If I don’t write about it here, I’ll end up kicking someone’s ass

I’m not one to criticize other people, and especially other people’s relationships, because that’s just not my style.  But this is bugging, annoying, bothering the hell out of me, no, I take that back. It’s bothering the fuck out of me.

Ness’ brother lives with us. He’s a good guy, but he has a tendency to act like a huge asshole on occasion. That’s fine though, because he means well, he just doesn’t think things through completely, and sometimes just doesn’t even think. But, whatever, because I can overlook that. I do that too sometimes.

About a month ago he started dating this girl. She happened to be one of his employees and because of this, he got demoted. Whatever. He knew it would happen if they got caught. Besides, it’s a lot better than meeting the girls he’s dated previously for a week at a time and not knowing their names. Then we find out that she’s twenty. I’m not usually a person to judge based on age, but it explained a lot about her once I found this out. For example, the fact that she doesn’t clean after herself, uses other people’s bathroom essentials and doesn’t replace them…basically, she’s a spoiled brat. In some regards she reminds me of one of my sisters.

I never really knew how old Ness’ brother was. All I knew was a) he was older, b) he has two kids, and c) he’s going through a custody battle with his psycho ex-girlfriend. Trust me, she’s psycho, I’ve met her. So, the guy is older than me and he’s in a pretty sticky situation. Turns out, he’s 35. He’s 35? He’s dating someone that’s 20? Dude. She’s almost half your age! I don’t have a problem with people dating younger people, or older people, but there’s a limit to where I think it’s ok. And besides, he was dating someone his own age who was way more personable and better looking but he fucks that up to date a spoiled, bitchy, twenty year old?

That’s not even my problem with it. I could give a shit who he dates, but when who he dates negatively impacts my life, and Ness’ life, I have a problem with it. Ever since she’s been staying here, I’ve only ever seen her sober a few times. Like when she just gets home from work, she’s sober. Other than that, she’s always drinking. Dude, she’s 20. What are you doing buying her alcohol? If something happens, like oh, I don’t know, your psycho ex girlfriend who lives 4 minutes away decides to come over and cause a scene and finds your current girlfriend drunk, do you really think that’s going to help you in your custody case? No. I’ve seen her drive around the block a few times a day and I have a feeling that if she’s pissed off, she might just stop by.

So, I live with a twenty year old alcoholic. Great.

If you haven’t known, the past week I’ve been sick. I had a bitch of a cold and slept most of the past week. I’m still sick but at least I’m able to stay awake for more than 30 minutes and not pass out. The other day I was taking a nap on the couch. I’d wake up often and cough up a lung or blow my nose a gazillion times. Everyone in the house knew I was sick. She knew I was on the couch. She literally goes out of her way to wake me up and keep me awake by being really fucking loud. If you have to be loud, shut a fucking door, at least.

I’ve said previously that she doesn’t clean after herself. The shower is disgusting. I don’t want to clean up someone else’s hair in order to take a shower. Seriously, how long does it take to spray down the shower and pick up some hair? Like two minutes? You can’t do that? I have OCD, if the shower is dirty, I can’t take a shower. Even if I clean it, I can’t do it. And I can’t clean someone else’s bodily hair. I can’t. I gag and puke. It’s not fun.

Even with all this…she has the personality of a fucking rock. Not even a rock, a pebble. A grain of sand. She’s annoying. She’s a pain in my ass. It’s like having my sister live here. Seriously. I’m so annoyed by her that I’m literally about to bust open a huge can of “I kick her ass” really soon. She’s rude, disrespectful, and annoying. Go back and live with your mom. Whatever. Just get the hell out of here. It’s so bad that I’m seriously thinking of going back to New York just to avoid her.

You know, I’m not even this person. I’m the kind of person that’s just really laid back and I get along with everyone because I just don’t give a fuck. But there’s something about her that just pushes my buttons in all the wrong places and makes me want to kick her ass. And part of me thinks, no dude, I can’t kick a girls ass, but then I remember, I’m physically still a girl, so I could kick her ass.

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My Colon Hates Me

An estimated 1 million people suffer from Crohn’s disease and/or Colitis. I’m one of them, suffering from both. I’m not afraid to talk about my colon; everyone has one. Seriously, it’s just an organ that processes food and turns it into poop. It’s not that big of a deal. As far as I know, everyone poops too.

Most of the vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients that come from your food are absorbed through the small intestine. Whatever is left over passes into the large intestine (colon) where excess water is absorbed. When you have Crohn’s disease, the small intestine becomes inflamed and absorbing any nutrients becomes a task in and of itself. When your small intestine is inflamed, it can’t break down foods normally, so some of what you eat isn’t absorbed into the system and just passes into the large intestine. This can cause malnutrition and a lot of diarrhea. On top of Crohn’s, I also have Colitis. My large intestine is inflamed and it can’t absorb excess water normally. This also causes diarrhea. It’s not fun.

I never took it seriously

When I was diagnosed with Crohn’s and Colitis, I never really took it seriously. My dad has Colitis and I haven’t seen him do anything to his diet. I did what he did; nothing. This was a huge mistake on my part, as the more I did nothing about it, the worse my flare-ups became. They got so bad this past month that I thought I had a serious problem outside of these two diseases. Allow me to tell you a story about my day when having a flare-up.

Ness and I would start off going to IHOP. This is perfect for me because a) I don’t have to cook, b) I get whatever I want, and c) it’s sometimes free. Sometimes I would get a salad, sometimes I’d get a breakfast sampler minus the ham, and sometimes I’d just get a turkey sandwich. After eating, Ness and I like to sit around to read our newspaper. Twenty minutes after I’ve finished eating, I have to either run to the bathroom or get in our car and speed home. I can’t hold it for the life of me. I proceed to spend an hour in the bathroom reading the newspaper, doing crossword puzzles, and anything else I can think of to get my mind off of the horrible, cramping pain I’m feeling in my stomach, on top of literally shitting out my guts.

Before I go on, let me say that there are medications for Crohn’s and Colitis, however, I don’t have health insurance. I can’t afford health insurance unless I literally starve myself each month to make insurance payments. Technically, I still “live” with my parents, so getting on any sort of state health insurance program is going to be pretty hard since my dad makes pretty good money for a guy who didn’t go to college.

Even if I were able to afford the medication, there’s always the fact that I might be allergic to the medication (which I am). So I can a) get health insurance to afford the medication and take it, even though I’m allergic and I’ll get stomach cramps, or b) not get health insurance and not get the medication and hope and pray to god that I can control my flare-ups by other means.

The first thing that needs to change

My diet is the biggest reason why I have so many flare-ups. I eat way too much greasy, fried foods, too much red meat, and not enough of everything else. On top of this, I don’t drink enough water, or anything for that matter.

I don’t get thirsty. For some reason, I’ve never had an urge to drink anything. Sometimes I forget to drink something because my body never says “Hey, asshole, drink something.” I sometimes go days without drinking anything because I forget, or I never take a time out to think if I’ve had anything to drink. And no, I’m not including beer in this, which is also another problem of mine.

No, I’m not an alcoholic, but Ness and I go out, sometimes, once a week, sometimes we go two or three weeks without going out and then we go out two to three times that week. I drink a lot of beer. Mostly because it takes a lot for me to even get slightly buzzed so I can drink and drink and I’m completely fine. The thing is though, I’ve never really gone out like that. I haven’t really partied like that and so my alcohol intake never really had any affect on my body. I didn’t get a lot of flare-ups when I wasn’t drinking, but now that I am drinking, coupled with the food I eat, makes my flare-ups even worse.

Since I enjoy having a beer, or five, with my friends, I doubt that I’ll be cutting out beer from my diet anytime soon. At least, I’m going to see if I don’t have to. If, ultimately, I still have bad flare-ups like I have been, then I’ll cut out the beer, or at least cut it down.

No more…of anything I like

The reason I never changed my diet before was because everything that I love (ie: cheese and greasy, fried foods) would have to get cut. You have absolutely no idea how much I love cheese. I can live without the greasy, fried food because I’ve done it before. But I’ve never lived without cheese. Ever. I’m Italian and I’ve grown up eating cheese, cheese, and more cheese. Almost everything I know how to make includes cheese and if you take out the cheese, it tastes like crap.

I mentioned red meat and, to be honest, I don’t really like red meat in the first place. Cutting out red meat is going to be the easiest thing in the whole world because I rarely eat it in the first place. I’m much happier eating chicken or turkey, or not even eating meat. Meat has never played a huge role in my diet because I don’t really like it.

Well, it’s not fair to say that I won’t be able to eat anything that I like. I can eat cheese, just in moderation. But definitely no meat because I’ve noticed that after eating red meat and after eating pork, I get sick. Pork isn’t red meat, technically, but it still fucks with your intestines. The key here is moderation and not an all out, eat whatever you want, thing. I need to slowly train myself to not crave the things that aren’t healthy for me.

Here’s what my diet will consist of:

So far so good…

I’ve been doing relatively well when it comes to making better choices with foods. I drink more water, although I’m not exclusive to water. I’ve branched out to white tea, green tea, and some orange juice. I also leave room for a glass or two of soda, but soda is no longer my main source, or even close to my main source, of liquid. I haven’t quite started anything else, except the meat. I’m no longer eating read meat or pork. My snacking has become a lot healthier also. I’m eating more fruit and instead of say…kit kats…I’m eating granola bars, don’t worry I check the nutrition information, and organic rice cakes.

My caloric intake is about the same, but I’m eating foods that are lighter and healthier and won’t add to my gut. Eventually, I’d like to start exercising because it’s easier to control Colitis and Crohn’s if you aren’t over-weight.

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Why I hate being cold

For the past couple of days, the weather in Cleveland has been pretty nice. It’s no longer hot and muggy, a sign that Fall is almost here, and now it’s cool and breezy. I usually love this time of year, mostly because I can finally sleep comfortably through the night because I’m not sweating through my clothes. So why am I complaining about the weather now, even though I said I usually love this kind of weather? That’s a very simple answer.

Ness loves fans

Well, let’s just say I’m very happy that our air conditioner broke, because I have a feeling that if it hadn’t, we’d still be using it in our room. Luckily for me, however, it remains broken (I keep saying I’m going to fix it, but now that it’s September, there’s no point in fixing it) and I remain a bit warmer because of it.

Have I mentioned that Ness loves fans? So much so that we have 3 fans in our bedroom. There’s a fan in the window, there’s a ceiling fan, and there’s an industrial fan that Ness likes to blow on the bed at night. On top of that, there’s a window above my head, and when the wind is blowing at night, I have absolutely no hope of getting warm enough to fall asleep.

The past couple of nights I’ve stayed up till 5AM hoping that a) I won’t have to get out from under the blankets to get more clothes or go to the bathroom because it’s so cold in our room that I don’t want to experience it for 2 minutes and b) I don’t even enough blankets or clothes on to get me warm enough to stop shivering so I can sleep. Last night I wore track pants, socks (I never wear socks to bed), a long sleeved t-shirt, and a hoody. I even went so far as to put the hoody hat over my head. Last night I also had one Spongebob fleece blanket, one comforter (all to myself) and one giant down comforter that Ness and I shared. I was still shivering.

I don’t think she understands how cold it is to me

Alright, now I don’t know why, but she is always warm. Her body temperature is high and no matter what, I feel like I’m an icicle when I touch her. We always joke that it’s because her people are from the sun (she’s a descendant of the Aztecs, aka she’s Mexican) and that I’m just a cold blooded freak. Well, I understand her obsession with air conditioners and fans.

Now…as for me…I’ve always had a relatively low body temperature. Seriously, touch me and you’ll shiver. At any given moment, my feet, my hands, or my ears will be ice cold. Sometimes this happens in 90 degree weather. People always ask me how I can wear jeans and a long sleeve t-shirt in the middle of summer; it’s because I’m not as hot as you think I am, and also because I’m probably kind of cold. This should be a good clue as to what three fans and an open window with a cool breeze would do to me.

I can’t sleep when I’m cold

No matter how many blankets or how many layers of clothing I have, if there’s one part of my body that’s cold, the rest of my body will be cold. I cannot sleep when I am cold. I cannot. I don’t like fans blowing on me, I don’t like having windows open if there’s going to be a cold breeze blowing through it, I don’t like being cold. I hate it. I also hate not getting any sleep. I have a feeling that I’m not going to get very much sleep until the coming Spring.

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Halloween: It was good, but not as good as the original

Friday evening, Ness and I caught the 7:20 showing of Halloween over at the Richmond mall. Ness’ absolutely loves the Halloween series. In fact, we’ve been watching the series on and off for the past couple of weeks. As soon as Ness found out that there was going to be a re-make of Halloween, she started getting ready to go.

Pre-game

Ness and I started renting the Halloween series to prepare for the release of Rob Zombie’s Halloween. I had only ever seen Halloween 1, Halloween 4, and parts of Halloween 5 and Ness thought that I should see them all. First, let me say that I’m not a fan of horror movies. They don’t scare me, most are poorly written and/or executed, and most I think are just stupid. Halloween is probably the only exception to my “I hate horror movies”.

Starting the week we decided to see the movie, I had heard varying opinions on whether or not the movie was actually any good. My feed reader was inundated with blog posts about how crappy the movie was, while some friends said that it was absolutely amazing.

Whenever I see a remake of a movie, I always look at it as a movie on it’s own. Very rarely do the remakes actually remake the actual movie. Most of the time, the new movies offer a different perspective, add or delete scenes, and “update” the movie for the current generation.

The Movie

We were lucky to get a theater that only had a few people in it. But a few of the girls in there were talking through the movie and that was kind of annoying. But for the most part, that didn’t bother us.

One of the cool things in the movie was that Danielle Harris, who plays Jamie Lloyd in Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers and Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers, plays Annie Bracket in the new Halloween.

The biggest problem I had with the new Halloween: all the blood and gore. As people have said, blood and gore does not equal scary. In most cases it equals disgusting and ridiculousness. But it was Rob Zombie and I expected it. However, it was still over-the-top. In the original Halloween, they didn’t need blood and gore to scare the shit out of everyone that watched it, so why would you need it now?

Ness will disagree with me on this, but the remake didn’t scare me at all. I know Ness will disagree with me on it, because she was squeezing my hand through most of the movie. There were very few suspense scenes in the movie and I found that I could predict what would happen.

Rob Zombie decided to change a few things in his version. First, he gave Michael Myers more of a back story, which was predictable and stupid. Second, Michael Myers is now ten or so instead of six. He also introduced the fact that Laurie Strode is Michael Myers’ sister, which in the original series didn’t happen until Halloween 2. I have to admit though, that this makes more sense, the way he introduced this plot twist. But it wasn’t really a plot twist this time around, as it was in Halloween 2.

Rob Zombie also decided to switch some of the scenes locations around. For example, the final scene between Michael, Laurie, and Dr. Loomis took place in the house where Laurie was babysitting in the original. In the remake, this scene now takes place in the old Myers house and surrounding area.

My Verdict

Rob Zombie’s Halloween was predictable, like most other horror movies made now. He didn’t butcher the movie, but his additions to the original just didn’t do anything. It wasn’t scary for me, while the original was. The girls in the theater thought it was scary otherwise they wouldn’t have kept screaming, but for me it did absolutely nothing.

If you want to see it, wait till it comes out on video. There’s no point in spending $9 to see a crappy horror movie when you can wait to rent it for $3. But I’d say that about any horror movie, not just this one. :P

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Free beer + Being sick + the most amazing fries evah!

When Ness arrived home from work late last night, we hurriedly got ready to go out to a bar. On Thursdays they have free beer for the ladies until 12:30 and since I’m legally still female, I still get free beer.

The Arrival

Once we entered, we quickly grabbed some free beer and looked for our friends. They were in the back of the bar. I thought “Sweet, I can catch some Sports Center” but everyone began moving around. I met one of Ness’ friends from high school who I hadn’t ever met before. She seemed really cool with the fact that I’m transgender. I’m not surprised that most of her friends are cool with it, there was only that one who had a problem with it.

You know, come to think of it now, I haven’t run into any really big problems. We go to IHOP all the time and everyone there knows me as Josh, even though it’s quite evident that I have boobs. But they all make an effort to call me Josh and use the proper pronouns (”he” and “his”).

Speaking of my boobs…

Ness has a habit of grabbing my boobs, whether we’re in public or not. I’m not really a fan of this, and you won’t see me grab people’s boobs out of the blue, but that’s just me. So we move downstairs so we could dance, or rather, they could dance because I’m not drunk enough yet. Although, the beer is running through me quickly because a) I’m sick and b) I haven’t eaten all day.

Ness makes a grab for my boobs then, Leah makes a grab for my boobs as well then shouts “I touched Josh’s boobs!” Hm…

A year ago, if someone besides my significant other tried to grab my boobs I would have beat the crap out of them, but the more I get to know Ness’ friends, that’s just who they are. They are very open people, which is cool because those are the kind of people I want to associate myself with.

The Fries

So after a few beers, I was kind of drunk. I hadn’t eaten all day and on top of that I was sick (still am). The beer went right through me. We were getting ready to leave and walked upstairs and saw two friends sitting at the bar eating the most delicious-looking fries. Delicious-looking while drunk fries. Mozzarella and sharp cheddar cheese with some bacon bits melted on top of crispy french fries. I was so excited that we ordered some.

If you ever want to try these fries, let me know and I will take you. I promise you that you won’t regret it.

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Joshanastasia V2 Final

As I said in my previous post announcing the new design, it was only about 85% complete when I first launched it. Well, now I’m proud to present the final version of joshanastasia.com.

When I started to finish the design, it took on a life of it’s own, as most things that I start tend to do. What you see now is almost nothing like the original design that I had in mind, and only a bit like the design that I previously launched with.

The Flow

I started working on the final design right after I posted the V2 launch post. It was the easiest thing in the whole world to do. It took almost a whole two days after, but that’s just because I wanted to make sure that everything worked correctly. Thanks to Lisa and Véronique for helping out and finding things wrong and giving me encouragement. Lisa also helped test out the forums, which I’ll get to in a second.

I spent as little time as possible in Photoshop. This design isn’t about the graphics, it’s about the content. Staring at code for more than 24 hours has my mind boggled, so much so in fact, that I dreamed in code and Wordpress Template tags this morning. That’s kind of a scary thought now that I think about it.

What’s Really New?

Pretty much everything. I decided to get rid of a lot of the plugins that I didn’t really need, so you won’t be seeing my last.fm tracks, or my flickr pics.

I originally had planned on having different sidebars for all the pages, but I realized that I didn’t need to do that. However, I changed the sidebar so that the position is fixed, which I think is a suhweet little touch.

The “Special” Section

I’m going to introduce a special section to the site. A lot of people have asked me questions about being Trans and I’d like to make the answers into special posts. I’m going to open up a special “Ask Josh a Question” section and I’ll answer your question in a post in the relative future. So look out for that, as I’m going to start writing more about trans issues until my next big project comes along. You’ll see that in the very near future.

Well, I said it, and here it is. The forums are open for business and you can ask questions that you wish for me to answer in there. Other users will also be able to rate your questions, so the higher the rating, the faster they’ll get answered.

The forums have been designed to match V2 of joshanastasia.com and they are being powered by bbpress. You’ll have to register to use the forums, but I promise you that I won’t use any of the information you provide and I won’t spam you. I swear to Bob.

If you’ve already registered for joshanastasia.com, you can use that same login info for the forums. Go and ask me shit.

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Interesting Death Facts

I know what you’re thinking about now…interesting death facts? No, I’m not obsessed with death, I’m obsessed with numbers and there are a lot of interesting number facts that just happen to be related to deaths, and or murder, assassinations, and attempted murders/assassinations.

There’s a reason…

I was reading my daily news when I popped onto cnn.com and found an article about a study where rock stars are more likely to die young. It got my mind going and I started to remember all these useless facts that I have stored in my brain. They have no real world usage, but can be interesting if used as a “Hey, did you know…” kind of thing. It’s no secret that I like to think of myself as smart, even if I’m really not, so I often use these useless facts.

The Number 27

Speaking of rock star deaths, the number 27 keeps popping up. If you didn’t know, or didn’t realize it, the following rock stars all died at the age of 27.

Those are just the more notable ones. Jimi, Jim, and Janis all died within months of each other.

Presidential Assassinations and Attempts

The following assassinations and attempts were taken on presidents who had been elected in even years.

Hmm…

Interestingly enough, there’s a documentary in production about the deaths of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison.

Why did I write about this? So when I’m 80 and can’t remember shit, I’ll be able to say that I used to be smart and could remember things.

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Joshanastasia V2

The new look is about 85% complete, but I got sick of the previous design and decided to put it up anyway. You’ll notice it’s not as fancy as previous designs, but that’s ok because that’s what I was going for.

Why the switch?

That’s easy. If you haven’t noticed, I’ve been busy lately. But that’s only part of the reason why I haven’t been blogging. I was frustrated with the fact that I wasn’t being inspired to blog about things and staring at my previous design didn’t help me. This might sound weird, but a lot of my ideas to blog came about while staring at previous designs. Weird, but hey, it’s how I roll.

The previous four months have been challenging, to say the least, and the next few months will be even more challenging. I knew that if I didn’t do it now, I would never have time to do it. I’ve been playing around with creating my own Wordpress themes for awhile now, but I’ve never actually used one on my own site. This time, I took a full day to work out the code and put together a theme. To be honest with you, I didn’t do that much. I had a lot of help along the way.

Who helped?

That’s a great question, with a couple of different answers.

Blueprint CSS: There’s been a lot of “buzz” around this CSS framework developed by Olav and I’ve been following it for awhile. I decided to test it out, and it seemed to work for me while local testing. The true test, however, lies in real world usage. I decided to use it for my site and see how it works out.

Christian Montoya’s Comments Template: Trying to develop my own comments template alone would have taken awhile, but why should I do it, when someone else already has?

What’s New?

Not much really. But here’s a short list.

What’s to come?

Another great question. If you’ve noticed, my recent posts have been a bit longer in length (minus the one about my ride in an ambulance) and I plan on writing more of these posts. It’s been awhile since I’ve sat down to write an actual post and taking time out to write a decent one has been fulfilling. I also plan on continuing the mixtapes and some other things that I haven’t had the time for these past few months.

Also, be on the look out for the “completed” look. I don’t even know what the final version will look like, but most of the design is done, and I only have to change, add, and delete a few things.

I’m going to introduce a special section to the site. A lot of people have asked me questions about being Trans and I’d like to make the answers into special posts. I’m going to open up a special “Ask Josh a Question” section and I’ll answer your question in a post in the relative future. So look out for that, as I’m going to start writing more about trans issues until my next big project comes along. You’ll see that in the very near future.

Bugs?

I know a few bugs lying around the new theme, but if you happen to catch any, please let me know so I can fix them. Thank you and I hope you enjoy the new look.

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Riding in an ambulance isn’t as fun as you’d think

One of the things I’ve always wanted to do was to ride in an ambulance. Well, I can cross that goal off my list. And it wasn’t as cool as I thought it would be. Although, when they put the sirens on, that was kind of cool.

Ness and I went to a wedding last night. The wedding was great, the reception was great, until about 10:30. I ended up having an asthma attack, bad enough to have to have an ambulance come and get me. I was at the hospital until around 2AM. Not a bad wait really. But after almost a full day of drinking and then to not be able to breathe, then all the meds they gave me, I’m out of it even now. And no, I don’t have a hangover. I’m still having problems breathing and I’m coughing.

I have to prepare for some fantasy football. I’ll be around later to give the full story.

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