Taking off the Ex-Lax Glasses

            I got up to pee on Saturday at 2:50 and on my way back to bed I heard someone pounding on the front door downstairs. Thinking that it might be one of my fellow tenants having lost a key, I stuck my head out the window. A man was down there but not from our building. I called out, “Yes?” He looked up and told me that someone that he’d just dropped off at our address had just left their passport in his cab. I went down to the front door wearing nothing but a towel. I asked the driver to show me the picture on the document, so he brought it to me. It was a young woman with long brown hair. She certainly did not live at this address and so she must have been visiting. Since I didn’t recall seeing her visiting anyone in my building before, I started to think that she might have been a prostitute. The African driver shook his head in disbelief on hearing that suggestion. I told him that the best I could do was to leave the passport on top of the mailboxes, since I certainly wasn’t going to go knocking on apartments doors at that hour just in case the woman was behind one of them. He didn’t think that leaving it on the mailboxes was a good idea, and on reflection, I agree. It would be safer for the cab company, which was Beck, to hold onto it. He told me that he’d given her a receipt, so she should be able to track it that way.

            It was 3:00 when I got back to bed. I still had two hours before it was time to get up and I normally have no problem getting back to sleep, but this time, in the back of my mind I was concerned for the woman and her passport. I didn’t consciously try to stay awake, just in case she came out again, but that seems to have been what was going on. After an hour with no one leaving, it became less likely that she was an escort. I narrowed it down to my upstairs neighbour, David, or his third floor neighbour, whom I’d seen but never spoken with. At 4:30 I heard someone go down the stairs and so I got up to look out the window and if it was the woman, to call to her, but it was David on his way to work. I went back to bed, but did not sleep before my alarm went off.

            I didn’t feel very tired at all during yoga or song practice, but at 9:06, when I was doing some writing, exhaustion suddenly caught up to me and I had to lie down. I wanted to get ready to go to the food bank at 9:30 and so I planned to rest for 24 minutes. Usually I’m pretty good at willing myself to sleep for limited periods of time but I woke up at 10:10, feeling disoriented at first until I realized that I was late for the line up.

            I rushed to get ready and arrived about half an hour later than usual, but the line didn’t seem very much longer than it had been when I’d gotten there at my usual time of 9:45.

            As I was locking my bike, the young woman from Latin America said hi to me and commented about how it had suddenly gotten cold again after having been so warm for the last few days. I agreed that it was very cold and offered the view that it was a good thing after that the mayor had opened up the armoury for the homeless. At first it had seemed too little too late because they’d only made the armoury available after the last cold snap had ended, but now that the temperature had dived again it was a good thing people had a place to go.

            Last Saturday had been very cold but today it was mean-cold with an added wind chill factor. As I stood waiting and the freeze began to eat into my toes and bite the tip of my schnozz, I started considering it to have been a very good thing that I’d slept through the first half hour of standing around in this hellish weather.

            Wayne was between five and ten places ahead of me, but hanging around near the entrance. He stepped out onto the sidewalk holding one of the coffee mugs that people bring out from the Parkdale Activities and Community Centre next door. Although the meals are free at PARC, it apparently costs 30 cents for a cup of coffee, perhaps because of the habit of smoking PARC members taking their mugs outside so they can enjoy both a coffee and a cigarette. One can sometimes find up to five abandoned mugs in places where they’ve been abandoned. Wayne tossed the contents of the mug he was holding and a cylindrical chunk of frozen coffee came flying out. He kicked the dark brown javsicle under a parked van.

            The food bank doesn’t seem to have been making coffee available lately. I never tried their coffee because I just assumed that it probably sucks but I know that a lot people in line look forward to it, especially in the winter.

            A little later, Wayne was looking at me with his holographic green eye sunglasses and he declared, “Somebody’s got to steal me some Ex-Lax so I can cross the border!” I puzzled over that one for a second and then asked if he was referring to Donald Trump’s recent comment about immigrants from “shit-hole countries”. Wayne nodded and added, “Ya can’t talk about people that way!”

            I wonder if Trump was really referring to immigrants from countries that might exist up his own shithole. I’ve seen pictures taken of his fat butt while he plays golf, and it looks like there’s room up there for a few small nations. Anyone that calls less fortunate countries “shitholes” is looking at the world through Ex-Lax glasses.

            The food bank opened pretty much on time. The co-manager, Valdene Allison came out for a smoke and was complaining about lack of appreciation on the part of food bank clients for what volunteers do for them. She told someone while pointing east that if they didn’t like it, “There’s another food bank that way!” I don’t know to which food bank she was referring, but food bank clients are encouraged to go to the one that is in their neighbourhood. The nearest food bank in that direction would be the Fort York Food Bank.
            I strongly disagree with Valdene’s attitude. It shouldn’t be “If you don’t like it take a hike”. It should rather be, “If the people we are serving are unhappy, maybe we are failing in some way.”

            By the time I got to the front of the line, Jack Frost wasn’t just nipping at my nose. It had latched onto my honker like a piranha and was in the process of giving it a hickey. The cold was seeping deep into my body to the point that I didn’t know if I could stand much more. They kicked the ones out that had been waiting inside and said that people could take turns standing in the entryway for five minutes at a time. I didn’t partake of that offer because I didn’t feel like being a temperature yo-yo.

Around 11:00 I was third in the next group of five to go downstairs.

As I was waiting in a short line to show my card I chatted with Bruce, who used to volunteer on a regular basis at the old location but I only recently started seeing him at the new place over the holidays. I said, “Long time no see.” He explained that he’d had to move out of the room he’d been living in and it took him quite a while to find a bachelor apartment. He said the decently priced ones are very scarce nowadays.

There were three volunteers rotating as they helped clients shop the shelves and it was just lucky that Bruce ended up as my helper.

They had crackers on the first shelf and I was attracted the box of red Good Thins until Bruce said, “You want the beets?” I’d thought the red colour meant that they were spicy. I took the sea salt and pepper ones instead. From the bottom, Bruce gave me a selection of granola and fancy trail mix bars.

Of the various canned goods that were available I selected a can of beef gravy, one of pineapple tidbits, two cans of tuna and a tin of peeled fava beans. I picked up another carton of free-range chicken broth. I’ve accumulated about five of those, so I’m due to make a big soup soon. I grabbed a bag of chocolate chunks from a shelf containing odd items and among all of the regular types of cereal I found a box of high fibre meusli.

Bruce passed me over to Angie, but before she could serve me, the young woman from Latin America came over to thank her and to say goodbye to her. I was surprised to hear Angie respond briefly in what sounded like very competent Spanish.

Angie gave me four quarter litres of milk; a half-litre of 18% cream; 750 grams of vanilla Greek yogourt; five eggs; two bags of falafels; 1.65litres of real orange juice; a frozen chicken with oven roasted chicken and peppers; and a box containing six cups of lemon gelato of all things. She’d also offered me the usual tube of frozen ground chicken, but I turned it down. I also didn’t take any of the spicy processed cheese slices that she had to give because they really don’t taste much like cheese except for a little bit when melted.

From Sylvia’s vegetable section I got a red cabbage; a net bag containing three sweet potatoes; a handful each of potatoes and onions; two apples; and two black krim tomatoes that looked beautiful when Sylvia put them in my bag but when I got them home they were too squishy to use. I guess they think tomatoes like that are still okay for cooking, but I figure that if they are too rotten to put on a sandwich they are too far gone to cook with.

I would have had a look at the bread this time, but I totally forgot about it. In the previous set-up, before Angie and Sylvia moved their sections to the end, the shelf volunteers would usually direct clients to the bread after the final shelf. But there seems to be a finality about the sections at the end that are presided over by personalities and one feels like one is done after dealing with them.

I had planned on riding my bike to the supermarket after the food bank but I was so chilled to the bone that I had to go home to warm up first. While putting my things away it was clear that the food bank continues to be well stocked almost a month past the holiday season. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen an empty shelf. There’s a plethora of canned protein with fish, meat and beans; and there is still a fair amount of dairy on offer.

If only they could do something about the inhumane practice of making people line up in the extreme cold. It is not healthy for the human body and a lot of these people are not dressed properly for these temperatures.

Once I was warmed up I rode to Freshco with the main intention of buying fruit. They were selling grapes in sealed bags and so I had to rip them open to feel if they were firm enough. I took a couple of bunches that weren’t too bad and a pack of blackberries too, but this is a sad time of year for fruit. I bought a whole chicken and some old cheddar, as well as milk and yogourt.

My cashier was distracted with amusement by the little girl screaming unsuccessfully for a Kinder egg in the check-out lane behind her. She explained to the mother that she was laughing because she has two at home. She said that as soon as the Kinder toy is assembled it becomes essentially garbage because it’s never played with again. A lot of these Portuguese supermarket cashiers seem to be too young to have children but I turns out they do.

For lunch I had the roasted chicken and peppers pizza that I’d gotten from the food bank and it was very tasty. Much better than the goat cheese pizza I’d gotten the week before. 

That night I watched the fourth episode of Star Trek Discovery. It’s starting to get more interesting. The monster that they captured because the captain had hoped that because of its power, near indestructibility and ability to tear through the hull of a ship could somehow be channelled into a weapon, turns out to be non-aggressive but valuable for much more important reasons. Michael Burnham discovers that the beast has a symbiotic relationship with the energy spores they are using as a means of transport. They can jump anywhere in the galaxy but they have no control until Michael finds that the monster is actually a living supercomputer that they can use to direct their jumps. It’s interesting but it seems pretty implausible. The creature is also a macrocosmic version of our microscopic tardigrades or water bears, which are apparently the most resilient animals on Earth.