Monday, January 21, 2008

How SIL is able to make my life hellish

Okay, so maybe I wasn't very clear with the whole SIL situation, as I seem to have confused Islay. Because I favor clarity AND because it's therapeutic to blurt it all out, I'll give more detail here:

In brief:
SIL is from another country. I've been asking her to get her passport since November. She still hasn't gotten passport (no sense of urgency, clearly not American, nor type A like me). We need her here by March 15. We still have to get an appointment at the American embassy in her country for approval for a Visa. Can't do it without a passport in hand. No sense in making appointment if you don't have passport. From the time you call for appointment there's a 10 day lead time before you can schedule an appointment. Then it takes another week to actually get visa in hand. We also have to have her documents translated to English before the appointment. That takes time too. Then we need to purchase airline tickets and arrange for her to either pick them up at a travel agency (the nearest one being at least an 8 hours drive from her town) or find a way to express mail them to her and the mails in her country are NOTORIOUSLY slow. Needless to say, when she told us she was going the end of this month, we were more than a little miffed. That leaves only six weeks before she is supposed to arrive. Add to that that plane tickets get more expensive the longer you wait to get them. The babies are due April 2nd and we need her here before that for the care and nurturing of little bear who last saw her when he was three months old. Little bear has NEVER been left w/ anyone for more than say 7 minutes. He needs time to adjust before the twins arrive and trying to juggle newborn twins and a two year old and picking up SIL at the airport at any point after they're born is just plain crazy, forgetting about the fact that there's no one to care for little bear full time while I'm at the hospital.
But perhaps I'm crazy because we called her back today and told her. GO, but if you go one day later than the end of this month just forget it because it's much too short a time and much too stressful for someone pregnant with twins to juggle all this nonsense at the last minute. Six weeks to do all of that is way too little time.
Thanks for coming over from waffley. I only just found her, but I already think she's wonderful.

2 comments:

Sarah, Goon Squad Sarah said...

Yikes! Good luck with the help. I remember how tough it was to have newborn twins. I cannot imagine having to so it with other kids.

OR being a clean freak.

Actually, we might make a good team. Bring them over here. If you can clean I can wake up a million times in the middle of the night.

Lisa said...

Hmmmm.... your offer is tempting sarah. But it could be one hell of a commute.