Who Put P*t in the Peacepipe?

This has been a week of making and in one case, possibly breaking, friendships. On a whim, I decided to go with Lanes to visit my fellow ‘Sister of the Leaky Ceiling’. She had enthusiastically invited me to visit any time when I first met her, so I thought I’d take her up on the offer.

Turns out she is extremely gentle and nice in her ways. She has a seven year old daughter and a son who is older, but I don’t remember by how much. Lanes loved the little girl and they had a good time playing while we chatted. We wound up talking for awhile, but then I realized I had to go because P was coming home around 5:30pm and if Lanes and I were not there, he might think we never made it home after school.

I burst into the apartment, expecting to find a worried P, but he was happily sitting at the dining table with paperwork!! So much for that. He just casually said ‘of course I was worried, I just thought you might have gone to the mall on a whim’. Hmm.

We might be seeing the last of the Cookie Cutters, I’m sad to say, as we are changing schools. If you inquire, I shall e-mail you the reasons but as we are in the most sue-happy continent on the planet, I shall refrain from blogging about our reasons. But who knows what awaits us as the New Year approaches? I seem to never be short of folks that are one screw loose.

I’m rather proud of myself because I took it upon myself to ask Mystic Pizza Hair (now a term of affection), if I can call her sometime as Lanes wouldn’t be coming to school after the holidays. I also got contact info of another really friendly mom who I shall call Helen. That’s not her real name of course, but for some reason P keeps insisting it is. So there you go.

The Cookie Cutter honorary list member I mentioned last week has been removed from the Board of Cookie Cutters. She has been discharged with honors. Turns out she is rather nice and I had mistaken her for someone else. There is an entire bevy of brown haired moms. So now I’m confused. I know it sounds terrible, but P can’t tell them apart either!!

For sure there are the two Cookie Cutters. P calls them Tweedledee and Tweedledum but they really look like Cinderella’s wicked step sisters, now that I got to study them up close (a whole new twist on Adventures with the Third Kind). One is toothpick skinny and tall and the other one is slightly stout, made worse by her affinity to puffy vests, and has a square face that goes well with her round zero of an attitude.

I actually got to speak to the Cookie Cutters—because they wanted $25 from me to buy presents for the teachers. The skinny one is not too terrible. I hope I’m not confusing her with another mom. The square one is definitely super unfriendly. No confusion there. But now all that doesn’t matter (until the Christmas party where I’ll load up on gossip as well as cookies).

Meanwhile I spotted Mutual Neighbor in the mall. With her husband. So much for the theory that she is divorced. Aunty G gets everything all mixed up. She has a knack for getting the wrong end of the stick. Not only that she runs with it and beats unsuspecting passersby with it. That’s what a mockery she makes of the plain old truth.

She was right that Mutual Neighbor owns a restaurant at the food court in the mall near our place. She co-owns it with her husband. They are very much together. I could tell from their body language. She was slumped besides the cash register and he was furiously scrubbing the grill. There was an atmosphere of nonchalance between them that only comes from several years of companionship.

Turns out they have a home in Richmond, but during the week it takes so long to get here and back that she keeps this apartment to save herself the long drive at 10pm. That’s why her apartment lacks any furniture. If only Aunty G knew.

One weekend, less than month into our tenancy at this place, Aunty G knocked on my door furiously at 10:30pm on a Saturday to see if I saw Mutual Neighbor come home. How in the world would I know this? Knowing that bit of information would require me standing by the peephole watching, but I was having the flu and too polite to point that out to good old Aunty.

The next day, worry had turned to fury as Aunty G had left several messages on Mutual Neighbor’s answering machine. She was livid that she didn’t have the decency to call back. I was thinking if she was lying in a ditch somewhere, as Aunty was so worried, it would be hard to return calls, but instead I pointed out that Mutual Neighbor was a grown woman and she probably was away for the weekend, and some people don’t like people enquiring about them.

To that I was given the mother of all scowls and I was the proud recipient of lecture number 142 on how people’s (read, Mutual Neighbor) manners should be and ‘that woman’ should have the graciousness to call back. She gets in a flap about these things and next thing you know, she is knocking on Mutual Neighbor’s door and offering (by force)doggie diapers. She really does mean well but she keeps on insisting people take things she doles out.

I think Aunty G is annoyed about the leak in our apartment. On Tuesday, the day after we complained about the leak, management sent in ‘the professionals’ that the maintenance folks were talking about.

P and I were not so sure how professional ‘the professionals’ were so we went to Home Depot and got some heavy duty tape and plastic curtaining and cordoned off the area around the leak. When the folks came they were so relieved we had done the work for them, especially since to quote them, all they had was the ‘crappy painter’s tape’.

I was glad as well since it turns out they stopped work at 3.30pm on the dot and they arrived close to 1pm. When I found out their work hours I was curious about job opportunities with them for P or me. However, their job does not seem like much fun.

One guy looked like a shorter, tamed Wolverine. The other looked like a really tall spoon, and I mean that in the nicest way. They were really good about not making a mess and were very respectful about not getting the apartment dirtier than need be. The work was messy, but Wolverine stayed in the tent and minimized any spillage.

Aunty G knocked on the door and at once launched into an outburst about the noise. She accused them of entering without my permission, which was so ridiculous I had to dispel that idea from her head. Her eyebrows were slanting down in anger, like two knitting needles, and her eyes were red rimmed like a manic rabit (accentuated by her bunny pink bathrobe). She literally yelled at them for waking up a sick person (at 1:30pm).

Her exit into her apartment was trailed by a series of four letter words that just didn’t sound right coming out of the mouth of an otherwise elegant elderly lady. Aunty G proceeded to slam the door twice, and further expletives seeped out her door.

Mr. Spoon and Wolverine were dumbstruck. I realized then that Mr. Spoon was on a ladder, holding the jackhammer in a rather precarious position. I began to worry than he might get trigger happy in his shock. I was not thrilled after that because I thought we’d have to hear about it for the next couple of months. Or worse the deafening sound of stone cold silence.

Things have been quiet with Aunty G since then. P is a little relieved since he didn’t care for foul language being used, and he can’t deal so well with drama. Ok, he can’t deal with drama at all. Yet he lives with me and Lanes. Hmm. I was just glad that Lanes was in school (I insisted no jackhammers while she was at home).

Lanes has had a good time this week. After school she played with some kids running up and down the little slope in front of the Church. The two older boys love to taunt her by saying ‘nanny nanny boo boo, you’re it again’, and Lanes is so innocent and happy to be involved she just runs right after them. She doesn’t give a hoot that she is ‘it’ all the time.

I think one of them belongs to the Square Cookie Cutter. On the first day when Lanes ran after the kids, Square (aka Evil Stepsister Number 1), ferociously called her son and asked him to get in the car already. I choose to assume this was a coincidence. On the second day, she had to let them play because she was talking to me about the money for the teachers.

Yesterday we went for a play date to a family friend’s daughter’s house. It was funny because it was a play date for P and me (I?) as well. We were having fun with our new friend and Lanes was with her new little four year old buddy. His name is Lanes’ middle name!! How cool is that?

We literally spent the entire day there and it was so funny to watch them go through this wide spectrum of emotions. They started out happy to see each other and played nicely. Then came the blame game, at our lunchtime of course. Then again with the playing nicely and so much love and hugging when we left. As I told the other mom, the two of them was like a bad marriage, in a good way: )

Meanwhile Lanes has been enjoying video Skyping. She thinks it’s fantastic. She got to see all her favorite folks on today. She told my father ‘listen to me. Don’t worry. I’m coming to save you’. Of course he was in the car with my sister driving at the time, so that does make sense. He tends to sit in any car with his arms squished together, like a sardine in a can, even if there is plenty of room for him.

I have caught the flu for the hundredth time since we got here. I noticed some mold in the room, so I guess P and I will be fixing that tomorrow. Google has got rid of my ads, I don’t know why, and we are continuing with the job search. Sometimes I feel like we missed a cruise and we are swimming towards the liner only to be washed ashore by a big wave. But we bat on: ) More next week on the school changes….