Spring Byington

            On Friday morning I got up to pee at 4:47 and remembered that I’d promised my upstairs neighbour David that I’d help him take his luggage down to the street and help load his taxi to the airport for his annual trip to Ethiopia. I washed and got dressed for yoga then put my Blundies on, a scarf, my hoody and my winter gloves and went upstairs. He already had suitcases at the top of the stairs so I grabbed the first one and took it down to just inside the building. Then I brought another one to the top of the stairs on the second floor. He helped me with a third one and then I took the medium sized one down. It probably wasn’t a good idea so soon after my recent knee injury but it’ll probably be okay. David called a cab and asked for a van but the dispatcher said they didn’t have any available. I was pretty sure they’d all fit in a car anyway. David slipped $100 into my pocket and gave me his key to look after his plant. David was in the hospital recently to have an operation on his stomach and he still had stitches. I’m guessing it was a hernia. The cab came and everything fit. He’ll be gone for two months. 

            I was only seven minutes late starting my yoga. I skipped the fish pose to stay on schedule.

            I uploaded “Down on Traversière Street”, my translation of Rue Traversière” by Boris Vian to my Christian’s Translations blog and started preparing it for publication. 

            I worked out the chords for the first verse and the first line of the chorus of “White and Black Blues” by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the first of four sessions and it continues to go out of tune. I’m going to try to find some time today to change the G string and see if that helps.

            I weighed 86.4 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I washed the wall behind and beside the toilet, the outside of the tank, the top and inside of the bowl. I still have to do the sides of the toilet. 

            I weighed 86.3 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. My right knee got a little sore near the end. 

            I weighed 86.4 kilos at 18:21. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 19:12. 

            I changed the G string on my Martin. 

            I completed nine more frames for my second rainbow wave animation and uploaded them to my “Seven Shades of Blues” Movie Maker project. In the video timeline I shortened all of the frames for the second wave and lined each one up with a high point on the waveform of the audio timeline. I could see that I need several more frames and so I started working on those. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a slice of roast beef while watching season 2, episode 33 of Batman. 

            The story begins with Catwoman meeting with the European villain The Sandman. He sought her out for a partnership when he came to North America. Catwoman now has two female accomplices while Sandman’s henchmen are male. They are plotting to acquire the fortune of billionaire J. Pauline Spaghetti but each plans on betraying the other. One of Catwoman’s Kittens tells her she’s going to pick up some fresh catnip. But after her girl walks away Catwoman thinks it’s odd that she would be able to get catnip at that hour. She follows and catches her calling Commissioner Gordon because she is an undercover cop. She has time to say, “This is policewoman Mooney. Your hunch was right” before Catwoman subdues her. All Gordon hears after that is Catwoman saying “Meow!” Gordon calls Batman but he is unavailable. He tries the Bat Signal and Batman and Robin do see it but they are outside of Gotham as Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson leading several boys on a camping trip. Later in the store window of Morpheus Mattresses, Catwoman is out of costume, wearing a nightgown and sleeping on the bed. A crowd has gathered on the street to watch her. Then a man in a nightcap and nightshirt comes and picks Catwoman up to carry her away. After hearing about this, Commissioner Gordon tries to call Batman again and this time he answers. Meanwhile the sleeping beauty has been found and is now being interviewed on TV. She says that thanks to Dr. Somnambula she can sleep anywhere anytime, then she sneaks away. Later Catwoman is again meeting with Sandman, this time in his hideout, when the phone rings. Sandman tells her to pretend to be his nurse. She puts on an accent and receives a call from J. Pauline Spaghetti who heard about Somnambula in the interview. Catwoman tells Pauline that the fee for treatment is $50,000. Pauline says she’ll pay $100,000 if the doctor can be there in ten minutes. Meanwhile Batman deduces that Sandman is after the money of a rich person with insomnia. He asks the Bat Computer to suggest who it could be and then pink spaghetti comes oozing out of the machinery. That’s one weird computer. Batman interprets this as meaning Sandman’s victim is J. Pauline Spaghetti and so he and Robin head for her penthouse. Meanwhile Sandman is already there as Dr. Somnambula. Pauline says she hasn’t slept for years but she did doze for a moment once at a rock concert. He puts a stethoscope to her forehead and she wonders why. He explains that the intransitive roots of her sensory motor activity are located between her paladinious canals and her sinualidated cavities. She’s impressed but I think those terms are fictional. He shoots a powder in her face from his stethoscope that puts her to sleep but also induces a hypnotic trance. He asks for her financial records and she says they are in her dressing table just like those of any other woman. Her dressing table is full of hundreds of thousands of dollars and oodles of priceless jewels. She shows him her financial records and he tells her to go to sleep on the bed. He photographs her records. Batman and Robin arrive just as she is waking up. She has just had the best rest she’s had in years and resents Batman and Robin’s suspicions of her saviour. Batman tells her to check her valuables. She does so and nothing is missing, except for Dr. Somnambula and she blames Batman for driving him away. Batman and Robin go to the Morpheus Mattress Factory where a giant Murphy bed drops from the wall with Sandman and four of his henchmen on top. They attack and the first big fight takes place. Batman is physically knocked out but Robin receives some of Sandman’s powder, putting him in a hypnotic state of slavery. Batman wakes up strapped to a mattress that is about to be poked by a stitching machine. Sandman tells Robin to start the machine and he does. Sandman leaves Batman to die while he takes Robin as a gift for Catwoman. I predict she won’t be happy about either of those. She wants control over Batman’s life or death and she doesn’t like Robin. That’s the cliffhanger. 

            Pauline was played by Spring Byington, who formed her own theatre group in high school that toured mining camps in Colorado. She then toured with stock companies in Canada and the States. She made her Broadway debut at the age of 31 in A Beggar on Horseback. Her film debut was in 1933 as the mother of the Little Women. She was nominated for an Academy Award for her supporting performance in You Can’t Take It With You. She co-starred in the Jones family film series from 1936 to 1940. On TV she starred in the sitcom December Bride from 1954 to 1959. She then co-starred in the western series Laramie. She played Larry Hagman’s mother on I Dream of Jeannie.