Yesterday was ten months since we were married, which means that Thursday will mark ten months since I arrived in Toronto to stay.  I was not a resident yet but that does not mean I was here illegally - I had six months without a visa.  The visa came in time for that, and anyway I left briefly and returned several times in the interim.  American Thanksgiving and such.  Now I'm quite the Canadian resident.  I have my Social Insurance Number, my OHIP card, my Ontario driver's license.  I can lay all those on a table along with my Permanent Resident Card and I look terribly official.

I've got friends.  Most of them were Joey's friends first, but that's normal, especially since I don't have coworkers yet (soon please!).  This year, we're going to throw me a proper birthday party.  Last year's was lovely, but small and very short notice, and I spent most of the day cooking, and I felt like it was Joey's friends being nice and welcoming.  Of course that was wonderful, but this year I will feel like it is my friends, though those are some of the same people, and they will make fun of me and feel like they can be idiots in front of me while celebrating, which is all that much better.

Being married is a lot of things.  I love living with Joey.  At first there was a lot to get used to, and he learned never to move my toothbrush.  I am still not sure why that is such a big deal, it just is.  We figured it all out - we always need to have both sparkling water (me) and meat (Joey) in the kitchen.  Joey will clean the bathrooms (we have 1.5, which is probably the most fundamental reason our marriage works, because no one ever has to wait to pee), I will do the laundry.  He enjoys anything I cook.  It's not perfect.  Sometimes I get frustrated with my life, and Joey bears the brunt of it because he's closest.  But we're doing well.

I know the west side of Toronto pretty well.  The East is a mystery, mostly, except for the area around Broadview station.  I imagine I'll figure it out.

When I hit a year, let's plan on my having a lovely university job, and everything else being pretty much as is.