LeftWingDuck

So we got my FLR(M)! That means that we can have our honeymoon (we leave for Berlin on Saturday) and when we return I should have the national insurance number I applied for so I should be able to polish my CV's and look for work. It will be nice to find something and not just eat at my savings but instead contribute to them.

We've come such a long way from me not being able to see J for an entire year and Skyping every 4-5 weeks or so (thank you BBM for existing) to me sat in our room eating food from the local Turkish restaurant. We even started the path to get me into his GP's practice which is needed as it turns out Prilosec (which I take daily for my GERD) despite being over the counter in the US is prescription only here. Luckily my brother sent a few boxes which will see me through my appointment with the nurse at the very least. And I have some nexium (not as good but it's better than nothing) to fill the gaps.

This time last year I was desperately hoping we would at this point in the year be waiting to hear back from my application for my fiancee visa so to have already been married for over a month, have my next visa and have actually had a bit of time to unwind from those stresses (we saw Jason Manford and Phill Jupitus in "The Producers" in Birmingham...god I love that show).

Granted none of this could have happened without the support of my parents. They let me keep the money from the lawsuit which makes me look economically more viable to the UKBA so I only had to work my tail off and save to get my visa application money (J paid for the second one) and for my living expenses. It's just so mental how pricey it is. I spent nearly $3000 on the first application and we paid to expedite the decision and it still took six weeks. We paid again for expedited decision this time (which means you have to attend in person) and a projected wait time of 2 hours turned into 4 hours and we were tethered to the home office in a room of shrieking children a good bit of the time. I swear to zod so many women hear a baby cry and want to care for it. I hear a baby cry and what remains of my ovaries shrivel up. Ugh babies. Gross! </rant>

Once our holiday is over not only will I begin looking for work but we begin the terrifying prospect of looking to buy a flat. Once again my parents are awesome in this respect as they gifted us a down payment on a flat for our wedding. No one can afford anything in London so it's a great help. But at 31 and 43 we have never once owned (not rented) our own space so the whole how to of it is a bit daunting. In in the first week of June, J and I will have been together for 3 years. It has been a rough ride to be sure. Nights of no sleep for all the tears, grumpiness, tons of money, a dash of heartbreak and a huge portion of working until you both feel like death (seriously...next time I may just go for a part time job seeing as every time I go for a 40 hour a week job I end up working 52 hours). But there is no one else I would have done all this for. Team Fox Kitty forever!

So yeah...still crap at updating my journals or uploading the art I have received. No huge surprise there but as some of you may have heard from other parts of the interwebs or even dA, I am no longer living in the USA and now wear a wedding band on my left hand.

Boyfriend/fiance (from last journal) and I had a rough go of it to be sure. They changed the visa laws in the summer of 2012 to make them significantly harder by basically adding a minimal amount of money to the procedure that was rather high. Fiance didn't make that at his permanent job and there was a bit of drama anyways (expecting him to do bonus work outside his field sans training and for no more money) so he was offered 6 months pay up front to look elsewhere and took it. This led to a long difficult time of three different contract jobs. Contract jobs worry J (husband) because they can literally decide to finish the contract whenever as soon as it goes beyond the length of the original signing. The first job which had promise ended when the contract expired. The second one made it clear that even though it was contract to permanent that it really was contract only with the dangling of the permanent carrot to lure people in.

Current job has been held for over a year. His contract was set to expire in Feb of 2014 but luckily they have kept him on. They really like him but unfortunately no budget to make him permanent. He would love to be permanent too so that we could move closer to his job. He commutes 3 hours everyday and on top of an 8 hour work day that is just exhausting him. He had surgery last April which they were nice enough to not terminate his contract over despite his being gone for a month. Then shortly thereafter they granted him time to come visit me in the US. Coincidentally he was in town when my parents were back visiting from Australia (where they have temporarily moved for work...I know I need to update more often). He met my parents, brother and grandma and everyone adored him. I was so sad when he left and I went to visit to drown my sorrows in friendship and burlesque performance...oh and tiny dogs.

When I got home I looked for work (the bank job I had in the last journal pulled their contract so I was laid off (in fact 70 something people were...it was a huge contract) after which I worked for a place that was basically AAA for semi trucks but we parted ways when my parents offered to have me spend my 30th birthday in Sydney with them to try and recover from the fact that I was working 52-60 hour weeks and the job said no. Sorry but an all expenses paid trip to Australia wins over your working me to death.) and got a job as a shift lead at Walgreens. Around this time J told me he wanted to switch jobs which bummed me out because we had planned on using my visit at Christmas time to plan and gather everything we needed to apply for my visa in the hopes that I would spend our third anniversary with him making plans for our wedding. However as the UK Yankee forum told me, once he switched jobs not only would it have to be a job that paid 18,600 GBP per year but he would have to hold the job for at least 6 months before we applied. Plus he was out of work during two of the down times for over a month. I wouldn't be able to be with him for our anniversary!

Desperate I asked him if he would mind staying at this job and applying for the visa immediately so that when I came to visit I could move out there and be with him. He decided it would be ok to try especially if I was willing to foot the bill for the first application (very very expensive). You can request when your visa starts so we requested when the ticket was bought for and promptly hit a few snags like you have to prove you have a wedding venue and date and that you've been buying things for the wedding like your dress. We had so hoped to plan those things together once I came over but luckily his mother checked with her church and they had March 21 open in their calendar which we grabbed as that would give us enough time to apply for the next visa without me having to leave the country to do so.

Even with expedited shipping it was an agonizing 6 weeks before they made a decision which they say they did in the email but you have to wait to get your passport and things mailed back before you find out what the decision was (thanks for that UKBA...bit of a heart attack) but when it arrived and I ripped open the package and flipped through my passport to reveal my visa it was worth it. 2.5 years of us both working 3 different jobs and saving as much as we could while visiting where we could (went a whole year between visits at one point which was killer) but we talked every day through it all. I moved over in December and spent my first Christmas with his family where I met his sister, brother in law, niece and his brother in laws parents. Had a miserable cold that lasted an entire month after Christmas and poor J got it so badly he had to miss a day of work when he blacked out on the stairs.

We faced all sorts of issues with the registry office that led to us having to go to Birmingham almost every weekend for 6 weeks which was beyond exhausting and they still gave us grief regarding our proof of address. I had to fight tooth and nail to actually get a bank account (thank you Halifax bank for being the greatest and giving me one without pulling me around). And all my fancy plans for what I would do with all this time off (I'm not legally allowed to even look for work until I am approved and receive my next visa) went out the window with all the stuff that had to be done.

It was all worth it though to be in Sutton Coldfield on the night of March 20th with J and his best (wo)man Sam (a dear friend of both of ours), and his wife, (my maid of honor) and my family in a hotel seeing how everything was coming together and just laughing and having a great time. The wedding and reception weren't perfect but I was so happy I didn't care and luckily most of the guests felt the same way. There was plenty of food for everyone and my niece really brought the house down with her dancing. Oh to be 6 again. I had hoped I would make it until 10:00 but at 9:30 I popped into the restroom and nearly fell asleep washing my hands so we made our excuses and spent that night and any part of the next day when we weren't eating or saying goodbye to people, sound asleep.

Also I was lucky enough that all of my international visitors came in waves so first my mother and brother came out so we all three went to Paris for like 3-4 days and Barcelona for like 3-4 days which was stressful but also nice. I do so love Barcelona. Then my dad came in and we spent time with the family including having them come out and enjoy dinner with us out where we live in the Southeastern bit of London. Then Sonny came out and he and his wife were so tired they just enjoyed meeting J at dinner time and rested.  Then Meghan came the next day so we all went to the Tower of London. After the wedding before J and I even got back to London on Monday my parents and brother were already gone. We did dinner with Sonny, Gayla and Meghan and then in the morning S & G left. Meghan stayed until the next Monday so I was able to show her around. Unfortunately I caught a cold so I wasn't my super enthusiastic lets see everything tour guide self. But I think I made up for it as her maid of honor gift was tickets to see where Harry Potter was filmed and she's a huge huge fan. I enjoyed the movies and read the first book but never got as deep into it as she did but I still had fun on the tour. The set pieces were quite awesome.

And now I prep like mad for my next visa. Our appointment is in person a week from this Saturday! They will supposedly  make the decision then and there and then post my passport off to get it's official page. So if all goes well by the end of April I will qualify to work in the UK and will be allowed to leave the country again. If this is the case we are going to go on two weeks vacation starting the 9th of May for our honeymoon in which we plan to go to Berlin. Then it will be straight into the job hunt for me and into a more permanent job hunt for J.

Thank you to all of our friends for all the well wishes over the years and to everyone who came out. Also thanks to who took a freelance commission for our wedding invitations during a busy time of the year and man did he go above and beyond the call of duty with it. It's the most amazing commission either. I will make sure to link to it when we get our wedding site up and running but for now I must say if you need freelance work, go talk to Kevin. The quality of his work is outstanding!

Now it's time for this married lady to go print off a million bank statements to prove I still have money to the UKBA. Til next time!