It's also Holocaust Remembrance Day or Yom HaShoah. I had close to an obsession with the Holocaust when I was about 13 or 14. It was more on the stories than anything. I think many Jewish teens go through a similar time. Now, I have a harder time with it...I usually just feel that we should remember it happened, how it happened, be mindful and vigilant to make sure it doesn't happen again, and then just move on. I think I made myself sick of it as a teen.
The weather calendar's main pic is of a tornado storm from 2016 in Dodge City, Kansas. There are 3 tornadoes going through different stages. At one point during that storm, it produced 10 tornadoes at once. The smaller pics are of a monsoon storm in Arizona. There are lots of lightning strikes coming off of the mountains. Cool, but would be scary to see up close.
The month-long holidays for April are: National Garlic Month, National Grilled Cheese Month, National Soft Pretzel Month, Frog Month, International Guitar Month, Jazz Appreciation Month, National Decorating Month, National Garden Month, National Pet Month. Some are for important causes, some are to make you appreciate things you may take for granted, and some are just for fun. Interesting mix this time. More than just food related ones.
Got my haircut on Saturday. I just wanted a trim and to get those weird side burn-like tail things buzzed off, as well as the extra stuff on my neck. The one who did it last time left that stuff and said it was part of the Deva haircut. It looked silly to me. Those side burn things were never long enough to tuck behind my ears, so they looked silly that way, too. I like the way the stylist this time did it. Much better, and she seems to know what she's doing.
I ended up coming out to her as agender. Before I mentioned it, she kept calling me girl. I'm not a girl, so I felt I should say something. It would be like a guy (cis or trans) being referred to as a girl. They wouldn't stand for it...Just to use something people can relate with more than the idea of not having a gender. That led to a lot of questions. I actually liked talking about it with her. She was very accepting and supportive. She wanted to make sure she got things right, too. She asked me if I still wanted my hair long, if I'm not a woman. Women aren't the only ones that can have and love their long hair...It's odd that many people when they know someone is non-binary and is afab (assigned female at birth), they automatically assume that they will want what's considered masculine with most things. With agender people, it really is whatever we're comfortable with. There is no 'look'. There are no 'rules', either. Kind of freeing this way.
Anyways, I've always wanted my hair long. When I was 6, my mom's friend chopped off my hair and made it super short. It was kept in a super short cut for a while. I was mistaken for a boy sometimes. Even with pink glasses. When I was 14, my mom let me grow a little flip in the back. I was happy with something just slightly longer. Eventually, while in college I decided to grow my hair out. It was difficult for while, since I had no style for it and it was really thick. After growing it out for about 7 years, I finally got another haircut. I wanted it trimmed, styled, and kept long. After that, I fell in love with it. The stylist that did it this time was the one that came up with my current style. Long hair seems to suit me a lot more than that short style. I feel like I can really be me. So, no, I will not go back to having it short. I even showed her how short it was, and she was shocked by it. She said she couldn't imagine it that short, and it wouldn't have been a very good look anyways. I think my mom wanted a mini me. It was the same cut as hers. When I was little and she was the one brushing my hair, I understood why she wanted it short. Later, when I could do my own hair, she should have let me do what I wanted with it.
We also talked about what I might want to do for transitioning, if anything. She seemed really interested in learning about chest binding. She asked if I wanted top surgery, and I mentioned how most people start off with the binding and then they might get surgery. I do want to get top surgery, but I also know there are quite a few steps before and after. Binding's probably good for now. Speaking of which, I plan to get a binder this month. I just have to get my measurements to figure out sizing. They say if you're in between sizes, you should go for the larger one. I have to keep that in mind. I'm reluctant to measure myself, though...They say it's a bit different than your bra size. I'm slightly small for the current bra size I have at the moment, so that wouldn't work anyways. (I haven't been fitted in a while, and lost enough weight since then that I don't quite fill it.) I plan to get a long tank top version from Underworks. It seems reasonably priced and highly rated. Also, with that style, I can wear it under my summer clothes and it won't show. I can also tuck it in my jeans so it doesn't ride up as much. Seeing so many other agender people rave about it in the comments was a small plus for me.
She asked about hormones. Hormones are a bit weird with enbies, and especially agender people. We're more of an unknown, and we don't know much about what is possible, too. I haven't thought much about it. Some agender people try to have both their estrogen and testosterone at the same levels. I'm not sure what that would do...I don't even know what my normal hormone levels are. Maybe going off of that? I am dysphoric about my facial hair that I'm constantly trying to get rid of. Maybe hormones have something to do with it. They did find a small cyst on one of my ovaries several years ago. The few times it has shown up since on imaging, it hasn't changed. Maybe it is affecting it. It's all strange to me.
There was a post recently in one of the enby groups on fb that got really heated quickly. It was taken down about 2 hours after it was posted. I was actually going to comment on it after thinking about it for a while, but it was already gone when I looked again. One of the mods even posted vaguely about it and how it was uncalled for in such a group. The post was about someone who didn't understand why saying their sex is female, but they're non-binary (don't remember if they mentioned their gender specifically) was problematic. They came off as combative about it.
They said we can't change our sex; and sex and gender are different. True, we can't change our 'sex', but you're still using gendered language for your sex. Sex is based on your genitals and other characteristics that might be interpreted a certain way. So, a more accurate way would be to refer to those genitals and/or those characteristics. Like, someone has a vagina or a penis. Or, with intersex people, maybe both. Or, someone who has ovaries or another one who has testes. Stuff like that, which is great for health related things. Female is pretty much synonymous with girl or woman. Male is the same way with boy or man. In fact, these are used on forms when asking for gender all the time. There are some serious issues. Some people really got into it. More than I would have. There was only one other person that I saw that agreed with the person who posted it. In the mod's post, they determined that they were most likely a troll and have been banned.
For a little while, I hit a block with writing Alliance 3. Luckily, I took a little break, and the ideas are coming back to me. A lot of stuff is going on in the story, and what might have stumped me for a while was keeping track of it all. I also feel like there should be more action and not as much dialog as there has been lately...I'll see what I can do with that. I'm 93 pages into this one. Not sure how long it'll end up being, but it looks like it'll take me longer than the 3 months I was hoping to finish it in. I think I took a few breaks from it, so the time writing it up has probably been much shorter. For the first week of this month, I had 2 promos going on Amazon. A free ebook one for the first book, Alliance, and a countdown deal for Alliance: Dawn. Not sure how that turned out, because I haven't looked yet. Once I get the 2 I'm writing published, I could technically have 2 promos going every month. For the last couple of months, it's only been 1 each. I can only have a certain number of promos for each book per 3-month term. So, it's a little uneven with 4.
Even though I'm done with writing out the recipes in the cookbook, there's a lot more that needs to be done with it. I've had to rearrange a lot already. Plus, I added more categories and subsections. She had things set to her own categories, like poultry, meat, desserts, etc. However, within those sections, things were out of place. For example, a couple of fish ones were in the meat section. Plus, within those sections, nothing is grouped together. For instance, the duck ones were scattered among the chicken ones. I've made it through to the cheese section so far with sorting them. There were so many desserts, I had to change it to additional categories. (Of which I'll have to go through again soon.) Things like cakes, pies, cookies, etc. instead. Eventually, I have to make a bibliography of all the sources that were listed. I want to make sure I give credit to companies and such. I also should look at templates and other cookbooks to see if I want to keep the style I have at the moment. Have to decide if I want to add pics, too. So many things to do with this still. It annoyed me a lot today. I got a lot of it done, but then Word decided to freeze, changed the doc to read-only and wouldn't save. Then, it crashed. Meaning it didn't save any of it. I had to go back through everything, save to a new doc, and then get rid of the old. It was acting weird the last couple of days. At least, I fixed it and that doesn't happen often.
I took a short break from learning German through Duolingo. Mainly because of going to Leavenworth. I've learned a lot through that app. They had a fluency percentage for a while, and I was at around 60%. I told someone and they seemed to scoff at it, because apparently the only way to learn a language, according to them, is to speak to a native speaker or someone who's fluent in it. (This way of thinking has actually discouraged me from learning at times, which isn't cool. I start 2nd guessing myself, too.) There are many ways to learning languages. Going through regular language classes in the past (not sure how many years of Hebrew altogether, 2 years of French in high school, and Russian in college), the speaking with other classmates was more of a review or quiz. It wasn't hinged on that. The teachers would ask us things in the language, but those were brief and not conversations. Sure, it definitely helps, but it's not the main component. In fact, for my Russian class, there was an extra Russian conversation club if you wanted to review things. It wasn't a requirement. If speaking with a native speaker was the only way to learn languages, how are radio courses successful? How are computer courses successful? How are online courses successful? How are even apps successful? These are all different ways of learning it. All of them valid ways, too.
The other component of this is Duolingo was also testing me on my pronunciation until they had the recent upgrade. I was correct almost every time with that. They also have chat bots, which are handy if you wanted to practice conversing with 'someone'. There are clubs where you can speak with real people. Most of everything is read aloud for each question/problem. The only times it might not be is if they want you to figure it out on your own, or translate from an English sentence/word.
The app had a huge overhaul recently, and I think it's still getting 'settled'. They seem to have done away with pronunciation/recording my voice, as well as writing in German. I think that will come back at some point. They now have 'crowns' instead of fluency. This has apparently given them room to add more to the lessons now. You can collect up to 5 crowns for each one. Supposedly, with each crown there's new and more challenging material for that section. Oh, if you are away for a while, they won't put you at the very beginning of a trek now. I was racing through before and now that I know they won't put me back at the beginning of a long 'trek', I can relax a bit more with it. It's cute that the Duolingo mascot sometimes pops in to tell you how great you're doing. It really is like a game.
While in Leavenworth, I could pronounce and know some of the German there. I knew enough to see errors in their German phrases pamphlet that's free at the hotel. Things like writing in German: 'ein'. The English pronunciation had it as ai-nuh. It'd be like that if it was 'eine', but with 'ein' it's ai-n. A bit different, and depending on the sentence, it could be wrong. Both ein and eine mean 'a' or 'an' in English. It changes with certain gendered words. Anyways, it was a small error, but I noticed it. I think I noticed another one, but can't remember it. So, even though I took a break from Duolingo, I still was around some German.
I got back to drawing heads of characters from Alliance this week. After finishing 3, I posted them to dA and Instagram. I think that's what I'll do in the future. I'll put out batches of 3 each time. This time it was Vincent, Gun, and Liam. They're a vampire, a half European and half Chinese dragon (human-form), and a ghost respectively. Liam turned out a bit odd, but he is a pretty out there character. It was the first time I drew glasses, too. I liked Gun the most this time. On Instagram, apparently people liked Vince the most, although the other 2 got a lot of likes as well. I'm posting one head each on Instagram, since they tend to chop off my drawings otherwise. It creates a line of drawings on my profile, which is interesting. I've gained a lot of followers just with this last batch. There are 3 times as many people following me than who I follow. That's crazy! I didn't think I'd get this many. I don't personally know most of them. People apparently really like most of what I post. It's a different 'feel' than dA. Although, I'm getting a lot of faves and collects lately on there. Even some llamas. It could be because I've recently become active on there again. I think more than I used to be.
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