Natalie Schafer

            On Sunday morning I memorized the fifth verse of "Rupture au miroir" (Crack in the Mirror) by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            I was very tired this morning like I have been for the last couple of days. Maybe it's seasonal affective disorder. 

            I weighed 84 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I've been in the morning in quite a while. 

            I went online and redid the usage and citation quiz that was due yesterday. I had written down what answers I got right on Saturday, but when one's answer is partially right one is not told which ones were correct. This time I followed the links to the grammar tutorials and read the articles. On my first try I got 80%, which was more satisfying than the 67% that I scored yesterday. It was already lunchtime but I realized that I'd gotten one wrong that was right yesterday and so I quickly took the quiz again and corrected that one mistake, so I increased my score to 83%. That's the best I can do without being more than a day late so I left it at that. That brought me from a C+ to an A-. 

            I weighed 84.7 kilos before lunch. I had saltines with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of limeade. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. My front flasher kept shutting off and so I changed it when I got home. 

            I weighed 84.1 kilos at 17:30. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:32. 

            I spent a little over an hour reading "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight". I had first started reading it two years ago as part of my Introduction to British Literature Part 1 course, but we were only required to read the first part. 

            It begins on Christmas Eve in King Arthur's court during a feast. A gigantic knight with green skin, green hair, green clothing and riding a green horse enters the court and challenges any single knight that is willing to a fighting game. Sir Gawain takes the challenge and the Green Knight gives him his enormous axe. He is to take one swing at the Green Knight with his axe but he must promise that in one year's time he will allow the Green Knight to take the same swing at him. Sir Gawain swings and cuts off the Green Knight's head. But the headless body picks up his head by the hair and holds it while it speaks. It tells Gawain to ride out in one year's time on New Year's Day to seek the Green Chapel where the Green Knight will take a swing at Gawain. 

            One year later Gawain ventures out to fulfill his promise. He searches long and hard but finds no trace of the Green Chapel. On Christmas Eve he finds a large and fine castle where he is welcomed and treated as an honoured guest. The lord of the house tells him he knows the Green Chapel and will guide him there on New Years Day but meanwhile he should stay as his guest. 

            The lord is preparing for hunting season and makes a pact with Gawain that he will give him whatever he wins on his hunt if Gawain will give him whatever he wins in the castle while he is away. The hunts are described in great detail, as is the butchering of the deer after the first hunt. While the lord is hunting, his beautiful wife comes to Gawain's bedroom and lies in bed with him. She gives him a kiss and so when the lord comes back to give Gawain his venison, Gawain keeps his part of the bargain by giving the lord a kiss. Something similar happens the next day with a wild boor for the lord and with kisses for Gawain, and again those are shared. On the third day the lord hunts a fox and his wife tries to get Gawain to do more than kiss but he refuses. She gives him a belt that will make him invulnerable, which he keeps for himself and does not share with the lord. He does however give the lord more kisses. 

            The next day Gawain is led out to the Green Chapel but it is really an ancient burial mound. He is met by the Green Knight who prepares to swing his axe. That's as far as I got, but there are just a few pages left. I know from what I've heard that the lord of the castle is really the Green Knight but past that I'm not sure how it ends. 

            I made pizza on naan with Basilica sauce and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 2, episode 29 of The Beverly Hillbillies. 

            Mr. Drysdale has bought Jed an upscale Beverly Hills dress shop as a tax investment. Jed decides that he and his family are going to do their part and help out around the shop. When they arrive at The House of Renée they think it really is Renée's house. When she sees the Clampetts she thinks they are beggars and when they tell her that Jed owns the place she thinks they are mad. She tries to scrape up some small change to give to them so they will go away. But when she holds out eighty cents and says, "That's all we have" Jed thinks that she is destitute and so they go out to buy food for her. Since Renée refers to her models as her girls, the Clampetts think they are her daughters and that how skinny they are is also because Renée is so poor. 

            When one of the models says her name is "Tommy" they suddenly think she is a boy. That's odd since "Billy" and "Bobby" are common girl's names among hillbillies, so why would Tommy make her a boy? 

            Drysdale comes and makes clear to Renée that Jed is indeed the owner of her shop. Renée and her models are sent to the Clampett house to be fattened up while Granny runs the scheduled fashion show with Elly as the model. Elly is poised as she models the dresses in high heels to an impossible degree for someone who has never worn these types of clothing. When someone bids 12.50 for a dress, Granny thinks she means $12.50 and asks her to up it to $15.00. What she really means is $1250.00 and $1500.00. But nothing is sold for more than $18.50 and so much of Renée's stock worth thousands is sold for $50. 

            Renée was played by Natalie Schafer, who got her start on Broadway and moved to Hollywood in 1941 to act in movies. She played supporting roles in many films, usually as society ladies. When she acted in the pilot for Gilligan's Island she only did so for the free trip to Hawaii. When she found that the pilot had been bought and that she would be in the cast of a regular sitcom, she cried because it meant she would have to stay in Los Angeles when she wanted to move back to New York. Her character of Mrs. Howell on Gilligan's Island made her a household name from 1964 to 1967. After Gilligan's Island she was on the cast of the soap operas Search for Tomorrow and Love of Life. 

            I finished reading Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Gawain takes the blow from the Green Knight's axe but survives. Perhaps the Green Knight held back. He reveals that he is indeed the lord of the castle where Gawain has been staying and his name is Bertilak of Hautdesert. It was the magic of Morgan le Fey that made him the Green Knight and she is the old lady that Gawain met at the castle. She is King Arthur's mother and Gawain's aunt. 

            

            

            I searched for bedbugs and after running my toothpick along a crack in the baseboard for a while above the left side of the head of my bed, I saw that there was a bloodless one impaled on the end.