Oh I am just traveling on business, no big deal… weeee, when I say that, I feel like I have a real job, hazaa! But there are, as always, a few downsides to traveling…

Firstly, I suffer from bathroom anxiety. There is next to no way in hell I will use a toilet on a bus. As if the walk of shame to the toilet isn’t enough, as you have just admitted your bladder is less useful then the rest of the travelers who can all somehow hold their pee until the one stop. But then the actual bathroom itself is just a stall of horrendous smelling satan toxic cleaner that I can smell from the front of the bus mixed with piss and herpes. So needless to say I anxiety peed about 4 times at the bus station before getting on the bus which seemed to have the opposite effect and turned my bladder into overdrive because as soon as I sat down on the bus I needed to pee. Damn you pee anxiety and peanut sized bladder! But because I am such a special, anxiety ridden, non-bus peeing person I TOTALLY WAITED THE 2.5 HOURS UNTIL THE STOP to go. I’m ridiculous and crazy all at the same time.

But this trip was much better than the last. When I left Toronto after my first week I had got to the bus station with plenty of time and waited diligently (asking random people in the station to watch my luggage as I ran back and forth to the bathroom a million times to pee) so I could try and ensure myself a window seat and hopefully two seats to myself. I got on, grabbed a seat and as they announced we would be leaving I congratulated myself on getting two seats together by taking out my books and phone and spreading out a little, relaxing. When all of a sudden this semi hippie looking couple run onto the bus. I looked up in a panic and thought, well there’s no fucking way, out of this whole bus, that they will sit next to me. I should look as maniacal and disturbed as I possibly can to avoid this. But nope, they walk up to me and one sits next to me and the other right across the aisle in another seat, I think, no freaking way! Oh well it could have been worse I guess. Then the girl across the aisle catches my eye and I take off my headphones and she says, would you mind moving as we would really like to sit together. My first thought was, fuck right off, you are sitting next to him, there is just an aisle between you. And why exactly do you need to be so close for a bus ride? Aren’t you just going to read and listen to music anyways? Hennie and I were once on a 7 hour flight back from England (with matching disgusting colds and booger faces) that we somehow didn’t get seats together on, but it didn’t bloody matter as we just watched a million movies anyways, blew our noses and then pretended to sleep! Like get a grip couple that feels like they need to touch for a whole 5 hour bus ride, get a grip. But instead of saying that I say, uhhhh ok? Like a question. Like are you serious? Are you really asking me to leave my cozy window to sit next to the girl with a thousand bags at her feet? Really? And as I get up putting by best annoyed face on I smash my head into the light ceiling thing above where one sits. The girl makes an empathetic yelp for me and I just scowl. So I finally move all my shit to the other side, THE AISLE seat. I am terribly annoyed and then I turn to see the girl I am sitting next to is now talking on her cell phone incredibly loudly like she did many times during the trip. So I turn to the couple and scowl going yup, look, look what I am dealing with. Then her bags start falling onto my feet and I hope the couple is feeling bad. Then the girl puts her bare feet onto the seat, sitting cross legged and one is touching me and they smell. I decide that the couple next to me should be cursed forever. I look over and they are kissing and I think, fuck off. This is how crazy things happen on Greyhound buses, I swear. Then I look over a bit later to scowl at them again as the girl sitting next to me has turned on her side to sleep and her bum is crossing our seat separation barrier.  Across the aisle the guy is giving the girl a massage. I nearly hurled. Anyways, I was obviously tired to be such a sac of crap for literally the whole 5 hours bus ride but I kid you not, I was absolutely a scowly faced curmudgeon the whole damned time! F U Greyhound couple, fo realz.

Here are things I have learned about Toronto…

-Every cab driver will warn you about the other cab drivers ripping you off. The one that does not do this is blatantly ripping you off. I have taken a cab from the bus station to Mississauga three times now and the price has ranged extortionately.

-Strangers have a lot of balls here, like too many. I now critique my hair in the mirror every time I catch a reflection of myself at work because of the guy who told me I needed a hair cut. It was just so weird! We had been chatting in the cafe for like twenty minutes about what there is to do in Mississauga (nothing btw) and then all of a sudden he points to a lady and says that I should get my hair cut like that. I turn to see the short in the back long at the front cut I had for years. I said I had already had that and it was too much maintenance. He insists I should get that cut or perhaps more like a bob. Then he tells me some places to get my hair cut down by the water because I absolutely need more style. If this guy himself had been stylish and perhaps a gay stylist I would have appreciated the friendly advice but this guy was extremely plain looking wearing a plain business suit. So I decided he must have a weird hair fetish and I excused myself immediately after.

-The other ballsy stranger was one of the cab drivers. He was a Lebanese guy who scolded me immediately when I responded to his question of which way do you want to go downtown with “I dunno, the shortest way?”. He freaked out telling me that’s how I would get ripped off by other drivers but not him etc. etc. Then he started bragging about his kids. They were both engineers, working for amazing companies like Bombardier and places like that. He asks what I do. He asks what I went to school for – Political Science. He explains to me all the jobs that I could have had with that and I tune him out because he is obviously drunk. Then he asks how old I am – thirty. What? You only have two more years to have kids! That’s it! After that, no way, too old! So I was already feeling bad about my job, my education and now we was telling me that my baby making parts were going to self destruct in t-minus 2 years. Well wtf buddy. Wtf.

-The kindness of strangers in Toronto. Today someone told me I looked like Mary Louise Parker. Was she implying I looked like a drug dealing soccer Mom? Possibly. But I will take that as a compliment anyways!

I arrived home to Ottawa on Friday only to realize it’s fall! Apparently the leaves have been changing and I had no idea because I was living in the cement playground that is Mississauga. I got out of my hotel every morning, walked through the mall, through a Wal-Mart (which is a terrible way to start your day btw) and then through a parking lot to WF. Did not see trees except in my Zen Garden I found and none of those leaves had changed. I felt like I had been living in a weird scene from Futurama, staying in a bland, generic hotel room next to the Marilyn Munro buildings, being surrounded my condos and malls and seeing no nature whatsoever. At one point in my stay my air conditioner broke so they moved me two floor down to the exact same room. I felt like I was in a scary sci-fi movie. I did, at one point, eventually find the waterfront which was nice, but it seemed like a weird anomaly as compared to the rest of it.