Happy Anniversary, Baby
In which we celebrate being together by spending the day apart
Yesterday, we celebrated our 23rd anniversary of becoming a couple. (We have to distinguish this anniversary as our “coupleversary” because we have a second anniversary marking when we were finally legally wed, almost ten years after this anniversary.)
When we first got together, our status as a couple was still a somewhat radical act. We still had six more years of W. Bush as president—the so-called “compassionate conservatism” that was nothing but. States reacted to Massachussetts’s 2005 legalization of same-gender marriage by enacting laws outlawing our love—even though the “Defense of Marriage Act” from the Clinton years prevented the federal government from recognizing any state-sanctioned unions. The Medievalist was still afraid to even call the Archivist by a pet name in public for fear of someone overhearing and reporting her, losing her job. (The Archivist gave up this code-switching in 2000; if a job can’t accept them as they are, that’s not a job they want.)
Because our relationship carries with it such radicalism, it seems like another radical act to spend it apart—and somewhat melancholy for the Archivist. Because we’re going to be out of the country for at least a year, though, the Medievalist took her nigh-on 99-year-old mother to her family reunion, where they celebrated that upcoming birthday. They were gone for many hours longer than expected, so her mother had a great time by all measures, making her choice a good one. Even today, we’ve not really done anything particular to celebrate, which isn’t unusual, since we’re generally travelling during this time of year because of summer breaks from teaching. Still, with the looming threat of the rescinding Obergefell (SCOTUS’s granting of nationwide marriage equality) in the same way Dobbs took away the nationwide right to abortion and returned it to a state (not personal) decision, it seems radical to act the way we’ve always acted about our anniversary, preferring instead to celebrate our love daily. Our relationship once again feels like defiance, though even most queer folks don’t see it that way. It feels precious and precarious, and the Archivist, for one, is glad we’ll have a year traveling together to celebrate it (even if we have to be more covert in some places in the world we’re visiting).
Temporary Locals
And speaking of traveling the world, the planning’s and booking for Scandinavia is almost complete (we only have Legoland/Tivoli Gardens tickets and trains to book, and we can’t book the trains yet). We’re visiting after the summer season ends at the end of September, so we did run into some challenges booking lodging in the more remote parts of the journey in the Jutenheim mountains, but were able to find something for each location (in some cases, with aboslutely spectacular scenery). Now, we’ll see what we’re able to do with our scenic driving (hopefully, the passes won’t be closed already!). The mantra we keep repeating is Rick Steves’: “travel as if you’re coming back.” So, if something we are desperate to see is closed because of the time of year, perhaps we can make it back there before we have to leave Europe in April 2026. We’re now at the point of planning in which we stop planning altogether, because the remainder of our time in Europe will be unstructured: we’ll find a good base of operation in an area, then live like locals until we’re ready to move on.
On the packing front, the Archivist has gone through the limited number of clothes they brought to, as a dear friend described it recently, our “weird staycation,” eliminating most of them. Though we’ll likely skip next week’s posting due to our visit to another city to stay with friends and watch the USWNT vs. Ireland, there will be at least photos of the packing coming in the next few weeks, since the bags will be packed almost exactly as we will for the long trip for this short one. The Archivist is using the 5-4-3-2-1 method, with five bottoms; four short-sleeve shirts; three long-sleeve shirts; two sweaters, two jackets, and two pairs of shoes; and, one of a number of accessories like a scarf, belt, and bathing suit. The full breakdown will accompany the photos/videos, but the mental work for clothing is largely done. The Medievalist will do something quite similar, and actually have fewer items, which will of course prompt the Archivist to pare their list even farther. There will be no all-cotton clothes in the Archivist’s bag, however; they are strictly a merino wool traveler and happy to discuss the benefits of this fabric for travel (and, yes, this includes underwear).
The Craic
This is our comfort zone right now. It’s awesome to wake up and not have to scramble around to get things done (though we should have already been doing packing more seriously, if we’re honest). We usually have one thing to get accomplished a day, and plan around that. We’ve been in the pool most days (we just got back from that today), though the unpredictable severe thunderstorms have dampened that for us.
We’re also getting into our bye-bye Birmingham food tour more seriously, hitting both Tasty Town with a dear friend and Dreamland ribs this week (plus the cake from Savage’s). We’ve also failed to mention, speaking of food, that we’ve been very much enjoying Stanley Tucci’s two series about better understanding Italian culture through food, making notes of dishes we need to try and locations we need to visit while in Italy this winter—there’s lots of pesce in our future, heading to southern Italy as we are. More on this as we visit, but we still have quite a few faves to hit once more—look for invites within the week, B’ham folks.
We’ve gotten into somewhat of a pattern of spending the day planning and booking, then one of us playing our games, though we’re both at the “travel around mopping up” stage of these games, with the Archivist completing the story of Days Gone a couple of days ago and clearing zombie hordes; the Medievalist still has a couple of boss-battle story missions in Far Cry: New Dawn, but may choose to skip those as the Archivist did. Our reading has changed, though, with the Archivist reading N.K. Jemison’s The City We Became and the Medievalist working on Sarai Walker’s The Cherry Robbers.
Mostly, though, we’re just enjoying having less stress and living in anticipation of our first flight and our exploration of the world. We’re in a bit of a rhythm walking to things (particularly to charge the Bolt EV after losing our convenience of home charging) then hitting the pool, and our location allows us to catch some pretty spectacular sunsets on the regular, as seen above. Once we return from our out-of-town visit, the pace of things will pick up as we handle our just-before-travel chores, but, so far, even this liminal space of retirement suits us. All humans should be able to live like this, always.
We’ll have much to report and show you after our return from our next visit, so thanks for sticking with us.
Ride and hearken, y’all,
The Transmigrationists