Athena Lorde

            On Saturday morning I checked my email and there was a message from Best Buy to contact them by phone to confirm my bank card information. I was suspicious but when I searched the phone number it was definitely that of Best Buy. They said they’ll cancel my computer order in five days if I don’t contact them. I think it’s because my first purchase from them last year was a gift for my daughter Astrid, which I had them ship to her in Montreal. Ever since then when they send me notifications they call me Astrid. I think I just have to confirm my identity for them and I’ll try to do that this morning.

            After yoga I translated the eleventh verse of “Ballade de la chnoufe” (Ballad of the Snuff) by Boris Vian.

            I worked out the chords for the first verse of “Tout l’monde est musician” (Everyone’s a Musician) by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            I called up Best Buy and assume I was talking to someone in India. She was audibly yawning when she first greeted me. Later she was coughing and I asked if she was okay. In a bored voice she thanked me for asking. She adjusted my billing information and assured me everything was fine now and my order would be processed. 

            I weighed 88.3 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Kramer electric during song practice for the last of two sessions. It stayed in tune about half the time. Tomorrow I begin a four session stretch of playing my acoustic guitars. I’ll play my Epi for three sessions and might have my Martin back for Wednesday. 

            Around midday I rode over to Vina Pharmacy to pick up my Pico-Salax prescription. The pharmacist told me not to drink anything red or purple with it because the doctor might think it’s blood during the colonoscopy. It cost me $37.75. 

            I went to No Frills where all the grapes were too soft so I got two bags of oranges instead. I also bought three packs of raspberries, some bananas, two packs of five-year-old cheddar, a strawberry-rhubarb pie, tomato pesto, some kitchen garbage bags, a box of spoon size shredded wheat, two containers of skyr, and a bag of Miss Vickie’s chips. I also got a pack of two charcoal toothbrushes. It seems to be something new although charcoal may be an old thing for tooth care from some cultures. I’d never heard of it before and frankly I was drawn more to the dark purple colour of one of the brushes. Anyway it’s supposed to make one’s teeth whiter. I haven’t noticed anything drastic in terms of brightening. They’re not widely recommended by dentists because they can be abrasive but they do remove plaque. 

            I weighed 88.7 kilos at 14:30. I had Sky Flakes crackers with peanut butter, five-year-old cheddar and a glass of iced tea. I should have bought iced tea at the supermarket but I mistakenly envisioned myself having plenty. 

            I took a siesta at 15:02 and woke up at 16:38. It was too late to take a bike ride downtown so I just rode to Ossington and Bloor. 

            I got another email from Best Buy saying they were still having problems processing my order. They wanted me to check with my bank but there was a 45 minute wait to call and I didn’t have time. I noticed that my daughter’s name was still on my bank card information on the bill and so I edited it. Ever since I bought her a humidifier last year they’ve been calling me Astrid in their notifications. 

            I weighed 88.75 kilos at 17:50. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 18:57. 

            I reviewed the next cassette tape on the pile and it was nearly empty except for part of a song by a woman about moving on. It sounds like it was recorded at an open stage. Maybe Fat Albert’s. The next tape is a recording of a rehearsal with Steve Lowe at my place in the Beaches. We worked quite a bit on “Spool of the Moon” and were just starting on “Snow on a Poppy” when I stopped listening for the night. 

            In my 2020-09-24 Song Practice Movie Maker project I continued to delete the songs that come before “Leave Some for Everyone Else”. 

            I made pizza on a slice of Bavarian sandwich bread with marinara sauce, tomato pesto, Genoa salami, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a glass of Creemore while watching season 1, episode 22 of Car 54 Where Are You? 

            Every Thursday night at exactly 23:00 Leo Schnauzer and his wife Sylvia argue very loudly on various topics, such as: Who is the better dancer, Kelly or Astair? Who is the best actor? Who was the best president?, etcetera. Toody and Muldoon are aware of this habit and always arrive before the fight begins to avoid the embarrassment of their fellow officer being arrested for disturbing the peace. But the neighbours always gather in the hall and threaten to report it if they don’t. The rest of the week Leo and Sylvia are annoyingly sweet with one another, so what sets them off on Thursdays? Schnauzer explains that he wakes up mad on Thursdays because he dreads Sylvia being angry over her weekly confrontation with Katz the butcher because she buys chicken on Thursdays and likes to squeeze the chickens before buying them, but Katz doesn’t want her to. So she takes it out on Leo. Schnauzer casually comments, “If only there wasn’t a Thursday!” That gets Toody thinking of a plan to get rid of Thursday for Schnauzer. He thinks that if they miss fighting one Thursday it might break the spell. Toody’s cousin Ed works in the press room of the New York Morning News and Friday morning’s paper is printed on Thursday. The early trial runs come off the press early Thursday so he arranges to get Ed to sneak him a copy before work. So Muldoon pretends to be on the phone when Schnauzer arrives at work and complains how hard it is to order fish on Friday. Then he congratulates Schnauzer for not getting into a fight with Sylvia last night. He says he and Toody were waiting in the hall for things to blow up and nothing happened. Toody comes in with the paper and Schnauzer checks to see it’s Friday. Then Toody changes the day on the sign-in book with the intention of changing it back after Schnauzer signs in. But when he is about to change it back Captain Block is there telling him to go out on patrol and takes the newspaper away from him because an on duty officer shouldn’t be seen reading the paper. Then Block sees the sign-in book and the paper and also thinks it’s Friday, then he tells all the desk officers to get on the ball and they start their Friday paperwork. Then patrolman Nicholson hands in his report for the previous day and Block chews him out for not handing in Thursday’s report. Nicholson seems somewhat in a stupor for the rest of the day. Then a drunk who was just put in a cell is released because everybody thinks it’s the next day. Meanwhile Sylvia has just spent the day with Lucille and Rose and they are talking about seeing the movie Gaslight in which Charles Boyer starts to drive Ingrid Bergman mad when she’s dressed for the ball but he convinces her that they already went the night before. So when she goes home and hears Leo telling her it’s Friday she thinks he’s also trying to drive her insane and so she begins fighting with him. 

            One of Schnauzer’s neighbours was played by Athena Lorde who became a member of the American Theatre Wing. She acted in several popular radio series before she began work in television. She made her TV debut in the soap opera One Man’s Family in 1950. She played Betty Matthews on the soap opera The Greatest Gift in 1955. She also provided voices for several animated features and shows.