About this "winter" thing...

I awoke this morning to yet another lightly frosted vista of my lawn. The little temperature gadget thingie on my desktop tells me it is 32F. Lawns throughout my neighborhood are no longer that perennial green we are accustomed to down here in the sub-tropics. Lawns are beige, trees are aflame with multi-colored (and dead) leaves. Well, not the palm trees, of course, who appear to shiver in the cold north wind... as do I and many others here.

Faye and Frances wrap themselves up in sweat pants and shirts and robes and wrap thick woolen scarves around their heads to sit outside and smoke (they voluntarily do not smoke inside this house and I am grateful).

We even kidnapped the lizard who lives on our back porch, Chester, and kept him in a Tupperware container on the kitchen counter for two nights and days. We had to protect the poor thing. I had to pry him off the wall (he bit me during this struggle but I persevered) where he had attached himself as he slid into a possibly lethal lethargic state. I placed him into the Tupperware, covered it with a metal piece with holes in it from a steamer so he would have air to breathe, dribbled in some V-8 juice in case he needed sustenance, and kept him comfortable.

You see, we didn't think he would survive the temps in the low 20's we were promised.

He seemed ungrateful. He eyed us warily. As if we intended to do him great harm, or barbecue him for our dinner. Still, we knew our intentions.

Faye kept wanting to put him back outside and made several suggestions about how we might. She also kept pronouncing hum "possibly dead" because he failed to move in front of her. I think she was afraid he would somehow shove the metal cover off (weighted down by a ceramic coffee cup) and attack her while she slept. So I encouraged visions of being slowly eaten to death by a 3" lizard as a form of humor and mirth.

But yesterday, about noon, I took him back outside and placed him on the leaves of the pineapple plant (which has yet to produce a pineapple) he seems to love. He didn't want to leave the Tupperware container. Even bit me again when I tried to coax him to get on the leaf. Ungrateful little wretch!

The worst of the cold seems over for now. We are promised days steadily climbing into the 7o's for the next couple of weeks. But still, there will be more.

The Evil Canadians are behind this. They do this each year. First, they send down hordes of their citizens to fill our restaurants and Wal-Marts, hogging the best tables and parking spots and then they send those cold air masses behind them.

It's a conspiracy, I tell you.