Paradise is NOT a 'place'.

The party.

Unlike any baby shower you'll find in Canada.

Canada?  Ladies only for the most part.

Silly games to keep us entertained, refreshments with a few tame drinks.

Music on, really only for ambiance.

Baby shower in Dominican Republic?

Co-ed, rum being chugged before it's poured into the glass.

Music so loud, there's no point having a conversation.

I filmed people dancing instead.

Our Fave's Mom looked so damn beautiful.

I've never seen her look so good, because the poor thing is so damn pregnant, she doesn't have the energy to fancy herself up.

Damn she's beautiful with her hair down and those massive breasts spilling out of her Spanish style top.

I actually didn't recognize her at first!

I had a tour of their fruit trees, pigs and chickens.

We're talking at least 20 fuzzy, baby chicks too.

Holding them to give me so much love that I need right now.

They chirped in my ear, "I love you, it's really good to be alive!"

Yeah, you're not old enough to know how bad life really gets.

Oh, but you won't be saying that when it's YOUR turn to be in the pot of food they were cooking for the party last night.

I was also the tester of the food to see if it was good.

Good?!?!

Oh I can't even tell you the flavours they use here.

I was grateful to be the tester.

Papi kept disappearing.  Understandable.  His social anxiety is worse than mine.

He was supposed to be behind the camera to keep himself busy so he didn't feel uncomfortable, but people were shy in front of him.

He handed it back to me.

The 2nd time he disappeared, I went to the house to get the flash for the camera.

I saw it.

A pint of beer poured.

My heart stopped, my stomach erupted through my head and the tears were being held back with all my force.

I was supposed to go back and take pics of Our Fave's Mom opening her gifts.

No time to cry.

As soon as I was done however, I went home to find that Papi didn't drink the beer.

Not because he came to his senses, but because he was caught in the act.

His way of dealing is to relapse.

My way to deal with depression is to get so angry that my yelling actually scares away all the animals, for fear that they will be pulled into the eye of Hurricane Andréa.

Normally, they see me as all love.

I'm hurting and scared and feel so isolated, so when there were no friends to speak to by way of internet, well, I lost it.

Papi's grieving.

Today we put down Psycho Kitty.

Poor little critter has had enough.  I keep begging him to go to the angels on his own, but he's just too much of a fighter.

I've had enough of watching him suffer, not being able to even open his mouth enough to eat.

Papi's had enough of watching his little love slowly die before him.

Beyond the dying cat, there is so much exhaustion and trouble to deal with that we're at the point where we half heartedly spoke about the convenience of there being two guns for a double suicide.

This is not paradise.

Paradise is not a place.

Paradise is in your heart.

A beautiful view of the ocean does not cure a mental chemical imbalance.

i offer a sincere apology to those affected by my anger

The Vacation - Part 2

Google maps.

They SUCK here on the island of the Dominican Republic, even in the capitol.

We decided to follow the Google instructions and drive the route given.

No, we didn't ask the hotel for help, because that would have made sense.

We weren't making anything easy for ourselves.  We never seem to do so.

Off we went, driving back through the streets we just came through, thinking we'd figure out the way to get back to Ikea, because we saw it when we first drove in to the city.

What I'm learning, is that even though there is realistic terror of people who could harm us, there are an overwhelming amount of good people.

Good people who want to help us, who seem to be guided by angels to cross our path, tipping the scales toward positivity, allowing us to feel great support here.

Ikea should have only taken 20 minutes to drive to, but not for us.

2 hours through insanity of no driving rules, cars that have bumps and dings in them that make them look beyond a beater, and darkening skies that threatened our shopping time.

We could have given up, but we were so desperate to get the items we need for our home, so we kept driving the streets of the capitol.

I yelled out the window at people to ask for where Ikea was, but dammit, it didn't even occur to me that the reason they didn't understand me was because they don't say Ikea the way we would in English.

Of course they would say it in their own accent: Ee-kay-a, not: Eye-kee-a.  Hence, not a soul could understand what the hell I was asking for.

Finally, we stopped at a gas station and dammit if there wasn't the absolute sweetest woman to help me.

I told her I wanted to go to Ikea, and again her head cocked as if to say, "What?"

I said it was a big store with tables and chairs and beds on the main street of John F. Kennedy.

Her eyes lit up! "Si!  Ee-KAY-a!!"  She then told me we were very far away.

She did give us instructions, however, between the language barrier, the sun going down and lack of signage in the city, we wound up driving toward the airport on the other side of the city, instead of our shopping destination.

Person after person, we stopped and asked, now pronouncing the name properly, and eventually our weaving in and out of traffic we found John F. Kennedy, and within minutes, we found Ikea.

We only had one hour to shop for bedroom furniture and other odds and ends we really needed that we just can't find on our side of the island.

Never in my life have I been the LAST person out of a store, escorted by guards with guns and employees giving us the stink eye, because we were taking way too long and they just wanted to go home.  Completely understandable.

They, however, don't understand how far we are from home and that we only had these few moments to get what we needed.

Well, we made it back to our car, the only one in the lot, accepting there was so much more we didn't have time to get.  Maybe the next day we could go back now that we know how to get there?!?

Fortunately, the drive home was much easier, with those 4 lanes of traffic becoming clear that they're really only 3 lanes, because it was late at night and there weren't cars stuck in the road like a parking lot.

Having left the hotel before dinner time, we were absolutely starving, but it was now 10 p.m.  We hoped we could eat at the hotel, even if it was room service.

When we arrived back, we very meekly asked if anything was open.

"Of course!  Right now the baseball game is on!  In the bar there is food.  It is the true Dominican experience!"

Excellent!  In we went to the restaurant to eat watch the Dominican Republic play against the Nederlands.

I had been told that Dominicans are CRAZY about their baseball, but I never expected to see what I saw.

Every time there was a home run, or the Dominicans gave the Nederlands an out, people ERUPTED!

People were jumping on tables, blowing horns.  Men were kissing one another, while women gyrated each other, waving their flags high and proud in the air, as the percussive instruments infused the airwaves with beats that melted my heart.

Every time it happened, people turned to look at my face, as I was so happy to see so much joy and giggled at their antics.

It was an opportunity to finally have the 'fun' that Papi and I needed after such a stressful few days.

The night ended with Papi admitting he can't drink just one drink, and me being grateful that we had time to be loving toward one another, not to mention, absolutely NO desire within me to drink.

Good thing it ended on a good note, because for day 2 of our 'vacation', we would need more patience than we could ever know.

i feel the love of those not physically around me

The Vacation - Part 1

I can't tell you how hard that first day was.

Nothing like being stuck in a car with someone who has just ripped your heart out, and knowing that you have to spend at least 3 hours in the car with them.

True to my suicidal nature, I was not mentally well.

I don't know that I would ever take my own life, but I'll tell you, I will beg the angels to do it for me.

Every car that Papi passed on the left, I would say to the angels, "Do it now while there's a car coming at us.  Head on collision.  Take us out together.  We're both suffering."

We could go together and live in a place where the pain would stop.

I didn't wear my seatbelt, because I thought for sure I could will an oncoming semi-trailer to do us in.

When Papi finally asked me why I'm not wearing it, I was honest, "If I get into another accident, I don't want to suffer through the pain again.  I just want to die in an instant.  I want this all to end."

Let it be known that when Papi relapses, we both suffer.

He has to live with the pain of a spouse who becomes suicidal.

I've lived with way too many alcoholics and drug addicts to know that this disease doesn't allow for love.

It robs all inklings of love.  I can't lose my soul mate to this.  Losing Papi to alcohol would be the final straw of my life, that seems to have so much goodness, but seems to be balanced out with so much pain at the same time.

He begged me, "Please, I don't want you to be unhappy.  I don't want to drink anymore."

"But you will.  You can't help it.  You're an alcoholic."

In frustration, mi esposo replied, "Can you just trust that I won't drink during this trip to the capitol?  You can go back to not trusting me after, but we're going for a mini-vacation.  Let's try to enjoy it and you can hate me when we get home."

He didn't get it.  "I don't hate you.  I couldn't ever.  I don't think you have any idea how much I love you.  But how do you expect me to just 'let this go'?"

I couldn't.  I didn't.

Until we actually hit the city.

We had pulled over so I could drive for part of the highway, while Papi slept off the effects of the alcohol the night before.  It was getting too dangerous for his bleary eyes to keep looking at the road, and besides, it was a really good highway with very few insane drivers.

That was of course, until we hit Santo Domingo.

I was slapping Papi in the leg, pushing him, as I begged him to wake up.  "We're here!  This is it!!"

He told me to pull over, but I decided that I'd had enough stress and wanted to drive myself, so that I know what's around me and I was in control.

I haven't had enough control over the the past few days.

So, no, I would drive.

I scared the shit out him as I found my place in 4 lanes of traffic where there were no lines, nor were there any rules.

I cut off people without a care in the world.

... hit me ... go ahead ... i don't fucking care anymore ...

But somehow, while being scared shitless in this driving chaos, I managed to get us to the malecon.

Then Papi had enough.  "Pull over.  I can't take it anymore.  You're going to give me a heart attack."

So, I did.  Then all of a sudden I noticed that the traffic was calm.  There were no more crazy drivers.

While we drove along side the beautiful Caribbean Sea in awe of it's beauty, we were actually talking for the first time since his drunkfest the night before.

We arrived at the hotel, illegally snuck in Sir Bark-A-Lot, who doesn't make a peep when he's in his carrying bag, and up to the hotel room we went.

This is when the adventure really began.

A trip to Ikea was in order to finally get our bedroom suite started.  The day was not over yet.

This little trip took us to adventure, where our Vacation began, and our communication followed suit.

It was at that point that I apologized to the angels for asking them to wipe me off the planet.

I felt bad that I had asked them to help me die, after all the love they'd given me.

I've had suicidal thoughts since I was a child, but this was the first time I had ever apologized for them.

I do want to live, but I'm so tired and all I want is for my emotional pain to stop.

i love and honour myself

got'cha papi.

Of course, we all know Papi likes to torture me, hence he has been dubbed the Tranny Terrorist.

His most recent femme fright was not really meant to make me crazy, but it does.

His relapse of alcohol began on a trip alone to see his sister get married in Mexico.

Leave the bugger alone for 10 minutes and he's into trouble!

Well, for this trip, he continuously mentions that he's uncomfortable with going to an all inclusive where there is drinking going on from the moment people hit the beach!

He talks about it, because he needs to.

I just keep asking him when he's going to tell his sponsor.

He doesn't have one.

So, yesterday, nonchalantly mentioned that I was going to take one of my pain killer infused muffins along for the trip.

"Nobody would know.  They would just see them as muffins and banana bread!"

Oh, the tizzy I got my tranny into.

The foul language he used!

The redness of his face!

The bulging eyeballs that seemed to pop out, not much unlike a cartoon character.

I have found my ammunition.

Of course, I was half honest, because the only other option for me to bring is morphine.

I hate pills.

Hate them.

But the Dominican Republic will not let us in if I have any traces of my medicinal cannabis in my system.

This means that I have to take morphine for the last month of us living here, and be off my natural pain killers for 2 months, in hopes that by the time they test my blood, I'll just look like your average pill poppin' femme.

And I'll be puffy.

Puffy, bitchy and tired.

But the whole point is, I am moving somewhere where the hopes are that I won't have to take those devil pills anymore.

Or at least, not very often.

The amount of prep for this is almost mind blowing.

Just to get ready for our short trip is enough to get the tummy squirreling around in there.

We bought two MASSIVE, and very ugly suitcases to bring some of our belongings that will be living there on this trip.

We're going to put them in storage there.

So, we have to go to our storage here.

To bring stuff to the storage there.

It's sorta ridiculous, and we hope to hell we can find a place to keep them there so that the next trip isn't as expensive with 5 animals.

Well, one of the animals is a little lighter.

Seems the stress has Psycho Kitty losing all his ass end fur.

It's really ugly.

This will not do for his television appearance.

And now, off to the vet we go to find out how to fix it, make him pretty and perhaps get a manicure for The Bastard Prince who lost one of his nails in the last Tom Cat Operetta which had him scrambling to a higher level.

Blood everywhere.

No, this is not sexy enough for their television appearance.

i accept abundance

please be specific.

When we ALL said, "It won't fit," we weren't very specific.

Seriously.  You have to be specific.

My love is used to his prize possessions, one being his couch, the other being his TV.

The TV isn't here yet, but shortly, it's gazillion inches of screen will be right up front, literally in our faces.

The couch is here though, and like I said, we weren't precise.  We should have said, "It's not going to fit, because it's going to stick out the side of the wall and into the hall and that's just wrong."

I had already expressed my fear of this, stating that I wasn't too keen on my usual, 'bounce off the walls like a pinball' mornings.

My brain injury still has me wonky in the morning.  So, imagine staggering around like a drunk first thing to go make my coffee.

Once, I torn a knee ligament tripping over a couch.

I didn't want that to happen again, but my love wants his couch and considering the fact that he moved practically everything alone on this move, I suppose he can have his couch any damn place he pleases.

The Mrs. likes it, because she can see everything in Our Closet from this spot. 

The Golden could care less, as long as he can fit through to get his attention.

 

Anyway, the couch is in and all it means is we have a little bit of a bottleneck leading into our living room/kitchen/office.

Oh, there should also be a 'slash dining room' as well.

Our dining room is pretty much anywhere we place our little wooden TV trays.

Which we'll use while we watch Papi's gargantuan TV from.

But hey!

He also fit in his La-Z-Boy.  Can you see it in the upper right corner there?

It's good thing it's here, because he's having a case of the Pit of Doom.  This whole journey has been a bit rough for him.

G'ma in the care facility with Alzheimer's, moving from his home he's been in since birth, his old one eyed Golden showing his age and having troubles getting up the stairs, fighting to keep his sanity after a very recent relapse, and the stress from moving for the first time.

Papi is in the Pit of Doom and those demons are nipping at his heels.

Still, his couch and La-Z-Boy are here and that's all that matters.

You know the most exciting part?  We can watch his colossal TV from the bathroom!

No more missing a show because of a piddle emergency!  Good thing.  I wouldn't want to boogie as fast as I can down the hall and trip on a couch.

home is where the heart is

my name is andréa, and i'm a tranny chaser.

Nope, I'm not dead.  Nor am I in the Pit of Doom.

I had 2 days of vocational evaluation for my legal trial, and my poor body couldn't take it.  So, I was either sleeping or too stupid from pain meds to write.  Today is not fun and yesterday was worse.

End whining.

We've also been busy finding our new place to live!  It's our brand new closet!

5 animals and the two of us in a tiny, itty bitty, smaller than our living room, one bedroom apartment.  It is super accessible for me to get to everything I need without the 'short bus'.

Good thing, as I'll have to be out of home a lot, fighting off the fear of claustrophobia.  This means I'll leaving the animals to fight for their immensely miniscule domain.

We've tried putting Psycho Kitty and The Bastard Prince on valium.

No, I'm not kidding.

After the near miss of losing an eye, there have been more injuries and there doesn't seem to be a 'working it out' phase for these crazy cats, even with all the suggestions we've followed.

So, valium it is.

However, the problem with that is, Psycho Kitty becomes more psycho and could actually take on a coyote.

I'm going to find him natural relaxants and see if that works.  He may be like me and can't handle the pills.

End cat rant.

Next!

I realized that after mi esposo relapsed, that I didn't actually get to tell you about Gender Odyssey.

Well, I'll tell you about those 2 days I actually did go.  Sorta go, that is.

My Person and I didn't actually go to any of the workshops, except for the tango workshop.

I tried to move around with them, until it came time to balance.  No go.

However, what I did get out if it was way more important.

I remember once, when I first came out and started dating people, my baby sister asked why I'm attracted to butches.  "You date women who look like men!  Why bother?"

I explained that they're a beautiful combination of both energies.

Sweet, sensual energy from a woman and rugged energy from the male side.

Yin Yang.

She got it, and it's pretty much how I feel even more now.

What My Person and I did the whole time was hang out with some of the founding attendees.  There's a whole gaggle of them that have been going since My Person started going with her love over 10 years ago.

It was so good to be around a bunch of trannies who called themselves trannies, and not have to worry about the immoderately politically correct Vancouverites, who take everything as an insult or a threat.

I got to just be with people who say it as it is, and I got to be around people where I could call my love a 'he' and didn't have to feel the knee jerk reaction to explain that I'm not straight.

I got to see that I am indeed attracted to transgender people.

There was this cutie.  Of course he's that 'bad boy' that I like, not much unlike mi esposo.

I do like the 'bad boys', because I'm a redneck at heart, and now I like them even better when the come in the form of a tranny.

After hanging out with the wives of trannies, I felt I fit in just fine and embraced the fact that I am indeed a Tranny Chaser, and damn!  That's a whole other level of queer.

Here's the part My Person and I giggled about.

If people think trannies are a freak, then hey, what about us Tranny Lovers?

Yup.  We're all in this together.

i feel about myself pretty much what others think of me

an anonymous encounter

At the very least, The Mrs. forgives me.

I was told I was feeling too guilty about the whole Papi relapse debacle, and that I was doing the right thing.

I know I am, but it's hard not to be with my love, especially when we had such a wonderful day yesterday.

It was really nothing out of the ordinary, as we saw the G'ma and answered the same questions she asked when I saw her last week.  We went to the house and I apologized to our Fuzzy Family and gave them as much love as I could for that short period of time.

We had such a nice time just talking about 'nothing' in particular.  It felt like I'd never been gone.  It also felt like this 2nd week will be the hardest. 

Papi, being the person cleaning up his act, feels it's kinda silly that I'm staying away for another week, because he's dedicated to staying clean 'n sober.  I now believe and trust this to be the truth.  I honestly just felt like staying with him last night, but Java the Mutt was relying upon me.

I don't even know where the 2 weeks 'rule' came into play.  It really was just a thought that I had while there was more snot and tears on my face than skin.

However, there is a reason, and I don't even know why.

I have some strange alternate sense that I don't even understand.  It doesn't matter if I don't understand, because I trust my intuition, even if others don't.

At the end of our day together, I didn't want to leave mi esposo, so I decided to join him at a late night meeting.

You know that meeting?

The one we're never supposed to talk about, because it's anonymous and is full of drunks who may, or may not, be sober.

Yeah, that meeting.

For my own sanity, I had to stop going to their convergence 8 years ago.  Their idea of non-denominational membership was not the same as mine, and I'd always leave feeling empty, because I didn't believe in 'their god'.  All it did for me was make me want to give up on happiness and drink.

Well, last night, guess what the topic was?

Yup.  God.

... for fucks sakes people ...

And guess who was the first person asked to share?

Yup, me.  Can you guess what I said?  I'll put it in a nutshell.

"I had to step away from these rooms, because they're supposed to be non-denominational, but somewhere along the lines, this became a Catholic church.  I'm still looking for that atheist meeting that actually follows the tradition about non-denominational fellowship.  I still need to be around sober people, because honestly, when my spouse was drinking in the beginning, I thought that if he could drink, maybe I could too.  I'm grateful he relapsed into a bottom to remind me that I too, am not able to drink normally."

Oh, I went on and on with more of my non-god talk and that's when people left the room.

I'll never be asked to share at that meeting again, I can promise you that.

The rest of the meeting was spent listening to everyone who did stay trying to convince me of the 'miracles of god', and I overtly rolled my eyes the whole fucking time.

Until 'god' gives me a phone call to tell me he exists, there's nothing that little books written by humans, and 'ideas of proof' can tell me to make me believe in some dude in the sky with unruly, unshaven hair, Birkenstocks and a toga.

They wonder why people won't go to their meetings.  They wonder why people would rather die out on the streets than get the help that they so desperately need.  People are dying because the zealots can't respect the tradition of the program being non-denominational.

The zealots took over and royally fucked it up for the rest of us.

The good news is, I did find some words about sobriety that were good for me to hear, and I took those words and left the rest of that fucking bullshit there.

I may go back, because I have less anger about their podium gospel since I left 8 years ago and tackled my sobriety on my own.

I'm still sober, without your fucking belief system, which is more than I can say about a fuck of a lot of people there who think that memorizing a book is the only way.

End rant.

i have abundant faith in my ability to succeed