we celebrated too early

 we're not just deflated, we're stunned, shocked, full of anxiety. i got a very rude awakening yesterday morning in the form of a call from the consulate - it turns out they've recognized gd as jewish, but they have *not* recognized me as his father. not only that, it turns out that the last time i tried to register his birth i was told something critically incorrect: that the paternity test couldn't be done here in south africa. so the good news is that the test can be done in south africa, the bad news is that it's only under very specific (and expensive) conditions and may take months.

months that i would have had in spades if they'd only told me this before.

so now we're in a race against the clock (gd's visa to remain here, her police clearance documents) and we've got to be out of our apartment by the end of this month. i spent all of last night (until 3.30am) hunting through documents and social media for any scrap of evidence i could find, but this morning the consulate called to inform me that almost none of what i found was at all relevant. we've spent today trying to piece together a plan for getting there, but this is extremely stressful and disillusionment is at an all-time high.

the one sliver of light in the darkness is that we've managed to get in touch with our landlord from when we moved in together, and he might be able to help us out.

...

and i had to work today. so i just signed off a few minutes ago after playing catch-up because my hours for both yesterday and today would have been very short otherwise. also, we've been getting quotes for moving with containers and they're expensive. like, big debt expensive, the kind that kept us chasing our tails for three years after we moved here from canada. like, we need to consider whether it doesn't make more sense to sell everything we can and buy new there.

mr smear, for the last while, has been much better behaved and more stable but we did have a few incidents today - although the recovery from those incidents on all our parts was actually pretty impressive. and the biggest issue when we went down to the pool with the neighbour's kid and her cousin was that he really doesn't want to get out of the water even when he's clearly too tired to keep himself afloat (－‸ლ) [does that look like a facepalm? really?)

i think i should go to bed now.

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