i-129 and i-130 approved yesterday - Finally.
818 days after I was supposed to have moved with spouse.

809 days and counting up, and no update.
This past week, also my other half has emailed, and mailed (paper versions) of letters crying for attention for our paperwork inferno to politicians, senators, even White House.
Guess what? No acknowledgment.
Meanwhile I am amazed I managed to get out of be in the mornings, to go to work, to try to look like I believe in anything any more.

Tomorrow it's 800 days, and there , and there is not an update in this whole time. I feel like crying, like crying really loud.

Senators and politicians all were eager to help, but it seems nothing can happen when it's on the "namecheck" that is taking its time. With no legal deadline. Beyond two years is beyond bullshit, and I and my spouse are still living in separate continents as they are taking their time.

Enough is enough. I'm ready to give up and go anywhere else as long as I can be with my spouse.

But one last try this weekend. 800 days with no updates is way beyond bullshit, and - hey, some senators cared but can't fix it - and my president's opinion was that "it is not in president's job description..." to care about her citizens. Michael Moore probably gets too many thousands of worse letters a week, so I don't expect he'd do any more than my president either. One last try - hoping to get some attention with PRINTED medias and in the net somewhere. Just this one try.

Hello. Welcome to my life. I've been married to a US citizen since February 2006, and I can't still live with my spouse as the paperwork is taking its time...

When the whole immigration mess, we getting incorrect and corrupt info from USCIS happened in 2007 and we acted trusting that information, and the whole delay of .. 770+ days and no updates since since the worst day of my life, I feel I've ranted and ranted and ranted.

Yet I never go to the details on what the daily life is. It feels repetitive, as it's been all inside my head since that day. And I feel it's enough to have said it once. But it keeps haunting day after day.

When I was supposed to go, I had quit at my job. So when I decided to stay instead of going to stay at parents, it was all idle, unreal, without much connection to the place. Others went to work in morning, and I (staying in same place) woke up, forced myself to get up, do something, force myself find a job...

Before I got the job (the second job - the first one ended up being so bad that I regret going there the second day at all) it was all bad. Get up from the bed becuse I didn't want to know what happens if I don't - it is like anorexia when you force yourself to eat one proper meal a day, as a deal with yourself to keep sane, except it is getting out of bed and trying to do the daily life. I wore sunglasses for months, as I didn't want to be seen, crying or not. And I could fall in my world, in the memory of being in that f-ing office... the past two days I've had again a headache, all body hurting and falling into pieces, I don't want to get up but I force myself to. And then the not crying gets the headache... today was close to walking out of work and leaving everything as it was, but even with headache that blocks half of the brain and makes my stomach turn upside down and makes me white and sick, I still stay.

It's a month until it's the longest days of the year again, and my brain is screaming it needs more light and more sun. My skin is as smooth as a baby elephant's bottom and itching as much. I've treated myself with nice scented soaps and the skin is so try and scaly that anything except pure vaseline to wash it hurts. And it's not just skin, it's stomach and whole digestive system not tasting anything any more, it's all stressed in either direction, overclocked or retentive. And fingers get so dry the touchpad of the laptop is not working.
Cry yourself to sleep, wake up tired and unrested, with a headache which even that isn't fresh from that morning... have a host shower hoping that will freshen your mind up and you get out of it smelling like pharmacy with all that vaseline and salty tears to puff the face. The hot shower isn't working. A book will, after you read page by page till the brain shuts down for a few hours of standby.
It's all "just body" but everything from digestion to sleep or being in constant jetlag is controlled by stress in the end. The weekends aren't exactly free either - standby for work, so all forced and all with the California smile on those days too. Get up, day after day, hoping it's one day when something happens, bringing you together. And it ends up being just sucked out of energy hour after hour...

Get up in the morning, act one more day... If I was a laptop my battery would need replacement. I'm failing when I shouldn't. I fall in my thoughts, I cry, I lose the hope, I fall in memories to the day I don't want to, I feel hopeless and know one day it's all going to be too much soon.

And when after a day of of bs at work and in daily life you are finally back home it's all crying alone. Shoulders and hugs in a chat are about as much a real thing as a smokers hotline is for getting your nicotine fix.

Soon 5 years here. I have never lived 5 years anywhere.

I'm used to having to go somewhere else, and being compact enough to move my stuff in a plane.
I'm not used to having a room full of stuff.
I'm not used to living for years in the same place, to feel even remotely like being home anywhere.
I used to feel at some point home in this house. And I never really felt home anywhere I've lived.
I feel trapped and nailed down, with things around.. I don't belong.

Yesterday at work there was a team lunch out. We went to a nice lunch place, all of us. Apart of me and an English lad, it's all Irish in the team. They started talking about normal people stuff - buying a house, who's getting married, how a lady at work sold her sports car as she's pregnant and so on.
And I fell out of my orbits. And when I got out of work and walked in town, I felt as misplaced as when I'm just tourist somewhere for a week but would like to blend in. I don't belong...
And that stuck. Going to work I still feel like when going to university, I maybe understand better why I still dress like a student.. why I feel idle.
Like a gypsy trying to live in a house.
And I suddenly want to go to airport and fly out, anywhere, somewhere out of my life, start it fresh somewhere else, leave everything here as it is, and disappear from it. A fresh start.
I can't have a normal life at the moment anyway - I can't commit to any other work than what I have now (and I hate "volunteering" my weekends that I can't unvolunteer). I can't commit to a house, or even a car, in the hopes that something moves on... and nothing happens, day after day, year after year.
And it all feels like when I first went away.
Wake up in a wrong place, vomit as the nerves don't take it and you just don't belong there. Do the daily life for a few months, without understanding a word of that language there, then go back to your second home.. do the life, go away, always have to go away, and when you much later want to stay it's all f-ed up, you still can't.
When you can't even be where your place is.

Just like relationships.
When being where you wanted to wasn't ever possible, the relationships ended up being long distance by force.
And when you finally meet someone that you want to be the rest of your life with, and get married to, it's still being all f-ed up, timewarped and still can't be together on the same continent. Still waking up every f-n morning hoping maybe something happens now, it's days and months and years forward, wake up in morning, go to work, go to sleep, rinse repeat, hope something happens finally..
And then you get timewarped again.. as if all life is a joke, as if you can't get past what life was before you met him, all being doomed never being home anywhere, and never having a present non-distance relationship.

Angry, tired, really tired, sad, beyond desperate in paperwork.. tired of not being able to commit in anything, in not believing in anything... I woke up as tired as I always go to sleep as, had a bad headache by midday - stuck at stupid calls, 4 customers needing me on the same exact time on phone, missing my breaks, and when I much later than my shift ended end up getting home it's so cold and windy, my muscles and head hurt from the cold and brain freezes on lack of sugars.. I want to curl up in bed in warm, read a nice book, and just one day wake up where I don't have to deal with any of this.

Is normality too much to ask?
Being able to feel home and safe anywhere, or at least somewhere.
Being able to live every day with the person you love, no more long distance BS. Going somewhere with the company you like for the holidays, instead of feeling trapped where you are now as you can't go anywhere.
Closing the eyes in the evening when falling asleep, and then waking up rested in the morning with no nightmares.
When I feel unrested I just want to go. And I no more know where to go next. Away. As if I ever belonged anywhere.

It took nearly two months for the president's secretary to reply candy-coatedly that "it is not within the president's job description to..." As I have the unfortunate (but in my work ah so desperately needed) skill to absorb the essential behind the coating, all I hear is "the president doesn't give a @#!@$". That is in all honesty very much what the embassy's attitude was for the split of my family in 2007. "US can do whatever they like, we don't give a @##". Great country I have.
Guess what? Even if one day I could vote without spending a cent to go to the voting booth (in expenses for traveling thru half the country) I don't think I bother any more. It's not among my duty description as a citizen any more.

As a side note, when my other half was here for Easter, two days before travel a note from San Antonio was received, they wanted to fingerprint... at this point, I was quite positive they had totally screwed up and were considering the wrong one of us to be immigrating, but at least that was in order. So after the trip, my other half is fingerprinted, and the fingerprinting personnel were promising that the form signed and those fingerprints are ONLY because something is moving ahead. I will be as always very much looking forward to seeing that something or anything going forward in this 760+ days of nothingness.

It has been practically two years since I was supposed to move with my other half.
Two years without an official update.
Two years of small bureacrats, politicians and senators and whatnot "seeing what they can do".
Two years of nothing.
I feel less close to being there than I did in 2002.

There has been absolutely nothing going on forward for my paperwork since the note that they'd open a third file to find out why it's taking so long. Great, whatever that was supposed to do has shown no results.

I have updates in average once a month here and as you see it's mostly "there are still no updates". The rest is too repetitive.

Every single day life feels misery for being apart of the only person I want to spend my life with.

There are days I want to escape my own life, and just take a cab to the airport in the morning and take the first flight one way anywhere it ends up going, and leave all the BS behind.

There are days when I wish I could cry, when I'm numb and frozen, can't even cry except in the mind. I just want this BS to be over, and be together.

There are limits on how long even the Most Perfect Ever long distance relationship can survive. And if it was anything else than what I'd believe in all these years it would have faded away. I'm afraid to admit to even myself that I've still got a fear that I'm drifting away, that I'm really not here, that I wake up one morning or that I don't wake up.

In all this time I've become terrible with deadlines. It's hard to put any deadline in life. How long should we wait before we get here or somewhere else instead? What if something happens the next week? If nothing happens then what else do we want to do? Work, study..? Some places would be awesome to study and I'm not afraid of the finances if we can live on the same continent. But the deadlines for applying... what else paperwork do we need? When do we do what to get where? Days drift by, while every single day at work drains me out, on a non-work day I can't relax and I feel I get nothing done even when I get the average stuff in daily life go by. It's just enough.

Over two years. How can they do this? They have no legal deadlines for getting my family together.

The FBI namecheck backlog was supposed to be cleared by the end of February 2009. Surprise surprise I have no updates or no official notification of my file being cleared.

And the president hasn't given any kind of indication of having actually done or being willing to do anything. So barely 700 days with no reason for the lack of updates for the file's part. Three years + married, and still can't live with spouse. Occasionally there are even seven days a week when I don't want to get out of bed any more.

I emailed my president today. Let's see if she'll (want to) do anything to clear this paperwork mess meanwhile.

And the final Famous Last Drop is Very Very Close.

I didn't expect the paperwork to be ready in a week or two like in most civilized countries (like Australia or Brazil etc). I knew it would take months. And I know during these months it would take it would not be possible to plant months ahead.

But it has been nearly two years now of not being able to plan more than one month ahead.

No sense in getting a car (where do you get a pre-pay monthly insurance for it and sell in two weeks if needed urgently?), no sense in changing house, or job, or committing to anything long term. No full semester evening courses (which wouldn't fit me anyway with the killer schedule), no cheap travel planned 8 months in advance to catch the best deals, not even planning your Christmas off from work in November. Because you can't plan. Because if the paperwork ever would move forward, I'd have to get all the certificates etc Immediately and ASAFP or then be told to go back to the end of the queue of the embassy. They say the embassy my interviews should be made at (where it was filed for) would be fast, but screw that - nearly two years and nothing.

Except a senator's letter last week to the other half. "Can't do really anything now, it's on FBI namecheck and they have no legal time limit for how long it can take". Gee, that is promising but at least it is an update. While I had read a year and half ago that in case of delayed namecheck or 'in administration' status they could delay it for 6 months but then have to move forward as if the results were positive, this hasn't happened, and then if needed halt if there was a negative result.

Just because there most likely is an Irish citizen with my name or close to my name, who is in no-fly or plain not-wanted list, it is taking FBI years to not be able to distinguish me from that other person. I have no Irish citizenship, but was considering applying for it - as in May it will be 5 years that I've been here (and was planning to stay 3-4 months then) and that should qualify wiht the work history for applying for it.

Before I got my current job, I was seriously considering studying something in Mexico. A work visa there would be have been workful to get, and Monterrey would still have been a car drive away from the other half. But I got a paid job that seemed to be close to my dream job at some point, and for the past maybe 14-15 months I have been constantly stressed and ready to quit, but haven't know where to go or what to do next. How are you supposed to plan anything when you can't plan even two months ahead?

In a few days it will be my third wedding anniversary. And it will be spent alone as we are still on separate continents.

I feel betrayed, angry, frustrated, and often have lost all hope and faith in anything ever happening in this Process. After years, I still can't even visit the spouse without two trips to Dublin for a visa and a humongous stress while hoping the immigration tier 1 officials would like me and not see me as a threat just because I'm married to one of their citizens.

I feel like crying everytime anyone asks. My mum and my sister ask every time, and every time I have to answer them that there are no news.

There are people whose marriage doesn't even last three years, while we can't still be together after being married for three years. And still no estimate for fix.

The past three nights I have woken from nightmares, looking for the other half among thousands of people while traveling. Talking to my uncle about death, having my hair fall out in my dreams, and so further. I don't wake up rested, and my work doesn't allow me to ever feel relaxed or even happy that often any more. Yet not being able to plan ahead has kept me there, hoping maybe next month there is something. And now I'll be looking at options to study - somehting, anything. Enough is enough... as long as we'll be together anywhere that'll do.

The president of US is changing after 662 days of BS of this waiting...
I will believe things will change when I will see any concrete change - an official status update, an apology for delay, an expedite for making the rest go faster - anything. Anything - as so far it still feels like nothing.

I don't feel much like celebrating the president change - I'm just really tired. After a weekend of only sleeping, I still don't feel rested enough to face a new week at work. I just want to sleep and I can't even do that properly. It's only been two weeks since returning from Christmas holidays, but I'm slowly getting close to having enough of it already. When all you need is the last drop to just go.

660 days, and to a great surprise, no official updates on why it's taking so slow. Only hearing from around the corners that the US government cannot distinguish me from an Irish national on the not-wanted list and with my name. Thatswhy they haven't bothered to give me any updates in nearly 2 years, and ungodly amount of senators and other people that should matter more than myself asking for the update. It is well past the stage "I believe when I'll see it". I have seen nothing. Having a resident visa for my spouse's native and home country seems to become as easy to imagine as water turning to wine or walking to a pot full of gold at the other end of rainbow in Blarney (which is just a few miles away).

At work I see signs I don't want to see: pay rises frozen. IT going network nazi. Hiring freeze. People quitting. People that don't quit being moved to other teams. People moved to teams that don't make sense for the skills they have. Everyone forced to "volunteer" to work on weekends - while for most it is only a Saturday or a Sunday every few weeks, for me that means sucking both days at weekend for on call, and that having been a month in a row with no weekends at some stage in the past few months. Surprisingly I'm not in the greatest mood, or at my greatest motivation. When I get home or when it's weekend I usually only want to sleep. And they can do all this forcing to work on weekends and reducing headcount with the excuse of hiring freeze which is with the excuse of global recession.

I have been asked my resume for two jobs this week. I wasn't planning on active work hunt, so 'only if asked'. One of them has since got a canned 'no' back since. The other would be in UK, and I'm waiting for hearing back more. Maybe this weekend I should prepare a new resume at monster for UK, or figure where we want to be next, and maybe find out how much more civil Canada would be in getting a visa for a professional work.

Friday evening, 660 days feeling miserable, to which a canned response from that job isn't exactly making me feel any better.

655 days, and guess what, no official updates from USCIS or any government.

I did spend ten days with the spouse around Xmas/New Year, and every day it felt good. Every day it felt like I was alive, and now again every day I feel like a zombie, just forcing myself through the mundane tasks in the daily life and trying to have something to smile for every day.

It's past the darkest days of the year, but it's dark nevertheless, it's cold, it's gray, raining, miserable out. I don't want to go to sleep alone, wake up alone, do all my daily tasks alone any more. Nearly three years married. This isn't as I imagined it. Not in my wildest dreams would I have thought that after so long I'm still stuck here, and my love life consists still mostly of ichats and skype messages. And I know I'll spend the wedding day alone too, a Sunday this year. I just want to go away, hide in a cave somewhere without anyone around, and cry until it's all sorted. How many more days, weeks, months..?

With all this BS, there isn't a day spent with each other that would be taken for granted. And there will never be.

Six hundred thirty-three days.

Senators from a fly-ower state are pestering USCIS in CA.
They promised a few weeks ago an update some day soon.

I saw my spouse last month, and we spent the Thanksgiving together in another country.

I will see the spouse again from after Christmas (since this world infested with the "global recession" mantra, one is forced to work on 24th December..) until 6th January. At least that will be joy.

Five hundred ninety-nine days since I was supposed to move with the spouse, since we discovered that one should never ever, under any circumstances trust the info given from USCIS hotline.

Five hundred ninety-nine days without an ETA for fix, for me actually finally getting there.

The lawyer has been changed, as there wasn't any results for quite a while.

Angry letters to senators in a few states have been written, and some congresswoman from Washington has called the spouse a few weeks ago, and has said to be investigating the delay.

I have seen my spouse in January, April, and August for a total of way less than a month.

In August, visiting my mum, the total costs of only to get thre were $ 3000 for the two of us, and one flying only from within EU. The total of this year travel expenses to see each other has been close to $ 7 000, and with thanksgiving and Christmas, this will be $ 11-12 0000. For nothing else except seeing each other. I can't wait to be able to not have to spend so much in just being together and for so limited time.

I don't want one more year of this. Waiting and waiting for nothing to happen. It's like a tunnel with no light, a tunnel that just keeps going on and on and on and you never arrive to the other end, and that as a person who hates the tunnels and all places underground, speeing in the tunnel to just get out of there faster. There is no light. There is nothing more to indicate its possible end than hearing others go thru faster from another tunnels.

It does not bring any hope or faith to know being just an anomaly in the statistics of how long hte visa processing takes. Or a number. I am just an acceptable level of % variation it may take to process the paperwork; the file number' the number of days...



The only reason for this sunset picture is the warm colors (while freezing in Europe) and it just feels like that, when the sun is the hope and it's fading.

No updates. 540 days, which according to the government people is "a few weeks" to process.
I bet we will get a real update before these "few weeks" have gone by.

Once you are in love you want to spend all the time and the rest of your life with that person. And when it is the true love, after days, weeks or even after years of being together with that person, still an hour without that person can feel like a week, and a week can be like an eternity.

Imagine that. For a person without too many securities or definite feelings or too strong instincts in the life, for once you know you have met the person you want to spend the rest of your life with. And after doubts and BS and lot of time later you decide to get married, and go thru whatever BS is needed to get that done. So you can have the happily ever after. This is where all the fairytales end, as do all the love stories (except those of Mills and Boons, marketed for single moms). This is where it's all going to be happily ever after, dancing on the roses, and champagne and strawberries and everything it was supposed to be after the happies day of your life (which was the day you got married, as the multi billion wedding industry has been telling you for all your life).

Apart of the clandestine wedding day (that they didn't want to give you off from the work), three days later... alone again. He had to go, to work. But he would be back, no later than in 8 weeks, and the paperwork would solve, and it would be the happily together part. In 12 weeks, he was here, but it was the two of us surviving in a small salary, one salary, for the political BS of the country.. it was legally supposed to get maximum 6 months to get the permit for work, but after 9 months of no updates and no ETA it was time to do something. There is only so much you can do without going crazy during the day - when you can't even fly to a job interview as the government is sitting forever on the only passport, or be driven anywhere when the driver's license is there - so it was time to try it the other way around. Even though those 9 months together without a break were having a tiny room in a house with 4 other people and going insane of playing World of Warcraft and trying to not go insane for work insanities of the other part... that was still time together. And it was supposed to be time together after then. Forever together. That was the point of getting married.

If until before those 9 months together on 25 % of the income of before it had been a week together and 3-5 months apart again, now it was together and we wanted to secure that. So there comes informing on how to do if you would be offered a job and the details are so and so... and the sympatic lady from the government sponsored hotline, USCIS, adviced on how to do it best. The USCIS must be funded by the lawyers making money from the customers they get when people follow the advice they give. It just wasn't going to happen. "A few weeks" until we could be together, said the lady of the second line border control patrol who tore us apart. This "a few weeks" has turned up to be a year and half with every day apart still sucking nearly as much it suck that day. It has been a bit over a month together since then, split to a week every now and then. And the rest of the time being vrying in disperation, waking up depressed, just wanting to cry but feeling the chest being like a thumbstone. It has been discovering the limits of patience (negative by now), how long one can stretch before the disperation gets to the extreme, before it all snaps. Looking for still some light in the tunnel.

"When are you going to be there?"
"Oh I wish I knew. I still haven't got an update."
"But hasn't it been quite a while by now? Months?"
"Yes, except it's measured in years, not just months by now..."
And at this point of any conversation with a friend you usually hear some comments that I am not going to repeat here.
"Why are they so ineffective?"
Just because they can. Just because it doesn't matter, you are no more than a number, first the number of your file, then the numbers on the paycheck of your lawyers, then just in most cases a number in the divorce statistics (shocking. People who were married to stay together, but were torn apart divorce in the end), and then some numbers behind the pie chart illustrating how long the process is taking now... what does that matter?

To keep going on the daily life, waking up alone, doing the day of work alone, crashing in the evening alone, it is only surviveable with a busy job. But when it gets even busier, and you reach close to the snapping point occasionally, it gets to thin ice. Even if you wanted to quit, where to go next? After a few weeks last year since the USCIS incident, it became apparent I could not take it alone without doing anything. It was haunting me days and nights. So can't just go for feeling suffocated or needing some air. And you stretch until the work stretches to cover all the weekends and you find yourself with one more autumn, days getting shorter, you still there in the same house, in a country you were initially supposed to stay a few months... it is no more dancing on the roses but on a thin ice. The ice will keep your weight for a while, maybe even all over the lake if you get thin and light and ethereal enough, but there will be the snap. Unless you manage to dissolve to the thin air completely, there will be the snap.

Human mind can put up with nearly everything once it becomes 'the normal'. Being beaten, having your self confidence crushed daily, dealing with someone close that escapes their troubles in alcohol, violense, distance, eating or not eating, substances, gambling, other people, sex, nearly anything... nearly anything can become the normal. When you look at that in anyone else's life it is easy to see it is not working but not when it's in your own life. Or when you see something is not working, then the amazing part is how people manage to live with the BS they are living in. In many situations it would really take the decision to go.

This isn't one of situations I will get to my normalcy concept. After how many years married still forced being apart for the umpteenth BS? No updates, and after numerous letters to senators and insiders looking at the whys of it, and crying loudly around there aren't many constructive alternatives left. Medias don't care. Anyone of friends or acquintances that care can't do a single thing - except be there when needed and help survive the daily BS apart. One deadline was by the end of this year, but that being too far, by the end of thanksgiving week. By then either there is an ETA for the fix and a RCA for why long the BS will have taken so long, or we are seriously going anywhere we can stay together now. And until then, I am actively scanning the visa procedures and timelines for selected countries.

It is still August, and with this impossibility to plan the life a month ahead, I have applied and got off the week for Thanksgiving as has he. In a few weeks we will be booking the flights to Argentina for a week. For one more week together...

I never imagined being married would be like this. Waking up alone, doing your daily life alone, going to bed and sleeping alone. Day after day, except the visits every few months for a week, while waiting for the paperwork... or I did know this would have to be the situation for a while, for a few weeks, maybe for a few months, but it has been 2 and 1/2 years of being married, and I still can't visit my spouse's country. That's it, I've had it.

This time he could only have 6 days of holiday, so we figured it would be best to go visit my mum - a lonely widow since January when my dad passed away. I headed there a week earlier, and M flew a week after, and we helped her and did whatever one is supposed to do there. And then back to our daily lives - he in the sunny Texas, I in the year around rainy Ireland, that is making me really annoyed at the weather here. It is the fifth year in a row with no summer for me (since I don't count a week or two weeks of sun breaks every 1-2 years as being summer, but only a week of break). The first week back hasn't been easy. I can't deal with this weather any more, but I don't have an alternative either. The days are getting shorter and darker - every year there is a limit when my body starts to scream that it can't take any shorter days, and it's all downhill from there to late April when I'll start to wake up slowly again. Last year that point was in September, this year it was last Monday. Walking up to work, and body started to scream that it can't take this no more. But what can I do, no sense in moving to another city in the same country, and can't really look at migrating to other EU states either - for how long? Oh yes, I will be working for your company for the next ... [mumble].

No updates. How long is this still supposed to last? 2,5 years married. Everyone is asking since last year when I will move there, and where is my visa process... no updates, I have no clue, I wish I knew. And the answers and their reactions are always the same. Yes I do know some senators are supposedly looking at why it's taking so long, and someone from internal on our side is supposed to do the same.

But this is taking so forever. If I was married to any other person than M, I would have walked away by now. Fsck this. No more of this endless waiting, no more this being half alive for 4 months and alive only for a week of visit, being miserable in the daily life when it would matter after a bad day at work to get some real life hugs, on the days of normal life when I don't bother going to do grocery shopping for a month because the shops depress me and I can't deal with the daily life alone, and when I would want to cook a proper meal for us but I call an apple or a potato with a glass of wine 'dinner'. I don't feel like socializing without my other half in the evenings, so the day is spent in the internet from the moment I wake up to the moment I fall asleep alone (including work).

Last March he was offered a decent job here, and we decided no then as it was supposed to take "90 days" or "maybe not in 90 days but this summer" to get me there. Since there are no updates, and once there will be an update such as the package received, it will not be only 30 days, there is no way I will be there this summer of the Northern hemisphere. Maybe by the end of this summer in Buenos Aires but that is past what I have patience for. "If nothing has happened by the end of the year, let's see again where we want to be". Or rather, if by Thanksgiving week there is no concrete update with a concrete end of this BS in vista, that's it. I am keeping an eye 3/4 open for the countries we could both live and work in with a much faster visa process for the next 5-10 years. So far concidering New Zealand and Australia as strong alternatives. One more requirement is that the weather will not make me go nuts in winters. Without that criteria, Ireland could be an option. I just feel tired of being here, and dead tired of this no ETA wait for this bureaucratic hell.

Thanksgiving he will have a week of holiday, and the logical thing would be to come here. I am sick of me never traveling anywhere any more, so we are looking at the options where to go. So far the strongest two alternatives are Winnipeg (close to M's parents) and Buenos Aires (always wanted to see, and it will be summer there). Among the other alternatives, Munich, Portugal, Iceland...

When we will be back to our separate locations again after Thanksgiving, if there is no concrete update, that is the official "that's it, fsck it, let's move along" from me, and we will be looking at which countries would like to welcome us and not treat like terrorists for the sake of being married.

Court backs EU citizens' spouses

The European Union's top court has ruled that non-EU nationals married to EU citizens are entitled to live in their spouse's country.
The court overruled a law in the Republic of Ireland, which grants residency only to those who have previously lived in an EU member state.

The European Court of Justice had studied the cases of four non-EU nationals married to Irish citizens.
It said the Irish refusal of residence permits contradicted an EU directive.
"The right of a national of a non-member country who is a family member of a Union citizen to accompany or join that citizen cannot be made conditional on prior lawful residence in another member state," the ruling said.

"The (EU) Directive applies to all Union citizens who move to or reside in a member state other than that of which they are a national, and to their family members who accompany them or join them in that member state."

The case against the Irish justice ministry was brought by four African men married to EU citizens resident in Ireland. The men had been refused residence permits.
The court said the host member state "is, however, entitled to impose penalties, in compliance with the Directive, for entry into and residence in its territory in breach of the national rules on immigration".

It was about time. From 2005 until now, any non-Irish-but-EU-citizen married to a non-EU citizen has usually spent over 6 months without documents, and anxious whether being approved or not. Of my friends, those who rushed usually got refused.

Several of my friends married to non-EU citizens, resident here once, were denied this. Even when the spouse is American and the EU-spouse is British...

Incredibly enough, M got the the residency. After 14 months... when it is already too late.

Nearly 2 1/2 years being married.
This isn't what I imagined it would be like.

I imagined long ago being able to be together in the daily life, and not deal any more with the life in 2 continents.
I imagined we'd live together for a long time already.
I imagined I didn't have to go thru any more Irish "summers" of 13 centigrade and weeks of nearly constant rain.
I imagined I didn't live without him and with still 4 housemates.
I imagined being able to wake next to him, after going to sleep next to him, and being able to curl around him if I woke up at night.

Happiness isn't made of the big things.
It's the small daily things - sunshine, having friends around, having the one person around you who most makes you happy to be on this planet.

But the happines seems often so far from me.
Monday to Friday, wake up, go to work, try to do everything with success in a job that should have had three people to do one's job, get home after way too many hours, directly, without shopping, bars, social life... chat a while, go to sleep, rince, repeat.
Saturday and Sunday, sleep, and realize everything you wanted to do you just can't get done as there is no energy left.
Calling mum and asking how she is doing, realizing you yet can't tell when you'll be visiting as it'll depend on the other half's availability to be on the same continent.
And getting unhappy or grumpy with weather, with time passing by, days, weeks, months, with no measurable advances in the paperwork. I don't have much faith left in ever getting the paperwork done. It's as with any paranormal phenomenon or religion: when it proves it exists, I will believe it then. Before I'll have all papers and stamps and be there, it is no more concrete than UFOs or any Judeo-based flavor of god to me.

I love my job, and I think it is a good thing that I am busy and don't have time to notice that I'm unhappy, to put it mildly, on how long this BS is taking. I love my job, but on the idle moments home alone on a weekend, instead of oing anything or going to Dublin as I'd planned to do for a month, I'm browsing mindless, having a nap when the brain goes off, and crying for no apparent reason.

When life isn't all roses, and all roses are on e-cards, there still are real spines in them.