Narrowly Escaping A Self-Induced Fate

I must say that a sleeping pill does do wonders when one of the things troubling one is a lack of proper sleep. I felt a lot better when I woke up this morning, and even the pain from this supposed kidney stone wasn't too bad. It wasn't until a few hours ago that it started bothering me again, making me wonder whether I'll actually be able to sleep tonight thanks to the pain. Maybe it's time for a prescription painkiller Pieter has for his back. It's pretty strong stuff :)

Yesterday I got the confirmation of my first name change having been fully entered into the system by email and later today again by snail mail. I had made an appointment for today to get a new driver's license, with Pieter tagging along for emotional support. After getting some new pictures taken for the driver's license we went to the appointment. That's where the trouble started.

A while ago I had resorted to scratching away the name and gender on any form of ID I own, including my ID card, driver's license and passport, resulting in the not so pleasant situation today that they were considered to be invalid due to tampering. Officially that is. Officially I also would have had to get a new ID card first before I could get a new driver's license, meaning that I'd have to get two ID cards in about six months time, as I reckon I'll get the official gender change confirmed in about 4 months time as well.

Fortunately the girl helping me talked to her supervisor a few times and managed to get an exception for me. I'll be able to pick up my new driver's license on Friday. At least I'll have a valid method of identifying myself by then. Also interesting was this girl mentioning that she studies medicine and that she thought my situation was intriguing. I left her the address to my site. If you're reading this: hi :D

How does it feel to be rid of this old name of mine and to have Maya be my real, official name? The best thing I guess is that when some institute allows me to be registered as 'Maya' it's no longer something they do out of a kind of pity for my situation. It definitely makes things seem a heck of a lot more normal. It's just that name and nothing else. It's so... normal. And I like it.

The one thing which annoys the heck out of me at the moment is to still have the 'Sir' part in front of my name, as it still doesn't stroke one bit with how I and others perceive me. It's just wrong, and I hope this gets corrected soon so that there will be one less thing for me to worry about.

So, tomorrow it's time to go swimming again. I just hope that this bloody kidney stone won't bother me too much. I would like to get in a kilometer worth of laps again, which is hard to do when it feels like someone is kicking you in the kidneys. Getting a good night's sleep would contribute greatly to a successful day tomorrow as well.

Beyond that I hope that I can do some work on TileWars tomorrow and next week. It's time to wrap this puppy up :)


Maya