10th of Adar I

Went to my first gender therapy session yesterday. I think it was a good start. I was really nervous and excited. Wasn't sure if he was going to take me seriously. That would have been my biggest fear no matter who I saw. Last time I was in regular therapy was roughly 6 years ago. It wasn't long after my mom passed away. That's a long time. Wasn't sure what to really expect with this kind of therapy. Felt like I talked too much...He said that was normal. I didn't like that the intake forms only had the options of male or female. Off-putting when you're neither. 

He said in order for my insurance to cover it, I had to be diagnosed with gender dysphoria. It used to be as gender identity disorder. He feels strongly against calling it a disorder, which was good to hear. He started going through DSM-IV, and realized it had really binary language. Then, he realized he was wasn't looking at the DSM-5, then went through that instead. The language was a lot better (still had to reword some things), and I've related to a lot of it. We spent a while on each criteria, since he wanted details on what I brought up. 

He was a little odd about my romantic/sexual orientations. I think he was just new to them. Especially so when I brought up platonic attraction and qpr's. I said it probably sounded weird. He said he'd like me to not say the word 'weird' when relating to myself. It's self-judgmental and it might be out of the norm, but they're learning more about this stuff. Society doesn't like diversity and 'new' ways of thinking about things like relationships. So, things might seem 'weird' through society's eyes, but they really aren't. Next time, we'll go over more of the criteria, 'diagnose' me, and start going over a bunch of stuff that I brought up. Should be interesting. 

It was a bit weird that there was no receptionist and a number code for the door. I thought the door could only be opened by staff or something. Someone came by, opened it for us, and found his door. Since there's no receptionist, he has to give you the intake forms. There were a lot of them. A lot to read. Hopefully, I filled it out right. The waiting room was nice. His Silverdale office has a receptionist. 

Got a call from a receptionist there today saying that I needed to authorize my first session with my insurance. I thought I had messaged Ashley (social worker in my insurance's Gender Health Program) about the appointment when I made it, but didn't. She had asked me if the therapists were going to work out that day, so I immediately replied back about this appointment. Didn't get a response back on it. I messaged her today about the call, she quickly got back to me, and said she was able to authorize it immediately yesterday. Both them and I will get a referral letter soon authorizing it. She gave me a code so I could tell them about it before they got it. I called them back and gave them the code. Now, it's out of my hands. I did what I could. We should get it soon. I'm impressed with how quickly Ashley did all this. I feel bad I didn't tell her about it sooner. I'll try to remember in the future. 

With this, I feel like I can finally start transitioning and get help with figuring out what I'd need to do. I have somewhat of an idea, but many things are still vague. It's a bit overwhelming. I'm excited for the future, though. 

It's upstairs from Kachai Thai Kitchen, conveniently. So, we (my parent was with me) went there after dinner. There was a weird thing where they asked us if we'd take longer than 1 1/2 hours to eat. They also gave us only the Valentine's Day special menus. I had to ask for the regular ones. Really awkward. I think they were giving those out to every party of 2, though. I already don't like the holiday. (Only thing I like is the candy/chocolate, and those are on sale the next day.) Let's shove it in people's faces...Besides that, it was really good.

The snow is finally melting. Yay! I think we lost the most today. It seems like it'll continue to be warm enough to melt the snow for now. The forecast for towards the end of the week is showing more snow. I really don't want more, and many people are sick of it. 

Youtube:

One Piece (the first one's on Brook's past. One of the saddest backstories in the series):

(This one's on Luffy's most recent fight. It's very fitting.)

Black Clover:

Boku no (My) Hero Academia:

Mob Psycho 100:

National Pecan Pie Day!

This is one of my fave pies! One of my fave nuts, too. For some reason, it's hard to find a good slice of it locally. Usually it's too dry, too many pecans, too sweet, or runny. It's like heaven when it's just right, though. 

I posted on my personal fb and in an enby fb support group about my analogy for gender. I came up with it a while ago, but it popped in my head again when someone was telling me about a muffin one. That one wasn't very good. It's hard to find good analogies for it. 

Mine is gender as pizza toppings. Men are handed sausage pizza, and women are handed pepperoni pizza. Society encourages them to love their toppings (only those) and to never change anything like the sauce or dough. A trans woman is handed a sausage pizza, but hates it and loves pepperoni. She doesn't hate people who love what they were given, but it's not for her. If she picks off the sausage and trades toppings with someone else, suddenly society at large is in an uproar. How dare you eat pepperoni instead of sausage! This goes the other way with trans men. 

Gender non-conforming people, who still like the topping they were given, might add other sauces and dough. Non-binary people, as a whole, would have different and/or multiple toppings. Agender people specifically might not have any toppings, except for extra cheese. Genderfluid people might have different toppings depending on which gender they are at the time. Bigender gender people could have 2 toppings of any of then. 3 for trigender people. Or, some might have one totally separate gender, and they'd get a different topping entirely. Demigender people might have their pizza partially covered with a certain topping associated with a gender, and maybe another topping for the rest of it. The possibilities are endless, but society will only focus on the sausage and pepperoni pizzas. They have to be the standard for those pizzas, too. They don't want people to switch with each other. Or, even to ask for another one. 

I think this is the best one that I know. It's got many layers to it. Plus, gender expression can be mixed in there with the sauces, dough, or different types of cheese. Really, there are many ways to look at this one. I went with pizza, because it's one of the most popular foods around the world. Sausage and pepperoni are some of the most popular toppings, and considered 'classics'. Funny thing about this is I can't have those toppings in real life. So maybe that was another added subconscious thing. Also, with genders that aren't connected at all with the binary they could have things like fruit or veggies. The concept is flexible. I'm extra cheese in this. It's not boring, especially considering you could have something like a 4-cheese pizza for it. For a cheese lover, like me, that's amazing stuff. Plus, we can have any sauce, dough, etc. that we're comfortable with. 

I had a couple of loves and a share on my personal page. I'm still getting lots of likes, loves, and comments in the enby group. People really seem to like it. Someone suggested we should list what type of pizza we are, which was cool. Very interesting to see what people are in that one. This could be a 'thing' now. It'd be cool to see illustrations of the pizzas. Not sure if I'd do it. Someone recently commented in the group that it's perfect. 

It's been really warm lately. A lot of the time when this happens I feel like not doing much. I end up trying to stay in the coolest area of the house downstairs. It'll be a little warmer the next few days. Oh joy! At a certain point, I can't have my desktop on. Unless I want to heat up the house, particularly my room, even more. My room usually is the hottest, even when my desktop's off. Makes it difficult to go to sleep. Even with my new window fan. 

This means I can't write more of Alliance 3 until it cools off again. Not sure when that will be. I did brainstorm a bit on what will happen next, today. That's something. 

Yesterday, I decided to lower the prices of all my paperbacks. I thought since my ebooks will start their promos soon, I might as well do something with their paperback counterparts. I made it so I get at or close to $2.57 in royalties for all of them. They also just started giving authors the option of Expanded Distribution for their kdp paperbacks. So, it sounds a lot like it'll be similar to Smashwords ebook distribution system. It'll be available to bookstores, libraries, etc. Unlike how it was only available on Amazon before. This will be immensely handy. If I get 3 ebooks on Smashwords' Premium Catalog, and check the box for Expanded Distribution, all 3 of those books (both versions) will be distributed to different places. Smashwords only deals with ebooks, although I think you can provide a link to other versions of them. I'll have all my bases covered for those 3. 2 of them would just have their paperbacks distributed to other retailers. (I'm keeping those 2 ebook versions on Select for now.) This sounds like it'd really work out. 

I managed to check all but 1 for Expanded Distribution. That one didn't meet their requirements. It has to be a certain trim, at least. I think it's has the largest trim for my books, so it makes sense. 4 isn't bad. The prices are required to be a little more for this option, too. I still kept the royalties at the amount I planned. 

Alliance's paperback is now $11.70. Alliance: Dawn's paperback is now $10.40. Sweet Endless Terror is now $10.80. More Than Meets the Eye is now $9.80. My Mother's Treasure Trove of Recipes is now $8.99. For some, I've lowered the prices by quite a bit. Like I planned, I'll get at or close to $2.57 royalty for them all. I think MTMtE was the one I couldn't check off for ED. Oh well. This all might help. After my ebooks are finished with their promos, I'll either set the prices back to where they were or set it to somewhere in the middle. It all depends on how they'll do. I'm pretty optimistic about this working out more. Some people (some of whom I know) who bought the paperback version of the cookbook already might get angry at me for lowering the price now. However, self-published authors mess with prices all the time. They need to find that 'sweet spot' with all their books. Maybe they'd be happy they got it either way? Hopefully. Or, they might be happy they helped me? I should look at it like that. 

Today, I went through the Colors unit for Chinese. Interesting that for colors they lit. say things like 'blue color', 'brown color', and so on. I'm doing even better with the pronunciation. Still a few mistakes here and there, but not bad. The next unit is The Attributive. 

Started the live-action version of Mob Psycho 100. It's probably the best way they could have adapted it. It's just not the same 'feel' as the anime. The anime made it seem so much more epic. They really tried to make the characters look as similar as possible. They did a pretty good job with that. Even the eyes are similar. The mangaka (creator) has a unique design for the characters, so again that makes it difficult to translate it to live-action. Ekubo, an 'evil' green spirit with red 'dimples' (also nicknamed Dimple) turned Mob's pet, was a little hokey looking. He looks better in the anime version. Not sure how different the anime is to the manga, but it's following the anime's story closely. They just left out the cool tunnel scene from the beginning, and I think when he fought Teru subconsciously it was in a different type of building. I like that in the story the 'jocks' of the weight training club are really kind and against using violence unless it's absolutely necessary. So much media has the jock high schooler stereotype of being rude or like a bully. It's refreshing to see again. Mob joined that club to become better physically and possibly get the girl he likes to notice him. He's not very good at it, but then again he just joined. The other members really care about him. When he falls down from exhaustion, they congratulate him on trying his best and encourage him to keep at it. When he faints they haul him back to the club's room to let him sleep it off. Usually alone. It's interesting that Mob is strong with his psychic abilities, but very weak physically. Saitama, the main character of One Punch Man, is superior physically. Both are 'overpowered' characters in different ways. ONE is the pen name of the mangaka for both series. 

9th of Tevet

There was a recent article I briefly saw on facebook about a guy who apologized to his nephew for saying boys don't wear dresses. His nephew had wanted to wear a 'princess' dress, and was yelled at for it. Cool that he apologized. However, the comments were almost comical in a way. It was full of fragile-sounding men whining about how he never should have apologized. He spoke the truth, according to them. Others were saying the only men who wear them are either gay or trans. Some women jumped in just as whiny-sounding saying they wouldn't let their sons wear their clothes. Others cried out things like: too PC! Or: the liberal and gay agenda at work again. They all sounded like their definition of what a 'snowflake' is. One woman said she was a proud liberal and supporter of the LGBT community, but this was going 'too far'. Doesn't sound like an ally at all.

First, dresses were originally made for men. Tights, high heels, and the color pink were all originally for men. Not too long ago, all kids up to a certain age wore dresses. This also sounds similar to the protests against women wearing pants. It's silly. 

Men and boys should definitely have the opportunity to wear dresses and skirts if they want to. Clothes don't have a gender. They're inanimate objects; pieces of fabric. They won't change the wearer's gender or sexuality. 

I do think there should be a kickass clothing line of more (what's considered) masculine looking dresses. Anyone could wear them, too. It'd be awesome to see, and people could get more creative. I don't really want to make the dresses myself, but I could probably draw the designs... I think it'd also be cool to have an entire clothing brand that abolishes the segregated gender system. Clothes would be divided by body-type. Sizing would be based on each body-type, and it would be more accurate sizes. Intead of, for the women's section, it being all based on a size 2 model. They just guess based on that model's proportions for the bigger sizes. Doesn't really work. It would make more sense if it was the average proportions for each size. Each section could be based on styles and type of clothing. Like, formal, teens, punk, casual, work, etc. There would be no shame, too. People could become more free and try more styles. Instead, it seems the current system looks down on that sort of thing, and seems to be toxic.

Nothing bad would happen if more boys and men wear dresses. Those men sounded like they were protesting too much. Maybe they really want to wear dresses, don't want to admit it, and are jealous that some men and boys do wear them. From an enby (especially agender) viewpoint, this is all really stupid. It's like, what is making the binary people so hot and bothered about it? Just wear the dress and be proud. Maybe you'll look even better in it than some women. 

It snowed a little bit Sunday night. It's the only time it snowed this year. We normally have at least a few snow days by now. So, for people who celebrate, they got a white Christmas. I know that can be a big thing for them, so good that way. It was, at most, 2 inches. So, not much. Pretty, though. It's been cold enough since then that it hasn't melted away completely. 

I'm hoping to get back to my 5 small meals a day thing next month. The one where I set the calorie range, 1200-1600, for each day and usually split it up between those 5 meals. Most people recommend that 6 small meals are best for IBD patients. I'd have a harder time splitting it up further, and planning to eat one more meal. With 5, it makes sense. Breakfast, lunch, snack, dinner, snack. It's close, at least. I guess if I tried the 6 meal one, I could have a snack between breakfast and lunch. That's not much time, though. Seems awkward. Plus, sometimes I wake up late. I'm often more nauseous in the morning, too. Lately, I usually barely have breakfast (half serving of cereal and tea), normal-sized lunch, big dinner, and maybe a snack. Often that snack is tea. It doesn't really count that way. It's varied quite a bit from this, but it's close to the current norm. Not a very balanced day. I also plan to keep my treat days. Those are 1 or 2 days a week where I'm not counting calories, and I can eat however much I want. This is actually a healthy thing to do. Since I eat small portions of things during the rest of the week, I end up not being able to eat that much more. I like this 5 meal/set calories way of eating a lot. I feel better when I follow it. The only problem has been figuring out the right amount of nutrients. My Fitness Pal has helped a lot with that and counting calories. I actually have to have more protein than most healthy people. As it is, I very rarely ever reach the 'normal' amount. It's difficult.