This is partly to vent and partly to see if there are some humorous ones out there, or just other people with the same frustrations.

My muscle/overall weight loss I blame on my ADHD meds. 
I have been trying to use lotion more my skin and hands are softer,  I blame it on my new-ish desk job.
Wearing pants/boots all the time to cover shaved legs and painted toes I blame on not having shorts anymore  ( I still have plenty, no clue how people buy this one).

At work since losing my muscle mass I am the only one that fits in the curing ovens (manufacturing facility maintenance) even though I got put at a desk job just over a year ago (promotion) and it isn't my regular duties.  I almost outed myself talking about the welding fumes and nastiness in my hair going to need half a bottle of conditioner (they took it as a feminist joke so it was OK).  Even if I was out at work I would probably still climb into there and do the welding, but still, not worrying about my femme complaints would be nice.

I LOOOVE water sports, I am running out of excuses for avoiding this, I just like my legs shaved too much!  Still down't want to out myself.

I wear pants too cover up, but I was giving my own excuse that I work in a factory now, so it's better than shorts. But I guess most recent excuse is I've been smugling in all kinds of cloths that I bough online to a spot I hide in the basement. If I am caught with a package (for not getting the mail first) I just say it's pony merch from a friend, or it's props for a sketch. I've always been a master at being a con artist, and on the spot excuses. Sometimes I wish I wasn't though. Perhaps getting busted is what I need. After all, I was scared to tell my parents I enjoyed My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, but I got caught watching it and explained it that way.

I have come to like my little pony recently again, it was almost impossible to watch my own TV as a kid living with my parents.  My daughter watches it, so that is my excuse for knowing all of the characters. 

My daughter provides me all kinds of excuses for girl stuff, especially all of the little girl stuff I missed out on or watched from the sidelines.

Think I have a few
-When work colleagues noticed I shaved my arms
"I'm epileptic have you ever tried to rip off tape every other day?"

-When I was on cruches and had to wear that special boot
"Why have you shaved your legs?". "It was itchy hot and sweaty. Now it's not"

-Whenever I was mistaken for a girl from behind
(laughing it off) "Don't worry your not the first and you won't be the last" (thinking yes thank you)

Excuses for stuff...

Facial changes from HRT - watching what I'm eating. Yeah right... (And what do you say when people say you look younger)

Electrolysis - I was lucky - I had so little facial hair, and got such bad outbreaks that it made sense.  SO hated facial stubble anyway.

Shaved legs - easier to clean gravel rash (back when I used to do a lot of roller blading)

Shaved underarms - I stink less

I wear a rash guard when swimming.  I just say you don't want to look at what's underneath, and they let it go.

The only thing I ever got called out on by colleagues was my legs when I was wearing shorts. We were in a group of twelve or so, sitting around following our Christmas party lunch and all a bit tipsy. A female colleague suddenly noticed my legs and was curious why and how they were so smooth, she's a cyclist and thought that might be why. I just grinned and said "Full body wax!". That got a lot of interest and attention from the women, and blanched looks from the two hairy guys also present. When asked why I just replied "why not?" I was dying to spill the beans on my impending transition but decided I'd wait until a more sober moment!

A number of years ago now (wow how time fly's) I was at work, my nails were polished with shellac. One of the girls asked why my nails were polished and another girl said I was being bohemian. I thought about and said no, I'm transgender, that was on a Friday, I went FT on the monday

So far about the only comment I have had was you look younger and lost weight, what have you done?
I responded I am taking vitamins and looking after myself. So true.

Might be harder soon as the girls are growing....

Anyway I love it.

I didn't take too long into my transition before I full came out...so I don't have too many of these stories. But I did have an interesting event on the following day of one of the first times I ever went round to a friends house in full girl mode...

I had completely forgot to take off the coral coloured nail polish I had applied the previous night. I didn't even realise this until somebody at work pointed it out the next day.

My lightning quick reaction was to burst into laughter and say

"Holy crap! Those sneaky bitches at the party! They must have done that when I passed out last night! Hmmm...I guess that's like...the female equivalent of magic marker on your face right?"

I am surprised that they all bought it, and it started a rather fun conversation on various pranks etc.

Daniella,

Quick thinking!  And it did actually happen to a guy I knew at school once... He showed up one day with one hand with polish on...

Excuses do get to be tiring. I work in an environmental field, and the majority in the office are outdoors persons. My excuse for losing weight is to get back my mobility.

My manicured eyebrows was from my wife because she was helping me with my unibrow. Shaved legs have to wait until fall which was difficult for me to have them grow back out. I do not know how to explain breast development. How can a male lose weight and grow breasts at the same time? No one has asked so far.

What hurts me the most is the situations where I can not make excuses (doctor/therapist appointments). I rarely needed to see the doctor in earlier times. Now I miss work regularly to see a doctor or therapist. I cannot make excuses to my employer. I simply state that it is a private health issue. Today I may have to miss out on my coworker's going away lunch beacuse of an appointment. We are good friends, and she will be missed. Again, I had to be straight forward and say I have an appointment to make .

A few more that I have remembered two where for why I had nail polish on (you can guess which ones)
-Trying to impress <girls name>
-Lost a bet
-It was a dare
-Why not
-They paid me
-And your point being
-The a/c makes my lips too dry
-Could you imagine what I would sound like on helium

Don't worry about it so damned much.

At my last job, I had shaved legs, no body hair whatsoever, my hair was long, I had very female-shaped plucked eyebrows, was constantly speaking in my female voice, wore a women's v-neck t-shirt and a bra under my work uniform, wore bracelets occasionally, wore clear nail polish, and even was gendered female as many as several times a day by players in the poker room. (Hell, even my own supervisors messed up the pronouns a few times.)

And STILL, not a single person questioned me on it. In three months, not a single person asked me if I was gay or if I was trans or anything of the sort.

This isn't high school. People don't nitpick your appearance to death anymore. You can get away with just about anything and still have not a single person question you on gender identity.

There's no need to make excuses. Just be yourself, do what makes you happy, and don't let paranoia over others' opinions dominate your life. It will make that inter-transitonal period MUCH easier.

I am having to excuse myself for my frequent doctors visits to the people at work. My endo's office is in Beverly Hills at cedars and I happened to casually mention my long drive to our receptionist when I had to make yet another appointment. Turns out she used to live nearby and she started asking questions about my doctor and I finally had to tell her that I'd rather not disclose any information about that while thinking "lest I out myself".

Some people at work have been staring at me recently. The cat is definitely about to slip out of the bag. I'm filing for my name change tomorrow thank heavens.

I don't know why I've never had any problems with anything like this even though I don't hide anything, really. Might be cultural differences since I'm from Finland and live in a big city where pretty much anything goes (including major bondage gatherings at local public parks), but nobody has ever said anything. Now granted, I do wear quite thoroughly covering clothes, but I do shave my arms which is plainly obvious since it's extremely hot and therefore I wear t-shirts. I also wear purple nail polish pretty often, but people don't seem to take notice. Facial changes probably are lumped together with my loss of a lot of weight and I did wear breast prosthetics regularly before I started HRT without any but one unpleasant encounter. It'll be interesting to see how people react to my breasts once they grow enough to actually show again since my weight loss means that they can't be written off as moobs anymore.

But then again, maybe I just don't notice. I was out and about with my mom yesterday and she said that a man sitting opposite to me in the tram first noticed my nails and then looked at the rest of my figure and then had this "what the <not allowed> is going on here"-kind of a face for the rest of the trip. I'm actually a bit sad that I didn't notice since it probably would've amused me considerably.

We'll see what happens today. I'm going to a computer festival and I'm going to wear my prosthetics for the first time in a while. And they look huge now that I've lost all this weight and grown real A cup boobs beneath them. And I'm going to top it off with a nice My Little Pony fan shirt.

If someone was to confront me about it, I'd probably just tell them "I'm a f***ing trann, now go away."

It's good that I live over here. I wouldn't be very good with avoiding hate crimes somewhere where they are more common.

EDIT: Apparently, no more prosthetics for me. They're designed for a flat chest and my boobs have grown too much to make them fit and stay in any reasonable attitude. I guess that's another happy milestone, although it means that I won't be having any more extreme boob outings with them.

The only problems i ever had before i socially transitioned were my friends, i didn't come out to them for a while, which led to some questionable excuses and situations, for example, wearing a full baggy hoody in the middle of summer to hide my breasts. Or reasons why i was doubled over in pain whenever someone hugged me too hard (i got a really bad stitch, cramp)

There were a lot of awkward questions, but a lot of the time i was saved from interrogations by ithers

I legitimately started eating healthier a while back and lost a bunch of unnecessary weight. People sometimes still wonder why I don't eat fatty (to me) foods and look so "skinny". Only a few females have noticed I shave my arms or shape my eyebrows.

Quote from: Carrie Liz on July 31, 2014, 07:24:07 AM
Don't worry about it so damned much.

At my last job, I had shaved legs, no body hair whatsoever, my hair was long, I had very female-shaped plucked eyebrows, was constantly speaking in my female voice, wore a women's v-neck t-shirt and a bra under my work uniform, wore bracelets occasionally, wore clear nail polish, and even was gendered female as many as several times a day by players in the poker room. (Hell, even my own supervisors messed up the pronouns a few times.)

And STILL, not a single person questioned me on it. In three months, not a single person asked me if I was gay or if I was trans or anything of the sort.

This isn't high school. People don't nitpick your appearance to death anymore. You can get away with just about anything and still have not a single person question you on gender identity.

There's no need to make excuses. Just be yourself, do what makes you happy, and don't let paranoia over others' opinions dominate your life. It will make that inter-transitonal period MUCH easier.

I'm with Carrie Liz on this one.  Before I accepted myself as trans* i lived androgynously with long hair, nails and items such as a ladies wrist watch.  Being queer my life also managed to feature rainbow colors and i suppose most people just thought i was gay.  The big news was that nobody ever asked and maybe they just didn't really fuss about it.
My fears of being ridiculed were simply magnified by years of denial and repression.  Fear and hatred are a wast of my time and emotional capacity.  Don't feed it!

Wait till you do come out or are far enough into transition and are trying your best NOT to look like that guy ever again.  Male fails will then be your well earned reward.