Random week off

I have been terrible at booking leave from work, partly due to the extra Friday's I've been given, and also due to generally being in the habit of not booking much in the first  half of the year.

So I ended up with the last week off, which I seem to have mainly used for Izzy time.

• Monday I did some adulting, a bit of spring cleaning. 
• Tuesday I went to Huddersfield.
• Wednesday I did Meadowhall with my friend Ann
• Thursday - was feeling a bit down, didn't do much
• Friday had an Insta day, playing with my new phone, and trying on outfits.

Huddersfield

I had aimed to park at a specific car park off the ring road, but it was completely full, so ended up driving back around to park at a big shopping centre car park I had seen on the way.

I have not been there in over a decade I would think, I don't remember the big shopping centre being there at all.

I hadn't been in a rush to get ready so was lunch time when I arrived, so after having a quick look in a couple of shops in the centre I headed down the main streets to look for somewhere to eat. I found a place that sold jacket potatoes - seemly my adventure food of choice - I eat a lot of them as Izzy. 

Next I did ShoeZone, and got a cheap pair of knee high boots. I already had a pair, but I had bought them before I was going out shopping en femme from Amazon, and they are a bit too big for me. Will perhaps have to offload at Chams, I think there will be people who will need 43's - I seem to be more 42 for boots, 41 for heels.

Then I did a few charity shops, I was very chuffed to find some purple animal print high heels, that go perfectly with a dress I bought some time ago. Only £4.99 too.

I had a look around a few more places, then decided to go find the art gallery, but googling it's location I discovered it was closed on Tuesdays, so went in search of the covered market instead. They had a 2nd hand market that day, which was mainly junk not worthy of sale really. 

So I headed back to the shopping centre, and had a nice coffee and some cake at the Costa there, before heading home.

So nothing too exciting really, just a nice relaxing day out. 

Meadowhall 

My friend Ann was also at a loose end on the Wednesday, and I really wanted to go buy a new phone. I thought there was an issue with the selfie camera on my current one. 

So we arranged to meet up at Meadowhall.

Actually managed to get there at a reasonable time, I got up early and did a quick job of putting my face on. We met up by the charging points, and headed inside for a coffee and some breakfast at costa.

Had a good wander around drooling at many things we loved but had price tags beyond hope of us buying. Got a few ideas for Vinted searches though :)

We did buy a few bits in Superdrug - I got a compact mirror.

Got my new phone from Argos, in a more stereotypically feminine peach colour. Post purchase I discovered another trans friend has the same same phone in the same colour ! 

The we did lunch - it was Ann's treat as I had done some data recovery for her - an old NAS hard disc that was in Linux format and unreadable by PC without much faffing. 

We ended up in Weatherspoon's, where I once again I had a jacket potato :) - This time with chilli. It was lovely. 

It was soon getting on for 3pm, and I wanted to get home to make sure the boys were not alone for too long, so we headed off. 

Again a nice day out ! 

Thursday 

Thursday I was feeling a bit down, so didn't end up doing much productive at all. A bit of laundry. 

Possibly brought on by the old demon of guilt at being me. Upsetting my parents, being a bad parent for indulging this side of me, and not concentrating on the wife and kids etc. 

I only mention as it didn't leave me in the mood to go to the Wakefield support group, so I skipped it. Not for the first time. 

Had some gin and a nice bath instead.

Friday

Really wanted to try and get some good photo's for Insta, and also needed to try on some prom dresses from my collection for the prom in Nottingham tonight. I had 5 options for the prom, but hadn't tried on most of them for a while. I had originally planned on using them on a future LFF night, I haven't bought anything specifically for this event.

I also needed to master my new phone, which it turns out was equally bad at taking photo's with the selfie camera :(  - in the end I resorted to screen mirroring my phone to a laptop, then using the front camera to take the picture instead.  I have a Bluetooth button to trigger the shot, but had been using the phone screen as the view finder previously. Clearly this isn't possibly if you turn it around. 

I think the gold one has it at the moment, the pink one I do prefer, but it's an open back, and bra options are limited.

I will be painting my toenails shortly, and charging my car.