Worryingly, There's a Lizard in my Kitchen

Oh dear, oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

I don’t know how else to say this, but I have been tasked with the capture of a lizard. It’s a skink — these are relatively small, as far as Australian lizards go, although this one is honestly the largest skink I’ve seen in my life. I’ve seen him a dozen times — he’s really wiggly, for some reason, and terrifically fast. He sees me, and goes scampering under the dishwasher whenever I enter the kitchen.

And so far, my attitude, vis-à-vis the aforementioned, has been almost insubstantial. I feel nothing whatsoever. Codeine makes me disassociate, somewhat. Anyway, I’m fairly live-and-let-live when it comes to the lizard. I look the other way. I tread softly and all that — you know, so as not to step on him. I feel no ill-will, only a mild curiosity as to how Jeremy (that’s what I’m calling him) grew to be so large.

Generally, I try to ignore Jeremy. I don’t want him in my kitchen, though, because I think stepping on him would be terrifically traumatizing. But the codeine and the sleepless nights are making me listless.

About a week ago, I was awoken by a scream. Primal instincts kicked in; moments later, I was in the kitchen, wide-awake and ready for violence. My wife was there, trembling and muttering the word ‘Eep’ over and over. Apparently, she’d gone into the kitchen to make coffee, and stepped on Jeremy, barefoot. She did not squish him — she felt his swishy, wriggling lizard body beneath her arch and reacted instinctively. Still, it was a close call. Jeremy himself was badly shaken, evidently. He remained on the spot for about ten seconds, shocked out of his wits, probably, then went scuttling under the dishwasher.

“You’re capturing the lizard,” my wife told me. “I don’t know how you’re going to do it, but this is your wheelhouse. This is now the top of your task list.”

“Call yourself a feminist,” I muttered, churlishly.

“What?”

“Nothing. I didn’t say anything,” I lied, because it actually is my wheelhouse, and we both know it. I was just disgruntled because she’s morally entitled to tell me what to do at this point.

My wife is the breadwinner; I mean, she brings money into the house. My job, generally speaking, is ‘all things childcare’ — which, if you’d met my children, you’d know is a significantly tougher role. I also cook and clean. But I do a lot of reasoning with people. I argue with ten-year-olds. I adjudicate disputes. I explain reality to preteens, and that sort of thing. And their willingness to debate me is beyond human measure.

Furthermore, I have a Substack which has 30ish paid subscribers. I love and appreciate those people deeply, though until I have approximately, I don’t know, 1,000-ish paid subscribers (?) then my wife will have the moral right to assign me arbitrary tasks, like — I don’t know — catching lizards and that sort of nonsense.

So, it’s been about a week, now. I have cleaned the stove-top thoroughly, I have cooked five meals for the family, and done the grocery shopping, and adjudicated 19 arguments, but there is a lizard loose in the kitchen and my wife is not happy.

Meanwhile, my daughters have decided he is not a Jeremy, but a Jemima. They keep talking about how she’s laying eggs under the dishwasher, and I sincerely wish they wouldn’t because it’s starting to make their mother hyperventilate. She’s American you see and feels lizards should not be in the kitchen. The thought of them being in there to establish families of their own is, like, a bit too much ‘Australia’ for her liking.

But as I said, it’s now been a week since I was assigned the task of removing Jeremy and she is, so far, justifiably dismayed by my lack of progress. Then again, how would you do it? How would you remove a 20cm skink from under your dishwasher?

I reminded my wife that there are other, much larger species of lizards living in the garden, just outside our back door. One is an Eastern Blue-Tongue; it’s about two feet long and evil-looking.

… and this is what a Blue-Tongue looks like, so you can imagine her general consternation.

What I could do, I suggested, is leave the back door open, ostensibly to let a Blue Tongue in, so the larger lizard can find Jeremy and, you know, eat him or something.

My wife asked me how I might thereafter compel the second lizard to leave. I told her to stop trying to micromanage me and walked away, feeling vexed.

Anyway, since that conversation I have, in fact, conceived of a viable plan to remove Jeremy/Jemima from the kitchen, and in my opinion, it’s two-parts genius and one-part utterly Looney Tunes, in the sense that Wile E. Coyote would thoroughly approve. But I won’t tell you the plan yet, in case it doesn’t work. No point in looking foolish. Also, I’m finding it a bit tricky to buy string. It’s one of those items you’d think would be sold everywhere, but never seems to be available in shops.

Meanwhile, I want to explain why you haven’t heard from me much lately. It’s the same old thing; I have a frozen shoulder, and my sleep has been tremendously affected. Last night, I fell asleep at 9PM, and slept fitfully and painfully, waking frequently. Anyway, that went on for what felt like about ten hours. Finally, and feeling exhausted from the throbbing pain, I decided I might as well get up and start the day. I checked the time — it was 11PM!

So that’s how it is. The nights drag on. Sometimes, I get up and fetch an ice pack, and fall asleep on it. I’m also now taking 30mg of codeine, twice per day, but much of my problem stems from getting strange knots in my back from sleeping in weird positions.

Anyway, last week I did finally go see a doctor. He prescribed the codeine, and sent me to get x-rays and an ultrasound. And, because Australia has been quietly dismantling its universal healthcare system, this all cost me $250+. You know, I’ve always been good at swearing, but in recent weeks … well, I feel like my fluency and creativity with the genre is a good deal improved. I think I might be getting a cortisone injection in my shoulder in a few weeks; I cannot tell you how much I’m looking forward to that.

The odd thing is, my shoulder doesn’t hurt too much when I’m just walking around, doing ordinary things; it hurts most when I’m lying down, which obviously is why my sleep is so disrupted. I feel like a shambling, incoherent mess these days. I mean, in former times, I’d have evicted Jeremy (or Jemima) on Day One, but here I am on the eighth day of the assignment, and he/she/they is still there!

At Wrongcards, I disabled the send-receive app more than a month ago, so I could do some maintenance on it. But somehow, I’ve lacked the lucidity to do any programming, so people still can’t send cards. I also haven’t been writing newsletters, which further exacerbates my despondency, because writing makes me actually happy, for some mad reason.

Most of my days, I stumble around in a fog, doing chores and cooking and swearing whenever I accidentally rotate my left arm while reaching for something. How bad is it? Well, if I can recover mobility in my left arm, I’m taking up yoga.

Look, like all sensible men, I have nurtured a lifelong aversion to yoga. I mean, it seems like such a hateful activity. Obviously, its a supremely good exercise — possibly the greatest, but no man in his right mind …. Listen, obviously I know that women find it relaxing. What I’m saying is that if you inhabit a male body, you have an entirely different experience. Yoga, for us, is the absolute most traumatic form of exercise that has ever been conceived. This is why none of us do it. We lift very, very heavy things instead, and then put them down again. Because that is infinitely easier than yoga, obviously. I mean, any sensible man would much rather enter a boxing ring and fight another man — and risk a concussion in the process — than, you know, show up for a single session of yoga. Because yoga is, for us, the definition of suffering.

No, I’m doing that understatement thing again, aren’t I? I apologize. Let me be more clear — yoga is such an exalted state of torture for all men that we will always avoid it, even if yoga classes are the most reliable way (on Earth!) to meet physically fit women. Simply put, our bodies weren’t designed for yoga; we were designed to fetch things off the top-most shelf, and open jars, and then fall apart at age 50.

My wife does yoga to relax. See how different men and women can be? It happens to be my personal belief that yoga was invented by a woman as a way to punish men collectively for some sort of infraction — possibly for not removing a lizard from a kitchen in a sufficiently timely manner. And my point, of course, is that I’ve been feeling so miserable lately, and so physically diminished and inflexible and exhausted, that I’m looking forward, one day, to attend a yoga class. Because, ultimately, I think it would be more fun than — however it is that I’ve been feeling lately.

When next you hear from me, I hope to update you about how I removed the lizard from my kitchen. And the other thing of course, that I cannot help repeating, is that I love writing these Substack newsletters. I’ve been in such a sorry state lately, shambling about, wincing and swearing and taking naps during the day, and promising my wife that I’ll attend to the lizard business, and generally fantasizing about doing yoga, and adhering to some sort of strict vegan diet or something. I know this all sounds like the sorts of promises you make to a deity, after getting drunk and throwing up in a toilet bowl for ten minutes, but I think I really mean it this time.

And my point is that I’ve missed writing to you all and, of course, receiving emails and comments. If you’re reading this, know that you’re appreciated; thanks for being kooky-enough to subscribe to my newsletter. I’ll be back in a few days, once I get this lizard situation figured out.

With chaste affection,

Kris St.Gabriel