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Showing posts from August, 2023

Professional (gender)Queer

This could have been exclusively in my personal blog, but I decided to to share it here as well.  These experiences are not exclusive to spaces in which being queer is unsafe, but they also exist in countries and societies that we think of as being more accepting.  I am both queer in terms of sexuality and also genderqueer (non-binary), but I can easily pass as neither when I'm out in the world.  I am married to a cisgender man and I haven't chosen to transition in a way that would make me appear to be physically more androgynous.  I even often feel most comfortable with femme gender expression, which makes it perhaps even more confusing for people struggling to remember to call me they/them. For queer and gender non-conforming people, new social interactions can be difficult.  Even more so for those of us who can't hide as easily.  We have to think about how safe we feel in this new social situation, who we feel can be trusted to treat us with respect and ...

Dutch houses

We woke up Monday morning to a waterfall in our kitchen.  It had been lightly raining all night and it turns out our gutter was clogged.  You see, our kitchen is part of an add-on in the back of the house with a flat roof that serves as our terrace.  And the gutter downspout for said roof runs... inside of the house.  I assume the water goes into the sewer system after it has travelled through the pipe in our kitchen, but with the pipe clogged it was just raining indoors. This is one of many things we've had to learn how to navigate in Dutch houses, which are unexpectedly far more different than what I imagined.  I thought I'd share some interesting tidbits that we've learned so far, including differences in the house purchasing process.  We will, of course, be continuing to learn all sorts of exciting things for a long time to come, so please note that this is a tiny list and feel free to ask me questions to research if you're curious! Brick and sand I've...