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Posted on April 24, 2020by meemselle
In the Age of Covid-19, one finds one’s horizons starkly constrained. In fact, I have not left the Mango Penthouse in over six weeks, unless you count the two times I crept downstairs under cover of night to drop my trash. Now I even have staff to do this quotidian task for me.
I know that many of you have been enjoying this time to catch up on movies and TV, new and old. It would be a wonderful time to be watching baseball, wouldn’t it, except for the fact that there is no baseball. Which sucks. I am basically a reader, not a watcher, but even I can reach a saturation point of too much reading. And except for the occasional binge on series like “Unorthodox” (only 4 episodes, which is about my limit) and weekly episodes of “Better Call Saul,” my media viewing is very limited. I don’t own a TV and I just don’t have the patience to sit and watch movies, and I have pretty much zero patience with TV. The half-hour sitcom format was not developed with Sra. Meems in mind.
Furthermore, the only place comfortably to use my computer, as I am doing now, Gentle Readers, is to sit at my dining room table. It is not the most ergonomic set-up, but you can take heart in knowing how I suffer for my art, as I labor to bring these Few Words to you.
My dining room/living room has an enormous window that looks out to a view of a huge mango tree. Hence the name: the Mango Penthouse. This is what makes the Mango Penthouse so comfortable and airy: no direct sunlight and muchas brisas. The windows are sliders, with the requisite Dominican security bars. (Although how anyone could scale the walls to break in to this apartment is beyond me, but I guess where there’s a will there’s a way…..)
As I was gazing off into the distance the other night, thinking great thoughts and eating a grilled cheese sandwich, I espied a small lizard crawling around on the screen. Stealthily determining that said lizard was on the outside, not the inside, of the screen, I snapped a photo. I sent it to some of you.
Well, he’s been back every night since, and he has a friend. The friend is much smaller and skinnier. I’m not up on how one determines the sex of lizards, nor do I have any interest in learning, so although in fact one may be a female, for the moment, they are simply called Les Lizard Frères. If you ever lived in New York or have read financial news you will get the joke. If you don’t get the joke, I’m not explaining it.
Anyway, Les Lizard Frères seem to be doing an excellent job of eating mosquitoes. I saw Lizard #1 snag a fairly good-sized moth the other night. We’ve actually settled into a routine. At approximately 6.30, I pour a glass of wine, settle down to eat something, and begin my nightly lizard-viewing.
To this I am reduced? Oh, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!
For sheer, stultifying boringness, I dare you to beat this.
Stay inside. Stay safe. Watch lizards
