AHMAAAGAWD!!!

I have, without a doubt, been away wayyy too long. I think half of my "peeps" have forgotten I even exist. I know that a lot of my friends back in Oz have dropped off the earth. I’ve been making the best of every possible experience but nothing masks the pain of homesickness. I could traverse this world a thousand times over and never come across a place as familiar as Australia. I miss it… That’s not to say that I’m not having a fabulous time being here in the U.S but I guess home is always home.
So much has happened and I think I last spoke about moving to Colorado? Well I did and it’s gorgeous. We got here a month ago (and I can scarcely believe it’s gone THAT fast) and I thought I’d be sad about leaving Leavenworth but GOD I love Colorado Springs!
The elevation took some adjusting too and I still can’t run or job because I "run out of air" but then again I’m hideously unfit. I joined a gym and then quit the same gym because what they promised isn’t what they delivered. I’m in the process of locating a new gym and getting back into Weight Watchers.
I climbed the Manitou Springs incline which is 1.02 miles straight up. 2000 ft up a mountain and then 4 miles down the switchback trail and I was absolutely pummelled. Jimmy wouldn’t let me quit though even though I was only able to walk 10 steps before I needed water and a break. I took photos, will post in the next few days!!!
There is not much good news… The divorce process is moving so slowly that it’s almost in standstill. We have a great lawyer but he is only able to follow the rules and NY law is notoriously difficult to navigate. Of course Sally still refuses to sign any document, that is no longer a surprise to me, but she also won’t allow herself to be served with any divorce doc either. She doesn’t answer the phone or the door because she knows that she’ll either be served with foreclosure documents on the house she won’t pay for or the divorce doc’s. The process server has been to many of her local haunts and she doesn’t turn up. It’s retarded behaviour for a 42 year old woman… but she’s making sure she bleeds every last benefit from the situation. According to law, nothing can happen until they have attempted to serve her for 120 days. Since the attempts started early June I’m calculating that this ends in October. To that end I’m extending out my B2 visa (and hoping they approve it – Homeland Security are hard asses) and staying on for another 6 months. I’m blindly praying that no other legal hurdles stand in the way after this. We’re told that if she doesn’t get served after the 120 days then it goes back to court in front of a Judge and he will approve an alternate means of serving her the papers (publication in the newspaper and mailing). After that she has 20 days to respond and if she doesn’t a) either contest the documents or b) sign the documents, she will waive her right to dispute the divorce proceedings and the Judge will award us a divorce decree. There will be a collective sigh of relief I tell you that much.
So the B2 will hopefully be exxtended out to April 2010. We’re planning on getting married as soon as we have a decree and once we have that we can start the visa process. Being the spouse of a citizen at that point they can’t throw me out of the country so I’ll get a greencard and a SSN (Social security number) and i’ll finally be able to get on base (because Fort Carson is super duper secure, I can’t get on without Jimmy).
There’s not much different about life otherwise – we found is hard to open a bank account without the SSN but finally we found a bank willing to allow it with my Aussie Tax File Number. I’m doing family daycare which was brining in about $400 a week but one of my babies just finished needing care so I’m down to two and down some cash. I’m a little tired of being housebound but it’s worth it to have a bit more money coming in.
We adopted another pup, her name is Elle-May (pronounced Ellie-May) and she is a Blue Tick/Hound mix. She’s 18 mths old and is a lot larger than Roscoe (our little beagle) but she’s cute. We have had a few hurdles with her that we need to train out because she’s very territorial around food with other dogs (she’s not worried about us) and so she has tried to assert her authority over Roscoe a few times but other than that she is very gentle and loving. She knows she’s not the leader of the pack when it comes to Jimmy and I but she does think she is bigger and better than Roscoe sometimes which pisses me off. We’ll get her sorted though…
I have heaps of photos and I promise now that we’ve moved that I will upload them so you can catch up on our "lives."

I miss my Aussie friends so please drop me a line and let me know how you are!
vnolan79@gmail.com

xxxx

Vee

Created by MyFitnessPal – Free Calorie Counter