How stressful is a relocation?

I wrote a blog post about How do I know what I don't know. We had a conference call with HR in Dubai in regards to our relocation prior to our South African visa's expiring on January 11th 2015.

My stress levels are now higher than they were prior to the call and I'm still none the wiser.

We can't seem to get through to people that as British Expats living in South Africa we can't just pop and get the attested copies of all our documents. We are trying to find out if we can get copies verified here in South Africa by the South African Police Service as we did when we renewed our visas 2 years ago or whether they have to be certified by a solicitor in the UK.

Either way I do have to return to the UK as our youngest child's passport expires in May 2015 and he must have 6 months left on his passport to enter Dubai. Even though he is in Boarding School in the UK, his home is with us and he must feel he has a home in Dubai and not feel like a visitor for only 30 days each trip.

I need to make an appointment with the passport office for the quick service and I also need to collect his birth certificate to be certified as he is required to travel with it as an unaccompanied minor when he comes here for the Christmas holidays, although it looks like we will be moving to Dubai the end of November.

However that is in dispute as we still don't know if we can ship our container when we apply for the visa for Dubai and the if the visa can be in place when our container arrives or whether it has to be in place before we can ship? When we moved to South Africa, the latter applied which caused us a lot of problems and cost a lot of money as these were details that we didn't know about.

At the moment, as from today, my life has been put on hold (again) for hubbies job and his life choices. When asked if I'd like a move to Dubai or the UK, I replied with 'neither' please can we stay in South Africa another year or two. When it became obvious that we couldn't stay in South Africa, after weighing up all the options we decided to go to Dubai. It has been a joint decision, but not a free choice and I'm struggling with that.

After the conference call that confused the issues even further, I then had to deal with the first of 3 quotations for removal companies, it took nearly 2 hours for this to be carried out.

Again i will go back to the opening statement. How do i know what I don't know?

I need to book a flight to the UK, I need to make appointments, I need to stay long enough in the country to collect the documents. I've emailed the UAE embassy in Pretoria and the UK, contacted the awarding bodies in regards to education certificates, applied online for a copy of the youngest's birth certificate, which will need forwarding on to SA, but all of this takes time 4-6 weeks and we are on a tight deadline. With Christmas looming in reality we need to be out of South Africa by December 12th. Either way we need everything closed and out of the country by January 10th 2015, if we over stay we will be banned from re entry for 5 years, neither of us can afford that, as hubby will need to visit here for work and I have several charities I'm supporting and intend to carry on working with them.

How am I dealing with it?

With tears, food, alcohol and TOWIE and GLEE box sets.