These are the people in my neighborhood, in my neighborhood

I should be working right now. That's the problem when you work from home, it's so easy to get distracted. Here is an example of a conversation I've had in my head, while I'm working at home: "Hey Larissa, do you want to work or do you think you should watch that episode of Game Of Thrones you PVR'd? "

Anyhow, I was supposed to have a birthday party for Dex but he got sick. Ah well, I hate cleaning up after those things anyhow. Nothing but condoms and pills left behind.
We live in Toronto and it's no secret that housing prices are ridiculous. Will and I bought in the East End of the city in 2008. Even back then we paid far too much for the house we have but whatever. Toronto is where we want to live so you just have to accept that this is the way it goes. Our neighborhood, as I have mentioned in other blogs, isn't exactly the most upscale of 'hoods. It's not the worst neighborhood in the city, but its got some "elements" to put it nicely. In fact, about 6 months ago there was a big prostitution bust at our main intersection. That, in itself, is not really shocking. There's prostitutes everywhere and who really cares. To me the bit that was slightly unnerving was that one of the prostitutes was 68. Lets do the math here. You're 68, which probably means you've been a prostitute since your early 20's, maybe even earlier. But wait. I'm jumping to conclusions here. Maybe she was a high-powered judge, living in BelAir with her 3 gorgeous children, while also taking in her wise cracking nephew. What do I know. Anythings possible. But lets assume she didn't have a mid-life crisis and decide to start hookin' (street lingo for hooking) when she was a younger woman. That's about 48 years as a pro-stitute. No amateurs on this corner. That is downright nasty.
I've lost my point here. My point is, before Dex, this kind of stuff rolled off my back. It was kind of funny that 68 year old women were spending their golden years giving Golden showers by the Golden Arches at Vic Park and the Danforth. I liked that my neighborhood had some grit to it. Now, it angers me and every idiot I see drinking Labatt Blue at 9am on their government funded porch, pisses me off. It's the part of Maternal Instinct they leave out of the baby books.
On the other hand, if I didn't live here, I wouldn't have any material for this blog, or at least very little.
Here's a doozie. As I mentioned, Dex was sick last week. I stayed home with him all week because it was the kind of illness you can't dump on your daycare, although there were days I really wanted to. Total gong show of a week. Anyhow, Dex was feeling slightly better so I walked to the Scotiabank at Danforth and Main. It was about 4 o'clock and the actual bank was closed but the machines were open. Dex and I were the only ones in there until this absolute bat shit crazy woman came rambling through the door with her cart of crap. I usually know, or recognize, most of these people in the neighborhood, and for the most part, they're pretty harmless. In fact, it's the super crazy ones that I have a heart for. It's not their fault. The crack heads, on the other hand, are the scummiest and scariest. They're too unpredictable and is it just me or do crackheads always seem like they're in a rush? Where the hell do they have to go except to score more crack? Anyhow, this woman comes into the bank machine area and is muttering to herself. It looked as though she had recently shaved her head and it was good to see that she was keeping warm as it appeared as if she was wearing about 14 layers. Anyhow, she went up to a bank machine and just started losing it! SHe started swearing like crazy and getting louder and louder. At this point I started to freak out slightly, it was kind of scary. I was desperately trying to finish depositing my $500,000 cheques before she totally lost it. As her voice starts getting louder, Dex gets scared and now he starts crying, while this lunatic is saying every variation of Fuck you can imagine. I grab my bank card out of the machine and just as I quickly get all my stuff together, the swearing stops for a split second. Now I hear something else. It's a recognizable sound, I've heard it before. Birds chirping? Nope. Harps harpsichording? Nope. Crazy ass woman pee'ing herself right on the bank machine floor in broad daylight? Ding!Ding!Ding! That's the sound. It occurred to me later that she obviously didn't have anything on under her 4 skirts because the pee hit the floor with such gusto there was certainly nothing in it's way. I get the hell out of there and calm Dex down by cuddling him and promising him a timbit, at the Tim Hortons on the corner. He settles down and so do I, slightly. We get to the Tim Hortons and the aforementioned crackhead who opens the door all day is there with his cracky girlfriend who is doing that weird cracked out dance. You know the one? It's sort of half jitterbug, 1/2 shimmy with a tiny dash of spaz? As we're approaching the door, I see some other guy come and pass the door-opening crackhead drugs. Nice. The crackhead makes eye contact with me, I look away and go inside. I come out to find the drug dealer and the two crack heads in a full on brawl. I don't know what the hell happened but they're all yelling at one another and whatever has calmed Dex down has now stopped working and he's crying again. I literally break out into a run to get off of this corner. I'm clear of the madness when I look down and see that I've nearly rolled the stroller over a dead pigeon.

Needless to say, I can only take so much, no matter how good of a story it makes. We're moving out of this neighborhood one of these days. I just need to find a few extra hundred thousand. I anyone has any ideas as to how I can, very quickly, round up a few hundred grand, I'm open to suggestions. The obvious answer is to sell drugs. I think I may know some one who is upset with their current supplier.