Morgan Brittany

            On Tuesday morning I woke up at 4:50 and felt something too familiar on my neck. I reached for it, grabbed and killed the only bedbug I've seen in five and a half years. It's been well over a year since I've sat down in any public place until yesterday when I went for my covid shot at Vina. I stupidly sat on their couch, forgetting how many people with bedbugs in their homes probably come in there and sit to wait for their prescriptions. I turned on the light and searched the area around and on my bed where long past but well remembered experience taught me bedbugs could be. I didn't find any and so there might have only been one. But it may have laid eggs and so I'm going to have to call Raja and get the bedroom steamed by an exterminator. 

            I finished translating "Le java des chaussettes à clous" (The Dance of the Studded Stockings) by Boris Vian. It's about the cops being dancers but their dancing is on people's heads. Next I'll start memorizing it. 

            I finished memorizing "J'ai des locataires" (I Am A Landlord) by Serge Gainsbourg. I searched and found two sets of chords. One says it begins with C but I'm hearing C#. 

            I called my landlord about the bedbug and he said he'd call Orkin. Hopefully he won't take two months like he did seven years ago. 

            I weighed 89 kilos before breakfast. In the late morning, because of the bedbug I'd found I did my laundry two weeks earlier than I would have. There were a few items sitting on the couch that I'd thrown into the dry bathtub in a panic that morning with the intention of also washing them, but I forgot. I washed my comforter, which I haven't cleaned for a long time because it rarely touches my skin, but this time it seemed like a good idea. On my way to put my things into the dryers I stopped at the Vina Pharmacy to tell them that I'd gotten a bedbug from their couch. While my clothes were in the dryer I vacuumed my mattress and bedroom floor. I didn't find any trace of another bedbug but I didn't look deeper by digging with a skewer into the cracks in the baseboards like I used to. I'm still hoping that there was only one bug and that it didn't lay eggs. 

            I weighed 88.1 kilos before a slightly late lunch. I had kettle chips, salsa and yogourt with a glass of orange juice. 

            I took a slightly late siesta with fresh bedding and so far didn't see a second bedbug. 

            I had planned on taking a bike ride but after posting my blog it was almost the time when I'd normally get back from a bike ride, so I didn't go. Besides there was a chance of thunder showers. 

            I washed my shorts, an undershirt, a button shirt, a pillow case, my sweat pants and two pairs of socks in the sink. 

            I took a skewer stick and poked around in all the holes and cracks in the baseboard and the old exit door where I used to find bedbugs between seven and five and a half years ago and there was not a trace. I still have the bedbug proof mattress cover on my futon but it does have one tiny hole in it. After that happily futile search I was feeling a lot more optimistic than I did in the morning. But then again there is still the possibility of there being eggs. Hopefully my vacuuming helped with that but bedbug eggs take ten days to hatch so I won't know for sure for a while. I was concerned because I saw three bites and I wondered if that would mean more bedbugs but one bedbug can feed more than one time in a night. If I killed it while it was still filling up with nest food I might have gotten it before it could lay eggs. 

            I worked on my poem series "My Blood In A Bug." 

            I worked on the video project for my song "Instructions For Electroshock Therapy." I had thought that I needed to insert some more video footage of the animated cords to match the concert footage up with the studio audio, but I actually had to remove some and also cut out a few seconds of the concert video between the last Am G Am chord change and the vocal. I spent about 45 minutes on it and they are almost synchronized. 

            I colourized a few more bricks in the wall behind the skateboarder in my black and white photo from the 80s. 

            I weighed 88.5 kilos before dinner. I rubbed pork ribs with olive oil, salt, pepper, chili powder, dry mustard, cumin, Chinese chili paste and habanero sauce and baked them. I had three with a potato and gravy while watching the first two episodes of the eighth and final season of The Andy Griffith Show. 

            The first story was a teenage dating trope that has been used over and over again on TV series. Arnold is throwing his thirteenth birthday party and it will be stag or drag. Stag meaning one can go alone and drag meaning one can bring a date. Opie has a crush on Mary Alice Carter while she dreams about Fred Simpson. She knows that Opie wants to ask her to the party but she keeps saying she has to run because she's holding out for Fred to ask her. When Fred doesn't invite her she finally agrees to go with Opie. But at the last minute Fred asks her and she immediately accepts. Then she calls Opie and lies that Fred had asked her in the first place and she'd forgotten. Opie is depressed and decides he's not going to go but Andy gives him a pep talk with an anecdote from his own teens when a similar thing happened to him. He says he went alone and had a great time. So Opie goes alone and plays it a little too cool to be realistic. At the party he finds Mary Alice sitting alone on the couch while Fred dances with other girls. Opie rubs her just rewards in a bit but then finally sits with Mary Alice and they have a great time. When Andy and Helen come to pick Opie up they find he's with Mary Alice and Opie suggests they double date it to the diner on him. 

            Mary Alice was played by Morgan Brittany who started acting at age five. She played the sister of Gypsy Rose Lee in the musical "Gypsy" starring Natalie Wood. She was one of Henry Fonda's children in "Yours Mine And Ours" also starring Lucille Ball. In between child acting and adult acting she finished high school and then worked as a dancer and model. She was the Ultrabrite Toothpaste Girl for three years and then while living in Japan for two years she became the face of Kanebo Cosmetics. She played Katherine Wentworth on "Dallas". She is now a right wing commentator and the anchor and co-owner of Politichicks. She has played Vivian Leigh in three movies. 

            In the second story Andy's bowling team is short a player for a big match against Mount Pilot. Howard has expressed interest in joining them but doesn't have a lot of experience and Goober and Emmett keep putting him off. Finally Andy convinces the others to give Howard a try. That night at the game Howard has an obsessive compulsive habit of walkingup to the line with the ball, turning on his heels, walking back three paces, turning again, counting as he steps forward, then telling himself to relax and bowl. Each time he bowls he gets a strike. His team observes that Howard is on his way to a perfect game but the guys from Mount Pilot bet $40 to $10 that he can't do it. Howard is one bowl away from the perfect game when there is a black out. They agree to finish the game the next night. Howard overthinks his playing in anticipation. The next night Howard is given two practice shots and they are both gutter balls. Andy talks to the Mount Pilot team and asks them to call off the bet. They agree and with the pressure off of Howard he bowls a strike, becoming the first bowler in the county to play a perfect game.