Friday, October 18, 2013

I’ve got a golden ticket!

The more expensive solicitor humoured me with a little back and forth regarding citizenship matters. (For free!!!!)

I think I’ve mentioned this before, but that lovely (really fragile) little piece of paper up there, written completely in German, and referencing a German city, may allow me to claim German citizenship.

If I can claim German citizenship, we might be able to bypass the Tier 2 sponsored employment bullshit.

I’ve written the German Consulate in Boston, and am going to push this as hard as I can. My mother was not a US Citizen until 1966 which means that for 20 years she was a citizen of… somewhere else. The country she was born in, perhaps? I think they moved to the states in 1949-ish, because (supposedly) she was three when they came here. I can’t find any proof of that and the last time I checked Ancestry.com, they couldn’t prove it either. (Even with the wicked expensive top tier membership.)

I’ve done as much research as I can, but the legalese starts getting ridiculous and then there’s the whole World War II / concentration camp / forced (railroad) workers issue that my grandparents had to deal with. I cannot figure out how that ties into citizenship, but I’ve seen it brought up once or twice.

We’ll see what the Consulate has to say.

In the meantime, I’ll be over here kicking myself for choosing French over German in school…

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According to my father, the only thing my mother really did right by me was to encourage my love of writing, but right now, I think that’s a distant second to her being born in a European country.

The amount of love I can find for this woman in my shriveled little black heart is directly proportional to how successful my attempt at German citizenship is. I’m not going to lie. So, that said…

Dear universe, I’m sure you understand that she OWES me this.

Consider it an even trade for the cigarette burn scar between my eyes (not a chicken pox scar like I tell everyone).

Consider it an even trade for the other scars on my body.

Consider it an even trade for all the mental abuse (and let’s not forget the fucking bipolar).

I really don’t feel like I’m asking for too much - I just want to prove that I’m “German” even if I come from Ukrainian and Polish blood. 

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In other news, one comment, eight kudos and six subscribers (and a partridge in a pear tree) for Hartford.

Fuck. Yeah.

Frustrated

Two immigration solicitors out of the four I emailed responded. The news is not good.

One will charge us £200 ($325) for an initial consultation, with that being used as a “deposit” toward their fee if we engage their services. No idea what is included in the consultation, but I will send an email to ask. (I mean, I pretty much knew the answer before I emailed them, so what is there for them to consult me on?)

The other will charge us £750 ($1,215), payment due in full. This one basically told me I was S-O-L as dad would say, or shit out of luck if you don’t speak Charlie. I need to have exceptional talent, a relationship connection with UK/European nationals, or UK ancestry if I had a UK grandparent. I called N my “brother” once to use it as an excuse to get out of work for his wedding, but I don’t think being friends for 15-ish years creates a familial bond no matter how good a friend he is. My grandparents are American, Ukrainian and Polish, so again, I’m screwed.

I’m just going to keep applying to jobs in the UK. I probably don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell, but you never know.

*sigh*

(The only good thing out of all this? I can finally make Polish jokes and not feel bad! WOOO! This is a VERY good thing because our neighbours are partial to holding Polish yard sales.)

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The first chapter of Hartford is live on AO3. Six kudos so far! I’ve been debating putting it on FFN because their RSS feeds for searches are still broken, but I think I might do that today.

I had a bad night last night - I was so antsy and restless and I couldn’t figure out why. Finally realised that it was because I didn’t need to obsess over the entire trilogy any more. Hartford is locked down and updates are scheduled, Paris is good, and the rewrite of Zurich’s ending surprised me with its awesomeness.

Now what?

I can’t start working on my NaNo outside of research and planning, so I think I’m going to go with the Case!Lock I’ve already started because researching it will keep me busy for the next few weeks. I reread the beginning and I think I’m going to delete it and start fresh. Besides, the idea is to start with nothing and go from there. (I may keep the Mystrade line, but I’m definitely not in love with the rest of it anymore. It starts too abruptly and I learned my lesson with Cabin Pressure - I cannot start in the middle and try to write around it. It doesn’t work for me.)

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Working on the Christmas present for my trainer has been fun. The socks are knitting up fast because I’m not doing any sort of pattern. The yarn is self-striping and the stripes aren’t very thick, so I think I made the right choice to just let the yarn speak for itself.

I ended up getting a splinter because I’m working on bamboo knitting needles and my finger bled because I really had to dig it out. I’m not sure how I’m going to knit with a big hole in my push-the-needle-through-the-yarn-finger, but I’m going to have to think of something.

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Figured out a way around my Netflix dilemma: look for movies online and then search for them on the TiVo. I found two acceptably crappy ones to watch yesterday, so life is back to being tolerable.

For now.

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Guinness is back at the vet. We think he sprained his wrist. This is now the second time he’s injured his left front leg from playing too rough.

I swear, he’s going to put us in the looney bin… or the poorhouse.