Lizards and spelling

This morning after Alexander finished his chores he came to me and said, "Mom, I finished putting away my dishes and everything so C-O-O-D-I-P-L-A-Y-M-C?"

I looked at him blankly.

"C-O-O-D-I-P-L-A-Y-M-C?"

"What?" I asked.

"Could I play Minecraft?"

"Oh," I said. "Sure. For a bit."

"I think you need to work on your spelling."

"Yeah, same, buddy."

*****

Zoë triumphantly announced that she caught a lizard the other day. She has it in an old spinach container, but she would like government officials to know that although she is diligently hunting earthworms and leaving out dishes of water for this small creature...she's not keeping it as a pet. She's merely protecting it from birds while its tail heals. Because apparently it dropped its tail in self-defense not too long ago.

We assume this because, well, it's missing its tail. 

It's a little brown skink, I think. 

Okay, like, I know it's a skink that is little and brown. But also "little brown skink" is a kind of skink: Scincella lateralis. 

She only caught it yesterday and it sat on the garden wall all day, happily sunning itself on the biggest rock in the terrarium...when it wasn't being manhandled.

We had sandwiches for dinner (on fancy homemade bread), which we ate outside...sitting on the garden wall. Everybody knew the skink was there. Grandpa had even been introduced and everything.

In the middle of dinner, Andrew, who was sitting right beside the terrarium, leaped up with his plate and stood on the other side of the yard. 

"There's a lizard in that container!" he yelped. 

And everyone was like, "Yup."

"You all knew about this?!"

Like, yeah...we thought he knew, too! After we made fun of him for being so scared of a little brown skink, he bravely—and snootily—retook his seat to finish his sandwich.

A few minutes later he about choked on his sandwich as he yelped in a panic, "Where's the lizard?! I think it escaped. I THINK IT ESCAPED!!"

Apparently he'd been keeping a wary eye on that skink while he tried to pretend he was calmly eating his dinner. The skink really is pretty good at camouflage and sometimes it takes us a few minutes to see it in when it finds a good hiding spot.

Who knew Andrew was so afraid of little brown skinks?!

Here's Phoebe bravely—and mostly gently—touching the skink this afternoon:

She's not really afraid of it, she just thinks it's so funny! We've had to watch her closely while playing outside today because she's always making her way back over to the skink and messing with it.

She is a real handful lately—climbing up everything she can and getting into everything else!

She might be a little bit responsible for my lack of writing because she's just always getting into everything (and it really bothers her when I sit down to do anything). But the other reason for my lack of writing is that I...still have so much other writing to do...that even when I'm not doing that writing I feel so guilty about not doing that writing that I have a hard time doing other writing. 

So I really just need to get it done.

But she is for real such a handful and only ever sleeps for an hour or two at a time before we have to go through all the work of coaxing her back to sleep again, so we're all-around exhausted over here.

But, Andrew is home from his conferences. And he taught his last class on Thursday. So hopefully he'll be able to help wrangle her a little bit during the day now so I can have some writing time before—you know—midnight. His schedule just felt oppressive this semester and I can't really think why...he taught evening classes on Tuesday and Thursday and that's it. I think it was just...the whole marathon of getting downtown. He had to go in early to find decent parking, so that affected Monday evening, and then he stays late on Tuesday. Then Wednesday is a busy day with music lessons, plus he hast o go in early on Thursday so that affects Wednesday evening, and then Thursday the kids just wouldn't see him because he'd leave the house before anyone was awake and wouldn't be home until 11 PM or so. 

So finally on Friday we'd see him...and then the weekend would go quick. 

And...it was just a hard semester. And I'm glad it's over. He doesn't teach during Maymester, so May will be my thesis-writing month.