Salvation Laundry

            On Friday morning the time of year began when it was warm enough to do my yoga in my underwear. Well, not the poses where I’m standing in front of the window, but the floor work, which is most of each session.

            I decided in anticipation of my birthday the next day that it would be nice to lay in clean sheets and so I did my laundry. They’ve raised the price of the big machines from $3.50 to $4.50 and the smaller vertical washers are now $3.25. I can usually do all my laundry in one big machine but one of them was in use and the other two were out of service for maintenance and so I had to split my stuff between two machines. For more than twenty years I’ve washed my things with dish detergent because it’s basically the same thing as laundry detergent and so why buy two products when you can use one? The manager came up to me and told me that I shouldn’t use dish detergent because it would cause more suds, which would come bubbling out of the top of the machines. I told him that I’ve been using it for a long time and that’s never happened. I said maybe there would be more suds if I used hot water but I tend to set it to “warm”. He seemed okay with that, admitting that would make fewer suds. Really though, even when I’ve used hot water I haven’t seem suds overflowing from the top of the washer. People online agree with me on this issue but they just say that one needs less dish detergent to do the job of laundry detergent. Dish soap is also cheaper.

            Once my laundry was done I called up “Sole Survivor” on Dundas to ask if they could repair or replace a buckle for a sandal. They said it costs about $50 per buckle, but they also said they are closing down their store in my neighbourhood on May 31^st and so they are not taking any new orders. I was told that I could go to their Kensington Market store to get the job done.

            I looked up “Shoe repair Parkdale” and saw that King Shoe Repair is still listed and it’s also just down the street. I remembered that it’s been there a long time but lately it hasn’t looked like there’s any shoe place there. I took my sandal and rode down there. What I found at that address looked like a women’s clothing store with dresses in the window. I decided to go in anyway to inquire if the shoe place had moved to a nearby location. A young woman who looked of Southeast Asian origin was sitting at a sewing machine. I asked her about the shoe repair place that used to be there and she told me that she does shoe repair. I realized that this was the same place but that she seems to do a little bit of everything, including clothing alterations and shoe repair. She looked at my sandal and said it was just a simple matter of replacing the prong. She told me it would cost me $7 but that I would have to wait a week because she’s all by herself with lots of orders for work to be done. She insisted on a $3 deposit. I wonder if that’s because so many people have brought things in to be repaired but then never came back for them.

            In the late afternoon I took a bike ride.

            At Brunswick and Bloor there were three boxes of books on the curb. Most of them were romance novels and some were actually Harlequin romances in hard cover. I found “Dancing Girls”, a book of short stories by Margaret Atwood, “Broca’s Brain” by Carl Sagan and a hard cover called “Young Edgar Allan Poe” by Laura Benét. It turns out to be a library book from Fredericton High School, but the last lending date on it is January 1965.

I went up to St Clair and Victoria Park. I drank a taller glass of water before leaving because last time I’d only drank a small glass and had been very thirsty halfway out. This time I was still parched, so maybe I’ll try two glasses next time.

            I slurped some water off my hand from the washroom tap at Starbucks on the way back.

            Before going home I stopped at Freshco where I did my regular shopping but I also bought some things for my birthday. I haven’t eaten ice cream in a few years but I bought some Hagen Das salty chocolate truffle and some strawberry ice cream bars dipped in chocolate. I also don’t usually buy things like limeade or ice tea, but I got a couple of jugs of each as well.

            That night I watched the 15^th and 16^th episodes of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. Neither of them was that interesting.

            The 15^th had a competition between Milton (Warren Beatty) and Dobie in a run for junior class president. Dobie was on the way to winning because everyone loves a simple, man of the people in politics. Milton’s mother reluctantly tried to fix the election because she had been the “hatchet man” for her late husband’s political campaigns even though she considered her husband to be a “nasty man” and Milton to be a “nasty boy”. She tried to bribe Dobie’s father with large grocery orders if he would influence Dobie. At first he gave in and so did Dobie but then his father changed his mind. In the end Milton’s mother gave all of her business to the Gillis grocery store anyway. She was played by Doris Packer, who was the school principal on Leave It To Beaver.

            The 16^th episode had Thalia on a kick of only dating athletes because she found out how much money top athletes make. Dobie is not athletic but since the school has no boxing team he concocts a plot to become a famous fist fighter. He goes to see Moose McCullough, the greatest athlete in Central High School history, now graduated, married, with a baby and another on the way. Moose will do anything for love and so he agrees to fake a fight with Dobie in the malt shop and to have Dobie knock him out with one punch. It works and Dobie becomes the big man on campus with all the girls fawning over him. But then Milton challenges him to a fight. Before the fight though, Moose, covered in bandages and walking with a crutch goes to see Milton and puts a scare into him. Milton shows up for the fight with his arm in a cast and so does Dobie.