Enjoy Reading About Dog Farts, British Consulate

I know, I know. It’s been awhile, dear readers (yes, all three of you). What can I say, I’ve been busy getting married

and being ridiculously in love and happy.

I’ve also been just plain busy, catching back up with real life. Not only do we have to deal with the normal reality check all newlyweds face (that life and work and bills and responsibilities go on), but we have to do it alone and 5,000 miles apart. Boo.

But we have plenty to keep us busy, particularly the visa application. We’re just about ready, having requested or acquired the needed paperwork and proof that we are actual citizens, that we were born and went to school and worked where we say we did, that we are not miscreants and/or general troublemakers, and that we are an actually-in-love married couple. Proving all this requires, so far, a three-ring binder filled with certified and notarized documents.

You might be curious: how do you prove to a stranger that you are an actually-in-love married couple? It does not involve, as I had previously believed based on bad movies about green card marriages, going to an office and being interrogated by a visa officer on personal info about your spouse. Which is too bad, because I think I would enjoy a test on the intimate facts about my husband. I am confident I could easily answer questions about his family, his tastes, his childhood and his sleeping habits. Just try and trip me up, bureaucratic monkey marriage hater!

But there is no need for such a test since nearly all immigration offices have closed and you cannot apply in-person for a visa anymore, even if you wanted to. (In fact, I just found out last night that one of the last two offices, located in L.A., closed and now ALL UK visa applications are being processed out of the New York office. This does not bode well for our processing wait time. Balls.)

Nowadays, it’s an online application that you fill out and print, then you mail it off along with your supporting documents (the three-ring folder). And then you wait for a pencil-pusher to decide your fate. So now the question is: how do you prove you are an actually-in-love married couple to a stranger you will never meet?

By providing documentable evidence of what they call Intervening Devotion. If any couple has spent more than four months living apart, they must provide proof that they are in communication with each other on a regular basis and at least visit each other from time to time. So we included logs of our Skype calls and Facebook messages and emails, and photos from our visits together.

As you can imagine, most of these communications contain private, silly or just plain weird conversations. So, you’re welcome British Consulate Visa Officer. I hope you enjoy scanning our conversations about dog farts, the proper dimensions for a robot head, tricking your dog into taking meds (that email subject is "chicken ball surprise!"), creepy hands, vajazzling, how to properly do a youtube search for kids stuck in chairs, and so on.

The way I see it, these kinds of conversations can only help our cause. Who else but with your best and closest friends do you have such ridiculous conversations? And an actually-in-love married couple would have certainly been smart enough to marry one of their best friends. BOOM.