So now at least we know that I can still put on some good hysterics.
After discovering the fine print on the consulate’s website that informed me that I needed to make an appointment (between 12:00 and 12:30 only for long-stay visa applicants, please), we searched and searched until we found the other fine print that led to the online reservation system. And watched, increasingly sick, as week after fully-booked week flashed by.
My appointment is on June 19. I had been sort of expecting that my visa would be in the mail by June 19. If they don’t even start the process until then, and it can take two months (Nick’s only took one, but they tell you to allow for two), then you do the math that has been keeping me up at night. And then there’s the possibility that I will show up and be missing one vital piece of paper, or find out that I’ve been applying for the wrong type of visa all along, since our situation almost fits the criteria for three different kinds, and I emailed the consulate just like they said to do, and they still have not written back.
Do you hear me, [email address removed after I decided that I really don't need to risk their wrath right now]? Nick got a reply from the D.C. consulate in one day; I’ve been waiting for nearly two weeks.
Look: I Heart the USA, okay? It’s not that. A lot of it is that I hate being away from Nick, but we can talk every day, and he understands why I have to be here.
You know who doesn’t understand? Jolie, who is being traumatized on a daily basis, and will wind up with emotional scars that will cripple her for the remainder of her fifteen or so years of life, during which she would otherwise have been as sweet and sparkling and wonderful as she was when I left.
Compounding matters is our gardienne-cum-dog-walker, who, after ignoring half of my careful instructions, was upset to discover that Jolie was not happy to see her (we have reason to believe that she thought she was being kidnapped). Most people would assume that she was just frightened of this huge change in her usually very constant routine, but not our gardienne: “She said Jolie has psychological problems because we shelter her too much,” Nick told me after the first day.
Excuse me?
This set off a complete meltdown in our dining room, during which I drew up two plans for immediate elopement and sent them off to Nick for review. But we’ve come down a bit now, so everyone can just relax, because there is no secret wedding currently in the works, no matter what you hear in the coming weeks. ‘Kay?
There have been good points, of course. My flight got in almost an hour early, for one, and I had really good seats on both legs of it, because the woman at check-in started chatting with me about New York, and then it was like I was a lobster in a restaurant tank that she had inadvertently named. “I only have middle seats left, and I can’t move anyone,” she nearly wailed. She explained that she couldn’t move anyone at least three times, as if I would ever have asked her to do so, before eventually pulling an aisle seat in the bulkhead row out of nowhere. It was awesome.
And the thing I brought back that goes with my wedding dress didn’t get damaged at all, although I got increasingly pissed off at the woman behind me who felt the need to keep taking down her giant “carry-on” from the overhead bin right next to my helpless, crushable package. And all she was taking out was reading material: a magazine, a book, a sheaf of papers, another magazine. It all would have fit easily in the seat pocket in front of her, if she had just taken out everything she wanted to read at one time. This is not rocket science. She literally must have gotten up seven times during the eight-hour flight.
And thanks to Nick’s mother, I now have a lovely shower dress and adorable shoes, and I found crème fraîche in our supermarket, so I can make good oatmeal and potage parmentier, and I went to the doctor’s and discovered that I have lost more weight than I thought I had, and I have reason to be hopeful about the immigration thing, although not enough reason to say what it is yet.
And Nick held the phone up to Jolie’s ear so I could say hello, and she went nuts.