Susan Hart

            Thursday morning marked three weeks of doing yoga after my elbow injury. The black scab is gone leaving a couple of shades of pink with white in between. It still hurts under pressure, though it’s not winceworthy and it feels a bit better every day.

            I took my bike out on the deck to take some pictures. I set my camera down on the railing and was trying to prop my bike up between the slats but ended up knocking my camera off twice. At first it went black and wouldn’t close but it came on after a few seconds of re-pushing the on-off button.

            On my bike ride that afternoon I was on Bloor around Sherbourne when a guy came running across the street in front of me. That was fine, but when he reached the curb I was directly on his left and he suddenly changed his mind and started heading back to the other side of Bloor. He slammed into my shoulder but not very hard because he wasn’t running. He said sorry at least twice as I continued on.

            At Woodbine I felt the slight urge to pee, but I’d had that twinge ever since I’d left home. I decided that I didn’t need to go that badly.

            I rode up Pharmacy to Eastgate Crescent, took that back down to St Clair, returned to Pharmacy and made my return trip.

            At Starbucks on Danforth a guy was waiting for someone to come out of the washroom even though the other one was free. He told me he didn’t know the code, so I gave it to him.

            There was a road crew tarring some holes on Yonge Street near Gerrard and a lot of striped cones were set up to divert traffic into single lanes.

            I stopped at Freshco on my way home but all of the fruit from cherries, to grapes to watermelon was from the States so I didn’t buy any. I still have some grapes at home though that may last till I go to No Frills on Saturday. I bought a tomato, Greek yogourt, toilet paper, garbage bags, hand soap and bleach.

            I had a few ribs, a potato and gravy for dinner while watching Dobie Gillis.

            In the first story Dobie is trying to win two girls with opposite personalities. Mona is a dishonest and deceitful dark haired femme fatale who admires conniving cads. Eloise is an angelic and honest to a fault blonde that always wears white. In Dobie’s opening monologue he tells the audience, “I am by nature an extremely honest person. I am opposed to double-talk, deception and lying … except to girls, and that isn’t really lying. It’s salesmanship.” When Dobie tries to convince Mona that he’s now a liar: “The truth never passes my lips!” “Honest?” “Honest!” “You’re lying!” “I’m telling you the truth!" "But you just said that the truth never passes your lips! Were you lying when you said you were lying?” “No, I was telling the truth!” “Well then you weren’t lying!” “Can we start again?” “No! If there’s anything worse than a good honest man, it’s a bad dishonest man, and you are both!”

            Mona was played by Susan Hart. She appeared in several bikini and beach part y movies such as, “Dr Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine” with Vincent Price. She was married to the co-owner of American International Pictures, James H. Nicholson, and when he died she gained the ownership of several of his movies, including “I Was a Teenage Werewolf”. She was also a moderately successful Country and Western singer.

            Eloise thinks she’s found an honest man in Dobie but when he takes her to meet his father, Herbert, she sees him arranging to have a parking ticket fixed by a friend’s relative at city hall and then tear up the ticket. She is disgusted and won’t speak to Dobie until the parking ticket is paid and she sees a receipt. Dobie convinces his father to try to unfix the parking ticket but it’s not on file. He offers the clerk $25 for a receipt for a $10 parking ticket and the clerk calls a cop. The cops think that this is an elaborate and ingenious scam that is way over their heads and so they put Herbert, Dobie and Maynard in jail in hopes that they will confess. Because the cops really have nothing on them, they have to let them go. Herbert eventually pays the ticket and gets a receipt but his story about how it all happened is so wild that she thinks he’s lying and storms away.

            In the second story, Dobie and his father are tired of being bossed around by Dobie’s mother, Winnie. When she decides to visit her sister in Cleveland they think they’ve got it made but everything falls apart because they realize they can't get by without her.