Pileup

Why so quiet around here?  On Monday we got the go-ahead from Oxford to apply for our visas.  This has now consumed pretty much every free minute.  It seems the UK has outsourced this process to private contractors, and apparently none of them can form a clear, unambiguous, grammatically-correct English sentence.  So we’re scratching our heads over just about every question.  If you have questions, you can call the 900 number listed for a fee of $3 per minute (!!!).  And, once we’re done jumping through online hoops, paying them handsomely for this pleasure, we get to trek to either Halifax or Ottawa for a five-minute scan of our faces and fingerprints, then mail it all off to another Canadian office with more fees for expedited processing so that we get our passports back in time to return to the States.  Ahhh, just lovely.

But in the meantime, Sydney’s also reformatting my computer (it was definitely time), so we’re slowly getting that back up and running.  Much griping by him about installing Microsoft software, but I’m not sure I want to learn one more new thing right now.  Seems we’ve got plenty of that coming up.

Katherine turned 16 months old yesterday.  She celebrated by grabbing the diaper cream while I was changing her, eating a fair amount of it while I wasn’t looking, and throwing up in the middle of the night.  Repeatedly.  The lady at poison control was very helpful (especially for 1:30am), though she laughed when I described the contents of my diaper cream (aloe vera, lavender, and lots of “natural” goodies).

And I’m trying to pursue real estate in Oxford from afar.  They need to make a dictionary to help Americans decipher the cryptic terms in those apartment listings . . . white goods, anyone?  All I care about is a washer/dryer.  Okay, okay, and a second bedroom, access to lots of green space outside, and price.  And a few other things . . .

Hopefully some good things to come at the end of this week, though we’ll probably be under the cloud of the visas for another week or so.

Erin