Maura's Illuminated Manuscript

My difficulty a few weeks ago with having orgasms? Gone. I can't help but wonder if a stress-induced rise in blood pressure "fixed" that for me.

The tic in my eye has gotten better. Yes, I put ice on it. When I wasn't wearing makeup or on my bike.

I should be making fun plans for the near future, or really any kind of plans for the near future, but to tell you the truth my heart isn't in it.

See you at the Merc tonight.

But first: The ease with which I can achieve an orgasm correlates strongly with my estrogen levels. My shot day is Friday. I'm in the "harrumph" part of the week now. That surely isn't good for my messed-up right shoulder.

On to the dream! cupcake_goth was organizing some kind of big Goth event. The invitation, which she'd sent to everybody, was in the form of a video. She warned me that it featured audio of me singing.

My singing wasn't as terrible or dysphoric as I expected, but I didn't remember recording the audio and I didn't recognize the song. The video featured a lot of photos of club nights long past. The overall effect was deeply nostalgic.

Meanwhile, I was trying to watch the video on my phone while walking through a house full of people. I rode my bike to a school where a couple of dozen ladies in hijabs were watching something going on across the street at an elementary school. (In real life, I live a few blocks away from one.) I parked the bike and resumed watching the video, trying to determine when and where the event was going to be. Of course I wanted to go.

When I had sex reassignment surgery, I got three dilators, each in a different color and size. I named them, in increasing order of size: Prince, Papa Smurf, and the Jolly Green Giant. Starting six weeks after surgery, I was to use each in that order for a few weeks each until I got to the largest. I've been using the Jolly Green Giant almost nightly as directed ever since. I kept the other two, though, in case anything ever went seriously wrong down there.

So why am I telling you all this? Because of my long and expensive quest for a sex toy that works for me. Yes, that quest came to a successful conclusion earlier this year, but the other day I got a brain wave. Might Prince have saved me all that trouble?

( Uh, I should probably use a cut here for technical sex toy discussion. )

Speaking of sex-related things, the Womanhandler postponed tonight's date because of car trouble. I should see her soon, though.

Hit the Merc with Shiny H & G for the former's birthday. Got to chat with aaminahlefae a bit. She's crashing out of that divorce, and it's a beautiful thing to see. And, and and and, Vienna La Rouge was there too, in the out-of-the-way Handjob Corner. No icky dudes with her, no partner either. Good Goddess, that woman's unfairly attractive, in a gay way. And hanging out and talking to her is... nice. No, that's not dirty. It reminded me of when we used to do that in 2008.

Shallow fashion details: violet brocade overbust corset from Dark Garden; "boot licker", i.e. very high-low, skirt from Gallery Serpentine; Fluevog Truth Melanie held above my knees with black velvet ribbons; and all the violet accessories with violet MAC makeup. It was my 2019 Pride eve outfit, only dressier.

Went to the annual Lambert House volunteer appreciation gathering in Volunteer Park. Sheesh, getting there on transit took forever. Oddly, coming back was easy. Said Ken the director, they're in negotiations for a place to move to for two years, but they haven't nailed anything down, so there's nothing really worth announcing. He asked us grunts if any of us had a line on a space, but he says the youth won't go to a space that's office-y. What the actual? Lambert House is such a precious thing, a place where it's safe for queer kids to be queer. I like to think that when I was their age I wouldn't have cared much what the building looked like. Anyway, if any of you know of a transit-accessible place on Capitol Hill that isn't (too?) office-like, please let me know.

I neither made it to the annual ravey thing at Myrtle Edwards nor circumflatulated. I needed to do housework, and my son should be arriving for dinner shortly. Ah well, I have a few summer weekends left.

And why the FOMO? Well, uh, let's just say I've been unusually successful with Clara II these last three days. Record-breakingly so.

I did an accidental medical experiment on myself. On Sunday night, I got home late from a date, then woke up early to go to my employer's annual conference. I was desperately low on sleep, so I consumed at least double my usual daily intake of caffeine, and stopped doing so much later in the day than typically. Predictably, I couldn't sleep when blessed bedtime finally arrived. What to do when I'm in bed and can't sleep?

Bust out my new glass toy, Clara II*. Clara II's entire reason for being is that it usually (Foreshadowing!) takes me a lot of time and effort to get myself off. You may recall that all that bicycling has lowered my resting heart rate to not much above forty BPM. But I was caffeinated to the gills late last night, so my heart rate was, by my standards, annoyingly elevated. I speculate that this helped me reach a happy ending with remarkable speed, despite much such activity over the weekend. In other words, Starbuck's coffee helped me score a hat trick.

In circumstances like this I've said in the past that more research is needed, but I really don't want to mess with my sleep anymore. I'm reminded that the Tickler says that the best drug to be on for sex is Benadryl, and in light of the above that seems counterintuitive to me. Maybe it depends on the person.

Edited to add: Uncle Google says that Benadryl is a vasoconstrictor, as is caffeine. Will wonders never cease?



*The very first functional toy I made, plain old Clara, was made of Lucite.

I had Juneteenth off. I didn't find that out until after my alarm went off this morning and I added my employer's holiday calendar on my phone. I salvaged the morning, however, by going right back to sleep.

And how did I spend this unexpected day off? By committing ritual commercial suicide: I have told my IP lawyers to forget it and published my sex toy design at github.com/sistawendy/sextoy as open hardware. Sure, anybody can use that design to make those toys and sell them, but they can't try to prevent anyone else from doing so. I included instructions on how to get the things made.

Why did I do this?

1. I'm really convinced that there isn't a market for them. Even my most enthusiastic market research subject isn't as enthusiastic as I am. Remember, that's a fairly freaky self-selected group I'm talking about.
2. Even if I thought there were a market, do I really want the hassle and expense? Not really. I just wanted a toy that works, and I want other people to have one too, preferably at a price we can all afford.

You know that thing I do whereby I wake up ungodly early, pee, and then can't get back to sleep until way too late if at all? I've done that at least three times this week. I can't remember too precisely because lack of sleep fries my memory. The way I got enough sleep last night was 1930-0100 and then 0400-0600.

What did I do with those intervening three hours? Well, I got something back from the 3D print shop. It works a treat. Ahem. I'm not absolutely 100% satisfied with the esthetics myself, but I've already committed to giving a copy of this revision to my best source of feedback. She's picking it up on Sunday. And I'll be able to show it to the Tickler on Saturday.

I haven't posted in three days because I've been either busy or dead on my feet. I finished my first two-week on-call shift for my new team. It, well, it sucked. I didn't get paged in the middle of the night, but it ate an awful lot of my waking hours. The sheer number of ways the service can go sideways and the decision tree to get it going again are staggering. And I'm supposed to improve it.

I'm hoping I've got the design ready for the last round of prototyping on the sex toy. In the last week, even after all this time, I'm finding new ways to do things with Blender.

The weather is perfect and fascists are coming for everyone like me. How are you?

Yes, you read that right. It all started about a year and a half ago, when I bought a highly-recommended Hismith sex machine, but it arrived with mismatched power connectors between the motor and the control box. I ordered another control box from the manufacturer. I thought I'd tried that second control box (Foreshadowing!) but it still didn't work. I decided, 'Fuck it. Or rather, don't.'

That sex machine moved with me into the Devil Girl House, where it had been gathering dust for ten months. I decided to do something about that, so yesterday morning I posted a message on one of the naughtier groups I belong to over on Zuckerberg's data mine advertising what I believed to be a sex machine that didn't work. I got a rapid response, and a Facebook friend who I don't even remember friending came and got the thing early yesterday evening. She invited me, conditionally, to a party featuring said machine should she get it working. I politely declined.

Within an hour she messaged me to say that the machine worked fine with one of the control boxes that she tried, and would I like it back?

o_O

I said, "Nah, it's yours now."

The truth is, the damn thing is heavy enough that I can barely carry it. It's also about a yard long. It's hardly the everyday solution that the toys I've invented are. And for special occasions, I still have a Sybian. Besides, the uh, attachments that the Hismith came with are disappointingly soft silicone. Maybe I've been reading too much Buddha*, but I thought it was better to give away the sex machine.



*I'm pretty sure that Buddha, even as depicted by Osamu Tezuka, wouldn't have approved of sex machines or giving them away in the hope they'd be used.

The most recent recipient of my sex toy likes it! And she is cisgender. And, amazingly, over ten years younger than I am. She's sent me notes that I believe to be excellent design suggestions.

I win. Facebook trolls can suck it.