The Shoddyssey part II

It would be an exaggeration to say things are coming together, but at least they're starting to seem a little less entropic.

1. My X-ray has been found. It turns out the hospital - instead of sending it to my doctor on the other side of town, a task for which I gave'em five euros in postage, and doctor about whom we had a little gossip at the front desk - instead took the initiative to pay about fifty euros and send it to the department of immigration in Sydney or Canberra or some such.

Luckily somebody there noted the Belgiumness of it and all and contacted the Berlin embassy (Belgian visa requests go through Berlin, the embassy here in Brussels is teeny-tiny) and the Aussies sorted it out between themselves. Not until after, however, the hospital had told me they'd probably sent the X-ray to a bunch of other Belgian doctors with the same name as my doctor and I should call all of them to track it down - I did of course, including one very friendly and very confused dentist - fuckers.

Anyways, the upshot of it all is that I'm irritated and amused in equal measure, and thrilled that I'll be moving to a country where the civil servants are able to successfully complete "If . . . then . . . so" statements.

2. Now the only pending documentation for the visa is my Canadian criminal background check and the fuckers of Mounties don't even know if my request is in their building yet. Fuck me, in excess of four months in my homeland vs a week in Belgium and France, two of the stupidest countries in the developed world. Brava, Canada, atta play with the big dogs. Would like to go back to Canada for a week or so to just get the three-day electronic request one, but unless I do it, like, next week, there's no fricking time until the end of July, in between work, travel for work, and people coming here to visit. In fact we're so solidly booked until the end of July that I caught myself feeling a touch of relief one of our visitors got a staph infection and had to cancel her trip. What kind of monster am I turning into?

3. Lexie finally got her rabies test. I'm starting to hesitate about taking her again. We have got an offer now from a very dear friend in Canada to take her in, Sugarplum of yore, and it's hard to imagine a better home for her, especially if her family decamps to the country house they're moving to buy. And a 24 hour plane ride in the hold followed by a month of quarantine, versus nine hours in the hold, a car ride, and then a warm loving permanent home . . . But I'm her human, she's my cat, and I reckon she'd like Australia, where we can get a biggish house and a garden. Sigh. It's all very confusing. I think I will judge as the months wear on on the basis of her health.