I love Nutella! I avoided trying it for a long time. I don't know why I felt uneasy about it at first. It's chocolate and hazelnut. A great combo. It's good on graham crackers, in a peanut butter and Nutella sandwich, crepes, brownies, and so much more. It's also the Chinese Lunar New Year. It's the year of the Pig. Next year will be the Rat, which is my zodiac animal.
This is my wallpaper for February. It's (from left to right) Gray, Erza, Natsu, and Lucy from Fairy Tail. Everything in February seems devoted to Valentine's Day. In other words, amatonormativity is especially shoved in people's faces right now. Amatonormativity is the idea that everyone who's human strives for romantic love/relationships and marriage. Everything else takes a back burner. The idea stresses that there are no other very close relationships, like queerplatonic ones. If you're single and/or don't feel romantic attraction, you're looked down upon, thought of as lonely, or something's wrong with you. Also, a certain kind of romantic love: monogamous, straight, and cis. It's harmful to pretty much everyone. Even those that are cis, straight, and monogamous. It's a term from the aro community, and wasn't meant to relate to sex/sexual attraction. That's different. Even some romantic aces say things like: "At least we can love!" Love, meaning romantic love. That hurts aros and aro aces. There's a lot more to the term, but that's the basics. It can be somewhat tough for an aro this month. We have Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week the week after Valentine's Day. Yay! We have that at least. Anyways, I thought it'd be nice to see some good platonic love this month. They're all good friends, even if Gray and Natsu sometimes butt heads. The atmosphere is nice and warm, too.
The month-long holidays for February are: Celebration of Chocolate Month, National Canned Food Month, National Cherry Month, National Potato Lovers Month, Barley Month, National African American History Month, National Women Inventors Month. Some are for important causes, some are to make you appreciate things you may take for granted, and some are just for fun.
For my Jewish calendar, the main pic's of a Torah crown, gilded in silver, made in 1837. It has a lot of bells, and a vine-like design. The other pic's of a wooden tzedakah (basically charity) box, made in 1900. This one has sculpted birds on the sides.
For my elements calendar, it's bismuth this time. Kind of made me gag that they shaped some of it into a heart for the main pic. It's the active ingredient in Pepto-Bismol. Apparently, 57% of it in a bottle is bismuth. Both elements to the left (lead) and right (polonium) of it are toxic. Despite this, bismuth, as far as they know, is nontoxic. It's considered the very last stable element in the periodic table. However, recently it was discovered that bismuth has no stable isotopes, either. They show it forming crystals, 30 lb ingots of pure bismuth which is how they're sold commercially, and a multimetallic chain containing a link cast from 99.99% pure bismuth.
I'll try to stay more on top of posting than I have been. Apparently, missed a week. I've been feeling really awful off and on, and distracted by things like snow. It snowed Sunday afternoon until the next morning. They said there would be more later on Monday but there wasn't. It was a lot for us. We're not used to that much snow. Certainly not in February. It's also been cold enough that the snow isn't completely melting away. On Monday, the highs were in the mid-20's (F), and felt like 9 degrees. The strong winds made it worse. Again, all this isn't our norm. According to the forecast, there's a lot more snow coming Friday and Saturday. They predict 4" on Friday, and 2" for Sunday. That's a lot more than we got recently. Why can't it be more spaced out? I have my eye appointment on Thursday, so it'll be good before it snows again.
I made an appointment to see a new gastro. She's an MD, which is already a plus for me. They said I can't make an appointment for a colonoscopy until after I see her. I got a reminder in December (I think?) to get another one soon. The last one was in January of 2017. The one before that, which was my first, was at the end of July 2015. The receptionist said that it was definitely time. IBD patients are encouraged to get one at least every 2 years. So, I'm going to have the 3rd soon. It just might be sometime at the end of March or April. My appointment's in the beginning of March. I don't think I'm in remission anymore, and haven't been at least since this past summer. I hope they let me have the Miralax/Gatorade prep. That worked a lot better than the Golytely stuff. That's the only thing I really hate about it. The prep. It can be difficult to go on a completely liquid diet for a couple of days, too. Maybe she'll have insight on what to do about scarring, at least. I think that's given me the most pain. Although, I don't really know what it's like now. So, there might be something different, and/or if the disease is active, the focus will be different. We'll see. I might need to stop Lialda, because I'm not sure it's doing anything. Haven't been monitoring it, and haven't had any related blood tests in about a year. If I do stop it, it was my last choice before starting a biologic. Biologics are either taken through an infusion or self-administered through shots to the gut. I'm really nervous about those, but especially the shots.
I realized LingoDeer only let's you have one free 'lesson' for each language in their 'free' app. (Doesn't really seem free to me.) I like that I was able to go into detail with the alphabet and one lesson, but I'm disappointed. I went back to Duolingo's Korean course. It seems better than the last time I tried it. Then again, I had a better intro to the alphabet this time. It seems like a shorter course than the other language courses. I'm doing it a little different this time. After finishing the 1st level of the 1st unit, I did one part of the next, and then started the next level of the 1st, and kept going back and forth for each part of a lesson. Each lesson can have anywhere from 4 to 20 (I think) parts to it. Once I finished the 1st level of the 2nd unit, I did a part of the 1st unit, then a part of the next level of the 2nd, then the first part of the 3rd, and went all the way back to the 1st again. Eventually, I'll level out (there are 5 levels to each unit) of units, so I won't always be going back to them. This way I'll be able to review it and have some new stuff in the mix. It'll take longer, too. I'm almost finished with level 1 of Basics 1, and the 1st unit, which is Alphabet, is up to level 3. There are 3 Alphabet units. It seems to be going faster than I thought. I hope they updated it to have speaking exercises. Haven't encountered them yet, but if they do have them, maybe it's after the first checkpoint? This section is about the very basics. I have been repeating and sometimes saying what the native speaker says at the same time. It helps a little.
Started drawing Shadow's clothes. I want to add folds and such to make it 'act' like fabric. So far, I'm not happy with the results. I've just starting experimenting with that, though. He's not wearing anything fancy. Just a shirt, jeans, and sneakers. It shouldn't take me long with this part. Eventually, I'll ink over everything, then color it in.
Managed to practice my clarinet today. Haven't in about a week because of that weird respiratory thing I'm still going through. I'm still coughing stuff up, have a hard time breathing normally let alone controlling it for playing, still sneezing a lot, nose is stuffed up, and more. I shouldn't still feel this way...Anyways, it makes it more difficult to play a woodwind instrument. Played all of my Duke Ellington book, and a little of the Gershwin one. Sounded better than I thought I would, but had to take way to many 'breaks' to catch my breath. It actually hurt. I did it for a short time, too. I might do it for the same amount of time tomorrow, if I can. Edited about a page worth of Alliance.
Recently, someone on AVEN (Asexual Visibility and Education Network) posted a thread demanding people 'enlighten' her on the 'issues of gender'. I thought she genuinely wanted to know about what she was asking in the 1st post. She wanted to know what gender identity is, what gender dysphoria is, what does it mean to be trans, how can someone have dysphoria if they're agender, and more. She claimed she was also asking this stuff because she wanted to confront her transphobic brother. Seems like a worthy thing. Especially if a cis person does it. She wouldn't listen to a single person on there about the gender identity part. A lot of them went in a roundabout way, so I thought maybe she needed it to be simpler. I also answered the other things in the 1st post and gave her my experience and perspective. We went back and forth on gender identity for a while. Eventually, she said: "I can't accept something I don't understand!" At this moment, I really felt like she was hung up on terf rhetoric. I couldn't quite tell if she was actually a terf herself, trolling, or just really not wanting to listen to others. I told her it comes off as saying: "I don't want to understand something I didn't accept in the first place!" I also said there are many things in this world that people should/have to accept, even if they don't understand it. She came back with claiming not to know what terf rhetoric was, and she doesn't accept most things in life. That last part seemed especially troll-like. She said she doesn't know modern culture either. That seemed odd...For some reason, especially on an AVEN forum, and in the gender subforum. That's a positive place where many trans people are active. The whole 'discussion' felt nasty afterwards. I let her have the last post, and it proved that she was at least a troll. People agreed with me. I've blocked her now. I think I'll still be able to see if there have been other responses and reactions to my posts in that thread. I looked at all the threads she started, and they seemed to just be there to get a rise out of people. A lot of demanding of things to be explained, too. In one thread she used the awful 'Abrahaimic religions' term that gets pushed around. It lumps 3 very different religions together. Plus, in Judaism, our focus is more on Moses, not Abraham, if we're talking about people. Neither of the other 2 focus on Abraham either. I'm glad someone told her to stop using it and said why.
Mob Psycho 100 II's most current episode was epic! They know how to do crazy battle scenes. Black Clover probably should be taking notes. The art seems to change a lot normally in MP. However, this seemed to really push things and do it well. For the first time, Mob got in touch with his positive feelings. Before, his negative feelings were feeding his psychic powers. He seems stronger with the positive ones. We don't know what his ??? power is like now. As he feels things his power goes up a certain percentage. (The 100 in the title is for 100%.) ??? is when he's over his supposed limit, extremely powerful, tends to be unaware of his actions, and turns into something that doesn't seem human. We still don't know much about it. This show just keeps getting better.
I love puzzles! Interesting that there's a day devoted to them. They're fun mental workouts. I like pretty much any type.
I finally made an appointment to see a gender therapist yesterday. I'm even more nervous and excited about it now. Not exactly sure why I felt so hesitant. The interesting thing is I was told that this therapist, Tom Freeman, is located in Silverdale. He's actually only available at his Poulsbo location right now. Works out for me more this way. The building is really close to home. About a 5-10 minute car ride. It might be a little too convenient, since it's in the same small plaza that has Kachai Thai Kitchen. Tempting to go to the Thai place after therapy...It's a good one. This first appointment isn't until Feb 14th. I wasn't expecting it to be on Valentine's Day. It's not that long of a wait until then. This is with the one that I talked about last time that seemed the most promising. With this appointment, it feels like I'm actually starting to medically transition. Hopefully, he'll work out.
Recently, I came across a thread on AVEN about someone demanding that people enlighten her on 'gender issues'. She had a disclaimer that she may come across as offensive, but she's really trying to learn. (Supposedly...) She also wanted to confront her brother on his transphobia. She had weird ideas of what it means to be trans, gender identity, gender dysphoria, etc. People were responding with really long detailed posts about it. She had even longer posts. That seemed weird. Why not keep things shorter? She had confused gender identity with expression, and later on said she just couldn't grasp the concept of gender itself. Reading the responses on that, made me think she was either very obtuse, moving 'goal posts', or the way others were talking about it went over her head. She seemed to think gender was only cultural, and being non-binary was purposely bucking the system. Being non-binary is not a political or fashion statement. I told her it's not just cultural. There are many sides to it.
With dysphoria, she had the idea that we're trapped in the wrong body. Many people think this, but that's not exactly it. There are things that either shouldn't be there or you're missing things; to put it more simply. It makes people feel distressed, thus the 'dysphoria' part. We're not 'trapped' in our own bodies. Someone said it's kind of like we have birth defects. She has sensory issues, and said she can understand the idea of being trapped that way. No, it's not the same...She thought in order to be trans, we had to have dysphoria. She couldn't understand why we'd want to change our bodies, especially if gender and sex are different. There was a lot more on this, and seemed like a lot to unpack. Being trans just means you have a different gender than the one that was assigned to you at birth. No mention of dysphoria or transitioning. Not everyone has dysphoria. However, I do think some of the people that say they don't have it, might not realize that's what they're experiencing. Took me a while to realize that. She didn't seem to know about social dysphoria, which is another important aspect that often can be forgotten when speaking about it in general. I told her that I have both physical and social dysphoria. I went into more detail about what it's like for me. I also said while sex and gender are different, we still use gendered labels to refer to sex: male and female. It'd probably be better to say something like uterus owner, prostate owner, etc. They're just asking about our reproductive organs when they ask what our sex is. Probably why it's inappropriate to ask unless it's relevant medically. I also brought up that most people don't know their chromosomes, so using it as 'science' to back up a claim that there are only 2 'sexes' (they often referred to it as gender), is laughable. They exclude intersex people this way, too. While I thought my post was slightly longer than my usual, it was dwarfed by how long the others were. I tried to be to the point, but using myself and my own experiences to explain it to her. No one has replied after my post. One person liked it. She's awfully quiet now.
I started a new language yesterday: Korean or Hangul. I was thinking about Yiddish, but found out how bad Mango is. (At least, their 'free' version.) I'm using LingoDeer now for Korean. LingoDeer used to just have Chinese, Korean, and Japanese. Now, it also has Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, and Vietnamese. A while back, I tried Duolingo's Korean course. I got about halfway through the first lesson, and realized that I had to have some sort of knowledge already in the language. They hadn't worked out the kinks in that course yet, too. I didn't look more into it and just picked a different language. LingoDeer has been great for an absolute beginner. I still feel like I don't have the alphabet down yet, but I'm slowly getting there. This is only the 2nd day. I tested out of the intro section already. That was on the alphabet. It's not counted as the first 'unit' of the course. It's like a get-your-feet-wet unit. They went into a lot of detail. Their 'letters' are really consonants and vowels put together, and there are 3 different orders those can go in. For the letter han, it's written like h-a and n on the bottom. I don't have the Korean keyboard enabled on here. (I might in the future.) Another one could be a vowel, like i, by itself. It's interesting, but seems like there are a lot of layers. Started the first 'official' unit. I'm actually doing better than I thought. It's on nationality. Hangug salam are Korean people. Migug salam are American people. It was things like that. They show you how to write it, sentence structure, record your voice to compare to the native speaker, match the letter/word with either the meaning or pronunciation, in depth grammar/pronunciation notes, and more. It's also interesting that they actually use spaces between words. That's different compared to Chinese and Japanese. The only issue I have is it doesn't correct you on pronunciation. Sure, you can check your own voice like I mentioned, but it's not the same. So, I've decided at some point, I'll switch to Duo's Korean course and use both that and Lingodeer. Duo's course should be better at this point, and it most likely has speaking exercises now. Since I had a more thorough intro to the alphabet, I'll be able to go through Duo's easier and with more of an understanding. It'll be interesting to go through both, too. I might get even more of an understanding of it than I would if it was just one or the other. It might take me longer with this language. We'll see.
Today, I started reading Mother Keeper. I think I like it so far...The art seems to be in an old style. It ran from 2005 until 2014. (Pretty long.) It's not as old as it seems, but maybe older than a lot of what I've read recently. The concept is interesting. There are 2 types of people in their world: those within Eden and those outside. It's like a domed city. Everything outside is like a wasteland. Eden makes it even worse as its massive exhaust is pumping outside. Only 1/3 of the world's population is allowed to live in Eden. Basically the rich and powerful. Meanwhile, people outside are suffering and dying sooner. Several rebel groups have formed from outside. The main character was apart of one of those. They had planned to destroy Eden's main CPU. If they had, Eden would cease as a 'paradise' to the few. He was killed (this happened early, so it's not really a spoiler), and turned into a cyborg. His appearance changed. The scientist there has complete control of him. They want him to help with the security of Eden. So, he's forced to help the enemy...The CPU is actually a cyborg that looks like a little girl. He had a hard time getting himself to kill her when he was given the option to, since she seemed so innocent.
Scanned the drawing of Shadow so far. It's just in case to see how it was before I add his clothes. I realized his hands are smaller than they probably should be. Not sure if I'll change that. At least, I practiced drawing them. He does look better than previous full-bodied drawings of characters. Should be interesting to see it when its done. I plan to color him in, too.
Managed to practice my clarinet today. I don't think I did yesterday or the day before. I've been feeling pretty awful again. Also, coughing up a lot of weird stuff. That's not a good combo for an instrument you blow into. Anyways, I finished playing through the Clarinet Solo book. I'll get to at least Duke Ellington next.
Edited a couple more pages of Alliance, too. Down to 298 pages in the print version. Meaning, it's 2 pages less. Yay!
