Please, won't you be my neighbour?

St-Henri is a special place. It borders on the fine line betwee ghetto and up and coming. As all the salespeople from the new condo developments will tell you. The up and coming part. Not the ghetto part. 


I was on vacation for two weeks, and last week I took advantage of visiting the grocery store during the day, without the usual mass of people who flock to the IGA after work. 


Yep. This is the kind of person I am now. One who takes delight in grocery store shopping on one's holiday. And then makes muffins. For fun. Muffin fun. I think there's a haiku in there somewhere. 


First, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that my street smelled like urine for a good 3 blocks. This is new. It usually smells like my neighbour's yard along that street. A combination or rotting pool water and fresh cut grass. 


Don't be fooled. Fresh cut grass is lovely, but it does nothing to overcome the rotting water smell. You didn't think water could rot, did you? Neither did I. But then there's this guy. And his yard. And his pool. And the rotting water in it.  


When I turned the corner onto the main street, I was greeted with a woman throwing up in front of the drugstore, leaning over her old lady cart. If an old lady is in trouble of some kind, it's part of the good-person-code to help them. I don't know where that code came from. It just exists. 


But I think there's an appendix about old people and vomit. Unless they're related to you. So, I let her old lady friend help her, while I had to walk briskly into the drugstore and stand next to the hand sanitizers for a good 10 minutes and think about concrete and bank machines and any other items not related to vomit. 


Lucky for me, she was gone when I came out of the drugstore. But there was another treat waiting for me when I got to the grocery store. Hooray! 


Of course the crazy man wearing mom jeans gets in the line-up behind me at the cash. Of course he does! He shoved his cart full of diet Pepsi and Saran Wrap into the back of my knees several times, then checked whatever was in his fanny pack several more times before running his hands through his greasy mullet/ponytail. I almost had to run back to my safe place; the hand sanitizers. 


I had my groceries delivered and insisted on writing my address on the delivery slip myself. I'm pretty sure crazy man wasn't in any position to remember complicated addresses that include a street number AND an apartment number. But I wasn't taking any chances. Henry is scared of a toilet paper roll. He's no help. 


I finally made it back home, but not before I spotted a man dressed in head to toe leather, with a shaved head covered in tattoos, save for a ring of blond dreadlocks around his head, examining a plastic severed foot in the Halloween section at the dollar store. 


So I did what anyone in my position would do. I didn't make eye contact and kept walking.