MonkeyPants

Got My Freak On.

And I am not talking about my sexual escapades, either.

Today was the annual PoCo Church Craft and Bake Sale. I have done this now for the second year in a row, and I must say, it is a fantastic way to get my Christmas baking done.

Yes! That’s right! I buy my Christmas baking! All, of course, except the shortbread. Even though I do not use the Recipe Sacred To My Family, I still have a shortbread hangup. Be that as it may, I was in the suburb of Port Coquitlam today and I can report with some authority: PoCo is full of freaks.

Church Freaks: These people were wearing festive Crhristmas sweaters with reindeer and snowmen on them. They had painstakingly crafted things like novelty lights in little jars, with some frou frou and little Christmas lights inside them. Also, baby stuff, so Em went Mental. Even her long-suffering spouse, J-Lo, picked out a baby hat with ladybugs on it. There was aslo some old guy (Think of Santa as a Teamster) at the cookie table, randomly stuffing cookies into bags. He wasn’t actually working at the table, but no one told him to stop, so I didn’t know what to think.

Craft Freaks: After the Church Bonanza, cookies and pies and tarts and squares in hand, we went to Michael’s, which is the Black Hole of Crafts. There were women in tasteful polyester ensembles and sweaters with kittens on, debating the merits between little plastic Holiday Figurines (Collect them All!) and Olde Tyme Christmas Ornaments, which were made of faux Carnival glass, made in China, and painted the most garish colours I’ve ever seen. Actually, a lot of the stuff was fairly stomach-churning. At one point, when J-Lo leaned over and whispered, “And you just KNOW that everysingle thing we see here is also in a home within a ten-mile radius of this place”, I lost my will to live.  Mostly due to Holiday Charm Overload, I escaped unscathed, although I wavered while looking at a tote bag with plastic pockets on it, where you could put photos of loved ones. Seriously. It was pretty cool in a kitsch kind of way.

IHOP Freaks: We were hungry after all our shopping, and what better place to go than IHOP? Let me tell you, it was Freak Central! There was the girl with the hood so big and fuzzy she prompted me to wonder where her tauntaun was. Her boyfriend was a bald and spotty youth with eyes that were too close together. There was also the girl with the T-shirt so low cut that I could tell the colour of her nipples (kind of a light cappucino). As well, there was the really scary guy with the tattoo on the back of his head. It was either a giant spider or the Joker. The fat folds in the back of his neck made it hard to tell. It was good people-watching, that’s for sure.

So, to sum up:

Kelly got the lip gloss that made me look like I’d been making out with clowns. It looks good on her.

Got baking done.

Learned that there’s more to humanity than my comfort zone.

Had a waffle.

All in all, a good day.

Random Community Ties.

So I just popped out to grab a couple things at our local convenience store. As I do most of the time, I took a book. It’s not raining, and I can walk and read under streetlights quite easily.

I crossed Fourth and a guy asked me, “You’re actually reading, crossing at a light?”

I looked up. “Sure. Lots of light.” I showed him my book.

He looked the cover over carefully. “I’ve been reading a lot of really ironic stuff lately. Is this ironic?”

“The characters are great. The situation is very ironic,” I said, wondering if he was going to work himself into a giant tirade, or was merely passing the time of day.

“Hunh,” he said. “Kind of like Vancouver. Look at us.” He pointed to the sky. “God pissed on us for two weeks of rain. Now we can’t drink the water. Are we the best city in the world, or aren’t we?” He shrugged eloquently.

He has a loose grasp on what I would term ‘ironic’, but he does have a point. If we’re in the best city in the world, the most livable city, why can’t we drink the water?