Racing Across

Two more calls later and Lanes still has no PR card. The only good news is that she is on their radar. The bad news is that it can take up to 30 days for us to get it. To say I’m annoyed would be putting it lightly. However, all the different agents we spoke to on the phone said that if we drive into Canada in a private car, we (meaning Lanes) should be able to re-enter with only her landing card.

What if we get the one officer who didn’t get that memo when we try to come back to Canada? Would Lanes (and therefore yours truly since Lanes is more or less like an appendage to me) be stuck in the U.S. of A? With Sri Lankan passports, is that even an option? Where would we go? Would my next blog be typed with us balancing precariously on a piece of driftwood in international waters? I hope not. I don’t do so well on water—it’s not my element.

We really weighed the pros and cons, but with the spirit of Christmas wrapping itself around us, we decided to be brave (and the constant phone calls begging us to come to Seattle also pushed us over the edge)and we hopped in the car at the last minute and came on down. Why not? We just hope we can get back with no problem.

Other than that this week has been quiet. By some miracle P decided to research tax laws in Canada and we realized that although we have just descended upon the place, we need to file taxes for this year, regardless of the fact that we are gloriously unemployed. We have to file by the end of this month, I believe. After looking rather ‘stung in the behind’ (a phrase I learned from my aunt, no less) by this news, I quickly asked P to print out the necessary forms and get on with it.

Lanes had her school Christmas party, and I finally got all my Cookie Cutters sorted out. The Square one is definitely still on the list, but I mistook the skinny one (who turns out is nice) for the Queen of Mean. Square’s real sidekick and partner in prissiness is a rather tall manish woman, who had been missing for the last week or so because she popped a kid.

So anyways Square Cookie Cutter at least smiles slightly now, but she and the Queen of Mean just sat by themselves and didn’t socialize with anyone else at the party. Anyway, the end of this year marks the end of the Cookie Cutter tale. I’m sure I’ll be on to more exciting adventures, as my life is never short of ‘endearing’ people.

Not much progress in the apartment either.  I had Lumberjack Goliath come back in with another guy who looked like he was born maybe five weeks ago. They mixed their cement in the balcony and very enthusiastically volunteered to clean up and move furniture much to my relief/delight. They even adjusted the blinds!! Who was I to get in the way? Looking sadly at the ceiling obviously did wonders for me.

A painter finally came in to see our ceiling. He just tsked and tsked and said the other guys had to come back, sand the cement and put ‘white mud’ on it before he could put the paint on the ceiling—which means more time wasted for me. In fact, now that it’s not leaking and patched up, P and I don’t even care anymore about the paint job.

We can pretend it’s abstract art or something. Or we can make up a humorous story about it when we have guests. Oh yes, P was practicing archery and cracked the ceiling…something along those lines. Perhaps throw in a mouse or tarantula into the story, spice it up?

P is finally taking it easy in terms of researching and sending out resumes on account of potential employers being busy during the holiday season. Thus, this weekend we got to have some fun. We found that recreation centers have lots of activities for kids. We went to one on Saturday and Lanes enjoyed face painting (she wanted her face painted like a red cat) and story time with singing. There were also some arts and crafts activities.

Then on Sunday we went to a dinner party to our nice friends’ house in Surrey. Luckily for them, it didn’t snow this time and we came home at 1am (so technically still the next day). Lanes had a whale of a time since one of the guest’s had two children aged 4 and 6 ½ and they were really kind to her and played nicely.

On Monday afternoon we decided to try our luck and book it to Seattle, so there was a mad dash to get Christmas presents for all. We were so tired, we could barely pack. I took lots of medicine since my sister, the PhD who thinks she is an MD, just loves sending people to the doctor. She loves to google symptoms and find lists of illnesses to match them. Itchy throat? Must be scarlet fever. Yeah.

One sneeze and she is on speed dial to set up an appointment with her doctor. The first time P and I came to Seattle, she had decided I really needed a full examination before we decided to have kids, so she got me out of the house in the pretence of going to a Thai restaurant. I am very easy to lure with food.

So I enjoyed my meal and slurped an entire huge glass of Thai iced coffee, which was sinfully and blissfully laden with condensed milk and sugar. Next thing I know, I find myself in a doctor’s office, with all my vitals being scurtinized.

Naturally, my sugar was sky high after my iced coffee, but no, no one wanted to listen to my protests. That was just the beginning of an entire battery of tests and my holiday was really almost ruined.

As I type this I’m stifling my coughs and sneezes. Hopefully my sister is so delighted by our surprise arrival that she is in no mood for getting anyone any medical attention. She looked so shocked when she opened the door, her eyebrows went to the back of her head and she was speechless. For once.

In fact, that’s how my father realized something was up and came running to the door to see if she was ok. It really made his day to see all of us so our trip was well worth it:) So that’s about it for this week. More on our crazy adventures next time…I do have a mystery appointment made for me on Thursday as a ‘Christmas present’. I’ll be hightailing it back to Canada if it’s with a doctor:)

Still Doing the Limbo Rock

One piece of good news for this week, P finally got his PR card!! No news yet on Lanes’ one. In desperation, we sent a letter to the immigration folks because if she doesn’t get her card before Christmas, we will have to celebrate the holidays with loved ones via Skype. My father is really anxious to have Lanes come to Seattle for Christmas, but now we really need a Christmas miracle to make that wish come true.

So Santa, do your magic—I have been relatively nice this year. I think. While in general I teeter towards the middle of the naughty or nice list, I assume that my general air of laziness pushes me over towards the nice side of the quotient. Being naughty requires effort: ) Well, for some (read: Lanes) it comes naturally.

Our apartment woes continue. As I type this, some dubious noises came from our one and only toilet. Last time it backed up, P had to run to use the one I discovered in the laundry room, only to wind up flashing one of the cleaning ladies while he reigned on the throne. Luckily, she thought it was hilarious, but most of P’s nose was still red when he came upstairs looking rather constipated and thunderstruck.

Our ceiling continued to leak well into the week. Someone finally came to attend to it. I opened the door to find a tall man with a gruff voice and all kinds of tape and wire draped all over his shoulders and torso. Considering I was delirious with my 100^th flu since getting here, I thought the Ghost of Christmas Past had come to get me.

All he did was get plaster all over the carpet while putting electrical tape all over the exposed pipe. We waited one week with a leaky hole in our ceiling and a bucket in the middle of our living room for that. Apparently one needs to have a plumbing qualification to put tape on a leak. It was enough to push me over the edge. I was so annoyed, I was calm.

Three days after that, on the busiest day of our week, of course, the Ghost of Christmas Past arrives again with a sidekick, who looked like a cross between Goliath and a lumberjack. They gave me the good news that after they add the plaster, I’ll have to wait until a painter came along to do the finishing touches. Great.

P had told me to wait in the bedroom instead of poking my nose in the proceedings since I was still under the weather and I’m deadly allergic to dust. My intuition told me to go outside and I nearly passed out when I saw little specks of cement all over my carpet.

I went into the kitchen to wash our plates and found that our sink was being used to mix the cement mixture!! Goliath made a big show of trying to clean up, but since there was no room for both him and I in the kitchen, since I’m not a small size either, I didn’t realize the full extent of the damage until they left.

There were grey specks on my frying pan, dishwasher rack, cupboards, etc. Who does that? The sink is looking lack luster and the garbage disposal is making a choking noise, no doubt from having chunks of cement stuck to it. To make things worse, they ran out of cement and are coming back on Monday to mix up more mayhem. I am kicking their behinds to the balcony. They can do whatever they want over there.

The only good thing is we got them out of the apartment with not a minute to spare. We had taken Lanes to her new playschool. I went armed with a book and cupcake in hand to entertain myself thinking she would want me to stick around on her first day in a new place but in one minute she kicked me out.

She beamed at me and said ‘ok mom, you can go home now. See you later.’ Yes, note that I am still ‘mom’ and not ‘mamma’ as before. I had to make an ungraceful exit and found myself waiting on the pavement, sad and lonely like an umbrella left at a bus stop, until P came to get me. I mean I could have walked home, but I don’t do walking up and down hills.

Twenty five minutes (at my pace) of that hike with my crappy lungs would equal a hospital visit. From now on my lungs are known as a separate entity to myself. The mutinous organs have launched a separatist movement and have won. As I type this, I’m still coughing up a lung.

After her first day at her new school, Lanes had a playdate with my new friend (I hope) Helen’s daughter, Abby. We went to a mall that was a whiles away because they had a nice Christmas display. You could sit on Santa’s lap for $25!! My gosh. I guess that’s how he pays off his elves, who were prowling the mall giving out cards with bios (like baseball cards—for elves) and Lanes and her little friend were delighted.

Meanwhile, P continues with his job hunt. No luck yet on that front. I noticed he has a penchant for using works like ‘executed’ and 'spear headed'. After he ‘terminated’ the services of his career counselor, I’m starting to think perhaps he should be looking for work in a more rough and tough field to finance.

Lanes continues to be mesmerized by video Skype, especially since she gets to see not only her favorite folks, but herself as well in the ‘my video’ box. Yesterday, she was so keen to talk to my sister that she went to P’s computer and pressed the keys enthusiastically, trying to make a connection.

I doubted a three year old could Skype, let alone video Skype, so I proceeded to change my clothes. Next thing I know, I hear dialing and see a video image of a mooning me and a beaming Lanes on the screen. I dashed over and slammed the computer shut before I unwittingly flashed my unsuspecting sister and her clan (of course her mother-in-law and uncle-in-law were there as well). Thank goodness it was not a wide angle lens. Then they would have had a free show.

On that bright note, I must sign off for this week. Hope you are grateful this is not a video blog: ) More dramas and adventures next time….

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….