toronto - day 4

'Sunday, a beautiful morning, almost summery' . . . STOP! Okay that was for Karin. (hihi) :-) It IS Sunday morning and it's overcast here and looks like it's going to rain. My cousin Celena has come over on her bicycle and is in the downstairs kitchen talking to Margot when we go down. She has breakfast and we talk about her setting up a web page and how she might go about doing that. Our plans were to go and pick up Keva and then all go and hunt for the ever elusive size four shoes. I don't eat breakfast because we decided last night that we would leave the house by twelve and have an early lunch because we had also planned to have an early dinner tonight with both Salinas at 'Julie's', a Cuban restaurant. I'm ready to leave at twelve but no one else is so we sit around talking a while longer and by one-thirty we are ready to go. Margot has to walk Bone & do several other home chores so she decides that she will not go out with us today. We pick up Keva and head to a mall which is not too far from York University. It is appropriately called the Yorkdale Mall. It's a little ways from where we are and there is heavy traffic because people are heading to the Kiddies' Carnival of Caribana. (For those of you who don't know what Caribana is, it is Toronto's West Indian-inspired carnival. Like other cities with large and prominent West Indian populations (i.e. London), Toronto has a Carnival. It seems as though the same kind of thing happens in T.O. as has happened in London - there is a little competition between Jamaicans and Trinidadians. Nick's husband Dave spent his day in Scarborough yesterday shooting video of the Scarborough Kiddies Carnival (the Trini/Eastern Caribbean version) and today is the Eglinton Kiddies Carnival (more Jamaican-oriented - we pass Jamaicans heading toward the carnival waving their flag). We finally get into the mall and get to have lunch (breakfast for me) at around three o'clock. We then head out on the great shoe hunt. The first stop is Browns. it is a shoe store where Nico has always been able to find shoes her size, ever since she lived in Toronto and was looking for winter boots. There is an end-of-season sale in every store in the mall, and so the place is swarming with people. Browns is no exception. As Nico and Keva head to Browns, I stop off and pick up some rechargeable batteries and as I enter the shoe store I see that it is nothing like Al Bundy's Married with Children shoe store. This place is CROWDED. Nico & Keva are trying to get the attention of any salesperson that walks by. They are interested in people who have already picked out shoes, and Nico is getting a little hot under the collar because all these other people can buy shoes in ANY shoe store. So, we all know what it means when Nico gets a little hot under the collar. I am being very nice here. After Nico turns to Keva and asks why she gave her such small feet, Nico marches up to the salesman, and in her most teacherlike tones bellows over the crowd: "Do you have any size four shoes?" He mutters something about checking a rack and he walks off. Nico proceeds to check the rack. The two pairs of size four shoes are horrendous and the three pairs of four and a halfs are unsuitable. At this point, Nico, losing patience, marches over to the display, then, to use a good Bahamian term, yucks up three pairs of shoes, charges over to another salesman and asks if any of these come in size four. The man disappears into the stock room and comes out shaking his head negatively. All is not lost, however, because one of the pairs exists in size four, but in the Montreal store. Weren't we just in Montreal??? So he offers to order it and says it will be here on Friday. In the meantime, Keva and I are both standing around looking at the various offerings of what the store calls shoes. We are marvelling at the fact that people will actually wear some of these things on their feet. Just as we are saying that, a woman comes in, sees one of the atrocious pairs that we have been eyeing, and says "Wow! That's beautiful!" I decide there's no accounting for taste.

We leave the store. Nico is feeling that only ten percent of what she has set out to do has been accomplished. There is another store in the mall that is known to stock size four shoes, and this is Naturalizer, where Nico phoned yesterday and was told that there were a few pairs of that size. So we look on the directory to see where it is and set off in that direction. On the way we pass several other shoe stores, one of them Capezio, where Nico has also found shoes to fit her in the past. Capezio has NOTHING. Size five is the smallest they stock. As we get to the saleslady in Naturalizer and she is asked about size fours, her answer comes back as a resounding yes, and Nico says, "Show me all your fours and all your four and a halfs." So out come eight boxes of shoes. After trying on the first pair, Nico says "I'll take them!" and she proceeds to try on the rest of the shoes that are there and settles on another pair. So with two pairs of Naturalizers and shoes on order from Brown's, Nico is now a happy camper.

By the way, with very little fuss, I purchased a jacket that I will wear at the wedding.

We leave the mall and head back to Margot's.

My cousin Celena can't make dinner tonight, so it's just going to be the four of us and Salina Eldon. We are going to a Cuban restaurant not far from Margot's. It's a nice walk but because of the impending rain Margot drives us there. Salina arrives with a friend, Kim Jackson, who could be her sister Bonnie's twin.

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Sunday - Day Four