Pregnant Freezer

           

            I didn’t have as much cycling competition as usual when I rode across the Bloor Viaduct on the Sunday evening of July 31st. Perhaps the other riders were away for the weekend.

            In Leaside, on the east side of Laird there are a lot of old warehouses that are slowly giving ground to office buildings and plazas. One warehouse just south of Wicksteed seems to be mostly abandoned, but there is a tiny newer looking wooden shack that extends from the old building out to the edge of the main sidewalk. There is no door and so one can see a filthy white couch and chair inside, surrounded by empty food packages. It definitely looks like someone has been sleeping in there. I poked my head inside and saw at the far end, beside the couch, a steep wooden step leading up to what must be a very tiny loft, where there is probably just enough room for someone to spread out a mat for sleeping. It’s odd because this hut is right on the main drag and extending out over half the sidewalk. It would be as if a building of the same size were sitting in front of my place on Queen Street.

            I rode east on Vanderhoof and then down Brentcliffe to Research Road. Traveling east again, behind some apartment buildings on Vanderhoof, I saw some interesting graffiti, so I stopped to investigate. The artwork was decorating a skate park that looked like it had been converted from a swimming pool. I took some photos. No one was skating, but one guy was sitting on the edge with his skateboard and I asked him if it had been built from scratch for skateboarding. He said it had. He looked like he was in his twenties but there were a couple of teenagers fixing their bikes. One of them asked if I had any tools with me, but all I had in my backpack were a pair of pliers.

            That night I watched the episode of I Love Lucy in which she tells Ricky that she’s pregnant, though they were forbidden to use the “p” word, so they just said, “expecting”. This of course corresponded to Lucy’s real pregnancy and apparently the tears of joy were not faked for the show.

            Speaking of pregnancy, the ice in my freezer had been continuously bulging out so much that it looked like it was going to give birth to a snowman. I started defrosting it and shoved all the milk in between the melting walls of ice so it wouldn’t go bad.