Characters I Have Met Thus Far

There are interesting people everywhere, aren’t there? I enjoy meeting them very much.

I enjoyed meeting the fellow on our first flight who white knuckled the landing in Toronto. His name is Donald. He lost his obviously dearly beloved wife several years ago and he seems rather lost without her. He was on his way to Crete for a vacation with his son and granddaughters…a 36 hour endurance test of a trip. Donald had a fabulous career with the oil and gas industry and later in a government position. He has been all over the world but despite having a son in Alaska and the other based out of London UK, he has chosen to remain living in our tiny prairie city close to his wife’s relatives.

At one grocery store we met checkout clerk Monserrat, a transgender male with the most glorious mane of long black hair I have ever seen. They are taking hormones to lower their voice and they gave us the most efficient check out experience we have ever had. When I asked if the store took cash or preferred credit card the response was, eyes sparkling, “Don’t make no nevermind to this store honey, long’s you pay the bill.” 

This morning at the pharmacy I met Keya from Bangladesh. She is an older woman who speaks and moves slowly like silk floating under water. She has been in New York for five years. She asked me where I was from and told me that many of her Bangladeshi friends and family have immigrated to Canada. She wanted to know if I like NYC as much as my homeland so we chatted a bit about that before I left the store. 

I already mentioned our lunch server at the La Guardia airport with her broad Bronx accent. This chain of diners will only hire servers whose accents reflect the stand out specific accent of the Bronx. You haven’t lived until you have been called, loud enough to be heard a mile away, “my dear people” by someone with a Bronx accent. It is terribly endearing.

Yesterday just before lunch there was a knock on our suite door. When I opened it there was Chris the Mexican repairman. He was terribly apologetic that he had not had time to complete two plumbing repairs before we checked. Could he do them now please? Of course! Chris confidently snaked out the bathtub drain and replaced the pipe under the kitchen sink. Then my husband asked if there was anything he could do to repair the metal plate on the floor where the entry hallway floor meets the entrance to the kitchen floor. That plate had been there to protect the edging of the carpet that used to be on the entryway floor before new oak tiles replaced it a couple of years ago. The plate was so old it was loose and shifting and the old nails holding it in place were stripped out and sticking up. Both my husband and son had scratched the bottoms of their feet on those nails. 

Chris had to call the request into what turned out to be an elderly, miserly curmudgeon….the owner of the building as it turned out.  Chris wanted to purchase a three dollar wooden oak strip, quickly stain it to match the existing oak tiles and thus remove the hideous old metal carpet plate altogether. Next thing we knew, Mr. Owner Of The Building hot footed it up to the suite from his office. Was there no way Chris could avoid the cost of a new three dollar oak strip and just find a way to reuse the ancient metal plate? Couldn’t he just screw it back on tighter? I thought my poor husband, retired building maintenance supervisor, was going to have apoplexy when the owner came up with this chintzy plan. To this point my husband had been sitting quietly at his computer saying nothing. However at this point he could no longer restrain himself. He interrupted the conversation to ask if perhaps Chris had in his supplies a particular glue that bonds metal to other surfaces. Hallelujah, as it happened, Chris had just that type of glue in his tool box. We had a nice chat with Mr. Owner, now smiling at the idea of saving three dollars on an oak strip when glue already purchased would work, and the he left much more cheery than he had been when he arrived. Hahaha…air yiii…

Chris didn’t think it was necessary to put any sort of weight on top of the strip to help it bond to the kitchen floor edge below and left quite happily in possession of a fairly generous tip from us for saddling him with an extra job he wasn’t counting on adding into his schedule, but my husband put dining room chair legs on top of where that strip was already lifting away from the floor, kept it there for a couple of hours until the glue was dry and in the end everyone was happy. The owner saved three dollars from the operations budget, Chris got himself an unexpected tip and we no longer have a safety issue for our feet! YES! Mission accomplished!

I wonder what other interesting people we will meet over the next month. 

This afternoon I will seek out an empty washing machine and do a small load of laundry so we can take all clean clothes to the cabin this weekend and I will stay home to rest while the clothes are washing. I forgot that I cannot sleep at night with the A/C running so now I am fighting a possible cold or allergy. There is a Walgreens pharmacy three blocks away so I tottered over there this morning, sans cane no less, to get nasal spray and a giant box of Kleenex for my bedside. My husband is shopping for a box 9f decent Indian tea at Kalustan’s, as well as a few fresh bagels. Usually he waits too long and they have sold out by the time he arrives at any of our area’s bagel shops. Hope he fares better today! 

We didn’t expect to see our son again until Thursday but he wants to come over after work tonight and have dinner while his wife has meetings of her own. Yay! A wonderful treat! 

Looks like I am going to have to get used to this iPad changing fonts at its own volition mid way through these posts, hahaha.