Re: The Stephanie Chronicles 2.0

[Donica]

Yes, Hermione?


Stephanie

Haha! I wish I had her powers cause I'd give you such a spell.

I would love to hear more about how things progress with the progesterone. I am arming myself with all the latest positive documentation about it for my next visit with my Endo this month. I'm planning to change over to self injections for E, Spiro and progesterone. I'm expecting quite an argument from her.

[Northern Star Girl]

@steph2.0
Dear Stephanie:

GOOD NEWS ..... 
.....your personal thread is now back up and recovered.... 

Thank you @Kendra and @Mariah for taking care of this important task!!!

So, Stephanie, I will be looking for your new updates.
Hugs,
Danielle

[Northern Star Girl]

@steph2.0
Dear Stephanie:

It appears that your personal thread is working just fine now and along with all of your other followers I am eager to see some of your latest pictures and to read new updates from you.

Many Hugs,
Danielle

[Jessica]

Happy to see your thread back up and running. 

[steph2.0]

Happy to see your thread back up and running.

Thank you Danielle and Jess! Me too! That was some fun, huh?



Stephanie

[steph2.0]

A lot has been going on, but I'll have to post things piecemeal, since I'm so busy I don't have a lot of time.

This one is kind of a big one for me. I remember reading with envy, bordering on jealousy, when @Michelle_P posted about doing a presentation for her ham radio group after coming out to them all, and @KathyLauren doing a presentation for her astronomy group. There was no way I would ever find that kind of acceptance, or develop the courage to put myself out front like that. I expected to cower in a near-fetal position the rest of my life.

Well, some of you may remember that I was voted back in as president of our flying club not long after I came out. I've run many meetings since then and assisted at our fly-ins serving food to countless people, with no backlash. And this last weekend it went another step further.

It's one thing to be accepted by those who you've known, but I'm still the one with the "T" prefix on "Woman"(and there are a few who still think of me as "Steve in a dress," but so be it). But I've joined three women-only pilot's organizations lately, and have become a (very) minor celebrity in each, despite my efforts to keep that low profile. You've heard of the one that I created their first website for, and maybe heard about my picture at a fly-in a few weekends ago wearing my "Ladies Love Taildraggers" t-shirt, but this last Saturday topped them both.

It was time for the semi-annual meeting of our chapter of the 99s, and there was supposed to be a presentation about flying taildraggers. A week before the meeting, one of the co-chairs emailed me to tell me that the speaker had canceled, and ask if I could do a presentation on building experimental aircraft. You all know that if you get me talking about airplanes you can't shut me up, but this was different. None of these new friends know my "past." They only know me as Stephanie, the woman pilot who has a shop in her back yard. This was a new milestone for me.

The great thing was, I had custody of the last plane I'd built, so I could even fly it there for show-and-tell. I spent the week putting together a Keynote presentation and testing the hardware,  and was ready to go on Saturday morning. I took off and headed East to pick up @SassyCassie, while she ran out to pick up the magic potions that keep us running, then drive to the airport for the pickup. A quick turn for loading copilot and in-flight meals, and we were on our way to the private airport where the meeting was.

The crowd wasn't big, only about six people sitting in, but one of the ladies in particular had lots of questions, and was intrigued by the woman doing the presentation, and the projects she'd completed. And amazingly, the hardware and software all worked perfectly. (iPad running Keynote connected to their TV with an HDMI adapter, using an iPhone as a remote).

I sat with the lady with the questions at lunch, along with a young lady who was working her way up to fly for the airlines. Nobody had any doubts about the woman who'd flown in and showed them how she'd built that white plane over there. The weather closed in and we shoved the planes into the hangar, then went inside to while the afternoon away just bantering with the other ladies about airplanes, flying, and this and that, and airplanes, and flying, and life was as it should be. When the weather cleared out, we rolled out the plane and flew off, with contact information traded and possible plans made for visits to my shop.

In just short of two years I've gone from duck-and-cover to doing presentations as a woman. Wow.

TL;DR: SQUEEEE!




Stephanie

[Faith]

very awesome read Stephanie. I am not surprised. I knew from when I first joined that you had it in you. Hmm, I think that there's an unintentional double-entendre in there

[Michelle_P]

...
In just short of two years I've gone from duck-and-cover to doing presentations as a woman. Wow.

Wow, indeed!  It's a neat feeling, and doing a successful presentation to a new group AS YOURSELF is quite a rush!

Congratulations!

[steph2.0]

very awesome read Stephanie. I am not surprised. I knew from when I first joined that you had it in you. Hmm, I think that there's an unintentional double-entendre in there

Welllll, not until September.

Unintentional. Uh huh.

[KathyLauren]

Squeeeee, indeed!  I never had any doubts that you'd be wowing an audience at some point.

[steph2.0]

Other than that, what's been going on in Stephanie's world? Just life, with an occasional twist.

Wednesday

Lunch with my Bestie and one of her very cool coworkers, therapy without tears (never guaranteed), a visit to a gathering of the local trans support group, hosted at the place I used to go to for all my support (but left them behind when I found better options). After saying hi to the few people I have anything in common with, and remembering why I don't go to those meetups much any more, it was dinner then home.

Friday

HNT Day. Kawtney (from Bawston) turned up the power and changed the method to speed things up. It was so much faster than the blend, but hurt more. I think we got more hairs than a three hour session when I called it at two hours.

It was also Take Your Muppet to Work Day. Guess who went to the shop with me...

We had high hopes...

He just wanted to help...



But it didn't end well...

Saturday
We were going to take the plane to the Grasshoppers Fly-out, but it was quite a ways south, and forecast to be windy there, so we decided to go north instead to a county fly-in about an 1:20 away. On the way we stopped at Williston, an airport I used to go to in the before-times. This was the site of my first unintentional "male-fail." It had been very early in transition, and, while I was wearing clothes from the women's section, they were absolutely androgynous. I really wasn't even trying. Yet we were called ladies by the guys across the restaurant and asked if we were with the 99s. That was an amazing experience and a taste of things to come.

The lady owner of the restaurant always used to make a fuss over "him" for some reason. I'd been there once before after going full-time, and she was nice then, too, not even really acknowledging the difference other than agreeing when I mentioned that a few things had changed since I'd last seen her. Both that time and this, she was really nice, and admonished me to come back more often.



We headed north to Cross City, where I had to fight off nervousness to use my voice to talk to the air boss in the temporary tower. Cassie was cheering for me, and it all worked out fine once i got into it.



Being a county fly-in, it had a bit of a carnival atmosphere, with food and trinkets sellers, antique cars, and of course, flying machines of all descriptions.



I was wearing the iconic t-shirt of Ladies Love Taildraggers, so i got a picture to post on their FaceBook page. It turned out to be a minor hit there.



Back in the air again, I handed it over to my copilot, who took us to Crystal River for lunch.



Back home for a nap, then a late night food run.

What a fun day!

Sunday

Time for another bicycle ride. This time on the Withlacoochee Trail, one of the Rails to Trails bike routes in Florida. We rode 25 miles with lunch in the middle.





Back to the shop for some work on one of my projects.

The old cowl is not going to work with this new engine...

And that wraps up a great weekend.

Tuesday

Trivia! And we won!



You can see that I had to carry most of the load, because the rest of the team was having problems with their faces.

The rest of the week was just normal life. A dentist appointment, a meeting with financial advisors, etc., things I would have been terrified to do a year ago, were almost normal now. There's still a little of the uncertainty about meeting old acquaintances and service people again for the first time, but it doesn't stop me from getting out there and being me.

Another 2 hour HNT session on Friday, the aircraft presentation I already talked about, and hanging with my bestie on the weekend. More planning for our big upcoming trip to Europe, with one especially notable reservation at an AirBNB apartment listed "Females Only." Yay! Today I dealt with a guy who came out to replace the broken windshield in my car. He treated me very nicely while listening to Rush Limbaugh on his truck radio. I wonder how he would have treated me if he'd known?

Anyway, got to get to Trivia tonight. The winning team from the previous week has the inestimable honor of being booed by all the other teams when their name is announced, and I don't want to miss that!


Stephanie

[KathyLauren]

What a fun week you have had!  You definitely don't sound like the shy person who used your username a year or two ago.

[Donica]

Nice update Stephanie. It's getting to be life as usual for both of you. So sweet when things go the way they are supposed to.

Congratulations Steph!!!

[steph2.0]

Kind of another milestone today. But first, let's get into the Wayback Machine...

November 3, 2017

It was relatively early in transition. On October 13th I had come out to the world on FaceBook. I guess I was sort of full-time, but it was tentative and the best I could admit to was dressing androgynously and feeling my way forward. I had decided, though, that it was time to come out to many of the friends I had in the aviation world. The DeLand Aviation Showcase was that weekend, and it was time to go say hello as my new self. I had access to the plane I'd built, and my friend D wanted to go, so I invited her to fly with me to the show.

We left early in the morning, with a couple of neighbors in their planes, and flew to Ocala for breakfast. Ocala is a towered airport, so I had to talk to the tower, and I of course got called "sir." Oh well, to be expected at that point. We had breakfast in the little cafe at the airport, and the other neighbors prepared to go home while we planned to go on to DeLand.

My friend D is, let's say, not the most discreet person. I was pretty self-conscious about my presentation, and while I was wearing mostly women's clothing and my ears were pierced, I wasn't feeling very confident about using the ladies room. So I took a deep breath and used the men's room. When I came out, D had an incredulous look on her face and stated loudly for all to hear, "Why did you go in there? I thought you'd use the other bathroom!" ARGH, not so loud, D!

The trip to DeLand and how it went (very well) are stories for another time. Back in the machine to fast forward to today...

May 8, 2019

That story took place 551 days ago. Today I flew back to Ocala for the first time since then and met a friend - the owner of the plane I built and flew both on that day in 2017 and today - for lunch. I won't say I was confident on the radio, but I liked the way my voice sounded, and nobody called me "sir" - though to be fair, there were no pronouns used at all. Lunch was great, and I was treated nicely by everyone there. Just another woman pilot flying in to meet a friend for lunch. On the way out my friend turned right, into the men's room I'd used long ago, and I continued down the hall to the appropriate room for me.

The point of all of this? November 3rd, 2017 was the very last time I ever used a men's room. As I passed that door on the right and continued down the hall it was almost a physical jolt as I realized how far I'd come in those 551 days.

To illustrate the difference, today I took a picture in that ladies room. As a comparison, here I am on November 3rd, 2017, and today.





I've come a long way, baby.


Stephanie

[Northern Star Girl]

@steph2.0
Dear Stephanie:
Your "Way back when" report deserves one of my
famous  Wow-Whee responses.

Your before and after pictures shows amazing changes...
... and your acceptance by your local flying friends is to be celebrated,
not only by you, but also by all of your followers here on your thread.

Thank you for sharing.
Hugs and well wishes,
Danielle

[Kendra]

Steph, I'd like to second Danielle's Wow-Whee if I can do so without trademark infringement.  Wow, and whee - in those terms, 551 days is a blink of an eye.  Hey isn't Blink 551 a band name?

Well earned, girl. 

[mm]

All I can say, there is that day when we decide that you are using only the correct restroom from now on, where you belong.

[Donica]

Yes you have come a long (551 days) way Steph! Why do they almost always put the ladies room further down the hall? It should be the first door down the hall. Let the men take the longer walk I say

[steph2.0]

Yes you have come a long (551 days) way Steph! Why do they almost always put the ladies room further down the hall? It should be the first door down the hall. Let the men take the longer walk I say

They put it further away to leave room for the long lines we have to stand in. Am I right, ladies?


Stephanie

[Donica]

Oh dear! Yes you are right Stephanie. Dang. Well I still thing the men should take the walk, or hike, which ever you prefer