Meeting Postscript

I'm getting a mental backlog of things I want to write about, so I'd best get cracking. I will begin with the freshest material, as tonight I attended my monthly support group meeting.

It's been two months since I last attended, and I was missing my friends desperately. And Leslie, too, for that matter. I don't dress fully anywhere else. I don't play with my makeup, excepting lipstick. I don't wear my wig. Half-assed gives me too much credit. Yet, I find that even without practice, my presentation continues to improve. I'm not uber-femme, I'm modest with the makeup, no campy mincing, but after the meeting I see myself in the mirror, and what I see is more attractive than what I imagined as I sat through the meeting. Consistently surprised.

The meeting place is one that we borrow free of charge from our local gay/lesbian group. They are doing major renovation of the space, well on its way out of dump status. They now have a programmed thermostat, and it was not cooling this evening. We could not find a way to override the program and create some cool air. It hovered around 85 degrees F in the room for the entire meeting. Anyone familiar with wearing a wig knows how uncomfortable many of us were. She's a very sweaty girl, the kind you don't take home to Mother, to paraphrase Rick James. I took a seat near the fan and managed to live to tell the tale.

We had to do some business at the meeting, but it wasn't exhausting as it has been so often in the past. We are going to have some guest speakers in the next few months, so we had to get the schedule squared away. Plus, our acting director wants to step back and share the workload with others. I volunteered to be a moderator on our Yahoo group, watching for inappropriate traffic (almost never) and getting involved in accepting or declining new members. Sylvia and I will share this duty, and we will get our initiation and passwords on Monday. I hope there won't be a sacrifice or any hazing.

There was plenty of good group discussion, but people started wanting to bug out pretty early, mainly due to the heat. This meant that I had to go back into the LATTE and change earlier than anticipated. *sigh* While others went off to a restaurant, I decided that I would go over to Lisa's with Tina, Shandy and Sylvia, for an impromptu cookout. Well, everyone hung around chatting outside the meeting place, so I wound up going home instead. My friends really want to figure ways to get me out more, which I find endlessly flattering. I'm very lucky to have fallen in with such a good crew.

I buffed and rounded my nails before the meeting, and I should go ahead and cut them now, but I don't want to ruin the look. Pulling back after a meeting is very difficult, more so with each one. The July meeting falls on the Independence Day weekend, so I likely won't be Leslie again till August. Way too long.