toss the ramen, save the friendship

my roommate lives off of beer, whiskey, and ramen. i wish i were exaggerating. he's pretty good about drinking his beers to the last drop, and he can be counted on to take care of other people's wounded soldiers. he'll suck whiskey bottles dry. but after he eats ramen, food remains. i don't mean to say he habitually wastes half of the ramen he cooks. no—he makes double recipes but only uses one flavor packet.

me? i don't like letting food go to waste. so i've been picking up these packets he leaves behind. i think, "i could use them in stir-fry, rice porridge, as a soup base..." and i have. there's just one big problem: he eats one or more double recipes a day. so they've been piling up.

this represents the difference between how fast he produces leftover packets and how fast i can use them. at least for the first few months.

though i stopped collecting new ones (except to replace ones i use—which has kept the total static for a while), i've held on to these flavor packets all this time. that changes today.

i've realized that i hold on to a lot more than just flavor packets in this relationship. i hold on to debts, the times i've felt cheated, the hope that i can change him—none of which are healthy. so i'm going to throw out those ramen seasoning packets. i'm going to forget that all of my beer disappeared while i was at work last night. no, really! the only way this friendship can live is if i let the past go, start fresh, and don't try to make my friend into something he's not, nor expect him to become that way on his own.

i should stop being a doormat, you say? i shouldn't let people take advantage of me? well, i don't have to. and i don't plan to. i can get mad about his stealing shit from me—i just can't hold on to the rage or resentment that usually go along with it. believe me, i have some strong words for him about my 5 hand-picked-from-the-liquor-store beers (not having a car, i can't really get to the liquor store very often).

time to be more assertive!

from there to here

flash back: 2 1/2 years ago. after an emotionally difficult summer, i decided to try to accept myself as being transgender—at least intellectually and emotionally. i felt that i shouldn't need to transition, and as long as i didn't ignore my gender dysphoria i'd find a way to cope. i explained this to others as being a "faith-motivated decision". in other words, my being mormon (and mormonism doesn't blend well with transsexualism), or my desire to "do what god wanted me to do" kept me from transitioning.

in retrospect, it seems there was more to it. a year later i left the church (maybe this deserves it's own in-depth post?). but it was still another year before i decided to begin transitioning. if religion were the only thing holding me back, why the year-long wait?

the bigger issue was fear, naturally. i worried "what if i never pass as a female?" "will people think i'm a fake if i don't act girly enough?" "who would want to date me?" "what if i get assaulted, raped, or killed because of this?" "will my family be cool with it?" "will my friends?" "will i be able to get a job?" "will i be able to adopt children?" "what if i'm not as 100% girl as i think i am?"

oddly enough, i never had the specific fear "will god punish me?". i knew that transitioning could very likely mean being kicked out of the mormon church (or at least being made a second-class citizen within the church). maybe final judgment was just too obscure a concept for me. *shrug*

last year i started therapy and began working through my fears. a lot of them slowly melted away, and once my confidence reached critical mass it exploded—i came out on facebook, changed my name, started hormones & electrolysis, and began presenting as female on a part-time basis.

i do still have fears—the most crippling being my fear of looking...silly. but to hell with it! here's a picture of me from last weekend in a dress for the first time since coming out:

life is change. i'd rather enjoy it than fight it. ^-^

yard sale in the sidebar

check out my new sidebar link (or click here) to get a look at the first few items i've catalogued as part of my pre-departure free yard sale. hopefully you live in utah and can score big from this opportunity to inherit all of my junk.

in other news i stumbled across a website for a japanese transgender support group here. looks like there are transgender conferences every two months just an hour away from where i'll be living! on a related note, i attended my first trans-support group last night. it was a huge emotional boost, since i've been feeling a bit isolated lately.

spoke too soon

a few hours after my last post i got a phone call from my future manager with a few more job details:

while i don't have a specific date yet for moving, i've been told that it'll likely be early april. also, i was a few cities off. i'll be in hitachinaka, which is two towns south of hitachi. it's about 2/3 the population of hitachi but twice as dense.

and because i'm moving pretty soon, i'm going to have a free yard sale sometime in the next month. i'll make a page with pictures and descriptions of all items and put it on the left side bar.

hot off the press!

i have news, news, news, and more news.

1) i passed the jlpt (level 2)!

apparently you only needed to score 19 out of 60 in each section (three sections) and have an overall score above 90 to pass. i'm glad my certificate for getting 60% looks the same as someone who got 100% ^o^

and congrats to sara (my california road trip buddy) who also passed!

2) i'm going to hitachi!

i just found out that my upcoming job in japan (next month? or april?) will be in hitachi, which, despite not being tokyo, i'm totally ok with. it's the 115th largest city in japan with a population around 200,000. that means it's about the size of tacoma, but about half as dense. it's a 2 1/2 hour train ride from tokyo, making weekend trips to the city both affordable (~$25 each way standard fare) and fairly convenient. in a year or so i'd like to move to tokyo, but in the mean time i'll get to enjoy the countryside a bit ^-^

3) i've started hormones and am doing biweekly electrolysis. (<--- the pain involved in electrolysis made me forgo an exclamation mark on this news point)

i haven't noticed any changes due to hormones yet, but it has only been two weeks. i was at least expecting some mood changes by now. but i shouldn't complain about my current state of emotional stability :P

electrolysis: simultaneously more painful and less painful than i had anticipated. some areas i barely feel any pain at all, while others make me wince pretty bad. no tears yet, but i think there will be plenty once we get to the mustache area and the neck.

oh, and the most annoying thing about electrolysis? you have to go a few days without shaving before a treatment. i shave on sunday, get zapped on tuesday, and then again on thursday. if i'm lucky my face will feel healed enough by friday night to shave again, which means i can only be clean shaven on the weekends. and when do i work? weekends. :( so i'm currently not in a great position to go out in public en  femme very often.

here's a pic (i had electro yesterday afternoon):

my webcam doesn't take fabulous pictures, but you can kind of see how i have prominent stubble below the red circle, whereas inside the circle looks pretty clean. after 6 sessions, i've had my whole sideburn area and cheekbone area zapped down to about where the jaw curves on both sides of my face.

i'm not sure how much i'll get done by the time i leave for japan :-/ at this point i may be lucky to just clear my face once.

4) i deleted WoW and got bored of playing n64 games.

i think after my weekend binge on majora's mask i'm done with single player games for a while. but i'm still going to game night (tuesday night LAN parties), of course. now i might actually read all the manga i bought back in december!

5) i'm now accepting donations to fund more electrolysis (so i could do 3 or 4 times a week).

everyone wins. if you like me, it's a chance to help me out. if you don't like me, you at least get to cause me some intense facial pain.

ciao!

my gay rant

as i was walking home from work today i did some thinking. on sexuality.

i grew up in a culture that views homosexuality as immoral. and it follows that if something is immoral, it stems from a personal *wrong* choice. like the following examples:

murder? immoral. manslaughter? unfortunate, but not immoral.
stealing? immoral. mistaking someone else's bag for yours at the airport? not immoral.

i'm thinking that if everyone recognized that homosexuality is NOT a choice they'd have a hard time seeing it as immoral—assuming they believe in a just god.

sure, there's the argument that homosexual attraction isn't immoral, while homosexual behavior is. in which case, behavior is the choice, and the attraction is beyond one's control.

so, even though a healthy intimate relationship is considered to be one of humanity's greatest sources of happiness, it's immoral to strive for that if you're gay?

no one should have to hide who they are and how they feel from their partner/spouse. a gay man marrying a straight woman IS NOT his best chance for happiness.

homosexuality isn't immoral. gay people aren't ruining marriage.

why this tirade? well, i've been thinking about my own sexuality a lot. and i've been using the label bisexual, but i think in reality i'm pansexual. i've been attracted to women and men, but i think the person is more important to me than the gender. while i most often am attracted to women (making me a lesbian?), i recognize that relationship compatibility for me has less to do with equipment, and more to do with personality—and not simply "masculine" versus "feminine" personality differences.

i'd like to be accepted and loved for who i am. and i think everyone else deserves the same.

and if you feel homosexuality (or anything other than heterosexuality) is immoral, i invite you to do a little mental exercise:

imagine that you are gay. you don't want to be. but you are. you find members of your own gender to be attractive, while members of the opposite sex are either repulsive to you, or simply nothing special. you'd probably try pretty hard not to be gay. but at some point you'd realize that you need to choose. happiness in intimate relationships or social/religious acceptance. most people never have to make that choice. doesn't it suck that you do? choosing the acceptance of society or what's moral from a religious standpoint is nothing short of repressing your own feelings. maybe you're good at it. but it will eat away at you your entire life. you'll be lucky to make it through and feel any sort of inner peace and contentment. now what if you made the other choice? you might lose family and friends. you might make yourself the target of violence. you might make yourself the target of general ridicule from society. but you'd also be choosing to embrace something that is part of you. you'd be choosing to live an honest life, one in which you wouldn't have to keep secrets. you'd be choosing to try for happiness.

so what'll it be? outward stability with inner turmoil? or the opposite: inner peace with outside sources of harm? not an easy choice. i hope you can at least sympathize with people in this position, and not demonize them.

sorry for the heavy tone in this post, but i'm very passionate about issues of gender and sexuality. and i wish we all loved each other a little more.

p.s. if you happen to disagree with me, that's ok. you can believe what you want to believe. i'll try to be understanding, but i just hope you realize that we all choose our belief systems, but we do not choose who we are sexually attracted to.

fancy dinner party

here are the promised details of sunday's dinner party (click to enlarge):

unfortunately i forgot to take pictures of the food >_< but it was quite tasty. the pasta fresca recipe was of my own creation, inspired by a farfalle dish that my mother would often make (made with sirloin instead of sauteed veggies). i didn't make the salad, nor did i buy the bread, but that's the beauty of a dinner party!

the day after, i made a big pot of japanese style curry for myself. luckily i documented this meal!

i began by sauteing some yellow onion, potato chunks, and mushrooms. once browned, i added water to finish cooking everything all the way through. a few minutes before everything got to the desired level of doneness, i added a brick of soft tofu (cubed of course). i then added my seasonings, turned off the heat, and mixed until it looked like this:

i then poured it over a bowl of my yummy rice.

and here's the final product:

it was super delicious!

and last night, i experimented a bit. i had been wanting to find a way to use all these extra ramen seasoning packets i've been collecting. then i thought, "ramen seasoned potatoes—why not?" so i boiled a potato, drained it, pan fried it, added a ramen packet and some water, reduced it, and voila! zesty soy saucy potatoes.

it went quite well with rice and kimchi. but sadly, no pictures for this one (-_-)

see ya next time!