently on patch #3, tomorrow will be patch #4

Things seem to be mentally more clearer.

Not better, just clearer.

Make sense?

Didn’t think so.

A co-worker asked me if I was still contemplating M.A.i.D..

I don’t see anything changing at this moment.

In fact the BC Human Rights Tribunal directed my complaint to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal.

2027 is still awhile away.

In a way it’s my desire for M.A.i.D. that has given me the freedom to transition.

As I’ve said before, I really wanted to transition since the ’90s. But the fragility of employment along with the absolute lack of family support meant that transitioning was always going to be a far off desire.

When I could no longer control my desire to transition and I changed my name I made the fatal mistake of going after my babysitter from Canadian Forces Base Namao.

That put me 14 years even further behind.

So it’s either transition now or never.

And I chose now.

Body changes so far?

I’ve noticed that some fat seems to be moving around.

My desired muscle loss hasn’t happened yet, but it will.

My long sought after breasts haven’t started growing yet. They are puffy though and their texture is starting to change. So I know that something’s brewing.

I’m off for the month of June, but I’m hoping that when I go back to work in July that I’m sporting a noticeable pair of bumps.

Surgery to help things along?

Nope.

I’ll be happy with whatever estrogen has in store for me.

I have no intentions for any type of surgery except for removing things.

Class Action Magnet

You can tell that there is something drastically wrong within the Canadian Armed Forces by the sheer number of Class Action Lawsuits that have been brought against the military over the years.

Contrary to popular belief, class action lawsuits are not a “get-rich-quick” scheme.

As can be seen from the settlement in the LifeLabs class action, the more class members that come forward, the less each member of the class receives.

As I had been a client of LifeLab since the early 2000’s I was eligible for a settlement.

The settlement I received from LifeLabs was a whopping:

Not all class actions pay out this little. It’s just that when a class action has over 100,000 members, the pool gets spread out a little thin.

So, what’s the benefit of a class action?

Members such as myself get to take on entities that I would never stand a chance against.

And so far as organizations that are untouchable, the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence rank up there pretty high.

How many class actions has the Canadian Armed Forces faced recently?

In addition to mine:

There’s one for Mental Health:

The CAF have a long and storied history of mistreatment of mental health issues. I should know. I endured mistreatment at the hands of Captain Terry Totzke.

There’s a class action for sexual misconduct:

There’s a class action for racism:

There’s a class action related to the LGBT purge.

This purge mentality affected the kids living in the military communities as well. This is why Captain Totzke was hellbent to make sure that I understood that I was to blame for being sexually abused. My father, being both a full time member of the regular forces and subordinate to the captain would have had to go along with Captain Totzke’s treatment plan for me.

Then there’s also the other issues that kinda got settled on the low-down by ex-gratia payments.

There was the 1974 CFB Valcartier Grenade incident in which an officer of the Canadian Armed Forces was in charge of a group of 12 to 18 year old army cadets and allowed the cadets to play with a live M56 grenade. The grenade went boom. Killed numerous cadets and physically and mentally injured numerous more cadets. The Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence fought compensation of these victims all the way up to 2011 when the Minister of National Defence on advice of the Canadian Forces Ombudsman offered each survivor and the families of the deceased up to $250,000.00 each.

There was also the Agent Orange matter.

Broken Bones

I have WordPress set up to give me reminders to write blog entries twice a week.

Today’s prompt was “Have you ever broken a bone”.

The only time I ever had broken bones was on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach in Edmonton.

This would have been in the spring / summer of 1982.

The was just after my father and my step mother had their civil union in our PMQ.

Richard took Sue to Jasper for a honeymoon.

Richard and Sue went to Jasper, my father dropped my brother and I off with our mother in Calgary. Yes, the same mother that Richard told social services that had just up an abandoned her family.

My father had borrowed a pick up truck with a camper from one of his air force buddies named Tim.

Representation only, but Tim’s truck was a 4×4

The pickup truck was a 4×4, so with the camper on the back the camper sat up pretty high. I’d say the roof of the camper was about 3m off the ground.

Due to my father’s inability to look after my brother and I my brother and I had devolved into trying to find the best way to get the other in trouble with Richard.

This was more of a survival technique than just childhood brattiness because if Richard was dishing out physical punishment to the other, that meant that you weren’t getting punished.

Anyways, my brother had decided to pack the pop-up vent in the roof of the camper full of leaves. Richard was at work. I knew that I was going to be in for the beating of a life time if Richard came home and found the vent packed full of leaves.

Why?

In Richard’s mind, I was my brother’s keeper. And even though Richard couldn’t look after his two sons, I was somehow supposed to be my brother’s father.

So, I hurried my ass up the ladder on the camper and cleaned all of the leaves out. Made sure that the vent was like spick and span.

On my way down the ladder I slipped and landed on my back.

I had the wind knocked right out of me.

One of the neighbours came over and helped me up.

Somebody called the military police and the military police called my father at the squadron.

My father hated being interrupted at work.

When he came home he wasn’t too pleased.

First, I was a stupid asshole for having played on the roof of the camper.

Then after the neighbours had told him that they saw my brother on the roof of the camper stuffing leaves into the vest I was a stupid fucker for not keeping an eye on my brother and for allowing my brother to get on top of the camper.

Did Richard take me to the hospital or even to our family doctor over in North Town Mall?

Nope.

I spent two days at home in an extreme amount of pain.

I couldn’t even wipe my ass after taking a shit, that’s how painful my wrists were.

Finally three days later he took me to the Charles Campsell hospital where it was found that I had numerous fractures in my right wrist and that my left wrist was heavily sprained with hairline fractures in the bones.

He told the doctors that I had only told him this morning about me having hurt my wrists a couple of days ago but that I didn’t seem to be in any pain.

As the doctors were setting my arms in casts he kept telling me that I should have told him sooner.

I shudder to think how long I would have had to suffer with my broken wrists had my family not been under the supervision of Alberta Child and Family Services.

I don’t think that Captain Terry Totzke would have given a flying fuck about my predicament, but Alberta Social Services wouldn’t have been none too pleased.

I was Richard’s “little buddy” for a couple of days afterwards, but that didn’t last too long. I guess that wiping my ass took a toll on him really quickly.

One of the things he did say is that I should have just left the leaves in the vent and that he would have made my brother clean them out.

There’s no way he would have handled things so calmly. Sure, he probably would have beat the shit out of my brother for having fucked around, but he would have beat the shit out of me for not looking after my brother and allowing my brother to do what he did.

I was only supposed to have my casts on for 6 weeks.

Richard decided that I was going to keep my casts on until the start of school so that I’d learn my lesson and not fuck around like I had.

I can still feel the fractures when I have to do heavy lifting or use large wrenches.

I can still remember Richard feigning surprise when he was told about the damage to my wrists.

Estrogen Log: Day 10.

Okay, so I’m on day 10 of being on estrogen.

I’m currently on patch #3, patch #4 will be on Wednesday.

Not too much noticeable in the way of changes, but there are some changes.

My facial hair isn’t growing as fast.

My nipples have started to change shape, and now it feels like there’s an empty void behind them.

And my testicles are smaller.

Other than that I’m still waiting on the muscle loss.

I did go for physio last week and the one thing we noticed is that my muscles aren’t as stiff and tense as they usually are.

I don’t expect the really noticeable changes to start occurring much before June.

June is my vacation month, so I am expecting to go back to work looking a little different than I did before my vacation.

That should be very entertaining……..

A co-worker of mine whom is aware of my blog and my desire for M.A.i.D. has asked me if finally being able to transition will put an end to my desire for M.A.i.D.. I told them that we’d have to wait and see. We’ll have to see what awaits in 2027.

Anyways…… ’nuff for now.

Day Two

Nothing much to report here.

I’m on day Two.

I don’t really expect to see any results for a couple of weeks.

Mental changes should start showing up first.

Physical changes should be showing up in a few weeks.

Facial hair should be the first to slow down, followed by hair on the other parts of my body that females typically don’t have increased hair growth at puberty such as their backs or their chests. Arm and leg hair will slow down but not by much.

Muscle loss should be coming up shortly after that.

The neat thing is I’m off work for the month of June for my annual vacation and this is when most of the new changes will start to come into effect.

When I go back to work after my vacation there should be some noticeable changes.

I’m hoping that after my first three months on 50 ug patches that I can look at something stronger. But this will depend on the results of my blood tests.

As long as nothing goes out of whack and as long as my body processes the estrogen properly I can’t see any reason why I wouldn’t be able to step the dosage up.

One thing that I didn’t anticipate with transitioning is that blood tests will be a frequent requirement. For the first while they’ll be monthly. This is just to make sure that my androgen levels are decreasing like they should and that the estrogen is not harming my liver.

Estradot

Well, I got my prescription for Estrogen.

Because I’m over 50 my doc wants to work me up to the full dose of between 100 – 400 mcg of Estradiol

My starting dose will be two 50 mcg patches per week.

I’ll have to go for blood tests every four or five weeks to see how things are progressing.

The blood work will guide us in ramping up my dose of estrogen.

Once the estrogen is under control then my doc will start me on an androgen blocker such as Spironolactone.

Between the estrogen and the androgen blockers my testicles won’t stand a chance. They’ll start shrinking on their own.

It’ll be about a year before I can request surgery to remove what I want to have removed.

If everything goes fine then I should start sprouting breasts in about 3 to 6 months. My breasts will max out in about 2 to 3 years. And if I stop taking hormones my breasts will remain.

My testicles will start to shrink in about 3 to 6 months and will reach maximum effect in 2 to 3 years. This will be permanent even if I stop taking hormones.

My muscle mass will start to decrease in 3 to 6 months and I will have achieved maximum muscle loss in 1 to 2 years.

Decreased growth of facial and body hair in 6 to 12 months with maximum effect in 3 years.

My skin will start to soften between 1 to 6 months. It’s unknown when the maximum effect will occur.

If my gender dysphoria and my gender related issues resolve with hormone therapy, then I should be able to decrease my anti-depressants.

There are some side effects, such as an increase risk for stroke, blood clots, etc.

But to me the risks are more than worth it.

Am I happy that I’m finally starting to transition?

Yes.

This is something that I have wanted to do for so long.

Am I upset that I let the CFB Namao issue get in my way?

Honestly, had I started to transition back in 2008 when I had changed my name in preparation for transitioning I think that the CFNIS would have taken me even less seriously if I had shown up for my video statement in a dress with breasts than they already did.

I can only wonder what Richard would have thought seeing me after my transition.

Work is going to be wild over the next while. Yeah, I’ve worn dresses, skits, kilts, etc. for an eternity at work. But I don’t think that anyone at work has any ideas of what’s coming down the pike.

Imposter Syndrome

I think one of the most crippling aspects of my personality is the imposter syndrome that I suffer from.

I have absolutely no idea of what I could have done in life.

But it hasn’t just been my lack of formal education that has held me back.

Yes, I only have grade 8.

But I also obtained my grade 12 GED with absolutely no preparation and no studying.

My marks were in the low 50s. Which is actually quite good.

The final scores on a GED equal the percentage of graduating high school students that your grades were equal to.

On the GED you absolutely do not want 100% as your final mark.

I consider myself to actually be quite stupid.

Yes, I know that there is a lot of shit that I can accomplish, but still my brain is locked on to this idea of how absolutely stupid I am.

And this causes problems at work. Oh boy does this cause problems.

I’m a qualified 4th class power engineer.

I am the Chief Engineer of a 4th class power plant.

I oversee 5 shift engineers, 3 maintenance engineers, an assistant chief engineer, and some casual engineers.

But where my imposter syndrome causes me issues is with the other engineers.

I can do things that are so far above my qualification levels.

The most recent being the replacement of the soft starter on chiller #3.

Chiller #3 has a 600 volt 450 hp motor.

This motor cannot be started across the line.

Originally it had a mechanical reduced voltage Wye-Delta starter that had been replaced with a solid state soft starter in the 90s. Well, that soft starter up and died last year.

The service company came back with a quote of $32k to replace the soft starter.

I found a brand new soft starter for $7.5k, so I decided to go with this ABB soft starter.

I had to guide the electrical department through how to connect this drive to the chiller and interface it with the chiller.

Soft Starter running for first time

Absolutely none of my engineers would have been able to do this. And it’s not for a lack of training or explanation.

And this is where the imposter syndrome kicks in really bad.

If a fucking idiot like myself can understand how to interface the soft starter to the chiller so the chiller can command it and so it can send feedback to the chiller, why can’t my subordinates understand too? We’re all 4th class power engineers. Actually two of my guys are 3rd class power engineer, but still?

I have no special training.

I have no special schooling.

And there was even some eye rolling from the chiller mechanic when I told him what I was going to do with the chiller.

“Bobbie, make sure that you connect the MCR1 and MCR2 relays as they are or the chiller won’t start”.

So I hauled out the schematics for the old Wye-Delta starter and the MCR1 and MCR2 relays were only used with the old mechanical wye-delta starter that had been tossed in the bin in the ’90s. The relays actually had to be jumpered in such a way just to make them engage so the chiller would start.

This caused ‘discussions’ back and forth.

I’m happy to report that the chiller starts just fine without the useless MCR1 and MCR2 relays.

Originally the chiller used a current donut on one of the 600 volt phases to monitor how much power the chiller was consuming. This went through a little converter board that changed the AC current into DC and then put it through a divider network to obtain a 0 to 5 volt signal. This 0 to 5 volt signal was then fed to the chiller CPU.

I happy to report that the chiller works just fine without this convertor board and that the chiller amp display now matches the actual current consumption of the chiller.

Well Bobbie, why don’t you take training or courses and move up in the world?

I am literally the dumbest fucking person you’ll ever meet. I am not smart. I just read. That’s it. My magical skill is reading.

And this causes me issue.

If I am the dumbest fucking person that I am aware of, why can’t anyone else do what I can?

A few years ago I put together a networked monitoring system for monitoring the temperatures of the refrigeration systems in the kitchens, the pharmacy, and the blood bank. This system just uses a bunch of stand alone refrigeration controllers networked together with RS-485 and some web servers. When I try to show the other guys how to program the system, or change settings on the system, you can see the puzzled looks coming across their faces. It’s almost as if I’ve started speaking in a long forgotten language or there are tentacles popping out of my face.

Again, there’s no coding involved. It’s just logging into a system made from off the shelf components. The webserver is meant to be programmed by supermarket store managers.

Where could I have gone in life without this imposter syndrome?

Who knows?

What causes imposter syndrome?

Apparently having depression and anxiety set one up for experiencing imposter syndrome.

Upbringing also plays an important part in setting one up for experiencing imposter syndrome. Apparently inconsistent parenting and unsupportive parenting place one at risk for developing imposter syndrome.

In the mean time I guess I have to be content with being the asshole who won’t “share” his knowledge with others…….