Life is not a roller coaster

For a long time I had kept this quote on my office messenger window - "
"Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming 'WOW What a Ride!'"
the source of this is unknown..


I used to believe in this... Life was certainly hectic when I was working. Work, friends, family, cooking, exercise etc my time just flew past so quickly. But just as the wear and tear was beginning to show, I married. And nothing has been the same ever since.


Since my wedding day one year back life has been a succession of one black hole after another. And we seem to be falling in all of them in succession. There is no roller coaster of a ride anymore, its more of a slow merry go round which just never stops.


Black hole number one was when we waited for 7- 8 months for a visa for me to join Reni here in the U.S. Fate was certainly very inventive and original in the number of twists that happened in those 7 - 8 months.
Imagine handing over the keys of your car an hour before you were supposed to leave and then coming back to office to find out you were going to be stuck there for another 6 months. Well that happened to me. Funny thing was I needed those extra six months to get the dealers to give me my money in return for selling my car.


But coming to the main issue, my visa to enter USA. I pushed matters from India and my husband pushed matters from US and ultimately when we were completely fed up, I was granted a visa. 
No that is still not the complete story. I forgot to mention that when the interviewer from the consulate congratulated me on getting my visa I handed her another paper which said I had to get my passport notarized. So instead of sending my passport to get my visa stamped she handed it back to me. Time froze that instant as I realized that I had just landed myself in another mess.


And a mess it was. Chasing people all over Chennai, running up and down stairs papers in hand trying to find someone who would take my passport back to the consulate. Turned out that this someone was right next to the passport office. But he was on his lunch break when I finally reached him. So while he took his lunch break I gave a liberal dose to my hubby on the phone telling him this was all his fault. Poor guy had called me to console me. Guess what I got no more calls from him that day. At the end of the hour tired, hungry and baked in the Chennai sun I handed him my passport.


No more surprises and one week later I got my passport back with the visa stamped and with a lot of good wishes I landed in the US on April mid of 2010.


So finally we were together and living plain ordinary days filled with nothing. Looking back now those days were too few because barely 2 weeks after I reached he filed his visa extension.
PLONK!!! You guessed it. Next black hole. 
For the next three months conversations in the house went like this.


Me : " Honey the sofa is almost brown in colour. Its really dirty and its stinks too. Lets buy a cover for it."
Reni : "Let my visa extension happen, then we will see. Cant risk spending too much and then losing all this when my extension gets turned down."


Me : "Honey the TV screen has turned yellow. Time to throw this and get a new one" 
Reni : "Let my visa extension happen."


Me : "Honey ...What do you say to... Oh! why bother I will tell you this after the visa gets extended."


We patched things up, covered up the stains, liberally poured room freshener over the stinky spots and stopped watching TV.


Today finally the visa petition has moved ahead one stage.
You rejoice thinking that perhaps we are moving to the happy end of the story.  But no, we are not the happily ever after kind of people. We are obviously Gods favorites. 
The next stage that the visa application has moved to is "request for evidence". This basically means that someone somewhere is not convinced that we need to stay here for some more time and that we need to provide proof to convince them that we need to be here.


So the originally green sofa remains grey - brown, the TV remains switched off and we remain Hansel and Gretel lost in the woods.


Adios...