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. 

10th of Adar I

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Youtube:

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

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

Black Clover:

Boku no (My) Hero Academia:

Mob Psycho 100:

National Puzzle Day!

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!