South of the Border

As you might guess from the title of this entry, we are outside of beautiful British Columbia, mostly because our daughter, Lanes, has her Spring Break. Sorely lacking in the skill sets needed to entertain a three year old for nine days straight, my harassed husband, P, and I decided we’d cross international borders and descend upon my sister and her family. Lanes was so happy about going there, she looked like she was right out of an ad for Disneyland or something.

It turned out to be a really long trip. The drive takes three hours and any additional time depends on how long the line is at immigration. Border wait times on Saturday mornings are terrible. I heard that a lot of people drive over to America to do bulk shopping and gas up their cars because it is cheaper. Or maybe like us, they want to go and bug their American relatives a little bit. Spread the joy. The good thing is that the wait times can be looked up on the internet.

We knew we had to wait for around ninety minutes, but I surrounded myself with anything and everything Lanes would ever randomly want or need and was set to go. I sat there smirking and rather proud of myself for being uncharacteristically lucid in anticipating her wants and needs. If she randomly screamed ‘I want my red dragon!’, hey presto, there he was.

Of course, since I came prepared, turns out she didn’t want or need anything. She was so focused on going to ‘Merica (as she calls America) to see her Aunty (aka 'Big Mamma') that she couldn’t even eat. Before we knew it, we were about to cross over, but alas, our visas, which are extended in six month increments, were overdue.

We were told to drive into a secondary inspection unit and get a new form, and that that’s all that needed to be done. So we got out of the car, taking only our passports with us thinking we just had to ‘pick up a form’. When we got into the building, the line was incredibly long. P got into panic mode thinking we were going to have to wait for two hours in the line—with unpredictable Lanes.

The crowd was growing steadily behind us and we were sandwiched between two narrow roped up lines. There was no hope of getting Lanes’ paraphernalia that I had so carefully selected. I didn’t want P stumbling through the masses, running to the car to get anything because if daytime talk shows are anything to go by, you don’t want to be a brown man running around randomly at the border. It just won’t end well.

Lanes was standing around at first, and I was clinging onto her arm for dear life because of the crowd. After ten minutes of scanning the line anxiously for signs of movement, I realized that Lanes had neither fussed nor fumed. There was no high pitch sound warning of a meltdown and her arm felt limp and compliant. Alarmed by the silence in not only her speech but of her body language, I turned my head towards her so fast, I nearly gave myself whiplash.

A a really nice 20-something Korean lady was kneeling on the floor, stroking Lanes’ arms and talking to her. The poor woman saw my head snapping and quickly let go of Lanes and showed me her palms like she was surrendering to me at gunpoint, and said ‘I’m sorry I was talking to your daughter’. It was almost like she thought I’d whack her with my handbag for talking to Lanes.

Quite the opposite, I was relieved Lanes was distracted. Ok 2% of me was hoping the lady’s hands were clean—who am I kidding—I am that anal. I told her it was ok and to please go ahead with their conversation. Anything to keep Lanes entertained, as we had to buy ourselves a lot of time.

In the end Lanes and her new friend had some discussion about boots and Lanes told her she really needs to go to America to see her Aunty. After that P and I had to take turns lugging her because she was fading fast between the built up anticipation to see her cousins and cramped up conditions of the lines.

Almost two hours later, we were stamped, scanned and sorted and on our way. Lanes was very good about the entire thing, mostly because she kept thinking Big Mamma would randomly pop up at immigration. She was really heated up from the sunlight being in her face most of the time, and after we fed and hydrated her she passed out and woke up just when we were turning into my sister’s driveway.

Lanes and I will be in Seattle for a week. P came down with us on Saturday and had to the next day. He could come back up on Wednesday, when his five day temp job is over, but he wants to stay in Canada. He said he is going to use the quiet (read: noninterference from his spouse and child) to focus on his job hunt.

I was not sure whether or not to be insulted/offended by P longing use the ‘quiet’ to do his work, but I figured the silence in the apartment would be deafening without Lanes’ screeches of joy (which she reserves for P) and my nagging/sarcastic comments about life in general. By the end of the week he will find Lanes’ interruptions and my running commentaries endearing. I’m sure?

Also, I purposely made and froze enough food for him to survive up to Thursday. If the boredom (or dubious state of apartment maintenance—currently we are being over heated which no doubt might result in us being put back on Fire Watch) doesn’t get him coming to ‘holiday’ with us, starvation will. But then again, his life doesn’t revolve around food like mine does.  I am not sure how Lanes will survive without him, because she is rather obsessed with her Daddy.

So far we have survived half a day ok. Lanes is really happy to have company, and I realized, so am I. My sister dyed my hair.  I must say, she has a rather spotty reputation when it comes to providing beauty services. Once she insisted on tweezing my eyebrows, which resulted in them being on two different levels. Then she dyed her husband’s hair brown, but it really came out bright orange.

He had to walk around in a hat and then go to a fancy salon where he had to listen to a stylist sighing and tsking nonstop, only to come out with black hair, because the stylist felt the only way to get rid of the ‘orrible orange’ was to make it black. Black was not a good look with his very a fair complexion and freckles.

Knowing this, I still let my sister dye my hair. I thought dark brown was a good safe way to go. She appeared to do a good job. When I washed my hair, the water was indigo--like someone dropped a vat of blue ink down the drain. I screamed her name in horror, but no one came. But it ended well though since I think my hair does not appear to be blue. And more importantly, it's still on my head.

She then put an anti-frizz serum in my hair and blow dried it and my hair couldn’t look frizzier if I swam in a tank of electric eels. I’m so glad I’m going to get a haircut tomorrow and this mane will be someone else’s problem. When I am asked what I've done to my hair, I'll wiggle my crooked eyebrows in the direction of my sister.

But suspect make overs aside, I'm glad to have big sister--after enlisting her to help me put Lanes to sleep and answer questions as to where Daddy is, we were chatting. Somehow she convinced me to open up my Facebook account. Before I knew it, she was all nostalgic and wondering how my childhood friends were.

She was happily surfing to see their profile pictures to see how they turned out—then she wanted to click on their spouses pages to see who they married. I was on pins that she would accidentally ‘friend’ the spouses—under my name nonetheless—or worse. Before I know it, I’ll be known as the Facebook hussy or something thanks to her.  I was so nervous trying to get her off my pages that my stomach and bum were clenched so hard, I think I’m fully toned.

I got her off and made sure I was securely logged off—just in case she came back to look up more stuff. I have no idea how the rest of the week will go. My sister is eyeing my eyebrows again, so I’m on guard. My nieces have school so we will miss them during the day. Right now Lanes and I are home alone.

My sister has put the alarm on and locked us in. Hopefully neither of us will open a door or window and set it off. All I know is that I was faithfully promised dim sum today—which means my sister will be missing for a good part of the morning. I must run and get ourselves ready for the day…until next time…