The Burning Ring of Fire

Yesterday I found out that I really do have a case officer (surprise!)--of course, I found out only after I called immigration to update my address and find out if there had been any progression with things. They wouldn't just notify people of these things, would they? It would be good news except that I also found out that the CO has decided there is not enough evidence of our relationship to grant me the visa.

At which point I fell apart.

Doing this whole visa thing has been one crazy up and down, annoyance after another with disappointment at the end of every single day. It's so frustrating that I've been doing this for nearly 7 months now with no full time work and very few options to find something else. I haven't been able to leave the country either--even when we came up with the money to go see my family. I haven't even made (many) friends which makes me feel like we're doing this alone with no support group. It's been hard. So, so hard.

She basically said that all the emails between us while traveling and the blogs I wrote during that time basically amount to "some correspondence and diary entries" which are insufficient to prove our relationship and time together. How does that make me feel? "GRRAAAAAWWWWHHH!"

The silver lining is that we have one more chance to submit evidence and get the visa but it's not going to be easy. They want documents--official documents like bank statements or utility bills--that list both of our names from the time we stayed with Jeremy's parents when we first arrived in Australia (which of course, there are none). They want statutory declarations from his parents. Letters, cards, packages with both our names on them. Evidence of his parents' residence such as a rental lease or a copy of their land title. The problem is that we found this out yesterday and tomorrow his parents leave for a 3 week trip to the US. We have four weeks to get these documents to the CO.

Jeremy talked to the case officer and thinks she seems to be pretty reasonable and likely to give us the visa if we turn in the stat decs. So we got up at 4am this morning and wrote one each for his parents who will have them signed and witnessed by a JP today before they leave. They should accept them and Jeremy seems pretty confident that they will but I'm not very optimistic. I feel like this whole ordeal has just been a hopeless foray into self torture. And I'm still so pissed. Not only are his parents leaving tomorrow, that it took them 7 freaking months to tell me this when I could have provided them with more earlier, but it also happens to be two days before we move and all our documents and photos are packed up in boxes. We're moving everything on Saturday which means we're stressed with other things on top of all this.

Yesterday was not only the day I found out about this visa stuff but also the day I picked up the keys to our new apartment. Finding out the visa stuff first made it a rough start to what should have been a great day of new-home excitement. However, in a increasingly predictable and craptacular fashion, our new apartment wasn't all we hoped it would be.

For starters, it turns out neither of us remembered it very well. After having been to so many 15 minute apartment inspections, all of them kind of run together in my mind. I didn't know I was doing that until I walked in yesterday and seriously thought the agent gave me the wrong keys. It was nothing at all like I remembered. It was smaller. MUCH smaller. It all makes sense to me now why I couldn't draw out a floor plan of our new place before we got the keys--it was because I had no idea what I had seen.

Could it get any worse?

Yes. Yes it can.

I also discovered that our fridge doesn't fit into the fridge hole in the kitchen, that the stove only has two working burners, that the shower head is held together with a sock and some electrical tape, that the walls looked like a three year old used to touch them with charcoal-y hands, that the shower was moldy and covered in hair--pubic hairs. I found dead cockroaches everywhere including smashed in the door jam, cobwebs encircling the entire ceiling of the bedroom, the laundry door is broken and hanging off it's one attached roller, grease stains on the cupboards and all over the wall above the stove. There were cockroach eggs in the medicine cabinet and yucky stuff left in the cupboards and drawers.

But you know what really confirmed to me that this place was N-A-S-T-Y? It was when I went to clean the medicine cabinet today. I was Windex-ing the glass shelves and found that not one but BOTH sides of each shelf was covered in yucky stuff. That means whoever lived there last didn't clean the shelves--he just flipped them over.

I seriously wonder if this man had a mother because even wolf cubs know how to keep themselves clean.

I just cried and cried and cried on the phone with Jeremy while he was at work yesterday. It was literally just the thing that could throw me over the edge. And poor Jeremy... Not only did we find out our new house is a pit and that the visa is closer to being denied than approved, he also went to blow up his bike tire before he took off for work yesterday morning and it popped. So he had to run three miles to work. In the rain. And then run three miles home from work. Again in the rain. He also had so much work to do because his division goes to print on Friday (a day he's taking off to move) and he had to get his sub-title finished before he left, that he had to stay back two extra hours rather than come home at 5pm.

He was so tired. I was so tired. But we still needed to look at out new place together. So we went, took inventory and tried to brain storm ways to make all of our stuff fit (which took two hours to figure out). We didn't even eat dinner. And then he had to get up at 4am to do this stat dec stuff before work.

I feel spent mentally, emotionally and physically. My body is getting sick and I've had terrible cramps for days because of gas. I feel like my situation here gets dimmer and dimmer every day. It feels so hopeless to keep trying that it's almost comical! Seriously, sometimes I fall into mad fits of laughter over the absurdity of everything that has gone wrong. It's the stuff of fiction. It's like playing hide and seek and hiding in the dryer, only to have someone turn it on while you're in there. I'm being tumble dried.

The burning ring of fire. Mr. Cash, how did you know it would come to this?

As we lay on the floor of our new apartment last night, we kinda half-joked about going to Vegas. And then someone suggested it on Facebook. It doesn't sound half bad right now. We need a vacation.