I put my I-751 application in the post on Saturday. Now it’s up to the powers that be to grant my request to remove the provisional status from my green card and allow me to remain in the country beyond 20th March.
We’ve now also got copies of Sarah’s birth certificate and our marriage certificate, both with an apostille applied by the relevant states. That should make getting a Dutch passport for Franbert much easier a few months from now.
Well, I’ve taken care of one piece of bureaucracy today. I drove up to San Mateo this morning to hand in my passport renewal application at the Dutch Consulate.
While I was there, I verified what I’ll need to do to obtain a Dutch passport for Franbert when he’s born. It turns out that we basically just need to get his birth certificate legalised with an apostille, which is what I’d already figured out from the on-line documentation.
What I didn’t know is that we’re obliged to also get him an American passport. The US has a rule about citizens with dual-nationality only travelling into and out of the country on their American passport and this rule applies equally to those just out of the womb, so that’s another bit of bureaucracy to take care of when the time comes.
In the next couple of days, I’ll send off my I-751 form and supporting documentation to the INS (or Department of Homeland Security, as they’re now known). That will set in motion my application to have the provisional status removed from my green card, thus allowing me to stay here past March.
It’s taken a fair bit of effort to collect the supporting documentation for this application: copies of bank account and credit card statements, an ultrasound photo of Franbert, a copy of our apartment lease, multiple notarised affidavits from people who know us… Bah! Still, now all I have to do is seal it in an envelope and send it off by registered post.
Sarah and I went along to Stanford Hospital today for our third ultrasound scan of the baby. The last one was at 13 weeks into the pregnancy, so expectations were running high as we headed in for the 22 week scan, which would seek to measure the baby’s growth and rule out any abnormalities.
We instructed the woman conducting the examination that we did not wish to know the gender of the baby before birth and away she went with the echo sounder.
Franbert is doing very well, we were pleased to hear. He/she looks a lot bigger than 8 weeks ago. According to my book, Hét Negen Maanden Boek, he’s now approximately 28.5 cm long and weighs 440 g. What a lot of baby; no wonder Sarah’s belly is swelling so nicely.
Anyway, all was well within: no club feet, no cleft palette, normal growth, a beating heart, a closed spine, etc. The placenta’s lying a little low, but not covering the cervix, which is good. This is quite common and the placenta will probably retreat upwards along the wall of the uterus as the pregnancy progresses.
It was rather odd to look at Franbert this time. He looked a little ghoulish as the ultrasound rendered his bones, but not so much of his flesh. All we could see was a small skeleton with some hazy, translucent grey matter around it. I’m sure he’ll be better looking when seen through human eyes.
Nevertheless, it’s priceless to see his fingers and toes, his little legs, the curve of his bum, the femur inside his leg, etc. I’m not one for messing around with nature, but the glimpse behind the scenes that an ultrasound gives you is really irresistable.
Lying in bed before we headed to Stanford, I was treated to my first kick from Franbert. Sarah’s been feeling them for a while now, but they’re still mild enough that it’s impossible to feel any but the most energetic from the outside. This morning, however, he was active and I was able to feel him move against my hand. It’s very cool to be able to engage in this primitive form of contact, as I truly believe it aids the bonding process.
If you’re interested in such things, we’ve put up ultrasound photos from the three scans to date.
My article on Ruby/Amazon has finally made it into print in the February issue of Dr Dobb’s Journal.
This is my first published work for a computer magazine in just under ten years. It’s hard to imagine it was that long ago that I wrote a monthly column about the Internet for the now defunct PCW Plus, a magazine devoted to users of the dearly beloved Amstrad PCW.
I’d still like to write a book at some point, if I can ever manage to summon the energy. I used to think I’d one day write a book about LDAP or Bourne shell scripting, but there are good books available on those subjects these days.
No, it’s more likely I’ll turn my hand to newspaper journalism at some point in the future, once I have more free time available.
_”So God is dead, like Nietzsche said.
Supersition is all we have left.”_
That’s a lyric from the song 1985, which opens the Manic Street Preachers’ most recent album, Lifeblood. That lyric, more than any other I’ve been exposed to in recent months, seems to characterise the age in which we’re living. All we need now is for all the religious fundamentalists to actually realise that God is dead.
I’m blogging when I should be writing appraisals of my colleagues. These will be used to determine the size of their performance bonus. Everyone has to write a bunch of such appraisals of their colleagues; it’s one of the seemingly democratic aspects of the job.
Here we are in 2005. I can’t believe it’s upon us. So much will be happening in our lives this year. For one thing, the McKenna-Macdonald clan will see a 50% expansion of its ranks in May, when Sarah squeezes the person inside her out and into an uncertain world.
We bought our first baby clothes yesterday at Lullaby Lane in San Bruno. It was a surprisingly significant event to me from an emotional perspective. Our wardrobe now contains Franbert clothing dangling from coat-hangers. It makes him/her seem a lot more real. If anything were to happen to the baby now, the impact on me would be so much greater, or so it seems. Those items of clothing belong to the baby now; it’s just that the baby is currently still wearing Sarah and doesn’t need any clothes.
Why’s it so hard to find baby clothing in decent colours? I don’t buy into the whole gender/colour association bollocks. It’s sartorial fascism for infants and I want no part of it. Inculcation of idiotic and oppressive social norms starts right here, while the infant is still in the womb. What nonsense!
So, if it’s a girl, she’s going to have to wear some blue. If it’s a boy, he gets away without having to wear pink, because pink is vile on anyone. Of course, you might claim it’s my own social conditioning that makes me say that, but I’d just ignore you.
It turns out that my employer offers six weeks of paternity leave. That means I’ll stop working when the baby’s born and won’t return to work until the beginning of July. What a deal.
What then? The second half of the year will be tumultuous, but I can’t say much more than that at the present time. Certain people still have the power to foul up our plans if they become aware of them. You just can’t trust anyone these days, so we’re forced to play our cards close to our chest. Ominous, huh? Sorry, but it has to stay that way for now.
There’s a lot of crap to deal with this year. I have to go to the Dutch Consulate later this week to hand in a passport renewal application. Hopefully, that occasion will pass uneventfully and I’ll have a new passport within a few weeks. In the meantime, I’ll be unable to travel for a few weeks, but I had no plans to, anyway. It just makes me nervous to be without a passport.
I’ve also been busy getting friends to write and notarise affidavits attesting to the genuine nature of our marriage. (Incidentally, anyone who’s seen us argue knows the marriage must be real.) These will be submitted in evidence when I submit my application to have the provisional status removed from my green card (a.k.a. permanent residence permit). I have to file that application within the next few weeks or I’ll be subject to removal proceedings from the US after 20th March. While I’d like nothing more than to get the fuck out of here, it has to be on my own terms and March is a tad too soon, given our plans.
Before Christmas, I had to write a will and retain the services of an estate planner. I didn’t even know what an estate planner was until a few months ago. Basically, it’s a death consultant. He’s basically there to ensure we’re not robbed blind by the US government if we both snuff it in a plane crash. If we move abroad, US law no longer applies, so we’ll have to get all of this done again at some point in the future.
We now have a couple of accountants, too: one in San Francisco and another in Amsterdam. It’s become too hard to figure out the tax consequences of our actions, so now we have to pay others to do it.
Life wasn’t always this complicated, was it?
