I apologize dear readers but I haven’t been blogging in real time. The last two weeks were written days or even a week before you saw them. No excuses other than I am very busy. Mostly staining lumber for the deck that Rob is putting together as I sit here typing this and with the day to day of being the house’s wife and the husband’s gal and the child’s mother. Regardless of how much reno needs to be accomplished, everyone needs to eat and wear clean clothing.
So a rundown….
As of Wednesday at roughly 10AM mountain time, BabyD and I achieved official permanent resident status in Canada. After nine months and much invasive paperwork, the final okay was a bit anti-climactic. I initialed a few things and signed my name a couple of time and that was it. I am now endowed with the same rights as any Canadian except my opinions of public policy don’t matter but as a former Democrat and a current registered Independent in the States – I am used to that.
I am finished staining lumber after a week of doing not much else. I kick ass.
BabyD is in skipping camp this week and to calm her fears a bit on the first day I hung out and jumped rope too. Learned some cool tricks. Suffered a high calf sprain for my trouble. I am old.
The garden is going gangbusters and I have been harvesting yummy stuff the past two weeks which makes for a less shocking grocery bill but much more prep time in the kitchen.
Weather is warm. Will be happier when fall sets in which this being August should be any day now.
Picked out a couple of writing courses to take this year at the university in the city.
Finally dug my desk out from clutter to ready for school’s start (and the return of my serenity and writing time).
Up on the agenda:
Finishing my manuscript.
Getting the outline set for my memoir.
Doing a closet and drawer purge.
School and cold weather preparation.
Getting ready for Rob’s birthday.
Signing up for fall yoga classes.
Much more writing!!
Okay, now I will return you to my post-dated blogging for a bit.
When I met you in the restaurant
You could tell I was no debutante
You asked me what’s my pleasure
A movie or a measure?
I’ll have a cup of tea and tell you of my dreaming
Dreaming is free
I don’t want to live on charity
Pleasure’s real or is it fantasy?
Reel to reel is living rarity
People stop and stare at me We just walk on by – we just keep on dreaming
Feet feet, walking a two mile
Meet meet, meet me at the turnstile
I never met him, I’ll never forget him
Dream dream, even for a little while
Dream dream, filling up an idle hour
Fade away, radiate
I sit by and watch the river flow
I sit by and watch the traffic go
Imagine something of your very own
Something you can have and hold
I’d build a road in gold just to have some dreaming
Dreaming is free
Dreaming
Dreaming is free
Dreaming
Dreaming is free
I have this recurring dream in which my purse is stolen and I am chasing the party responsible to retrieve it. Well, this is sort of what happens. In the early days of this dream, the purse is just lost and I spend what feels like hours looking all over places that feel like places I know and yet they look completely different.
Like university.
I wander the streets and buildings of what is supposed to be Iowa City but isn’t and yet I think it is – and isn’t – at the same time.
I have also wandered a representative of the middle school I worked at the longest too.
But lately the dream has evolved to the point where I haven’t misplaced the purse but it has been stolen and I chase the thief through a mall. A funhouse version of a mall that actually crops up as a dream setting a lot. (I think sometimes I recycle sets but have no idea why.)
I am worried in the dream because all my credit cards and money and identification is in my purse. Why would I carry all that, you might ask. Because I have. Moving up here I had to keep all the important documents on me to ensure nothing got misplaced or left behind in a hotel. Any trip we take across the border requires a multitude of documents so we can get back in as we await finalization of our residency. Documents loom large in my life.
But money and credit cards?
I’ll get back to that.
So I finally have the woman who has my purse within my sights and she knows I am close on her heels. The bag is a dark leather with a longer shoulder strap and is floppy. You know, the kind that only stands upright because it is crammed with crap. Usually junk that belongs to everyone but the owner of the bag. That is the way of motherhood.
I grab the women by the shoulder and spin her around. She is shorter than I am. Blond short hair, the kind that kicks up in curls at the nape of the neck and at the ears. It looks frosted actually. I don’t recognize her. I wrench the bag from her shoulder and she fights to keep it, but I easily take it from her and knock her down.
I am so angry with this person and I just start to whale on her.
She rolls around, protesting that she needs the things in the purse but I don’t.
I don’t know what she is talking about because everything in the bag is mine.
I grab a hand full of her upper arm. She is extremely overweight. I pinch and twist it. She howls. Still insisting that I don’t need the purse.
That’s when a man snatches it up from the ground where it is laying and runs off with it.
That’s where I woke up.
Aside from the ever annoying spider dream (I spend a lot of time fending off noxious critters – usually big furry spiders), this purse dream is the most consistent in my rotation. I dream in color. There is often a soundtrack and I usually am at least partially – if not fully – aware that I am dreaming. Sometimes I am even a character and a spectator. It never seems odd.
I have told Rob about the dreams and mentioned the purse one with the new details. He wondered what I thought it meant and I really hadn’t any clue.
However, thinking about it for a few days I came to a few conclusions.
The purse is my identity and my baggage. That is obvious. The fat woman is my body image troubles which I clearly need to let go of. The fact that she told me I don’t need the “baggage” or the “identity” makes sense as I am not even the person I was a year ago let alone the woman I was prior to that.
The money and credit cards?
I am putting too much emphasis on the pay off end of my writing. I shouldn’t be worrying about that. Financially we are fine and I am putting too much pressure on myself and probably stifling my muse in the process.
That’s not a phrase that any Canadian wants to hear.
When we were pouring cement two weekends ago, Best Man was regaling us with his golf exploits (Best Man frequently takes the summer afternoons off to “network” on the green) and mentioned seeing military jets , CF-18’s, flying overhead.
There was an air show in Edmonton because ordinarily, we wouldn’t see military aircraft up here, and of course the conversation turned to America and it’s lust for the oil sands just to our north.
“You sure it wasn’t the Americans coming to secure the oil sands?” my husband asked him.
Best Man just laughed.
It’s not really a joke. Canadians are pretty sure the day will come when the U.S. redirects its might north and simply takes from Canada what it now coerces from them via treaties and secret agreements.
However the only Americans landing today were BabyDaughter and I. The final piece of the immigration puzzle is an interview and handing over yet another photo for our permanent residency cards*.
MidKid had heard that the interview could get intimate and picky.
“What color is your husband’s toothbrush?”
I could draw a map of his “identifying marks” more easily than recall that.**
I do know that some couples are called upon to “prove” the legitimacy of their union but short of setting up a camera in the bedroom (which Rob nixed and wouldn’t do us justice anyway), how do you prove you are truly married in all senses of the word?
If that were to have been an issue, it would have come up before now anyway.
The interview mainly consists of the following:
Are you a criminal?
Do you actually live here?
Do you have the $490 dollars?
Welcome to Canada.*
*So we are now officially permanent residents of Canada with all the rights minus two (voting and running for public office). I was handed a document that entitles us to live here but not doesn’t grant us reentry should we leave before the PR cards arrive.
Why would we leave? I hate that my mind goes there but I had to ask the woman what would happen should I be needed to go back to the states because I have an elderly/dying father.
“You would have to go to the Canadian Embassy to get a travel permit for reentry.”
Oh. No problem. It’s a mere three-ish hours away from my folks’ home being located in Chicago.
For the next five weeks then I’ll just hope my dad doesn’t get worse or die. Like the good old days when my late husband was in the nursing home and then hospice. I just uber-planned. I had lesson plans months in advance and a weeks worth of emergency sub plans. I sometimes wonder now if I am not a bit too contingency oriented. Always knowing where the exits are located and what to do after evacuating. Side effects.
**I was not called upon to prove intimate knowledge of my husband. Though I was prepared to do so.
anniegirl1138 