Advisory Notices

I'm stuck in a purgatory state of mortification thanks to my five year old, Lanes; I'm trying to buy a clue when it comes to job hunting; and my nutty sister has stopped short from springing out of the cupboards with health and wellness messages from the Land of  Unsolicited Advice, of which she been Governor since 1989. 

This is how it all started: we went to a New Year's Eve dance where little tykes were welcome.  We were quite delighted that Lanes latched on to the other children there.  She was so occupied, that my diligent spouse, P, and I could have actually pretended to be on a date, if we were so inclined.

Midway through the party, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a nice Aunty type had summoned Lanes over.  Normally, Lanes tends to be shy around people she doesn't know and I mistakenly assumed the conversation would be rather short and one-sided.

I was concerned when the Aunty’s face, which was beaming and full of adoration initially, was suddenly looking a little pale and alarmed.  I continued to assume Lanes was not saying much (she had her back to me) and figured the lady was looking perplexed because the music was so loud that she could not hear.

As I possess the attention span of a fruit fly, and I was distracted by the prospect of chicken tikka masala, one of my favorite dishes, I forgot about it. After Lanes did the rounds with her new friends, I finally caught up with her and asked her about her conversation with the nice elderly woman.

She said the lady wanted to know if the little girl she was playing with was her sister. I was about to leave it at that when Lanes added, “I told her I don’t have any brothers or sisters. I’m all alone. I had two big brothers, but they died and went to heaven’.

I nearly fell out of my chair! As I gasped in horror, the penny dropped as to why I was getting pitiful side glances. I asked Lanes why in the world she said such a thing.  She explained that her ‘brothers’ were my now deceased pet dogs, Muttley and Coco. Oh dear. Therapy anyone?

Since I loved my pets as if they were my children, she decided to compensate the whole no sibling thing by pretending she did have some. Poor child. Poor me. Poor lady who heard this story and thinks Muttley and Coco were human. Poor P, enjoying his drink and dancing like it’s 1999, blissfully unaware that his daughter has clearly traumatized a senior citizen.

I rushed to explain the situation to that poor woman, but something got lost in translation and I think she thinks we are one step above being the South Asian version of the Addams family.  Maybe I should call Lanes ‘Wednesday’ and call it a day, no pun intended. My hair does bear a resemblance to Cousin It on most days.

Leave it to us to have a comical start to 2013. Fortunately, that lady did not catch our name and thus we should be spared any awkward encounters in the future. Now that all felicitations and unwilling spinning of mayhem is cast aside, I have no more excuses to delay the job hunt.

As a first step, I made an appointment with an immigration service type place for them to look over my resume. I figured I needed all the help I could get now that I have a gap the size of the Grand Canyon in it due to my ‘mothering’ duties after our move here.

Two buses later, when I got to the office, I found out that it was in a school. Something about the hallways reminded me of the movie ‘Fame’ and I half expected a bunch of angst filled, self-righteous young adults in neon leg warmers to start leaping out of the doors singing ‘Fame, I’m going to live forever…’.

I would have happily joined in, tone deaf, two left feet, no high lighter colored clothes and all.  No such entertainment, alas. The only people in the hall were a nice Indian lady who had shown up too early for free English classes, her teenage son, and another woman who was trying in vain to give them directions.

Due to miscalculations about bus times and preferring to be early than late, I wound up being forty-five minutes early. Turns out the lady I was supposed to meet was out sick, but someone else was supposed to help me.  The lucky thing about that was that I was seen sooner rather than later.

I was redirected to another organization as my resume was deemed 80% suitable (to which P would no doubt scoff and guffow). As it is, when I dutifully repeated what was told to me, P added his two cents and in the end, it seemed like I could have spared myself the long day and just sat and taken notes from him.

P has the tendency to look up or study things in great detail and then tell people how to do their jobs. This, several bank managers in the greater Vancouver area have found out the hard way, when P has taken to explaining their products to them. Sadly, I hate to admit he would have had a brilliant career in the banking sector.

Speaking of unsolicited advice, my nutty sister has taken to calling and e-mailing me multiple times a day with messages of doom about failing to take a flu shot. Apparently, it’s a terrible flu season, the worst in years.  If I don’t want to languish and kick the bucket, I’m supposed to go get a shot and reduce my chances of falling ill by 60%.

If she could send me a singing telegram with this message she would. As I type this, she is probably looking for those talking pigs dieters put in their fridges. Only hers will say ‘did you get a flu shot? Don’t eat the chocolate. Oink oink’.

With that I must sign off, as the phone is ringing on cue. More musings from BC next week…