Florida

I'm sitting in my sister's still-dark room (but there's a mockingbird outside the open window, singing his heart out to welcome the coming dawn) typing this on her computer. I can't get online with my laptop down here, so I have to use hers. Please excuse the brevity of this, therefore, and also any typos.

There are gekkos (is that how you spell it?) down here, those tiny lizards that serve as the model for a car insurance agency on television. These little guys aren't green, but brown -- and they don't walk on their hind legs or speak with an Australian accent, either. But they are cute and they can climb any vertical surface, even glass. There are cats in the house, and they amuse themselves by hunting the gekkos and bringing them inside. It's a catch and release program for them, the lizards are probably very annoyed, but uninjured by the experience. I took one away from the cat early yesterday morning, and found it sluggish or sleepy and went outside with it on my hand to sit in the sun. Sure enough, his problem was that he was cold, and after a few minutes of hand-warmth plus sunshine on his back, his head suddenly lifted, his breathing quickened, and he went zipping off my hand, down my leg, and into the shrubs that line our pool.

I hear it snowed yesterday in Minneapolis. The temperature here was in the mid-eighties. I went out to dinner with my sister at a restaurant called the Bahama Breeze. Had a drink called the Mojito, which consists of crushed lime fragments, fresh mint, juice from sugar cane, and rum, all over crush ice. For dinner I had the mahi-mahi with mango sauce, steamed very slim and tender green beans and mashed sweet potatoes flavored with cinnamon. We drove home under a rising full moon. As they say, "Just another day in paradise." When the sun comes up in the morning, I just want to imitate a gekko and sit in the sun, working on my tan. Do a few laps in the pool, then back in the sun. Every three hours I take Mom to the bathroom, bring her a drink of orange juice or a snack, or a simple meal, talk with her awhile, then go back out in the sun. I am getting some stitching done, but I'm not working very hard on it. I've got a whole five pages done of Buttons and Bones, the next Betsy Devonshire mystery.

As I have said before in this blog, Life is Sweet.