Drunken Babysitter

       On Saturday morning I had the sniffles, watery eyes and a slightly plugged left ear during song practice. It didn’t feel like I was getting a cold but the pollen levels were supposedly moderate. Maybe they don’t measure them from this close to High Park and the lake though.

I went to the food bank at the usual time on Saturday morning. My place in line was behind a middle aged East Asian woman who was behind the blonde woman that always sits cross-legged on her shopping bag. Outside of the line-up a guy in a baseball cap was sitting not far from the blonde woman. He asked me if I wanted a cigarette. 

My reading material this time was book five of the Consolation of Philosophy by 6th Century Roman senator and Christian, Boethius. He wrote the work while in prison under Ostrogoth rule and it takes the form of a dialogue with Philosophy personified as a woman. The section I was reading was about predestiny and was remarkably similar to another dialogue written earlier by Augustine. Neither one of them though convinced me with their arguments that predestiny exists. 

One of the volunteers that I hadn’t seen in a while, a well-built man in his 40s with prematurely grey hair, came and took a place in line. He explained to someone that he hasn’t volunteered there for a couple of months but that his birthday was coming up soon and he wanted to get some free food so he would have extra money to party. He said he didn’t want to let anyone downstairs know he was there because then he might get sucked into doing something.

Another volunteer left the food bank and walked along the line handing out a flyer about Parkdale tenants meeting at the Parkdale Library on the evening of September 27th. The purpose of the meeting is to help tenants organize against being pushed out by greedy landlords.

A very slim and pretty young woman came staggering up to sit on the steps of 1501 Queen beside the big, talkative woman that sits there during the line-up. Her knitting was sticking out of the large bag that she was carrying. She told the big woman that she was still drunk from partying on Friday night but she was on her way to a scheduled babysitting job. The big woman advised her to call the parents and tell them that she wasn’t feeling well. After a few minutes the young woman continued on her way. 

       Moe came by, saying that he was on his way to check his email at the library. He 

told me that he’s been going to the food bank on Thursdays but thinks he’s going to switch back to Saturdays. He complained they had nothing two days ago.

I saw Richard, who works as a receptionist for PARC on the second floor, on his way to have breakfast before work. He said he hadn’t eaten for a day and a half because he’d been in bed with a sore ankle. Richard only has one leg, so I would imagine a sore ankle is a much bigger deal for him. He said he just peed in bottles the whole time. 

The food bank opened surprisingly close to on time. I felt compelled to re-establish my place in line each time the line moved but then to move away again because of the smokers nearby. The woman in front of me was constantly holding her bag over her face, though I doubt if it served as a very good smoke filter. 

The guy in the baseball cap had been gone for a while and came back with a can of light beer because I guess one wants to take it easy before noon. He offered some to the blonde woman, who was now standing. She took a sip but said she needed to eat first. 

The ex-volunteer was telling someone that at the previous location there was a tremendous amount of corruption and theft by everyone, including the management. But at PARC he said, there are people more diligently overseeing things and looking at the books and so there is less chance of getting away with anything shifty. 

The new card system came up in one of his conversations and I asked why they don’t just have cards with magnetic strips so they don’t need people at the computers to copy down the numbers. The answered that they’d considered that even back at the old place but they’d decided that too many clients would lose their cards and then it would get expensive to replace them all the time. 

When I finally went downstairs the person working the computer was much quicker than the one the week before and I got number 23. 

Angie was not at the dairy and meat counter this time and Hazel was taking her place. She explained that there was no milk this time and so they were offering two cans of Nestea instead. There were two small cups of fruit bottom yogourt, the usual four eggs, and a choice between ground chicken, chicken wieners or a small bag of breakfast sausages. The breakfast sausages were temping but I took the ground chicken because it’s more versatile. She gave me a bag of bacon bits as well.

Sylvia’s vegetable section had two organic tomatoes that were perhaps too far gone to be edible, an orange pepper that was mostly salvageable, a good head of leaf lettuce, a net bag containing three heads of garlic, six potatoes, five carrots, an onion and a butternut squash.

My helper at the shelves was the older woman whom I’d thought before to be Polish but I overheard her tell someone she is Ukrainian. 

There were mostly children’s sugared cereals but among them was a box of Cheerios, which I took. Since the box was open I saved some space and took only the bag containing the cereal. 

I had heard there was pasta sauce this time but either they ran out or hadn’t put it on the shelf yet.

There were lots of canned beans and soup but I took my usual carton of chicken broth and a tin of chickpeas. Canned tuna was back for the first time in a while and I got the second to last can. 

She asked if I wanted any of the restaurant portions of jams and jellies. I said, “Well …” but before I could complete my sentence with “I think I have enough of that at home” she’d already thrown a couple of handfuls into my bag. 

I got a jar of sweet sandwich pickles, a bag of pita crisps and some Quaker bars: three smores bars, two chocolate chip and two strawberry squares.

There was a lot of bread, but not much besides just the white loaves, buns and baguettes. On the bottom shelf though there were a couple of specialty loaves. I took the one that had been made with roasted garlic. 

When I came out and started unlocking my bike the guy in the baseball cap asked me, “Did you see my woman down there?” I assumed correctly that he meant the blonde woman and I told him that she’d been ahead of me. He speculated that she must have been eating. He asked me about the food haul.

The dairy was a big disappointment this time around. I had been really depending on there being some milk. I suppose one could try putting lemon iced tea on cereal but I think it would be a bit of a disaster. The vegetable situation wasn’t bad, except for the rotten tomatoes and there was a little more protein on the shelves. 

I wonder how the drunk babysitter made out. 

After the food bank I didn’t go to Bike Pirates because I didn’t have any money. I guess if my bike had been noticeably misbehaving I would have gone and just owed them a donation. There are a couple of problems that could get worse though, so when I get some funds I should spend some more time in the shop, at least before the winter weather arrives when I’ll want my bicycle to be in good shape. 

I checked my U of T student account and saw that my grant had come through, though they had yet to deposit my refund. I was shocked at first to see my balance owing to be almost $7,000, but then I remembered that it was because they had charged me for a full program. It would correct itself in a month or so but I decided to go to another U of T site and request per-course billing so I wouldn’t have to look at the scary bill. 

I flushed my left ear out several times but it continued to feel plugged. I assumed it was air bubble that was causing the stuffed sensation. In the evening though the feeling went away.

I watched a silly episode of Maverick in which an Indian princess wanted to marry Beau. He agreed and had to go through several warrior tests, which he passed, but it turned out that part of being Pale Moon’s bridegroom meant that he had to be burned to death the day after the wedding. I guess they didn’t really consult any real Natives on their customs when they wrote that story.

I finished reading Boethius’s “The Consolation of Philosophy” and started reading Kate Chopin’s novel, “The Awakening”. I finished chapter six of the novel before bed. It’s set in a Creole community of Louisiana, but the main character is not French. It looks like she’s about to cheat on her Creole husband.