26th of Shevat

Having the new hospital bed in my room has been interesting. The remote actually has a clip to hook over the rails. I don’t have to have it at my side all the time. The old one didn’t have a clip and would easily fall. Had to sleep with it. It feels weird to not have to do that now.

I got 2 new calendars. One that’s Jewish, and the secular one features places from around the world. We think the one that features places has Amsterdam for this month. The houses are similar to the one’s there.

I kept getting hot flashes and had to open the windows in my room. It got pretty chilly in there. It was weird to feel so hot when it was so cold outside.

I had my first bed bath with it on 2/13. I didn’t really trust the water coming from the bathtub, so I got some downstairs, and slowly went back up the stairs. I poured it out in the tub afterwards to make it easier to go down the stairs with. The dust bunnies went everywhere, but it did go down the drain. I did the bed bath after lunch instead of right after brushing my teeth in the morning. I think it was the perfect time. I did that for the other times since then. Most of the time since then it’s ended up being 40 min-45 min to do everything. (A little bit less time last time I did it.) That’s not too bad considering I was by myself. The last couple of times, there wasn’t any wet spots. Yay! I ran out of lotion last Monday. I quickly ordered more that day. With my most recent bed bath, I had to go without the lotion. At least I got clean. It’s just my skin got a bit drier afterwards. I got it tonight. 

I waited a while, but my next Universal Yums box was stuck on the pre-shipping phase. I sent an email to them about it. They replied back only a few minutes later. (It was much faster than expected!) They were sorry that it looked like they lost it. How do you lose something like that? They quickly sent a replacement box free of charge (I paid for the one they lost, so it should be like that) after that email. They said it’ll be on Türkiye or Turkey. That’s interesting. They sent another email on a Turkish recipe for karnıyarık. It’s for a savory stuffed eggplant. I hate eggplant. Maybe if it was hidden I’d try it. They even had tips for what to look for when picking a fresh eggplant, and on Turkish olive oil. They prefer Turkish olive oil. Should be interesting to see what snacks they have. Probably would be different than Treats was. I think they mainly look for things with multiple servings, which is great to me. Apparently, I got 2 boxes from them tonight. (I just got them, so I don’t know what’s in them yet.) They must have found the ‘lost’ one.

My parent was gone last Monday through Friday. She went to a NASP convention. They go to a different place every year. This time it was in Seattle. I heard she met a lot of people she hadn’t seen in a while. She also broke her glasses. She went with an Uber there, and came back in one. 

Rosie has been super clingy since she was gone. She already was before, but even more so now. She’s been resting under my new bed as I’m on it throughout the day. There’s a pretty big area back there. She’s been peeing a lot on the puppy pads. She’s been going through them like water. We got more on Saturday. It takes a lot out of me to do them. I was giving her the insulin shots. Sometimes it was earlier than usual. I didn’t know if she was going to run away later, so I did it when I saw her just before making breakfast and before my dinner. Her usual is after those meals. There was one night where I didn’t see her downstairs until my last snack. A little late, but I did it. I think I was doing it right. I didn’t feel any wetness or smell it in those spots. She seemed wobbly at one point where she tripped over her legs. She was ok after a minute, though. I didn’t think she needed sugar or anything with that. She’s been lying on the hard linoleum floor in the kitchen sometimes. I don’t know why she does that. She has food, water, and the pads have been taken care of. Sometimes I’m making something, so it sort of makes sense. Other times I’m not. Weird. She’s been sitting/lying down really close to me as I eat, too. Sometimes so close, she’s under my chair. Hopefully, she’ll go back to normal, since my parent’s home now.

I decided to order groceries online Friday night, since my parent’s glasses broke. I thought it would not be good for her to drive. Found everything except for the usual desserts, my toothpaste, and a med. Still had to go out for those things Saturday. That’s also when we got more puppy pads for Rosie. My parent decided to wear her bent glasses while driving, since she could still see that way.

Last week I had a chocolate chip cookie sandwich with cream in the middle. It was from the new bakery area at a local market. It seemed over-the-top, and a great way to celebrate things. I could only get through half of it. They also had a red velvet and champagne cake. It was combined, and interesting.

A couple of days ago (in the morning), after brushing my teeth, there was a lot of red stuff that I spat out along with the toothpaste. I didn’t eat anything with a red color. I didn’t feel pain in my mouth, and didn’t see any blood from my gums. The only thing out of place was last night I noticed a hard/spiky spot on the roof of my mouth. It disappeared pretty quickly. I don’t think it had anything to do with it. So, what was it? I’ll see if it does it again.

I enrolled all 5 of my ebooks on Smashwords to their annual Read an Ebook Week promo. I set them to free. I seem to get more ‘bites’ when they’re free. It’ll be from March 2nd-March 8th. I put up a notice about it on my socials. I doubt anyone will care on those. I’ll still post about it on March 2nd.

Last week was Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week. I didn’t see anything new and interesting on facebook for it. Seems like everyone’s quiet about it this year. Maybe they’re scared.

I posted a selfie on my socials. I haven’t taken a selfie in a long time. I also wanted to compare previous selfies to see how much my ‘moon face’ has gone down. (A steroid made that happen.) I think it’s pretty much gone. I had a couple weird responses. One person, on Tumblr, said they looked at my profile and my selfie and they want to make a mural based on it. Saying I’m their muse. They said they’ll pay me $500 for it. I quickly blocked them. That was just bizarre. On Twitter, someone mentioned me. Apparently they said they were ‘inspired’ by my selfie and drew/painted me. It looked awful. The other people he did that to and was inspired looked awful, too. The original selfies were much better. Good it’s not just me. I don’t like that they did that without my permission, but it doesn’t violate Twitter’s rules. Although, he also had drawings of naked men. Some with rabbit heads. It was creepy. Another little surprising thing was a comment on facebook. Saying my skin is perfection, with hearts for eyes emoji. I think I should take it as a compliment, but I’m not used to that. At least it wasn’t like that person on Twitter.

It’s been raining heavily lately and windy. It’s supposed to get even windier tonight and Tuesday. The temperature has been warmer than usual, too. Warm, but stormy. Weird combo.

I finally cooked again Sunday night. It was One Pot Chili Mac and Cheese. From another pin on Pinterest. I don’t know if I rinsed the beans correctly. It turned out great, though. I thought there wouldn’t be enough liquid, but the pasta was perfectly done. There were a lot of leftovers, but that just means more lunches/dinners during the week.

Had a phone appointment today with my primary care doctor. I wasn’t expecting it. I had a notice telling me to do a pre-check in. I looked at my appointments, and there was also one to see someone in oncology (one I don’t know) in April. No one told me about it. I don’t like when they ‘decide’ for me.

Anyways, my doctor said she created the phone appointment today. She wanted to talk to me right away. She had just talked to Dr. Slack about my pain. He might think I’m still in palliative care (pc), which I’m not.

She went over 3 options for pain. The first one was to go to a certain specialist (I don’t remember what she called them), choosing between 2 different places in Seattle. They’ll insert a pain pump. Seattle’s a long haul. I don’t want to go all the way out there. It also sounds a little scary. The second option is to switch to methadone. I’d have to get off of morphine. The third option was to try gabapentin. That would work together with the morphine. She said the morphine deals more with bone pain, and gabapentin deals with nerve pain. I chose the third option. I think I’ve tried gabapentin before. (I could be wrong. We might have just talked about it.) It was back when they thought I had fibromyalgia. In reality, I probably was experiencing symptoms of my cancer. If I took it, I don’t remember how it affected me. She said there’s either 100 mg or 300 mg capsules. She’s going to try a stronger dose for me to start with. It’ll be the 300 mg. There’s more wiggle room to work with as well. Like, the max is higher than some others. She said I should probably start with it at night, since it might make me sleepy. It might also make me dizzy, unsteady on my feet, or trouble thinking/brain fog. She’ll order this along with okaying my next morphine refill. She wants me to talk to her again in 3 weeks over the phone. Just to see how it’s going. Hopefully, this will work. The other options sound intense, and again, scary. 

Pinterest (I did not make these. I'm just sharing):

Youtube: 

National Cherry Pie Day!

This holiday was yesterday. I love cherries, so putting them in a pie makes them even better! Haven't had it in a while, though. Finding a good cherry pie locally can be difficult. They tend to have what I call sugar or 'gel' packets. Basically large globs of sugar. Not the best. Sometimes those are good, but really shouldn't be there. They mess up pecan pie often, too. Either too few nuts, too dry, too much filling, etc. I sadly can't have that anymore, even if it's one of my faves, too. 

This week hasn't been great health-wise. Monday, I had one of the biggest migraines I've had in a very long time. The 'aura' for mine are often auditory. Usually thudding sounds. When it happens, it also feels like blood is spurting from my head. There's a lot of pressure, too. That part usually lasts a while, and gets really annoying. Not really painful. As soon as it finally stops, the massive painful headache starts. At this point, I'm also sensitive to light, certain sounds, cold (more so than usual), and certain foods. Usually this phase doesn't last long. Maybe a few hours. This time was different. The headache finally died down on Wednesday. However, the after effect was stronger than usual, too. I get sick to my stomach, feel like I'm in a fog, still sensitive to a few things, and fatigue sets in like I had been through a marathon. This phase usually lasts for an even shorter time than the headache. I was still in it when we went to the local trans support group that night. Another headache, that felt similar to the migraine one (but there was no aura beforehand), started after having the banana cream pie for dessert at Shari's after group. The bananas in it were still frozen. Might have triggered it? It was bizarre. 

It felt like I was finally starting to recover around noon yesterday. A few hours later, I decided to try a new game on the PlayStation 4 called The Vanishing of Ethan Carter. A detective/horror game. Sounded fun. However, the clues had text that would light up near them. If you clicked 'inspect', what he thinks/observes comes out as text quickly and swirls around. Occasionally repeating over and over. Sometimes, it wants you to find a certain clue by clicking '???', and then those question marks swirl around wildly. They combine when you've found something. There's some jerking around of the camera, too. It eventually made me so nauseated, I came very close to throwing up several times after I stopped playing. Stomach was really upset for a while, and felt like the acid was burning through it. So, I laid down, trying to calm it down. Felt like I couldn't look at a screen (like the computer or iPhone), couldn't color in my 'adult' coloring book (it's a book based on designs of a tattoo artist, which is usually fun), or really much else; for fear that I'd throw up or start another headache. So, I just closed my eyes and sat there. Eventually, I had fallen asleep for about 2 hours. Felt better afterwards. Today's been pretty good so far, but I'm trying not to trigger anything. Trying to be kinder to myself, too. 

I'm thinking of looking into chest binders again. I don't think the one I have worked too well. I also stopped wearing it when my health issues got worse, and it was hurting more. Things don't seem as bad as they were when I was on Lialda (that's not to say things are fine. I still have awful health stuff), now. So, I thought it'd be an ok time to look into it again. Plus, they're bothering me more than usual lately. I'll go with a different brand this time. I have an Underworks one. I've heard gc2b and Shapeshifters are good, so I'll look at those, along with any other brands I find. I want something long, so it stays put and doesn't roll up or anything. Similar to my current one. I don't want the weird string feeling rubbing up and down my back, and the weird puckering it does around the neck area. Maybe something that gets me even flatter? I don't know. 

Sunday was the start of Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week. I've been posting something aro related for every morning post on my author account on Instagram. A couple of people have stopped following me during it, but I've decided not to care about that. This is a part of me, and if people don't like it or don't want to be informed, so be it. All the better, actually. I've gotten a lot of likes from fellow aros on a lot of those posts, which has been nice to see. Some have added a couple of those posts to their stories on there, tagging me as well. My evening posts are still following the pattern I'm trying to set. For normal weeks, I've 'assigned' certain topics for the days of the week. Some having 2 topics for the day. That makes it more interesting, I think. 

I also recently found out that there's an aro ace flag. It was created at the end of 2018, so it's rather new. 2 shades of blue for being aro ace and the aro ace spectrum, and our experiences. Blue was chosen because it is between the aromantic green (in that flag) and asexual purple (in that flag). White for wholeness, as well as aro aces who are aplantonic (don't experience platonic attraction), nonamorous, or not seeking a partnership of some sort. Yellow is for love and relationships that exist outside of conventional romantic and sexual relationships. Orange is for community. It's in between green and purple in the other direction on the color wheel. Much more colorful than the current aro and ace flags, which is nice. I think it looks snazzy. 

There's also an oriented aro ace flag. I saw this a while before this 'new' aro ace flag. An oriented aro ace is someone who experiences other attractions strongly. Many go by this for queerplatonic relationships. Before I heard about this, I read that people were just saying what their 'queerplatonic' attraction was. This seems to encompass more, though. There are many other types of attractions. I'm an oriented aro ace. Specifically, a pan aro ace. My strongest is platonic, although I might rephrase that as queerplatonic, since it feels like something even more (hard to describe). I have potential to be attracted to people of all genders this way. I would love to be in a queerplatonic relationship or qpr in the future. The problem is trying to figure out how to get a partner for one. It's not like dating, and that makes me cringe. I'm slightly romance-repulsed, although not as strongly as my sex-repulsion. Probably more romance-averse...I have read about some people that are trying to create a site that's based on finding queerplatonic partners, and for aro aces specifically. I don't think there truly is anything like that out yet. It's hard, especially because not many know about this sort of relationship, and it might seem...weird at first to others. It's also hard to know who actually wants to be in one. Then, there's if you're compatible, like with most relationships. I've heard that going to aro and ace group meetings has helped many people find partners for it. The closest one to me is in Seattle, and they recently changed the name from Seattle Aces to Seattle Aces & Aros. Through their facebook group, they seem to be sincerely trying to include aros, too. They're not just changing the name. It's not really local for me, though. They only have one meeting a month, but do have events throughout the rest of the month. Some of them sound fun.

Anyways, that flag is also pretty new. Created a few months before the aro ace one. Dark blue is for the shared aro ace experience, grey for the aro ace spectrum, white for orientations within the community (bi aro ace, gay aro ace, pan aro ace, etc.), and teal for non-romantic and non-sexual attractions. It's nice looking, too. Still more colorful than the current aro and ace flags. 

Got the author copies of my paperback books last week. So nice to actually see them in print! They're like my babies. They had some scuff marks, which I wasn't happy about. The matte finish on the 4 that had it felt weird, but that might just be because they're new. The glossy finish for Sweet Endless Terror was nice, and really fit well with it. The only other issue I see with them is the font size. I went with what was suggested, but it's bigger than I expected. Might be good for the cookbook, but the others...I'm not so sure. The font's not incredibly large, but maybe it's just a slight size too big than what I'm used to. I think the memoir is the only one that ended up slightly smaller in font compared to the others. Maybe it's the size of the books. If I change the print's font to something smaller, I'll have to change the formatting, change the cover size, etc. It's not a simple change. I'll just stick with it for now. Seeing them all stacked up really shows how much writing I've put out there, too. It's impressive to me to see it all like that, even if they're not really huge books. Alliance is the thickest, like I expected. Alliance: Dawn comes close. Also, understandable. 

Youtube:

One Piece:


Jibaku Shounen Hanako-kun (Toilet-bound Hanako-kun):

Kimetsu no Yaiba (Demon Slayer):



Boku no (My) Hero Academia:

Ansatsu Kyoushitsu (Assassination Classroom):

12th of Shevat

This is my wallpaper for February. It's Allen, the main character, from D.Gray-man. Kind of fits my mood for Valentine's Day. A lot of the month is set up around it, especially at places like grocery stores or in commercials. It promotes amatonormativity, which can hurt everyone, not just aromantic people. It's the assumption that everyone's striving for a romantic partner, it's central (most important relationship), exclusive, monogamous, and part of what makes us human. It ignores little known relationship types, like queerplatonic ones. I would really like to be in one in the future. Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week starts a week after the holiday, so that's something to look forward to. It's perfect timing. 

Tu B'Shevat is coming up Sunday night. That's our new year for the trees. One of my fave holidays. You get to eat a lot of fruit and nuts (not so much for me, since it's a trigger food), appreciate trees, and more. 

The month-long holidays for February are: National Canned Food Month, National Cherry Month, National Potato Lovers Month, Barley Month. Some are for important causes, some are to make you appreciate things you may take for granted, and some are just for fun. Cherries and potatoes are a couple of my fave foods! 

I created an author Instagram account: R C MacDonald I've been basically testing the waters this week. Wasn't sure exactly how I wanted it. It's a mix of topics from my books (fantasy, horror, LGBTQ+, Judaism, cooking, etc.), a little on my personal life, and my book stuff. I might just change the 2nd sentence of my bio to: A writer's world. Not as clunky...My book stuff will be things like a stack of my books, quotes from them, book trailers, author business card, etc. 

The things I didn't create will be from Pinterest and facebook mainly. Of course, I'm crediting them. I'm finding a lot of interesting things on Pinterest for the 'fantasy' part. Beautiful art relating to 'demons' in Alliance. Of dragons, phoenixes, griffins, wraiths, cat demons, etc. Nice eye candy, but when I post them, I'll also give info on characters from the story. For instance, info on Gun with the dragon pics. Or, on Zero with the phoenix ones. That way people get to know the series more. I have plenty of stuff for my colitis, LGBTQ+ stuff, food, some for horror, lots of animals, music/clarinet, and some quotes from other people on boards on Pinterest. Quite a lot of material. 

I've decided it might be easiest to set a theme every day. This is what I think might be best: Monday for fantasy or writing in general. Tuesday for LGBTQ+ things. Wednesday for horror or chronic illness. (They seem to go together pretty well, oddly...) Thursday for cooking. Friday for Judaism. Saturday for animals or more Judaism. Sunday for music. This will change during holidays or awareness weeks. During those, I could post about them. Like, with Tu B'Shevat, I'll post on that during it. Aro stuff during the week of Aromantic Spectrum Awareness week. It might switch up when I have something to share of my books or personal life, too. People will expect certain content most of the time, which should be a draw for some. 

I was posting once a day this week, but I think I'll try posting twice a day next week. Probably one in the morning/early afternoon and one at night. Except, I'll only post once on Saturdays, after Shabbos ends. The 2nd post on Friday will be a little earlier than the rest of the week, too. I think I can have quite a lot of fun with this, and not have to do a lot for it. It'll be a view not only into my books, but my personality and identity. 

I'm posting the same stuff to my author fb page. That might have added things occasionally. Today, I liked many pages as my page. (Fave pages that I already liked on my personal one.) Wanted to see what that would be like. It might be a way for people to get more info on things, as well. Things like Judaism, LGBTQ+ people, IBD, etc. My page could become a resource with that. I couldn't like pages as a page on my phone, which was weird. 

I've been searching for quotes from Alliance, as well as settings/building descriptions. Found quite a lot for the descriptions, and more than I thought I would for quotes. Plan to fill out author interview questions on Smashwords at some point. Really want to start a vlog, too. That would help with more exposure. 

Ordered author copies of all 5 paperback versions of my books from Amazon. I thought it would be much more expensive. With shipping and handling, taxes, and printing/manufacturing costs together it's $26. For 5 books, that's nothing. Just with the printing part, they ranged around $3 to $4 each. I thought that part would be more. Very interesting. I should get it Tuesday at the earliest. They make them as soon as you buy them, so it takes a little time to put them together. I'm ok with that. I'm excited about actually being able to touch and hold them. They're like my babies. I do have a print out of the very 1st rough draft of Alliance. I don't think it was all of it. Having that is very different than an edited (without marks all over it) and finished actual book. 

My memoir, More Than Meets the Eye, is now on Smashwords. It won't be released until the 28th, but it is on preorder. It was approved for their Premium Catalog unusually quickly. I got the 1st approval in about the first few minutes. That's the auto vetter part, where they automatically check the formatting. The 2nd approval is manual and takes a few days for authors who've previously submitted works, and about 2 weeks for new ones. I submitted it yesterday afternoon, and was fully approved early this morning. Probably the fastest approval for one of my books. The only thing I didn't like was they only had a Gay & Lesbian category, not an LGBTQ+ one. Not even a trans one, if they were just split up. Since I'm neither gay nor lesbian, it feels really weird to put it under that. It ignores other people in the community, too. Yet, I did see some authors using it for books relating to other parts of the community. I at least tagged it as LGBTQ. Also, tagged it as agender, asexual, and aromantic. There were very few books under the agender tag, and they were fictional. Similar with aromantic. That might make it easier for people to find. I already have the most page views for its 1st day compared to my other books. There have been 4 sample downloads, too. 

Got tired of playing Oblivion. It really got boring. I don't use that word lightly. The scenery was great, though. So, I've been trying various games on PS4 Now to find something to stick to. The most interesting one so far has been G-d of War 3: Remastered. It's based on a lot of Greek mythology, which is fun to me. Your character is Kratos, and he is seeking revenge against Zeus. The cinematography is really great. Feel like it's a movie even when it's not a cut scene. There are a lot of puzzles in it, which surprised me (especially with the type of game it is), but that adds another interesting layer. First game I played where you get trophies. That's fun. Got one for killing Poseidon. That was pretty epic. Made the seas rise. Also one for incinerating Apollo. I thought they wanted me to save him, but there wasn't a way to do so. He was imprisoned in part of Hades, near the River Styx. The bramble around him made it look like a prison cell. I managed to ride Cerberus and have him spit fire balls. I thought he would only set fire to the brambles, so I could free Apollo. No...The fire immediately engulfed him, and didn't hit the brambles much. It was pretty horrific to watch him. At least, I got his bow and arrows. I can set things on fire with that. I'm trying to defeat Hades at the moment. I don't think I've actually seen him yet. Just a statue, and his wife Persephone in a casket hanging in front of it. There are also notes written by people that were sent there, people praying to seemingly nothing, and a giant in the forge area. Apparently that giant is a friend of Kratos, but is stuck there. I don't remember his name. Interesting details. At some point, I might play Red Dead Redemption 2. It's the prequel to that franchise. My parent really likes that game, and it sounds detailed and fun.

I've decided to stop the Duolingo Scottish Gaelic course. I'm really tired of it, and there's not much content. Half of the units have been leveled out completely, the other half all have the 1st level cleared. Not bad. I'm thinking of starting either Polish or Welsh on Monday. 

I've been having some bad pain days lately. The type of pain I know that's associated with colitis. It feels like part of my intestines blew up on my left side. It's somewhat hard there. Maybe it's from inflammation? My back and other areas of my abdomen feel really sore. Hopefully, it just needs to heal for now. Going to the bathroom a lot more often again, too. It's better than having a lot of that other stuff, on top of it, before I tapered off of Lialda. Still difficult, though.

National Cherry Pie Day!

This holiday was yesterday. This is one of my fave pies! Cherries are one of my fave fruits, so it makes an awesome pie that way. It can be surprisingly difficult to find decent cherry pie sometimes. Sometimes there are huge sugar lumps, sometimes it's too watery, sometimes there aren't enough cherries, etc. Might be why I don't order it often at places like Shari's or feel like getting it at the markets. 

Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week ends this Saturday. Didn't do much for it. Most people know that I'm aro on places like fb, dA, and Instagram. I post aro stuff occasionally on fb. Not often for the other stuff. Oh, I post about it on here, too. I thought a little about making aro related art, but couldn't come up with anything. 

I got the referral letter for gender therapy through the mail yesterday. (Didn't see it until today.) I find the referring diagnosis both funny and insulting. I know they have to have something like it in order to cover it, but it's weird. It's: uncomfortable with one's gender. I'm not uncomfortable with my gender. I'm more uncomfortable with how society forced me into a box that doesn't fit. Seems backwards. Just because a doctor looked at me when I was born and said I was female, does not make my gender that. Would have been better if it was just gender dysphoria, but they can't do that until I get diagnosed by a therapist that I've seen. I wish things were better this way. At least, my new therapist will be covered and there'd be a small copay. However, I've noticed I haven't been billed for a copay for that 1st visit yet. Maybe they'll cover the whole thing? Doubt it. I guess I'll see. 

Most of the snow is gone. There's more snow in the forecast, though. I really hope that doesn't happen. I'm tired of seeing it. It's just been cold with a slight breeze lately. Fun when you still feel like you have a respiratory/ear thing going on. 

I'm trying to be better about eating a certain way again. Not related to the calorie thing. I'm still following that. Having more soluble fiber, and less insoluble. Insoluble fiber often aggravates my colon, since it's so scarred. That stuff scrapes across the scarring harshly. Plus, a lot of it triggers my colitis symptoms, and I think I'm flaring again. Soluble fiber is like soups, applesauce, oatmeal, cooked/peeled vegetables and some fruit, non-seedy/grainy breads, etc. Insoluble fiber is like a raw green salad, raw/unpeeled vegetables and some fruit, seeds, and more. Think the fibrous roughage type foods. Often thought of as 'healthier'. I've decided to try and stay away from most things that are nut-based. Creamy nut butters are comfort foods, but whole and pieces of nuts are triggers for me. (It's more than just insoluble with this.) So, I went to Shari's last night and their turkey dinner comes with the option of salad or soup beforehand. I got their tomato bisque. I still got a vegetable this way, and avoided the pain of the salad. The vegetables for that turkey dinner were well-cooked. That was nice, but I didn't have much of it since I wasn't really thrilled about it. I got their s'mores pie, instead of a nut based one. I like their nut ones, so that was sad. Their new hazelnut pie sounded so good, so I got it last time. It had so many nuts that 1/4 of the way in, I was feeling the effects. Partially why I decided to be better about this sort of thing. There are a lot of restaurants that have salad as a thing before the entree. I'll try to look at their soups to replace it. I don't think there are very many options for me at places like Red Lobster. We'll see. Gone back to not taking home leftovers, except for those few dishes that I know will still be good the next day/certain places. I'll try asking for smaller portions again, too. 

Studied more Korean today. I've decided to completely level out the early units (at least) one at a time. I'm close to finishing the Alphabet 2 unit. There are 5 levels to each one. Alphabet ended up having 72 parts to it in total. So much! It'll probably be close to that for the one I'm on. This will also elongate the course a bit. It's much shorter than the other courses I've gone through. I want it to last at least to the 3-month mark. I'm surprised that I'm pretty much able to read it now. I've been saying it along with the speaker, but some things look like they should be said differently. I also feel like I'm getting some form of speaking exercises this way. Still not as good as the actual speaking ones for Italian and German. They were more structured, too. 

Finished drawing Shadow's clothes today. I tried to add folds to them, but didn't want to overdo it. Hopefully it looks fine. I'll draw his shoes and start outlining it all with ink next time.

Managed to practice my clarinet, too. Haven't in a while because of that respiratory stuff. Had to take more breaths than usual. Mostly played Gershwin and some from the Solo Pieces for Advanced Clarinetists book. I was better than expected. Hopefully, I can practice again tomorrow.

Edited more of Alliance. Found some really silly mistakes. Went through 4 pages of the print version, and 3 of the ebook. The print version is smaller in size. Not bad.

Finally, got back to cleaning today. Despite still feeling sick, I felt I really needed it. I swept my bathroom floor, used a strong version of liquid plumber to clear my sink, and laundered the large rug near the counter. Beforehand, that stuff was probably making me feel sicker. I haven't done it in a while. I used to clean something every day but the weekends. Hope to get back to that. It's hard when you're always fatigued. I don't remember actually laundering that rug before. (Might have, it's just been so long I don't remember it.) I've had it for many years. I just would shake the stuff off it. Stuff like hair and cat litter. It didn't smell right for a while. It'll be nice to see it clean. With cleaning, I'll try to do little sections of rooms again each time. It worked well. If I feel that I'm going to have to do a lot, I'm a lot less motivated to do it. Plus, this takes into account the fatigue. 

World Nutella Day!

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.

National Bagel Day!

Bagels are great! The only issue I have with them is a normal sized one is full of calories. If it's not a treat day, I'd only allow myself half or a quarter of it. (Depends on brand, type, and what I have with it.) They're nice every once in a while. I like pretty much all of them except poppy seed. There's plain, blueberry, cinnamon and raisin, cheese, everything, onion, dill, etc. So many different flavors to choose from! I'm one of those people that isn't too fond of lox and cream cheese on mine. Maybe the lox, but no 'schmear'. Most of the time I like them plain or with a little margarine. Rarely, I might add cheese and heat it up until it melts. Doesn't need much, if anything.

Woke up a little late today. Had a hard time falling asleep, but once I finally was, I was out cold. I've decided not to beat myself up about that sort of thing, and instead embrace it. Trying to take care of my health more, and listen to my body. Maybe I needed that extra time? Maybe it's fighting something like a cold? I have a feeling I might be coming down with something. If that's true, than it definitely needs that time. I also don't want to push myself too much. That's a good way for me to become less motivated with things again. I think that's what happened in the past. In fact, doing the calendar reminder thing not long ago, ended up feeling more like a nuisance. My current way of doing things seems a lot more flexible. I don't need to spend the same amount of time on everything every day. I shortened up a lot of it today, because of that late start. Still got quite a lot done. I'm going by a to-do list like format (in Notes on my phone) and checking off things as I go. I don't have to follow the order it's in, either. Seemingly a much better way of doing things.

I've always had very sensitive teeth. I've kept up with brushing my teeth twice a day with a sensitivity toothpaste for a little over a week. I've been pretty bad with doing it daily in the past. Sometimes I would just forget. Not good when you don't see a dentist, have had gingivitis, and have sensitive teeth (they get worse). Anyways, this one also helps strengthen enamel and whitens. The whitening part is more of a side thing. One of the active ingredients acts similar to an anesthetic. Numbing and closing up the little tubules that expose nerves. They say it takes at least 2 weeks to get the full affect. I can tell it's working well so far. Things aren't hurting nearly as much when I eat, or even when I'm just in cold weather. Just feeling that cold air on my teeth used to give me searing pain. Eating has been a nicer experience lately. I still get the pain sometimes, but it's barely there. It'd be nice to see if it completely numbs it at the end of those 2 weeks. My teeth feel stronger and look whiter already, too. Wahoo!

I mentioned this on fb recently, but Gab-Dong made the psychopath copycat serial killer aro. That's a common trope, and makes people think aros are psychopaths or killers. A nasty thing to do. Pisses me off. It's like the trope of trans people being victims or crazed killers. I'm tired of both those. The aro one (and other tropes they push for aro people) actually affected me when I was figuring out my romantic orientation. Since I'm not a psychopath, frigid, unfeeling, robotic, etc; I must not be aro. Anything but that. This is really harmful. After looking more into it, I realized I was very wrong about it. I'm about as aro as it gets, and proud of it now. I had to get over that conditioned by society internalized arophobia, though. That's such a common thing people assume about us, that the food symbol the aro community has (decided through Arocalypse) addresses it. It's ice cream. We may seem cold and unfeeling, but we're actually sweet and kind. Plus, most people like ice cream...This way I'm an ice cream cake (cake for aces). Those are awesome! Wouldn't it be nice to see a kindhearted aro detective? Interestingly, I thought no one reacted to my post about this on fb. Looking back at it, I've had quite a few reactions. Didn't get notified about them, though. I think there was another recent post that fb didn't notify me about reactions, either. It's weird. The one about aros seems to have only had reactions from people I don't know, though. (Haven't looked into how they found it, but I do have my profile/posts set to public.) However, it's not showing me who shared it. Maybe it was someone who shared it to a secret group? Again, how did they stumble upon it? The other post, someone I knew reacted. I don't know...Maybe they're being selective with those now, too. That would be sad. Maybe if you don't post that often they do that sort of thing?

I've really liked Gab-Dong besides that. Now the copycat killer is furious. Everything seems to be ruined for him. He's on his way to Switzerland, so he'll be away from everything, too. He can't act out the rest of the murders because he doesn't know the details, anyways. The detectives, forensic psychiatrist, and copycat, all thought the original Gab-Dong was someone at the mental institution. Turns out that person was just a pawn of the original. He had moments where he thought for sure he was the original, but it was due to his mental illness. He knew the details about the first 5 murders because he worked with someone that was working the case 20 years ago, after being falsely accused. He wanted to catch him himself. Being accused ruined his life. They've accused thousands of people in the past, and ruined most of their lives. Some even committed suicide. This makes sense thinking about the real life case. Like I mentioned before, they accused over 20,000 people. They probably were all used by the real one. He's smart. It'd be interesting to see what happens next. There's a lot of episodes left. Maybe the original one will come back and finish the murders? Or, will it just be about finding him now? 

Tensei Shitara Slime Datta Ken or That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime has been good so far. They went over what Rimuru's possible gender could be as a slime a while ago. In his past life he was a man. In this one, he seems to be agender. He was trying to figure it out when he finally was able to shapeshift into human form. (He still uses he/him.) He tried thinking about being a man, but it didn't feel right. Being a woman felt even worse. He seems to have gone with a non-gendered body look (maybe androgynous, but that implies little aspects of both...) as well as not feeling either. An absolutely flat chest, no visible muscular build, average height, long hair that could go for either men or women, etc. As an agender person, this has been interesting to see so far. He seems to be growing fond of the computer like being inside him, too. It tells him if someone's a foe, info on people and places, what skills he'll gain if he eats something, and more. That computer apparently also has a function of auto-combat, where she takes over his body and fights. Rimuru can just sit back and assess the situation. He's extremely powerful in this world. He just defeated the Orc Lord in the most current episode. That orc had the ability to gain powers from people he ate. Similar to Rimuru's predator ability. Except this makes him always ravenous. He ate his own kind. It seems like the rest of the thousands of orcs might make an alliance with Rimuru. He's getting quite a lot of different beings on his side. He's keeping a dragon in him, he became leader of a goblin village, ogres joined that village, dwarves have as well, the lizardmen are now allied with him, a handful of humans are on his side, and the guardians of the forest are allied too.

With the current episodes in Radiant, it's been much more 'French' than the beginning was. It is an adaptation of a French comic that's in a manga-like style. Konrad, who's the leader in Rumble Town, reminds me of a Neo-nazi. He wants to exterminate all the immigrants and sorcerers there. He doesn't just hate them, he wants to 'purify' the town of them. This reminds me more of how some of the people of France and other places are against the Syrian (and other) immigrants 'invading' their country. There's also a huge increase of antisemitism in France, which might be the 'sorcerers' in the story. (I just realized that they probably do represent Jews...) Sorcerers are despised and discriminated against everywhere, except one place, in that world. They even have an inquisition hunting down and torturing sorcerers in that world. They feel sorcery is heresy. Yet, they sometimes ask them to take care of the Nemesis that invade. Interesting that the creator's covering these themes. 

Did just enough Italian to be counted for the day on Duolingo. With the current unit, that took about 10 minutes. Not much time at all, but I still felt like I did it. Didn't read manga, because I finished what I normally read last week. I would have wanted to start another one, but with more time. Drew only for a few minutes, but outlined one of Shadow's hands. Felt like it was something. Practiced my clarinet for 15 minutes instead of an hour. About enough to feel like a warm-up, but got through quite a bit of my jazz book. Edited more of Alliance. Managed to get through more than I thought in the time I gave myself. 

Did a shorter walk, too. Although, not as short as I had planned. It was essentially the last part of my walk walking the other direction. I do 2 loops usually. One big one that loops back towards the house. Then, a shorter one that covers the other part of the neighborhood (the longer one actually covers more than our neighborhood), wraps around the tennis courts, and goes straight back home. I haven't been doing the shorter loop lately, honestly. I was thinking of just walking straight to the tennis courts and back, not that entire loop. I guess it's good that I did more. There was a car that slowed down next to me and came close to stopping. I thought maybe they lived there or something. After I walked passed them, they suddenly turned around and followed me again. It was creepy. They stopped at some point, though. I looked in to see if I knew them, but didn't. That made it weirder. I thought maybe I had something on me, but didn't. Hope that doesn't happen again. It was cold out there again, but I'm happy I managed to get out there. 

World Nutella Day!

This holiday was yesterday. Yay for Nutella! I'm not as crazy about it as some people, but it is good stuff. I used to be scared of it until I finally got up the nerve to try it. I don't know why I felt that way. It's just hazelnut and chocolate. It comes from Italy, and was first introduced in 1965. 

This is my wallpaper for February. It's Dogma, or the Earl of Poor Eating, and Satoru from the manga Hell's Kitchen. I think this is the 1st volume cover. I decided to have it a little differently. I like a lot of the manga I've read and am still reading, but there are hardly any wallpapers featuring them online. Most of the ones I've read don't have an anime adaptation. They're awesome and they should be adapted! I copied a lot of chapter pages from some and shared them on here in the past. Most of them are pretty old. So, I thought why not use the big ones as wallpaper, and combine small ones into them as well. So, some of them have 2 images on them. One of them looked great just adding it to a bigger white background. Not all of them are in black and white like this. I can appreciate them more this way. 

By the way, they finally updated Hell's Kitchen. It's been a few years since I put it on hold, and most of the update happened a couple of weeks ago. I think they have all but the 3 last chapters up now. Maybe whenever I pick it up again, and read to that point, they'll already have the last 3 up. It's a fun one, and some of the dishes are drool worthy. Dogma is training Satoru to be the perfect chef. After his training, Satoru's soul will be eaten by Dogma, who's a demon. Akaya Akashiya Ayakashi no (Of the Red, the Light, and Ayakashi) had a massive update, too. That's been on hold for me a lot longer. They have almost all of that up now. It's a really beautiful manga. That'd be cool to get back too, as well.

The weather calendar has crawling lightning that was shot from Australia during the monsoon season. It's cool looking. Looks like fingers of lightning stretching across the clouds. The other smaller pics are of supercell clouds and tornadoes. 

The month-long holidays for February are: Canned Food Month, National Cherry Month, National Hot Breakfast Month, Potato Lovers Month. Some are for important causes, some are to make you appreciate things you may take for granted, and some are just for fun. I love cherries and potatoes! My kind of month. 

The Tu B'Shevat (New Year for the Trees) seder didn't actually happen. I even made a list of all the fruit and nuts we needed. I went through the seder with my mom's haggadah, somewhat to 'practice' it without the drinks and food. I noticed the wording was really odd. Even the prayers weren't written out in Hebrew, when they normally would. It's from online roughly 16 years ago. So, I looked it up. Turns out this particular version isn't online anymore. However, it was an adaptation of another one. The original uses YHWH instead of Adonai or Hashem. Also, using that acronym is usually a red flag that it's not Jewish. Usually a Christian thing. If you're going to actually use the first letters of each letter in the actual word, it'd make more since to use YHVH. It's yud hey vav hey. There is no W. We don't know what G-d's name actually is, so we use attributes, like Hashem, which means The Name. The letters written down are not actually said that way. It's like a placeholder. So, that makes me wonder...The transliterations aren't quite right either. I did find a different one that was Reform based online, and it seemed a lot better. Seemed more kosher, so to speak. Might use that if I do it next year.

Maybe we can invite them to our Passover seder, instead. Last year, it was just me. Hopefully, there won't be too many people that end up coming to that. Dad told me if they had gone it'd be 3 people and possibly their partners coming over. So, it'd be roughly 8 people altogether. That's more than I'm used to for ours. I guess it just means more food and people might have to share the haggadahs. Oh, and either adding the extension (I think it's called a leaf?) to the dining table or putting a card table at the end. Passover starts at the very end of March this year. 

At the end of this month, I have a haircut. It's apparently been exactly year this month. Last year, I tried their over-hyped Deva cut. I thought I liked it at first, but after a couple of weeks the way it was cut seemed so...off. It started to look a bit different, too. Deva cut is apparently supposed to be the best one for curly/wavy hair. I loved the style that one of their stylists gave me after 7 years without having a haircut. (I was growing it out in between.) She actually made me fall in love with it. Others have really liked it, too. I think I had her roughly 2 1/2 years ago, and the time before that. I just wanted to see how the Deva cut was last time, and she's not trained for it. I'm glad I at least tried it out. 

Another thing I've been noticing is I think either lialda or azathioprine has messed with my hair a bit. I know when I started aza., my hair started to fall out. (I'm not taking this anymore, but it can stay in the system for a while afterwards.) I'm noticing lately that I'm getting a lot of white hairs. I started getting white hairs when I was about 16, but I'd pluck them out when I saw them. They didn't show up often. Now, a lot of them seem to be suddenly sprouting up. I know both meds can mess with hair, but this is weird. Those hairs aren't even the same texture as the rest of my hair. I think it's cool that it seems I'll eventually have all white hair, but I don't want that now. I'm iffy about dying my hair, since I've always liked my hair color. If I ever do dye it, I'd probably have a pro do it and have the top layer dark green and bottom layer dark purple. Green, since it's in both the aro and agender flags. Purple, since it's in the ace flag. That might have an interesting effect. I doubt I'd do this anytime soon. 

The 18th through the 25th will be Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week. It's usually the week after Valentine's Day, which is fitting. I might put an aro filter on facebook sooner, though. Maybe I'll bring up what aro means again on there. There might be articles I can share, and/or I could do some sort of art thing for it. It's not just for the aromantics, but also the 'grey' area or aromantic spectrum between that and alloromantics. Alloromantics are those who do experience romantic attraction. Sometimes we use allo for short. (Same thing with aces calling others allosexual, they'll use allo.) That community online seems newer than the ace one. There have always been aros, though. They're trying to separate themselves from the ace community, since it's a different thing. Also, most aros are actually allosexual. It's odd when you're both. I might go into more again on here during that week. 

I've been feeling sick for the last few weeks. It doesn't seem as bad as the flu, but like a mild cold. I've also had a lot of pain on my side that eases every other day and then comes back with more intensity. Another reason why I think I'm flaring again. On top of that, I've had a somewhat different type of extremely sharp pain all over my abdomen. It'll suddenly happen, and I have a hard time walking or doing anything while it's happening. That's happened at the grocery store a couple of times. I end up trying to walk around slowly, hunched over a bit, and clutching my gut. It feels like my gut's super heavy when it happens. Luckily, this type of pain doesn't last too long. However, I've noticed it has been happening more often. The first couple of times I thought maybe it was just really awful gas. Then, I didn't pass much of that later and it's gone before that usually. It doesn't seem like it's really related. This and that side pain are starting to scare me a bit. I don't want to go to the hospital (or even Urgent Care), because it feels like they won't believe me. Also, I don't have a fever and I'm not throwing up. I don't know...I suppose if it got much worse I might go.

Last week, the local trans group had a potluck and movie meeting. We brought chicken strips and potato wedges. It was basically the only thing I could fill up on there. There was a 7-layer dip with tortilla chips (both of which I don't eat); a cheese, olives, and meat platter with crackers (couldn't have the meat); and I think one other thing. There was soda, and even though I don't usually drink it, I had some. The movie was the Gender Revolution National Geograhic documentary with Katie Couric. I swear we've had it for group movie night before. I was watching it a little differently now, and didn't have my 'blinders' on. I didn't realize I was agender when we saw it last. Anyways, there were a lot problematic things in it. It was a lot better done than most, but still needed a lot of improvement. The main focus was on binary trans people. Which, ok, it's good to have some focus on them, but what about enbies? 

Also, they briefly showed and mentioned 'gender non-binary'. This is really irritating to the community, as I found out through bringing it up a while before in the enby fb group I'm in (I didn't exactly know why it irritated me so much so I asked them), and seeing articles on it. Would people say gender transgender? How about gender woman or gender man? That's how weird and awkward it is for us. Now, people definitely can say non-binary gender(s). That makes sense. Agender is a non-binary gender, genderfluid is a non-binary gender, etc. 

They didn't bring up genderqueer either. There's some misunderstanding with this even in that enby group. Genderqueer was the original name of the community. Some people had issues with using the word 'queer' (totally understandable), so they came up with non-binary. They mean the exact same thing besides that. The creator of the name genderqueer (they also created the flag for it), said this too. Some people like both, like me, and others go with one or the other. I just say/write enby more, because it's seems more fun. The shortened form of genderqueer is GQ. Not as cutesy, and it sounds like something else. I think there's a magazine called GQ? 

Katie also interviewed 2 trans women. One that was in her 70s and the other in her 20s. The older one was really stuck on the binary. Painfully so. The other one was a lot more 'loose' about the binary. She brought up that gender is really a spectrum, and some people aren't just a man or a woman. That was good to see. The worst part was when the older one said life wouldn't have meaning if there wasn't a binary system...She'd rather die. As an enby this was disturbing. Luckily the younger one was appalled by it. Apparently, she blew both Katie's and the older one's mind. Why does it have to be so out there for people?

I also thought it was odd when Katie kept saying that it was all a lot to get her head around. It's so confusing, apparently. This was mainly with the binary trans and intersex people. Why is it confusing? I think people are actually more scared than confused, but they don't want to admit it. I kind of get being a little confused by the concept of being non-binary. They only touched on enbies once really. Still...It seemed rude at times. 

Oh, one of their 'experts' saying the 'opposite gender' was lovely. I don't know if it was to dumb it down or something, but it wasn't cool. There is no 'opposite'. It's a very binary and somewhat harmful view. 

At an artsy shop downtown on Sunday, the owner was really nice and talkative. Eventually, he stopped and looked at both Dad and I, and said he was assuming that both of us were ladies and asked if that were true. So, to my parent it seemed both affirming and clocking her. She said yes to it. I had a longer pause. Do I tell him the truth that I'm neither a lady nor a guy? Or, do I politely nod and say yes? I thought that I didn't really want to get into it, and did the latter. But, it felt really wrong. The other thing is do I want to cater to cis people to make them feel comfortable and not awkward? Or, do I want to be unapologetically me and possibly have to explain it? Even though he was a very nice guy, why should I have to hide it? He misgendered me this way, and I let him...It feels like a weird internal struggle. I'm actually leaning more towards using they/them, but am ok with she/her still. With everything else, like 'lady' or 'woman', I have more issues with. I want to be more out, but even if I had merch like t-shirts relating to agender (if it even had that word), people would most likely not know what it meant. If I'm more out, I could educate people more, and be happier about it too.

Also, why do people have to assume someone's a certain gender? Wouldn't it be great if everyone was treated truly equally? Before people know what pronouns someone uses or other gendered things, wouldn't it just be easier for everyone to use neutral pronouns and language? Like, using they/them for pronouns. Instead of things like: lady, woman, girl; or guy, man, boy, etc.; why not: person, human, being, pal, friend, gentlefolk, etc. So many other options! Cool if someone tells you to use she/her pronouns and they are a woman. Refer to them with those pronouns and gendered language. Same with men with he/him and other gendered language for them. It's not erasing people's gender. Breaking a binary system would actually benefit everyone. People could explore their gender more deeply, as well. It would be a beautiful thing. More people would probably realize they're enby, which I think some people would be scared of that idea. They want to live in their perfect little boxes. A world where everything is black and white, and they don't have to think much about who they really are. It's the same thing with sexual orientation. They don't want to know there are more 'options' than gay or straight. They might realize bi is a thing, but nothing more. 

I brought up being misgendered and essentially being frustrated about the binary on the enby fb group. The only comment I had was someone who was obviously very angry. I don't think at me. Just someone who's perpetually angry at cis and binary people, I guess? They started off by saying they were frustrated too and agreed with me. Then, it got weird. Saying I shouldn't expect people to be accepting, the gender revolution is afoot, I have to have a hand in it, etc. It was bizarre. At first, I thought I was overreacting in thinking it was weird and uncalled for. But, the more I thought about it, the more it was unsettling. This person was older than me, and seemed to have been 'battling' for a long time. Why can't I assume people will accept me? Why do I have to do something about it? There are people who are willing to do that stuff. I'm really not. I just want to be openly me. There are also safety issues. Yet, I was told recently that even my existence is radical politically. That I'm inherently an activist just for existing. I don't know if I like that. Anyways, I decided to block the angry older person. I don't need that drama. I have been getting a lot of reactions from people. Mainly sad and love ones. I think it's up to 16 of those. The most reactions I've had on any post I've posted in that group. So, obviously I'm resonating with people. 

I've been off and on with writing Alliance 3 lately. Mainly because of feeling so sick. I couldn't focus on it much. I know I'm at least close to chapter 4. It took me a while to think of a name of one of the 'villains' in the story. I didn't want it to sound 'evil'. However, I did want it to be interesting. I often go by meanings of names. Sometimes I'll translate a word (like 'song') into multiple languages, and either pick what seems more interesting or jumble them up. I have come up with some cool combos this way. I chose an actual first name that's water based. It's a rare name, though. His last name is a scientific name of a poisonous flower. Sounds cool and the flower is beautiful, but it's extremely deadly. Also, turned out to be the name of a Greek G-d, who seems to have a similar personality. So, it worked out better than I expected. Interestingly, 2 other recent characters have flower based names. 

I'm almost done with the fish section of the cookbook. She had a lot that were from an unnamed grocery store. They must be from the late 70's or early 80's. Some sound really good. Some of them are microwave recipes. Those sound interesting, easier, and quick. 

I've also been finding more interesting things through Pinterest. One pin was a ramen 'cheat sheet'. It seems like it's for a more traditional type of ramen. You pick different ingredients for each part, and they show you the basics of cooking it all and plating it. I tried it out. My protein was chicken. Aromatics: garlic, dried onions. Vegetables: spinach, carrots. Broth: shoyu (soy sauce) based. It was one of the options they suggested, and I based it off of recipes I saw online. It was chicken broth, dashi (fish broth), soy sauce, and rice vinegar. Seasonings: 7-spice, sweet paprika, a dash of salt, pepper, and margarine. They suggested curry powder, but I couldn't find it, so I used paprika. They suggested butter (I use margarine in place of butter usually) to make it a richer tasting broth. Garnish: chives. They also suggested different types of ramen. I just used the instant kind. Turned out amazing! It's a nifty little template. Might use different combos in the future. Definitely felt more like a meal than I would normally do. Normally, as a soup, I just use chicken broth and the ramen. I never use the flavor packets. 

I also found a pin on making your own flavored salt. That was a cool idea. Another one's on making your own flavored butter. Found quite a lot with making salad dressings. Some with different marinade ideas. Figuring out the right onions or the right apples for recipes pins. Templates for making soups. With a lot of this stuff they can help you create your own dishes. That's pretty awesome! Funny and relatable colitis-based ones. There are pins that have tips on binding. As well as some on top surgery. Lots of aro, ace, and agender based stuff, too. I'm surprised with what I've found on there. I was thinking in the past about sharing some of these on fb. Not sure what stopped me. I know I posted one thing. I think it was on queerplatonic relationships. Maybe I was nervous that it was too odd to share after I did so? Maybe I'll get to that again soon.