I’m working from home today as our movers pack up our apartment for tomorrow’s move. I’m thinking about the place we’re moving into, and I’m also thinking about the place we moved out of before we moved into the place we’re about to move out of. If you think about it, every place you ever lived in your life is linked, one to another. All the apartments and houses and dorms. If I try, I can probably visualize almost all of my moves — except for a few, such as moving in and out of dorms every year during college, which tend to run together (especially when I moved in and out of the same place more than once). There are some weird linkages, too, such as the time I moved almost all my stuff into storage while biding time at my parents’ house for a few months. But really, I can probably visualize everything all the way back to the earliest move I remember, when I was three years old and we moved from Queens into the New Jersey suburbs.

The 2010 U.S. Census has me peeved.

Matt and I received our census form in the mail yesterday. But we’re not supposed to fill it out. The census is supposed to be a snapshot of the U.S. population as of April 1, 2010, and by April 1, we will have moved to a different apartment.

So what’s the big deal? Can’t we just fill out the census form for our new apartment? Yes, but… we’re moving into an apartment on a college campus — one of the perks of Matt’s job. And if you live in a university residence, you don’t fill out the regular census form; instead, you fill out the Individual Census Report. The Individual Census Report is for people who live in dorms, nursing homes, shelters, and other group residences. Unlike the regular form, which is for everyone in the same household, the Individual Census Report can accommodate only one person — hence the name. So everyone fills out their own form, and there’s no way to indicate whether you’re in a relationship with someone. Therefore, there’s no way for me and Matt to tell the Census Bureau that we’re in a relationship together.

I think this is really stupid. I’m disappointed and annoyed, because I was looking forward to having me and Matt counted as a same-sex couple, which the Census Bureau is doing for the first time this year. Either the Census Bureau assumes that nobody in a university residence, nursing home, or shelter is married or in a relationship, or it doesn’t care. I think this is dehumanizing to people in nursing homes and shelters, and it’s a dumb assumption about people in university housing. Why doesn’t my relationship count to the census? I’m unfortunately used to my relationship being treated differently because I’m in a same-sex couple, but to be treated differently because we’ll be living in university housing? That’s ridiculous.