mamadrama

Damn Rebecca...This was our courthouse wedding. I wore a skirt, we brought our kid, and afterwards we ate at Carraba's, played mini golf, and watched 1408. It's not the end of the world to have a civil ceremony first to get the paperwork finished.

"it's definitely fishy about how he's trying to rush it..." Dear Lord, people, it's a 90-day visa. The time limit is literally there in the show title.

What? You mean that someone is different from their vacation selves?! Some of these ladies need a good seminar on how to handle vacation romances and how you don't have to bring them all home with you. I hear that Ash might be available...

Thanks for asking. Insurance will pay a bit so there's that. We can't get back into it until the restoration people have treated for mold and the contractor has checked for structural damage. Basically if it's fabric then it's wet. We're staying with my mother which sucks, but at least I have 10,000 loads of laundry to do to keep me from having to be around her much. Some of our outbuildings were totally destroyed but the house can be fixed.

I'm coming into this an hour late. Did I miss anything?

Rebecca keeps treating Zied like a child. I wonder if she's older than him?

Still here. Still trucking.

Stephanie: My heart still has some booze and pills to take healing to do.

No swanky watches but I DO still have some Swatches left over from the 90s...

Hair-us doesn't care about the psychic because he's not playing the long con. He just wants some booty, watches, and maybe a Xanax or two.

Exactly! That alone would have me prettying myself up, not to mention being on TV.

WHY would she meet her ex with greasy hair, an unflattering top, and a scrunchie? That's what you wear when you're out at Wal-Mart at 2am picking up cat food and accidentally run into your ex-not how you look when you have days to plan for the meeting.

Social media followers and to be on a TV show?

I think it really was just as simple as her only possessing a one way ticket during a pandemic when traveling was still a little wonky. If she answered the question the way she said she did then it's not surprising to me that she was detained. Rather than saying that she was simply there for a vacation, she basically answered it in a way that let them know that she was using it as a way to circumvent covid travel restrictions to backdoor her way into the US. She should have had a roundtrip ticket and avoided mentioning a fiance or the US. "I'm here on vacation," is all she should be offered when asked. If pressed, "Here's my hotel reservations and my ticket home". EU nationals can get into Serbia with a national ID card. Egyptians must have a special visa that costs around $600. That entire region was my area when I wrote for Rough Guides. I can't imagine slipping a border agent cash there-it's one of the strictest countries I've worked in. It would be akin to trying to bribe a passport control officer at JFK. These 2 dummies are all over the internet giving the inside scoop on what happened. It doesn't sound like anything weird, I think they really are just daft. (Though I like her more than him.)

Well, according to creepy David the women in Ukraine are so poor that they only have one pair of shoes and can barely afford to eat, much less enjoy any cultural happenings. 😁 It's probably a matter of perspective, though. My entire county has fewer than 7,000 people. 391,000 is huge to me. For Yara, though? Maybe not. It depends on if she's really from there or if she's from a village but says Kiev because people have heard of it. Though Kiev has a pop of around 3 million, it's really spread out. For me, being in Kiev proper has never felt the same as being in Chicago, Rome, or Paris (cities of comparable population sizes). Unless you're on the Right Bank in the Shevchenkivskyi or Pecherskyi districts, it feels more suburban-y than city-y. Interestingly enough, metro New Orleans has a pop size of 1,270,530 which is 100,000 less than it did before Katrina. Some years they see a significant pop growth and some years they see a significant loss. It's kind of sad. I bet Julia's watching the scenes right now and thinking it's huge!

Preferred the bus over the train. The airplane looked like an airplane. They basically just painted it black and brought in some furniture. The only thing I liked were the pops of yellow and the secret room, though I understand why Tony left. The bar they were going nuts over looked like a big bunch of bamboo glued together. It was okay but I didn't get the excitement.

Relatives can come to visit either through the Visa Waiver Program or through a tourist visa. It depends on the country. Importing a relative on an actual residency visa is a totally different can of worms. My in-laws could purchase plane tickets tonight and be here by Sunday if they wanted. It wouldn't cost more than their plane ticket and the new exit tax (around $50). If they wanted us to actually sponsor them in a permanent move here, though, it would take years and cost thousands. Since it's repeated over and over every season my guess is that the "I won't get married unless I can have the big fairy tale ceremony" is just a storyline. I've never met a K1 couple who did that. Most of us did It within a few days of landing so that we could get started on the next round of paperwork. When the immigrant gets here they can apply for a work visa, but it's $200 and takes around 6 months to get. As soon as you marry, though, you can apply for your conditional green card. It also takes around 6 months and once you receive it you're legally allowed to work. Most of us bypassed the work permit and saved the money. It makes no sense to wait the full 90 days to marry.

That might be her plan, but it can take years-like 20-to bring family members over. Family visas are notoriously difficult to get and take forever. When we looked into bringing over my sister-in-law there was a minimum of 16 years wait and that was before some of the current restrictions were put in place. That's also why Alexei was having trouble bringing his brother.

The Red Cross came today. FEMA came yesterday and they're doing damage assessments. The rivers are mostly down but our roads and houses are still full of water, debris, and raw sewage from where septic tanks overflowed.

Eastern Kentucky. We've been declared a federal disaster area. https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/local/2021/03/03/homes-damaged-belongings-destroyed-eastern-kentucky-floods/6904171002/ https://www.wlky.com/article/eastern-kentucky-rebuilding-after-flooding-heres-how-you-can-help-donate/35728249

And who says this show isn't educational!

The farm.

My house. Our barn. This is our Main Street.

Dang it. I missed the whole live viewing chat. Thanks @Angry Moldovan it's been...something. Final quote on damages is $49,000. That's before we get to any of the stuff well have to replace-beds, clothes, sofas, etc. Not looking like insurance will cover much, if anything. I shouldn't complain because some people in my town have no houses to return to at all, but it still sucks. The fact that it all came down on my birthday was just so extra. I still hate Brandon. Seriously, what a twat (no offense to twats).

I have trouble watching those, too. Hell, at that point their brains haven't even fully finished forming. As a couple we've lived through some of the hardest things a couple can face: parent loss, child loss, international move, job loss, financial issues, serious illness, and now home loss to natural disaster. None of those things tried our marriage more than our oldest son's first year. I look back and thank god that I didn't get knocked up by anyone I thought I loved in high school.