mamapants

(And oh wow, do I do this a lot. I am down to four shirts, FOUR, that I'm willing and able to wear on a regular basis. This wouldn't be such a big deal, since I don't really do much that requires fancy wardrobery, except for the fact that three of said shirts have grease spots on the front and force me to constantly hold something over them, like a purse, or a small child, or the car. My back may be aching but my biceps are remarkable.)

Anyway. The skink in the sink is kind of funny, so here you go. A couple of days ago, Norah and I were doing our thing in the yard - she in her swing, me on my knees in the garden, pretending that the plants are actually going to survive this year - when the phone rang. I trotted inside, leaving her in the swing (she can't unbuckle herself, so I figured she wasn't going to escape or anything), and answered the phone that hangs next to the sink with a cheery "HellOOOOH GOD WHAT IS THAT?" Good thing it was a telemarketer - bet they won't be calling here to offer me any more Scholastic books THIS year, huh?

"That" was this, a Southeastern Five-Lined Skink, who had wiggled his skinkly way through the screen and onto the sill, and fell off into the sink. One would think that skinks would have stickier toes, or something, but this one was clearly a somewhat deficient skink, because OF COURSE the only ones who come to my house and get themselves in impossible situations are the messed-up ones. He was missing part of his tail, he was orange, and good golly, he was looking at me. And skinks bite.

I didn't want to alarm the kid, so I maintained my cool and attempted to trap the little bugger under a Tupperware bowl. Deficient or not, he was pretty bloody fast, and reluctant to be trapped under the Tupperware. So we spent several glorious seconds chasing each other around the sink, until I got mad at him and slammed the bowl down in front of him, trying to scare him into holding still. Because that's wise, right? Scare something that bites? Heck yes! He didn't bite me, though. He had some kind of skink seizure and fell into the garbage disposal.

At this point I was pissed, both at myself for leaving poor Norah in the swing through all this ("Mama? Would you like to come out here and push me now? Mama, I am not having fun, did you know that?") and at this clearly STUPID lizard for getting himself into this position. My hand was on the switch, y'all - I was going to make skink pudding, the easy and downright nasty way. But I stopped, and I thought about how it really would kind of be murder of a defenseless little thing, and how I am not That Person who murders things, and I had a MacGyver-style idea: I stuffed the disposal full of angel food cake, backed it up, flooded it with water, and watched Sir Skinksalot float to the top. Scooped him out, stared at him for a while, did a few fist-pumps in the air to celebrate my toughness, and chucked him out into the yard, where Norah saw him and descended into hysteria. I felt good, righteous even, for having saved one of Mother Nature's creatures... until I realized that now we have no angel food cake, and that's probably even worse than murder, maybe.

Other news: pregnancy good, baby due in eight weeks (wha?? how??), photo biz a'rockin', and my buddy Mills and sister Kate ran the Stick Horse and got medals, because they're that kind of cool. Next year, girls...

(Thanks to Mills' mom for the photo, which I have printed and hung on my fridge in an effort to inspire myself out of the ice cream. Ha.)