Canada Moms Blog

Moment Of Truth: The Drug Talk

"You remember how the cops found 25 million marijuana plants in that building downtown today?" he asks me over spaghetti. "I do; all 25 hundred of them," I reply. "Well, mom, they said that they haven't arrested a suspect," and I added, "Yet."

He's grounded for the next week, for being ridiculously stupid after school today, so the CBC is as much stimulation as the kid can get. He'll take it and soak in every last drop. 

The 11 year old perks up. "2500 whats?" he asks, and his brother fills him in on all the details. He hears the story and asks me, "Marijuana is a plant?" I tell him that it is, that it's, more accurately, an herb much like basil or parsley except that it doesn't make your pasta taste better, it gets you high.

"What's high?" they ask, and I am suddenly Jack's tweenage reality.

He Did It His Way

This morning, my son went off to his first day of summer camp.

Our school offers an invite-only visual arts camp for two weeks over the summer. It's put on by someone or the other, which just means it's free for the parents. Only 25 students in the school of 500+ are invited, which means that a whole bunch of kids don't get to go.  One of my sons is going; one isn't.

Paradise By The Drug Store Lights

Like half the internetowebosphere this week, I am gearing up for my trip to Chicago for the 2009 BlogHer conference. Unlike half of that half, I am not the slightest bit concerned with what I'm wearing or the way I smell or how fat I am. I am worried that my passport will be stolen by a senile old woman in teal clubbed shoes in a bathroom stall while I wait to make my move on Donald Sutherland but, as luck would have it, lightening never strikes twice and yes, that has already happened to me once, so I think I'm safe.

And while I've come to accept that I'm a 20 pound overweight woman with no sense of fashion whatsoever who stutters when she gets nervous and will, most assuredly, forget to wax off her beard before the conference, there are a few personal issues I've not completely resolved myself to, those being the state of my teeth and pores. Because I like to totally wigg out about things that are completely beyond my control, that's why.

I Went To Half Day Kindergarten, And All I Got Was This Stupid Ability To Overanalyze Things I Can't Control.

My boys will leave the 3rd and the 5th grade behind them next Thursday and march forward into the summer with intermediate wishes and junior high school dreams.  Which means that I have a kid in junior high school and that means I am officially old.  What's worse is that my little baby girl will be enjoying her last summer before she, too, is enrolled in public school, and what that means is that I will officially have three school-aged children.

Someone get me a walker already.

When my oldest son, the one who will be going to dances with girls next school year, was entering kindergarten, our school had a full day kinder classroom and a half day one, too. The state (of Colorado, yes I'm a dirty American) offered every child Monday thru Friday, nine to noon kindergarten and our school offered the options of a tuition-based full day. The two classrooms ran on totally different schedules; one to accommodate the necessary learning for the half-dayers and one to spread things out for the full-dayers and incorporate gym, music and art.

Being a school on a city boundary that fairly clearly delineated the haves and the have-nots, the classrooms filled much as you'd expect, with the poorer students, the ones on free or reduced lunch, the ones who didn't fully speak English and so on in the half-day room and the wealthier students, the ones who were financially secure and, for the most part, white filled the full day room. 

My son went half days. 

Grounded

Right now, I am not allowed to cross Canada's borders.

I may be getting deported in a few weeks and until the decision is made by the Immigratory Powers That Be, I have to stay put within Canada's borders or I will be prohibited from returning.  That means no business trips, no vacations, no Target runs, until they say I can say or they toss me out by the collar in a few weeks.

We go through this every year when we re-apply for our visas, but this year is particularly nerve-wracking because not only are we upping the ante and applying for visa renewals AND permanent residency, we're doing so while we stand thirty minutes from our home country's borders and watch as she crumbles from the wallet out.

For the first time since we've been here, we can say with no hesitation that we want to stay here, that we really don't want to get sent back home.  That we're maybe a little afraid of getting sent back.

Crossing the Canadian Border With Your Kids, Clint Eastwood Style

I get asked often about traveling and immigrating to Canada by my American friends.  I've moved over the border twice, imported two cars, applied for visas three times for five people at a time and have traveled back and forth over the border for majorly important events Target more times than I can count.  I am a plethora of Useful Border Information, and today I thought I'd share a few examples of how to not border-hop with your kids, because knowledge is power, friends.  Forewarned is forearmed.

Can You Get Deported Over The Alphabet?

I am an American in Canada.

In the two years I've lived here, I've learned that in Canada, almost anything goes.  You can walk into a courthouse and get married to anyone.  You can have a peaceful assembly protesting the criminalization of your drug of choice and get police escorts.  You can have any color skin, go to any church, speak any language, have any amount of money in your pocket and people will still treat you just about the same. 

The one thing you cannot be under almost any circumstances is an American.

We are thoroughly American, my family and I.  My sons were seven and nine when we moved here.  My husband was 34.  I was 32.  Assimilating us is going to be damn near impossible.  My daughter, however, was only onewhen we moved north, and since she's lived the majority of her life in Canada we can see some major differences between her and the rest of us.  And don't think we having been using her as our litmus test for how well the rest of us are Canadianizing ourselves.