Dogs don’t care about time, they just live in the moment.

I haven’t worn a watch since the days of Swatch-mania circa the late 1980s and I stopped wearing them altogether when I had a collection of 10 of them that all needed battery replacements at the same time and would cost as much as a new watch to revive them again. “Fuck that shit,” I said and never looked back. I don’t even need a watch anyway:  a) my cell phone is so connected to me it has amalgamated into my DNA AND it has a handy clock on it and b) I always know what time it is even before I check the time. I have a finely tuned intuition clock that wakes me up 5 minutes before my cell phone alarm goes off because I so fucking hate/fear/dread that noise, I will do anything not to let it permeate my ear drums. My subconscience has my back and will wrap up that dream plot early and jostle my bladder to force me up so I don’t have to hear “Marumba” at 5:30 a.m. However, sometimes my subconscience is a douchebag and wakes me up every 15 goddamn minutes just in case I start dreaming of Idris Elba and his dick actually works this time and doesn’t turn into a lizard and run away. Why do all my sex dreams end with some kind of surreal erectile dysfunction?

Anyway, now that HAVE AN ACTUAL JOB, I am now much more aware of time management. Also I bought a non-Swatch watch because I keep my cell phone in my locker so I’m not tempted to finger fuck it while I’m on the clock. I think that is a major no-no, nobody should pay you to play Bejeweled Blitz, you are your own idiot on your own time.  Anyway Before Job (B.J. as we will call it), I would lovingly milk out my chores, spacing them out so that each task would cover a certain amount of units of time, like in “About A Boy” when slacker Will (Hugh Grant) explains how to while away the day:

Now I motor through my errands like I’m yanking out rogue eyebrow hairs. For example, today being my day off, first thing this morning I drove Evangeline up to her job at her swanky private school day camp, Bayview Glen, then went to the car wash and got “the works” while I filed my toenails on the bench outside (relax, no one was there), then went to Loblaws and twirled the aisles, came home and powered mowed my lawn and the neighbours’ and ALL THIS before my morning poop. Seriously, it was 10 a.m. and I was ready for cocktail hour and was going to sit down with y’all and blog about my childhood friend coming to visit me last weekend when the phone rang and I actually answered it.

It was a strange number but I was feeling reckless and turned out to be Evangeline calling from the school’s medical office. She was having one of those heart palpitation thingys that I have not told you about but is an actual symptom of anxiety, she is okay now, thanks, but I killed more than 2 units of time picking her up and then popping into the butcher shop for Tamshire bacon. The butcher asked me if I was going to see “Pacific Rim” this weekend because my boyfriend (Idris Elba) is in it.

“I’m an old woman, I don’t have time to watch monsters and robots fight, there’s nothing in there that I can grasp and then take back with me for later use,”  I said. It’s true, since watching that wretched mess, “Inception,” with my beloved Leonardo DiCaprio, I will never waste another second sitting through a summer blockbuster again. I have my warm laptop and I have my hot torrent of “Luther” that will satisfy all my needs. I have no problem watching shows I love over and again and yet I’m reluctant to try new things. I think this is a symptom of becoming a curmudgeony old person. Oh well.

Another 3 whole units of time were frittered away watching “Boogie Nights” this afternoon.

“That was a weird movie,” said Evangeline.

“Don’t you think Dirk Diggler is cute?” I felt bad because she wanted to watch “Breaking Dawn Part 2” (I know, right? Barf-oh-barf, why has she not outgrown this?) and  insisted upon “Boogie Nights” as I hadn’t seen it since it was in the theatre in 1997, holy cow, where does the time go? and I had a fond memory of Mark Wahlberg but I couldn’t quite remember why.

“That was a prosthetic, I’m pretty sure.” That’s what she said.

Huh.

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So now I’m here, better late than never. Last weekend Val, my oldest friend from my childhood, came to town from Boulder to visit for a few days. We grew up in a tiny town in Quebec, Mont St.Hilaire, a unit of time “south” of Montreal. Although, let’s address this first, I’m talking to you, Montreal, this is something that has been bugging since I was literally four years old: Why is your sense of direction so fucked up? Is your compass drunk? Check the map: The “South Shore” is actually east. I don’t want to make a big stink out of it but come on, people please, you have enough problems with your cracked pavement, sinkholes, and collapsing bridges, LOOK AT YOUR MAP, BRO: Boucherville and Longueuil are on an east shore and NDG is south so why do you call it “west?” And when you say Laval is north, it’s actually west. It’s sad really. LOOK AT IT:

And between y’all and me, if you address their whacked due north system it to a Montrealer, they’s be all like “Baaahhhh-waaahhhhyy” then mumbling something incoherent. So there is really no point in arguing. They do make good gravy, though, I will say that.

Anyway we grew up off that map somewhere to the right, let’s not stress out about this again but it really does bug me, we looked at the sunrise and then the sunset when we were young savages trolling the orchards and in through the trees in mountain and knew even then something was off-kilter. We spent all our waking non-school hours together and made up a language that only we could understand. We lived outside in a tent in the summer and an igloo in the winter and terrorized the neighbourhood in bare feet and feral hair with our never-ending pranks that I had completely forgot about until she reminded me. I now am actually embarrassed decades later. Take note: I am embarrassed. I know I am all TMI with my sex dreams and you probably think what could two re-adolescent girls do that was so bad, you are wrong. You’ll have to buy me dinner and maybe I will tell you one of our dark deeds. In the meantime I am asking the gods for forgiveness and ask to absolve me by cutting out wheat and sugar that is not alchohol-based from my diet. That’s how the gods roll, right? Quebec-style. Give some shit up, then you are golden like a pancake smothered in maple syrup. Plus I am killing two birds with one stone. That Wedding is just over a week away and I don’t want to wear Spanks in July!

Anyway, Val moved away in Grade 9 to Toronto during the mass exodus of the late 70s and we only had snail mail and the occasional visit, Then we grew up and older, I moved to Toronto and spawned, she moved to Boulder, had her family and we kind of lost touch until the magic of Facebook, of course. And if you think I am all about talking shit and over-analyzing to death then put the two of us together and we did not sleep hardly at all the first night. THERE WAS NO TIME! Oh, how we trolled the internet, checking out each other’s friends and exes, scrolling on Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and even that big fake titted bull, LinkedIn. We had to control ourselves because some of our crazy pranking instincts were starting to kick in. We are old now and have mellowed out because wine. Too old, too tired, and that’s okay, most people now have call display and they can track down your pubic hairs through DNA testing, so it’ s just as well.

What was interesting was it was like no time had passed between us since we were kids, there was no feeling of being strangers. I am lucky to have someone like her in my life but I wish she lived next door again because I just don’t have the time figure out how to Skype. I know, your grandmother probably does but I am lazy that way.