The Alternate Lexicon
Currently viewing the tag: "moving"
It’s almost the end of the year, and I’ve done a rather terrible job writing and updating. I played with the layout a bit, but I’m not sold on it as a permanent fix. The 2012 layouts should be out soon, so I’ll hold out and see what’s coming and how I’d like to play with them.
Melbourne continues to feel strange, home and not-home all jumbled up together. The past month has been harder than the ones before it, as I find myself missing Stina and Dylan badly even as I’m growing into more and more of my own person. I read somewhere recently that it’s not unusual at all for autistic people, but especially autistic women, to lack a strong sense of self and identity–it’s something I definitely identify with (oh, irony). I have been so defined by that friendship for so much of my life, and all of my adult life at that, that I have of course been confused and lonely and unsure of how to go about being me separate from them. I’s been a good thing to mull over, thinking about how to deliberately choose who I am and who I can become.
I know 2011 hasn’t been particularly great for many people in my life, but it’s been positive on the whole, for me. I’m happy to be here. We’re in discussion with our immigration lawyer to begin my trek towards permanent residency. I have a job, albeit a terrible temp one, and make enough money to live comfortably and save for said immigration. I have grown infinitely more comfortable with both my autism and my gender, and my metacognition is much happier than it was a year or even two or three ago. While I am still sad because of Stina and Dylan, I am feeling like I am going to be okay.
Next year is going to be good. There are lawyer appointments and immigration agents to meet. I’m going to have a booth at a local artist’s market in January, and if it goes well I’ll sign up for more times in February, March, and April. I have insurance that will pay for me to get a massage every once in a while. There is a very, very strong chance we will get a second kitten to keep crankypants happy and entertained. I’m going to Port Fairy. Kate Miller-Heidke put us on the guest list to come see her for free, because we’re awesome. I’m considering scraping together the cash to take a course in Auslan (Australian sign). I found a choir I want to join. Maybe we can talk Hez into visiting. I’ll try to write more here, not just reblog on tumblr.
I think it’s going to turn out just fine.
There is a kitten next door. He’s maybe 8 weeks old, and it’s pouring rain. He turned up sometime yesterday and has been crying nonstop since then. He does not have food, water, or appropriate shelter. He’s a little ball of fluff that’s been soaked down with the rain. He comes to the fence if I speak to him.
Prosper is in quarantine. He has a little cell about 4′ by 8′, which is actually not too terrible at all, and he’s finally started to eat (according to the quarantine staff, he’s “picky”–what, I precisely, does it take for a cat in that situation to be called picky? I can’t think on it too much or it makes me scared.). He let both Kit and I pet him and tried to chomp, a sure sign he’s feeling more like himself.
I can still hear that kitten.
I am on the edge of tears, worried about that kitten and about my big kitten, and how scared they both must be, feeling abandoned and hungry. I can’t focus on anything else, filled up with worry about a kitten that theoretically belongs to the house next door (though they’re doing such a shit job taking care of him, I’ll call the animal shelter to report them for animal cruelty if they don’t take him inside as soon as they get home–who the fuck leaves an 8 week old kitten outside while they’re gone all day?!). I think my empathy is working just fine.
Been in Melbourne for a while, now. I have a temp job lined up to start this week. We have a lease that starts a week from tomorrow. Prosper is starting his trip tomorrow (miss the cat, so much).
I found these delicious things at the grocery store here:
I found these on a lamppost:
This has been an update.
Less than a week in the US. Feels weird. Words are a little hard to come by now that I don’t have to pretend to be fluent and fluid and talkative at work, which maybe says something in favour of faking it or maybe it’s just about regular sleep schedules. I have packed and repacked, abandoned much of the stuff I thought I simply had to have to exist, and decided more hair dye totally beats clothes any day, because awesome hair is awesome even if I only have pajamas and t-shirts, and manic panic is hard to come by there.
We spend a lot of time looking at houses in between my fits of playing the sims and trying to shove more stuff into my over-full suitcases and being sat upon by the cat, who is in a panic, too. I have chai cola. It is delicious. My life is inane.
I am feeling resilient and tired and ready.
In two and a half weeks, I will get on a plane and cease to live in the US, for permanent as far as we can guess.
When I land, I will be a new person. I will be neatly crafted, all smooth lines and invisible joins, not cobbled together of hurts and fears and sinew like I am now. A clockwork person; a robot made out of human bits of bone.
I will be Eliot, sometimes. I will be trans without being ashamed, or anxious, or both. I will be openly, joyfully queer (and if the immigration stuff goes easily, maybe even poly). I will be proudly autistic, honest about the disabling bits and all the good things. I will be clever and quick and funny and obsessive. I will make friends.
At least, I’m going to try.
Moving is really fucking hard when you have executive function issues.
You know that time suck that happens where you get on the computer and look at something, and then six hours later you haven’t showered or eaten? My whole life is that time suck. My to-do lists consist of one thing per day, usually the most difficult thing I’d like to accomplish. Everything else is a bonus.
I’ve been trying to coax my brain into the right space to work out costs for international moving for about a month. I managed to contact an international moving company, who sent a brochure, and that was great (though I now believe I cannot afford them). More important than moving my table and chairs, though, is moving my cat.
[Image: my cat, looking pensieve]
I finally contacted one company yesterday and…$3995. WHAT IS THIS I DON’T EVEN FOUR GRAND TO MOVE MY CAT? THAT DOESN’T EVEN INCLUDE THE QUARANTINE FEES AND PAPERWORK FEES AND WHAT THE FUCKING WHAT. THAT IS MORE THAN ALL OF MY PERSONAL MOVING COSTS PUT TOGETHER (except furniture transport that looks increasingly unlikely as this was the company reccomended by the movers).
So then I spent the past three hours alternately crying and sending out pleas to other moving companies. I think I’m aiming for less than $2000, which is the lowest price I’ve seen advertised so far. This throws off my budget drastically (I’d planned for his cost to be abouit $750, plus vet, import, and quarantine fees, which sounds reasonable given my human ticket is about $1000), and now there’s a panic attack. I don’t know how we’ll afford this–it eats up a lot of money I’d planned to put up for rent and bond while looking for a job.
Thanks to perseveration, I will probably continue having small panic attacks until this is resolved.
Awesome.
I’m changing my name.
Not my website or any of the various aliases I use online, but my last name in real life. I have a couple reasons for wanting to do this:
1. I want the family I build with Kitty to share a name. We’ve talked about combining names, but she already has a hyphenated name and expressed some discomfort over having to pick which parent’s last name she kept. By taking on a wholly new name (whether or not we choose to keep our original surnames as well), we are creating a family unit. Because same-sex marriage isn’t available anywhere we plan to live, we won’t have the opportunity to change it when we get married.
2. I’m fairly certain that it will be easier to change it now, before I move permanently internationally. I’ll need to get a new liscence, social security card, passport, bank cards, credit cards issued (and I’m sure I’m forgetting stuff in that list–help!); I’ll need to change my name with my bank, my job(s?), all of my online information. Some of these things I doubt I can do at all once overseas: I don’t think the consulate would be able to handle my request for a new social security card, for instance, if they could grant a name change at all. North Carolina apparently has some of the most lax rules about legal name changes in the country, requiring a court fee, two affadavits that I am not a criminal, and a 10 day wait. The legal fees are about $80-90.
3. I am not very attached to my last name. It’s pretty common, which does give it the advantage of being easy to spell. In fact, the only part of my name I’m attached to at all is Alison. I’ve never really liked my middle name. My last name is my dad’s last name (and my mom’s, since she didn’t change it after they divorced), and I have no real connection to his family. Basically, I have no compelling reason to keep it.
So then the question becomes: if I’m paying to change my name, and I’m set on my first and surname, what the hell do I do with the middle?
I could keep my current middle name (1). Alison [bland middle] St. James. I could keep my current last name. Alison [bland surname] St. James. I could keep both. Alison [double bland, so intense] St. James. I could change it altogether. There have been a handful of names I’ve been interested in using for myself for years. I could go with my facebook first name, which sounds pretty good as a middle name in this construct.
Potential middle names, in no particular order:
Patience
Jane
Rosalind
Constance
Merit
Anna
Even
Laurel
Rose
Aster
[current surname]
Thoughts?
1. I’m a little reluctant to be posting my full name up on the internet–I use a pseud on facebook, for fuck’s sake. Those of you that know me personally can just insert the correct names where they belong.
Catching up on the last bit of Melbourne, the trip home, what I’m doing OMGRIGHTNAO and plans.
We went to Kate’s hens night, which involved thai and karaoke and a lot of overstimulation, and the wedding, which was beautiful.
We also went to a place trying to bill itself as molecular gastronomy coffee. It wasn’t, so much, but they did have test tube coffee:
Then I took some more pictures of flowers:
I flew back to the US and it took forever, 10 hours of which I spent chilling in the SFO airport, which may be the most boring place on earth. I’ll make a point to go through LAX next time.
I did come back to my kitten, which is some consolation.
I got rid of GoDaddy hosting and signed up with ANhosting.com, largely because Hank Green told me to do it. It’s been a breeze and I’d reccomend them.
Currently, I am unemployed and living in Greensboro. Well, that’s a lie, right now I’m in Staunton visiting Stina and Dylan, but on the whole I am in Greensboro and loathing it, but it’s free and hopefully there will be jobs. There’s been a lot of drama about my car insurance and liscencing, but it’s over and I don’t want to rehash it.
ON JULY 1 I HAVE AN INTAKE APPOINTMENT WITH TEACHH, THE AUTISM PEOPLE IN NC. IT WILL BE FREE.
I’m super excited but also anxious for 2 reasons: 1. I worry it’ll be like Dr. Gaddis again, and 2. it might negatively impact my immigration. We’re waiting to hear from a lawyer, but this isn’t a full-on diagnostic appointment and nothing stays written, so I’m keeping this one and hopefully making the follow-up diagnostic appointment and then making decisions after Kitty has her surgery and can see again to visit lawyers. If I have to wait to get my papers before I can get my other papers, that’s fine. Australia has plenty of very good doctors in this regard and I’d be happy to see them. BUT THIS ONE IS FREE.
So…that’s all. Etsy sale on right now. I took lots of pictures that I hope will become my moo cards.
In my head
I repeat our conversations
Over and over
Till they feel like hallucinations
You know me:
I love to lose my mind
It’s less than a week before I have to leave Melbourne, and so much has changed.
I landed and was whisked away to the Windsor Hotel, a beautiful, historic bit of miniature castle, where we had a gorgeous view of Parliament and breakfast in bed and high tea.
We’ve been down to the beach…
And I’ve taken lots of photos of flowers around our neighborhood:
We learned a valuable lesson (and watched a damn lot of Glee):
And then I learned about a medical program that will want me, no strings attached, in Sydney.
I want to go, very much, and could apply next year and sit the Australian version of the MCAT in February. We need to speak to immigration lawyers, I need to get Prosper cleared for immigration. Everything is suddenly on an impossibly fast timeline. I’m in a mild panic.
I wanted to maybe move with the wonderful Sarah to Baltimore, but I’m concerned I won’t be able to get a job that pays enough in just a few months in a new, big, expensive city. I wanted to move to Atlanta, though less than I did a couple months ago. I wanted to live with my mom, even though the idea mildly nauseates me, because it’d be cheap and require little effort. I’m not sure what I am going to do, but it’ll be something. So at least I’ve made the decision to act, and not let the inertia get to me–and that’s the most important step.
