What the hell are people doing at the Carleton Place Tim Horton’s parking lot all hours of the day? There are always groups of people that congregate there and everyone seems to know each other. It’s like a park for adults, who are gainfully unemployed and enjoy the rich taste of disgusting, cheap coffee. Maybe it’s like parking lot Fun Haven. There are different stations of people and you move around depending on what you feel like chatting about. And your reward at the end is a supersize coffee that tastes like ass and a doughnut that goes right to your hips. Bless Carleton Place right? 

Walking through this town is so amusing. I walked down main street yesterday and got more second hand smoke from cigarettes and joints then I did at Bluesfest. People watching in CP is the best. I like to play spot the drug dealer, it’s like where’s Waldo for small towns but way more seedy. In Carleton Place people feel it’s their right to grocery shop or just walk around town in their pajama’s, and the guys think shirts are totally mandatory and if they are wearing a shirt, wife beaters are the chosen style. CP, where every weekend brings out a few bar brawls, where you can find drugs faster then you can find the town hall and where mental health problems run free and unchecked. My Dad was always shocked at how many men ride bicycles around Carleton Place. I tried to explain it’s like Amsterdam, environmental and cool but knowing full well the bike is the first step vehicle after a DUI and a sad financial situation and you are way less likely to get pulled over leaving the bars. There are real cyclists here, they wear helmets and wear expensive shades. The other dudes with bicycles drive around with no helmet, a cigarette in their mouth and one arm holding a 12 pack. Now that is functional exercising. I would be way more motivated to lift weights too if they were giants bottle of beer I got to drink after I was done.

Speaking of crazy amusing places…Wal-Mart right? I never go there by choice but I have kids I work with that love to cruise around in there. I always feel as soon as I walk through the doors I have entered a weird portal to a different world. Maybe I am just a pretentious asshole that sees it like that, but I always find the experience hilarious. My favourite Wal-Mart story was when I was in there with my teen and we were shopping around for clothes and then got to the underwear section. Peaking out of one of the men’s Everlast underwear packages was a playing card. I grabbed it only to  find a three of diamonds with a provocative naked male displaying a huge penis!! My teen’s eyes bugged out of his head and we laughed so hard!! It was so random! It felt like we were in a way more dirty version of the movie Amelie with instead of cute and whimsical things happening it was random and perverse and involved penises and all taking place in Wal-Mart and in English…ok it was nothing like Amelie. I still, by the way, carry that card in my wallet to this day. Just for fun.

I took a kid I work with today to the bowling lane on McArthur because she wanted to do ten pin. Man that place is a little bit ghetto. It’s a little dingy, they only accept cash, the receipts are printed on a machine from the eighties and the whole time you are playing your game your tv screen, showing you your points, is waving it’s lines and trying not to die. I knew I had had a lazy week of not going to the gym but lifting up 10 lbs balls is painful (insert joke here). I was watching these other pro bowlers stretch and do some fun moves that resembled Flashdance without the pizzaz. And in my head I was making fun of them for stretching before bowling because y’all, it’s not a real sport. I retracted all that after my fourth bowl and I was sure my arm had broken off and gone off with the bowling ball.  It seemed like a weird place to be when a huge party came in next to us and they were colourful! It felt like an indoor gay pride parade but it made the bowling lanes seem less creepy and more exciting. The names the group next to us put on their screens were like Asian 1, Dixie Enormous, Semi-Asian and they were a terribly fun crowd. After bowling two sets and realizing my right arm would never be the same and that I do indeed suffer from carpal tunnel we packed it in and ventured out of Vanier. On the way out we passed a dude biking with a cigarette in his mouth while balancing an LCBO bag! Vanier is just a big CP! So fun.

Herbfest! The one time of year I fall off my financial rocker and rock out on local or fair trade goods. (Okay not the one time of year at all, it happens far more then that). I came home with spreads, cheese, preserves, coffee, buttons and of course a fair trade tye die shirt from Tibet. Sure it makes me looks a bit like a tent, perhaps a bit pregnant, like a rainbow balloon, like Dumbo the hippie clown but fuck it feels right.

What the hell happened to July? I feel like I was sucked into a vortex and it just crapped me out on August’s doorstep. 

Fruit flies. How do I stop them and what’s the most effective way to kill them? I have tried many things. My husband’s banana addiction tends to breed these little shits but it has gotten out of hand and they are now forming colonies and creating laws so something must be done. 

The 16 year old kid I work with is so scary knowledgable about classic rock it’s crazy. She doesn’t know who Beyonce is but she can tell me the name of Richie Sambora and Heather Locklear’s love child. She can tell me who the main groupies were to the Stones and the Beatles and claims early and rare Def Leopard is totally different form the stuff they plan on the radio. It’s so weird. The song Africa came on and I was like oh ya, Africa by Men at Work or Men Without Hats or Village Men? I have no idea. She looks at me and tells me it’s Toto. Dammit! What the hell? For the rest of the night every time a song came on wherever we were I yelled the name to make up for my lack of eighties hair music knowledge. My tourettes was back with a vengeance. We were mini putting and I was yelling KATY PERRY!!! QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE!! Then in the car I was yelling MATTHEW GOOD!! Then she got Rick Springfield, Scorpions, Poison and ACDC. So when we were walking around Ikea listening to the Ikea elevator playlist I was yelling GLORIA ESTEFAN!! AL GREEN!! STING!! It was a music pissing contest all night and although I kicked her butt in mini putt I sorely lost in the music department.  

Black countertops are OCD nightmares of never ending uncleanliness. Especially with animals around. It’s becoming a problem. If I don’t show up for work tomorrow, I am polishing my counter.

Argh Christina Aguilera you were supposed to be promoting sexiness in curvy women and now you are skinny again, damn you! Damn you for abandoning us!

I saw one of those My Little Pony adult Clubs at the food court in St. Laurent! It was both fascinating and creepy. It definitely felt like the geek section of the cafeteria. I didn’t even pretend to play it cool I just stared. My kid wanted to go see it and I was like no, no, don’t go near them…just enjoy it from afar.