Either Or

            When I got up on Saturday morning I noticed the strong smell of vinegar in the living room from the bucket full of it that I was using to etch my amethyst rock. After yoga I moved it to the kitchen so I wouldn’t have to smell it during song practice.

            The temperature was starkly different on Saturday morning than it has been of late. While Friday had been a tank shirt, shorts and sandals day, this was an unbuttoned long-sleeved shirt, jeans and boots day.

            On my way to the food bank I realized that I’d forgotten to slip my denture in and so I promised myself that if I got a high number I’d slip home to put it in and to meanwhile make sure I didn’t smile like a hockey player.

The line-up was shorter this time because it was the beginning of the month but each person there seemed to be smoking for three nonetheless.

I read another page or two of “The Atheist’s Mass” by Balzac from my dual language book, struggling with the French on the left page and leaning on the English on the right. It seemed appropriate that I was at the part where the now rich and famous surgeon, Desplein is telling the story of his extreme poverty as a medical student in Paris and how his breakfast every day consisted of a day or two old bun crumbled in some milk.

When Martina came along with the box I was pleased to draw number 3. She let the first five of us in at 10:30, the exact time when the food bank is supposed to open but when we walked in downstairs, Angie said, “What are you guys doing in here? We’re not ready yet!” We were asked to wait in the hall while they rushed to finish their set-up. Angie asked for two tongs from the sink in the back and she unpacked some boxes of packs of frozen mini-quiche, which she declared were awesome. She tossed the empty cartons on the floor and the older Ukrainian lady (whom I think she called Marlene) picked them up to take them to the back.

Martina came down, saw us in the hall and wondered, “What’s goin on?” I told her, “They said they weren’t ready for us yet!” Verdene, the manager came up to Martina and joked, “You’re fired! You’re fired for tomorrow!” (I don’t think they are there at all on Sunday). Martina teased that she was taking the rest of the day off because there weren’t very many people and everyone had gotten their cheques. It suddenly occurred to me that Verdene and Martina had been smoking-up together and that the evidence was there from when they first arrived in the food bank van and Verdene had commented to Martina about how the lettering on the side of the van “popped out” and from how giddy Martina had been while interacting with some of the regulars leading up to opening time. It was fairly clear that the two had smoked a doobie on their way there.

Marlene was my volunteer and from the top of the first shelf I grabbed the prize of the day: a package of medium roast Muskoka brand medium roast coffee. It must be just about time for this year’s coffee harvest up in the Muskokas right now.

Further down was a bag of hummus with olive oil flavoured seed crackers. I had them for lunch later with hummus and they tasted like stale oil.

Another score was a 680 ml jar of artichoke hearts.

I also got a jar of tomato and basil pasta sauce, a large bag of Cheerios, a small hand-filled bag of flour and a can of chickpeas.

When I got to the canned protein and peanut butter shelf, I was about to reach for a can of salmon when I was told that if I took something from that section I couldn’t get any meat from Angela. She said that if I didn’t like any of Angela’s offerings I could come back and take something. That’s a policy I haven’t seem them present before and I wondered if it was going to be a regular thing or if it was just because Angie more than just the usual frozen ground chicken tubes and chicken wieners.

Angie did have the usual meat selections but she also had bologna and a pack of frozen spicy Italian smoked sausages. I took the latter and so I didn’t go back to select the alternative protein of tuna, salmon or peanut butter. It seems like an odd case of “either or” though, considering how much more substantial a pack of five sausages or any of the meat choices were than a can of tuna.

I didn’t want any 2% milk nor either colour of soy cheese slices but I accepted the two small fruit bottom yogourts, the package of hard Becel margarine, two bags containing three eggs each, two meat patties, a container of Bailey’s French vanilla coffee creamer and box of 24 frozen mini quiche: half of them Florentine and the other half three-cheese that Angie had been praising earlier.

Sylvia gave me a hand-filled bag of potatoes. These are the same spuds she’s been giving out now for the last couple of months and they aren’t in great shape. Some of them have sprouts and they all have black spots that need to be cut out before cooking. They are definitely not the kind of taters that one can eat with their skins.

I got a few onions; two small tomatoes, one of which I had to throw away; and a package of romaine hearts. That was all she handed me but there were bags of spinach sitting there as well and I asked about them. She said I couldn’t have both the spinach and the lettuce, so, since the spinach looked much fresher, I traded the lettuce back for the better vegetable.

I was about to leave when Lana called to me from the bakery goods section. I turned to tell her while still moving away that I have enough bread. She insisted, “This is a day when you can say ‘Yes’ because we’ve got lots of different snacks! Come on” she coaxed me towards her with a hand gesture and repeated with more force, “Come on!” I have no willpower when women get aggressive, so I came over. There were a much wider variety of snackable items than usual, such as cheese bagels and different kinds of baked sweets. Lana pulled out a package of six chocolate strawberry muffins to show me. Sylvia called out something about Lana being diabetic, I guess as an explanation for why she was promoting the sweets because she couldn’t have them herself. The chocolate strawberry muffins looked pretty good so I agreed to take them. On my way out I said to her with a smile that probably showed the gap from my missing denture, “Thanks for being so pushy!” She responded, “Well, you deserve it!”