Month: August 2018

So Josh got paid again. Wrongly again. This time we had a crazy amount deposited into our account (almost 40K). Great, right? Except when it arrived yesterday it didn’t match up with any amount that we expected to have coming in so we knew something had gone wrong, again. It was only 1/2 of what we were expecting for rent, but way more than what he would get paid for a normal paycheck, so what sort of messed up paperwork created this monster?

Well this morning Josh checked the breakdown and it is the money that we were given to pay our rent, but someone didn’t file the tax paperwork properly, so the government took 1/2 of it, assuming it was income and taxed it as if he were a 2 million dollar plus wage-earner. God bless. 46 thousand dollars in taxes out of a single paycheck. More went to taxes and expenses than ended up in our account. Hilarious.

So someone’s going to fix this. I’m not sure how, but it has become the new normal here. Give all information required, hope they can get it right, experience system failure, and then send strongly worded emails to light a fire under someone who should have done the job properly the first time.

On the bright side, all we need is an Emirates ID and we can get moved into our house. Our landlord will take a partial payment up front which gives us time to sort out the tax mess that was just created. We’re happy for the weekend and 2 days of rest, both physical and mental — though Josh won’t be able to mentally rest until someone takes ownership of this latest failure. The trial of living in the opposite time zone and waiting 12 hours for the work day to begin and someone to receive your very urgent email.

Third year at ACS, 3 days of school behind us, and 3 days with no tears. It’s a miraculous shift that couldn’t have come at a better time. At least when you go to school from a hotel, you can have anything you want for breakfast, including hot chocolate.

With all the other details of our lives in flux, it’s so nice to drop a smiling child off at school and know that she’s excited to be there and going to have a great day. That way we have the maximum amount of mental energy left to deal with other stressors: an internet company that doesn’t have a record of a payment we made back in June, a work phone that is locked to an American carrier even though Josh requires an unlocked phone for his job, a paycheck that isn’t correct — but wait, maybe it will be correct . . . I guess we’ll find out in two days if someone did their job, chasing down health insurance policy numbers (for the residence visa), sorting out who is going to pay our hotel bill, and more. Basically Josh has spent the majority of his time on administrative tasks related to our lives here, in-between work meetings/emails/and phone calls for his actual job.

All of the above are things that Josh has been taking care of, thankfully. I didn’t have to spend 6 hours on the phone with the internet people or field emails about the potential disaster of an incorrectly filed W4 (the outcome of which will be known on Friday). In general all is well, and it is coming together, but it has taken a lot of effort and mental energy. As Josh said, not one thing has gone smoothly.

Even getting our laundry done took a turn for the ridiculous. There are several services here that will pick up bags of clothes, wash, fold and return them for a decent price, approximately $13/bag. There are no public laundromats here so we’re happy there’s an alternative to the very expensive hotel cleaning services. The other day we were on our way to breakfast and then church, so we filled up 2 bags and asked the boys to drop them in the hotel lobby with the concierge so the service could pick them up while we were out at church.

When we returned, I checked with the hotel guys and yes, the clothes were indeed picked up. All was well until we got a phone call from the driver who was wondering where to pick up our clothes . . . ah yes, the very sweet, very helpful guys at the concierge’s desk misunderstood and thought the boys wanted the clothes to go to the hotel laundry. So Josh had to go downstairs and talk to the manager and explain that we would never, ever consider paying $600 for laundry (the bill they presented) when we could get it done for under $30. It all worked out and we weren’t on the hook for the full charge, but again, extra effort, extra stress, and something easy that ended up being difficult.

We think we will have Josh’s residence visa early next week and the magical Emirates ID (required for everything — car registration, lease signing, bank account opening, etc) by the end of next week. Assuming everything goes according to plan . . .

It’s been a better few days for us — partly because the Eid holiday means that we know we can’t accomplish anything so it relieves a bit of the annoyance of being in limbo. The stress of the previous issue has passed and only our housing remains unsettled. With everything on hold, the past few days have been sleep, lie around, eat, lie around, sleep . . . it’s too hot to go outside, but I have to wear pants and sweaters inside because the AC has to be cranked in order to keep the humidity down.

We are happy the kids are arriving this evening. While I haven’t missed the work of parenting, I have missed their excitement, energy, and wit. They never fail to make me laugh and that’s what I need more of these days. 

The rest of the holiday week will be spent at the pool (it just reopened after being closed for repairs since we arrived), eating, sleeping, and lying around while the kids recover from jet lag and prepare to start school on Monday.

Hmmm, where do I start? It hasn’t been an easy week for us in spite of how it looks externally. We’re staying in a beautiful hotel, kid free, but WOW our stress levels are high. There’s still so many details that are unknown — like how much money we will actually have coming in each month, figuring out why the health insurance approval stalled out, which is holding up Josh’s Emirates ID, which is keeping us from moving into a place, and hey wait, is someone working on getting the money sent to us to pay for our rent when all of that finally does come through?

My job is going great and it’s been a seamless transition back to school, but on Josh’s side he keeps hitting one hurdle after another. All administrative, all stressful. He’s trying to focus on learning and doing his job, but ending up having to babysit (and pester) the people who should be doing their job of getting him set up within the company. Someone warned us that the bureaucracy didn’t end when we left the military and we’re unfortunately finding that to be true. Thankfully there are a few bright stars that have been lifesavers, but all in all, we’re worn down.

There have been specific stresses that have popped up this week, but I’m being vague intentionally. Let me just say, when your husband starts threatening, “if Toby replies with anything other than ‘OK, I’ll take care of that,’ — I’m out!” we have reached nervous breakdown territory. I’m no longer fearing that I will have to pack my suitcase and start sourcing plane tickets back to the US, but it was a tense 12 hours.

In this case, God provided a solution and we didn’t have to rely on Toby to take care of it. Thank God! Maybe when it’s not so raw I’ll feel free to spill details, but it’s still too fresh to relive it in words (unless you want to message me to get the inside story).

Moving on to people who are having a great week — the kids. They are living it up in DC with the grandparents. 

A White House tourWatching the Marine parade at 8th and I

hiking all over DC to see the sights — Natural History museum, National Archives, the Capitol, and more.

and there’s always time to play cards!

I guess they are collecting all the Americana gear and are ready for their National Day parade when they get back to school!

That about covers it. Oh wait, we did find a place to live and the landlord is holding it for us until we can sign a lease. Of course that enthusiasm was dampened when I thought we might have to leave, but I’m 99% sure that crisis has passed so here it is: 

3 bedroom, good location, close enough to school to walk . . . it will feel more secure when we actually have the money to pay the lease. Inshallah, inshallah.

Yeah, I’m not feeling the brightest these days. I’ve been outsmarted by the room lights in the hotel (it took over 24 hours to figure out how to turn on the light in the bathroom), lost my phone for about 20 minutes when I hadn’t even left my desk at school, and I can’t remember the rest of my fumbles, but I guess that’s what happens when I’m working on only a few hours of sleep. Not by choice, but because it’s a inevitable part of flying across the world.

The flight from DC was painful. Clearly I survived, but the 13 hours felt just as long as 17 from the west coast. Of course there were 2 little munchkins seated behind us whose mom let them climb all over the seatbacks and kick endlessly, so that didn’t help. My bigger issue was having been in limbo for so long, I was just anxious to hurry up and get there. Anyway, we finally made it, breezed through passport control, and were out of the airport and on our way to the hotel in record time. It was much easier being freed from the hassles of the diplomatic passports.

Thankfully the Intercontinental hotel treats us like royalty. We arrived in time for the evening cocktail hour and had our fill of small plates of Thai seafood salad, beef carpaccio, tomato and mozzarella, and more. I thought I’d be able to sleep all night because of my restless plane flight, but no luck. We woke up at 2 am and killed time until we could go eat breakfast at 6:30am.

Since Josh was headed to a work meeting on day 1, I decided to head into work myself to get a head start on everything that has to be done before the school year begins. It was great to be back, to have a purpose, and to feel productive. In spite of my fuzzy brain, I got a good bit accomplished and I was so proud of myself for making it all day without a nap. Jet lag victory is mine! I went to sleep at 11 and . . . woke up at 2:45 am, feeling as if I had slept for 8 hours instead of 4. Good grief. Stupid body clock.

I’m really hoping that I don’t end up in a zombie state since I actually do have to work today. It’s the first official day back for all the teachers and while it will be fun to catch up with old friends, I have a new work partner that I have to train to do our job while still trying to get everything completed on our task list. I’ll do my best. At least it’s not brain surgery.