I wasn't quite able to finish memorizing "OK pour plus jamais" (Okay for No More Always) by Serge Gainsbourg. I think I was too distracted with thinking about preparing for pest control and thinking about whether the landlord would pull another trick on his tenants and cancel again after everyone had prepared and waited all day.
I weighed 84.2 kilos before breakfast.
I cut song practice short and was ready for the exterminator just a little after 9:00.
At around 10:00 I could hear the landlord with the Orkin guy in the hall. Raja told the pest control technician they would be leaving my place until last. It was about an hour or so later that Raja knocked on my door. I was glad to see that the Orkin guy was Steve but when Raja tried to come in I told him that he couldn't. He started swearing at me as I held him back but Steve convinced me to let the landlord in because in this case it was part of the procedure. I sighed and let Raja come in.
I told Steve I hadn't seen a bedbug in three days. He said that he would just be spraying the spores and that they don't use the poison at all anymore because it kills the spores. He told me that last time the guy that came and sprayed my place with poison after the Aprehend had been sprayed ruined the efficacy of the spores. I wondered why they would do that. He said because they are fucking idiots and he's the only one who knows what he is doing. I read a study that to some degree confirms what he says and especially the over the counter sprays work against the Aprehend.
Steve said he treated every place but units 5 and 1. Shankar in 5 said he was sick and Cesar in unit 1 refused to let him come in. Cesar's place is probably where the infestation is and so our bedbug problem might continue. He said David's place is pretty bad because it's so cluttered. He found lots of dead bedbugs because David uses those hardware store insecticides that kill on contact but don't kill the eggs. It was only in unit 2 that Steve found live bedbugs.
My landlord looked at my Pipe Dream sculpture and told me I should throw it out because it's all rusted. The rust is one of the most charming things about it. I told him with annoyance that it's art and he just threw up his hands and said, "Do what you want". I said, "Thank you for telling me I can do what I want with my own things."
It reminded me of about twenty years ago when Raja was in my place doing some plastering when I wasn't there. I had a rusted metal rod that I'd found down at the Leslie Spit. It was sitting on the mantle not far from where Raja had been working and it was there to complete another of my rusted sculptures. Later I saw that the rod had disappeared and I suspect that my landlord needed something to stir his plaster mixture, saw the rod and thought, "This is just garbage" then grabbed it, used it and threw it away. Is it any wonder I don't want him in my place? He snooped around my apartment in places that weren't his current business. He said he's thinking of putting an exhaust vent over my stove.
Steve said he would be coming in a month to inspect the bedbug situation and said that no tenants would need to leave. He said the one spraying of Aprehend this time should be enough.
I asked if the bedbugs could be coming from the attached building next door. He said it would need to be an extreme infestation to motivate the bedbugs through the brick wall barrier between buildings.
I did my laundry. The price has gone up on the washers and the dryers. The marked price on the machines was $4.75 but the machine switched on after I'd put $4.25 in. I informed the attendant, who thanked me and changed the price signs.
I rode on the slippery road down to Freshco where I bought toilet paper, naan, and Bavarian sandwich bread.
When I came into my building Benji was sitting on the stairs and feeling very angry because he couldn't go into his place. He could have gone to the library where there's lots to do for somebody who just sits around anyway. Steve said we have to leave for four hours. Last time he told me two hours. If the spores are not toxic I don't understand why we have to stay away for four hours. I assume they are just being overly cautious in case some people have a reaction. I went into my place and it didn't feel noxious the way it does after an insecticide spraying.
I weighed 83.4 kilos before lunch at 13:45, which is the lightest I've been at that time over a very long span.
I weighed 83.9 kilos at 16:45.
I was caught up on my journal at 18:35.
I read another forty pages of Jane Eyre. Mr. Rochester went away without saying goodbye and was gone for a couple of weeks. There's a lady of his class whom Jane has heard he likes and Jane has resigned herself to be without him, even though she realizes that she loves him. He returns with a large group of fancy people including that lady and they all party for two weeks. He asks Jane to be there during their nightly entertainments and she obediently comes to sit off by herself and watch. She observes that Rochester doesn't love the lady after all.
I had a potato with gravy and the last steak while watching the third season finale of The Beverly Hillbillies.
In this story Mrs. Drysdale has a new plan to get rid of the Clampetts by convincing Jed to turn his mansion over to the city as an art gallery. But for her plan to work she needs her husband out of the way and so she convinces him that he's sick and needs to rest in Palm Springs for two weeks.
But the Clampetts think she wants them all to become artists and so Granny paints daisies and other flowers on everything, Elly May makes mud sculptures of her pets, and Jethro hauls enormous rocks to chisel into sculptures. Jethro hires a beautiful model to pose for him while he works. But then Jed learns that he plans on sculpting a possum and isn't even looking at the beautiful young woman. Jethro says every great artist has a beautiful model pose for him. Jed thanks the girl and pays her to let her go home.
Mrs. Drysdale brings Mr. Engel, the chairman of the fine arts commission to what she thinks is going to be the Margaret Drysdale Gallery, but they both nearly faint when they see that it's filled with art made by the Clampetts. Then Jethro brings another big rock but it falls off the truck onto Engel's car.
The model was played by Gay Gordon, who co-starred in the short lived TV series, "McFarlane's Way".
Mrs. Drysdale's chauffeur was played by Chet Stratton, who started out as a child in Vaudeville, then worked a lot in theatre and on Broadway. On the radio he played Hop Harrigan in "Ace of the Airways" and starred in "The O'Neill's" for ten years. On television he appeared regularly in the 60s version of Dragnet. But in between acting jobs he drove a delivery truck and sold washing machines.
I finished chapter 18 of Jane Eyre.
I searched for bedbugs and for the fourth night in a row I amazingly found none.
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