Not Singing in the Rain

            On Saturday morning it was very hot in the apartment because the heat was on full blast and it was three degrees outside. On top of that I still had my cold and was coughing quite a bit.

I memorized the first two verses of “Sensuelle et sans suite” (Sensual and Senseless) by Serge Gainsbourg.

I worked on my poem series “My Blood in a Bug”. So far mostly just breaking sections of the twenty-one pages of prose off into verses in the hopes of later forming them into poems.

At 9:30 I started getting ready to go and stand in the food bank line-up in the rain. I didn’t need as many layers as the week before but it was still 9:45 by the time I got out the door.

When I got there it looked like a neutron bomb had hit the line-up dissolved all of the people but left the carts intact. Everyone but the two people directly in front of me had taken shelter in the entryway.

The guy directly in front of me was a big guy with glasses, wearing a cheap navy blue winter coat with the hood up and a pair of ragged sweatpants. He was holding a big black umbrella. I opened my baby blue umbrella and started a long, boring wait.

Ahead of the big guy was a young man in his twenties, of shorter than average height, with a well-trimmed beard. Another young guy, much taller than him walked up the line and placed his cart in front his and three places ahead of me. I didn’t say anything about him butting in, although I thought about it several times. It seems almost like an unwritten rule in the line-up that if you know someone well enough it’s okay to step in and take a place beside them even when you’re supposed to be further back in line. They spoke to one another exuberantly in Arabic almost continuously for the entire time we were waiting.

Behind me was an early middle aged couple that looked like they were of South Asian descent but they were speaking what sounded like a Slavic or Eastern European language.  Except for a couple of short conversations with the guy in front of me I barely heard English spoken for the whole wait. There was no one to talk with, no conversations to eavesdrop on and it was too wet to read my book. All I could do was stand in the continuous driving rain, angle my umbrella so that it kept me dry without the wind getting underneath to push it inside out, and wait, wait, wait.

The guy in front turned to tell me that he was soaked right through but commented that the rain just seems to bounce off my jacket. It’s true that except for rain coming down my neck I tend to stay pretty dry in my motorcycle jacket.

Looking again at his ragged sweatpants I suggested to him that he could get free clothing at one of the Out of the Cold places. I know people that get some high quality clothing from Out of the Cold. He asked where it was but I was embarrassed to say I didn't know. When I look it up now the nearest Out of the Cold place is downtown at Sumach and Queen. I notice now however that we were standing right in front of PARC, which apparently has a clothing bank.

The line started moving fifteen minutes late and the owners of the carts came back out into the rain from the shelter of the entryway. Veronica turned out to be two places ahead of me. She didn’t have an umbrella though and she looked out of sorts. She moved to where the roof extends over the window and the door.

The guy that jumped ahead of me got inside with the group of five that I should have been in.

When I was in front of the line I suddenly got a cramp in my left ankle. I was worried that I would be called to come in but to not be able to walk. I lifted my foot and flexed it like crazy to get the circulation going. It came back to normal after a couple of minutes.

When Marlena said I could go in she stopped me from going downstairs. It turned out she had just let a group of five head down to the food bank and my group had just been allowed in to warm up.

It’s amazing how much physical work is involved in just standing around. My neck was aching like crazy and my back was bothering me as well. I had to remove my backpack to relieve the pressure. Frankly I would rather ride my bike for an hour in the cold rain than stand under an umbrella for the same amount of time.

My volunteer at the shelves was a young woman who engaged with me in superficial and patronizing way by exclaiming, “Awesome!” whenever I made a choice.

From the top of the first set of shelves I took a bottle of La Costena green Mexican sauce. The Mex Grocer website offers chilaquiles as a serving suggestion and it seems that the fried leftover tortillas with salsa and other toppings traditionally served at breakfast is a traditional hangover cure.

I got a jar of unsweetened applesauce and later noticed that it’s on sale at No Frills for a dollar.

I grabbed a box of Romano cheese flavoured Triscuits and my helper gave me a handful of granola bars. I didn’t notice until later that the protein bar she’d given me contains sucralose and I don’t like artificial sweeteners and so I’ll try to remember to return it to the food bank next time.

            I selected a can of chickpeas and another of tuna. My volunteer gave me four small containers of apple juice.

            I picked a carton of roasted sweet potato and leek soup and a tin of organic sweet potato soup.

            The pasta, rice and sauce section had lots of cans of diced tomatoes but I took the only one of pasta sauce.

            Angie was back in the cool food section after having been sick last week. I hadn’t seen her since the beginning October because I’d been busy with school. She said, “Hi babe! Long time no see!”

            I didn’t take any milk or yogourt but I accepted another bag of what the person last week had called "burgers” but that Angie said were sausages. She asked me if I wanted some juice since I hadn’t taken much else. She went to the back for a couple of minutes. While I was waiting Sylvia was trying to get rid of a drunk and very friendly Italian man who was still hanging around her section after having finished shopping. She finally said, very emphatically and firmly, “You have a nice day!” and he left. I said, "No, YOU have a nice day!" and she responded, "You have a nice day!" She told me she’s been telling everybody to have a nice day. I said, “That sounds kind of bossy. What if they don’t want to have a nice day?” She answered, “They don’t have to.”

            Angie came back and gave me a 1.75 litre carton of cranberry cocktail.

            I asked her for eggs and she’d thought she’d already given them to me but she handed me two bags containing three brown eggs each.

            I didn't take any bread because the bakery section just had plain white loaves.

            Sylvia told me to help myself. I took a small yellow pepper, six clementines, the firmest avocado I could find (I was actually surprised to find later that it wasn’t black inside), a bag of shredded lettuce, a cauliflower and a tomato.

            When one thinks of time as a valuable commodity and adds the inconvenience of standing around in the cold rain on top of that time, I’m not certain this week’s haul was really worth the inconvenience.

            Next week they will be giving out the Christmas turkeys and, I assume, the rest of the Christmas donations. I predict there will be a big line-up but that there will be lots of extra volunteers and perhaps less of a long wait.

            After I emerge from the basement stairs in the entryway a man waiting to go downstairs grumbled, "I should have gone down before you! I've been waiting for half an hour!” If only I'd just to wait for thirty minutes!

            I took my food home, put it away and headed back out to the supermarket. I had a parcel all ready to send to my daughter and so I stopped at the post office in the back of Guardian Drugs on the way. With parcel post it only costs $2.75 more by express than by regular mail. For letters and small things it’s much more expensive so I took advantage of the deal. I was told it would reach Montreal by Monday.

            At No Frills I picked a half pint of raspberries and three bags of grapes. A headed for the section across from the regular meat where there are often very good deals. A young man who was talking to himself very loudly approached that cooler and suddenly exclaimed, “Oh man! Look at those legs! That’s what I'm talking about! And what a great deal sir! Five bucks! Those are some nice legs! What beautiful legs!” He turned, saw me behind him and showed me the pack of ten drumsticks for $5.50. “This’d be $20 normally! Stick up on these! Put’em in your freezer! Really nice legs!” He walked away with two packs and I imagined him dressing each drumstick up in a little fishnet stocking before having an orgy with all of them. I grabbed to pack for myself. I also got mouthwash, applesauce, a can of coffee, Miss Vickie’s chips, and three containers of Greek yogourt.

            I had ham, cheese, tomato and lettuce on a toasted bagel for lunch.

            In the afternoon I did my exercises while listening to Amos and Andy. This story was somewhat similar to a previous one. They both involve Andy meeting the girl of his dreams and then proposing. The wedding dates are set but then a woman arrives from Georgia. Andy has never met her but they had corresponded through a lonely-hearts club and Andy had proposed. After breaking off the postal engagement, in this story Andy is confronted by the brother of the jilted bride. He turns out to be a prizefighter and Andy smashes through the window to escape. The boxer catches him. In the end the boxer says that he doesn’t care whom his sister marries as long as she gets married and so Kingfish and Andy hook her up with Shorty the barber. But then upon finding out that Andy had previously proposed to another woman, Mary breaks off the engagement. Jackson the prizefighter offers to go and explain everything to Mary and soon wedding bells ring and Mary marries the boxer.

            I worked on writing about my food bank adventure.

            I had an egg with a toasted bagel and a beer for dinner and watched Zorro.

            In this story Don Diego learns that Varga has decided to fully take over Diego’s father’s house and to make it his. He also learns that his father is on his way home from Monterrey and he does not know that his house has been acquired by Varga. Diego anticipates that his father would fight and perhaps die to defend his home and so he is desperate to find a way to get rid of Varga. One day he sees Varga go into a panic when he sees no guards posted. Varga goes running around desperately calling for the guards. Sgt Garcia comes and explains that they had simply been changing the guards. When Varga insists that there must always be a guard posted, Diego realizes that he has found Varga’s weakness. He is afraid to be alone. Utilizing the secret passages in the house, Diego and Bernardo begin to mess with Varga’s head. Bernardo several times pulls the string on a gourd that would make a sound like a wounded buffalo. Then he hides behind the wall so that when Varga and the soldiers come running there is no one there. Near the front of the house where Sgt Garcia and most of the soldiers are posted Zorro appears and taunts them. They are lured away from the house trying to collect the reward for Zorro’s capture. While they are running in circles Zorro doubles back to the house where there are just a few soldiers left guarding Varga. He plays the piano in the library and then hides behind the wall so that when Varga and the two guards come running in there is no one there. When Varga and the corporal have their backs turned Zorro sneaks out and grabs the other soldier, pulling him behind the wall with his head covered and ties him up. Bernardo smashes a plant on the patio and Varga and Reyes go running there but Varga decides it’s a trick and they go back in the library. Bernardo plays a music box and while Varga turns towards it Zorro pulls Reyes also behind the wall, leaving Varga alone. Varga goes out into the courtyard in a panic shouting for the guards as he sees the lights go out in the house one by one. Zorro makes more non-musical sounds on the piano. Garcia returns from chasing Zorro and Varga tells he’s playing the piano in the library. He orders him to go there and kill him but Garcia finds a kitten walking on the keys of the piano. Varga tells Garcia to have his bags packed because they are all leaving for Los Angeles and from there he will make his final move to seize all of California.