Here in Qu�bec we call 'em march� aux puces which literally translates as "store where they sell fleas" and for some reason that just cracks me up.

You'd think that when they were figuring out how to translate the English term "flea market" here they wouldn't have been QUITE so literal, that maybe they would have made up a special French word. Nuh UH.

Oh well, whatever you call it, today Paul and I hopped in the car and motored over an hour to a massive one in a place called Bromont so we could poke through other people's stuff.

Yep, every so often I jones, got to go get my flea market fix.

Flea markets make me giddy with happiness. For a zeke like me it's like it must have been for a medieval peasant to go to the big annual fair. There's EVERYTHING at these places from cotton candy to fresh fruits and vegetables, from pony rides to huge flower displays from local greenhouses.

And JUNK. Mass quantities of people's junk. Ooooooh, I LOVE looking at other people's junk, wondering what drug they were on when they bought THAT piece of hideous madness.

Except for the stuff I buy myself at the flea market. That stuff is NOT junk. That stuff is treasures that people have been forced to part with under extreme duress. I'm sure of it.

Flea markets are magical sort of places, don't you find? A person can fill BOTH their enormous stuffed Rottweiler craving AND their need to complete their Singing Vegetables CD collection at a flea market, you know. Magical, simply magical.

Long, long ago Paul and I realized that if we were to stay married, we could never ever explore a flea market together. I can quite happily spend 35 minutes flipping through the 1,200 or so CD's the CD Guys bring when they come.

I bought nine CD's--everything from Agnus Dei II, the choir of New College, Oxford, England singing classical religious music (yep, me the agnostic likes a capella Brahms--so shoot me) to Johnny Rivers' Best.

(When Paul saw the latter CD he said THAT title was an oxymoron. Hmmpphhhhh. Some of us feel nostalgic when we hear "Secret Agent Man", and I believe that whatever a consenting adult does in the privacy of her own home ... well, 'nuff said, eh.)

Like he can talk, anyhow.

Paul can spend half an hour at The Used Tool Guy's table lusting over hand planes, feeling their delicious curves, deciding which one he will take home with him. The guy has absolutely NO self-control when it comes to antique planes. Pitiful, really.

Now if we stuck together, while I was poking through CD's and books and such like, I would have the 47-year-old equivalent of a five-year-old fretting beside me, bored out of his skull, desperately wanting to be somewhere else, all the time making fun of my musical taste.

Make me stand beside him while he explores the joys of antique tools, and I will be making pointed observations about how we have like twenty kazillion hand planes already stored on his display shelves, DO WE NEED ANOTHER ONE?

So, when it comes to the flea market, we have an open marriage. We cut each other loose for three hours or so, and agree to meet at the pony ride. I never ask him who he was with, what dark need he may have fulfilled, and he allows me my indiscretions.

It works for us.