MeghanIsMe

It's been a long while since I've caught folks up on life here.

The greatest center of activity right now is preparing to move to Regina, Saskatchewan in Canada. My partner is starting a new post-doc at the university there and I'm coming along. I can hardly wait to get out of here and go somewhere new.

I'm taking charge of planning and logistics. We don't have many large possessions coming with us: the board games and our desktop computers are the largest items. I'm packing clothes and games into double-walled boxes, ready to send comfortably in advance of our flight via an unaccompanied baggage service like we used on our move here.

I'm not quite sure where it will be sent yet. We've discussed either flying to Toronto to see Danae's parents, or to Chicago to see mine, before driving to Regina. We're also considering flying in to Calgary directly. The final decision will be based on what health-related travel restrictions and requirements are in place when we make final plans. Currently, I'm planning to make those decisions around the first of July, though I also need to see when trends suggest the cheapest time to buy plane tickets is because that will influence the timetable of decisioning.

We will be in Saskatchewan for at least a year, and possibly several. While we're there, I plan to apply for permanent residency in Canada. If Danae finds a tenure track job in the country or we otherwise end up being there long term, I plan to apply for citizenship as well, but that's a few years out at the earliest due to residency requirements. Having citizenship in a country other than the US will give me significant peace of mind.

With that in mind, I'm considering learning French via DuoLingo. I've taken classes in Spanish, Japanese, just a touch of German in high school, and before coming to the Netherlands, Dutch. For me, Japanese pronunciation is the most straight forward, followed closely by German and/or Spanish. Dutch is a little bit weirder, but maybe that's partly because I want it to sound more like German. Though the handful of words I know in German aren't even enough for simple sentences, a native speaker complimented me on my accent when I read a title for her to translate. French, though, is a whole different world. I have a vastly harder time with pronunciation than any other language I've tried. But it will be my first time learning a language that someone I live with already has some fluency in, and I think that will help a lot!

Here in the Netherlands, the weather has been gorgeous, finally, I'm still having a really hard time getting myself outside. I bought an affordable exercise bike and am trying to get daily exercise either out on the balcony or in the living room as I watch videos about civil engineering or games like Minecraft on Youtube. The bike supposedly tracks my speed and distance covered. It's numbers bear little relation to the actual speed and distance I would track on a real bike with the same level of effort (they are rather...generous?), but whatever.

I am finally getting my first vaccination injection early this afternoon! In just an hour or so, in fact. I just got showered and am going to hop on my bike at 12:30 to go to my appointment. Then I'm going to come home and sleep since I've been up all night. My schedule is pretty inconsistent.

I realize I often, arguably, bury the lede in long social media updates. In this case, I think that's because talking about it publicly is a big, scary step. But I'm transitioning to using she/her pronouns for myself. There's a lot to say about that in another post, but talking with the therapist I have been seeing for the last month and with Danae has helped me realize that's the direction I'd like to move in.

I haven't made any announcements, or talked to anybody specifically about it: Danae has simply started referring to me that way when I come up. She compared it to a soft launch of a new piece of software: It's not *officially* available, but it's kind of out there if you want to try it and know where to look. It's a way to test it and see how it feels, I guess. So far, it makes me really happy. I have a lot of cognitive dissonance surrounding it, related to my underlying belief of gender as a social construct that should really not exist at all. That's still there, but my therapist has encouraged me to let the rational things coexist equally with experiential, emotional things. And on those latter levels, it feels really good. I really doubt I will ever fully reconcile those things with each other in my lifetime, but that is ok. "I am large, I contain multitudes."

It's time to get dressed and check on my bike tires. 'Till next time!