New Friend!

After a dinner of roast lamb, beet, and sweet potato salad with butternut squash sage risotto -

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Risotto, because I bought arborio rice 2 weeks ago for 750 grams at $2. And then the next week I saw "2 for $3" 1 kg bags of arborio rice - you do the math! (here in Australia they say "maths" which is the ultimate slap in the face to anyone with a speech impediment, not to mention straight up annoying.) And then my partner in crime, channeling pretty much all the men of my life (self-appointed 'voice of reasons') exactly: "But Lizzi... we already have arborio rice - and that other rice - at home."

"I know, but this is so much cheaper, and besides risotto is delicious!" Not such a good argument, because really I was just prey to good marketing. My meek rebuttal was followed by a the pronouncement:

"Risotto is just rice cooked badly."

So now I am on rice-crazed mission to prove that risotto is delicious, and furthermore that it was not only a good, but an excellent decision to purchase such an obscene amount of couture rice.

And after round one - mushroom and beet-green with parmasean skins - which was devoured... what do you think? "Well, the stuff around the rice was delicious."

(Everyone here sticks to their guns, we all die fighting... but it's manifest destiny, or destiny's child or meet your destiny that I'm going to win.)

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(back to the story, and the menu:) and mulled red wine that I preceded to spill all over the house and my guests (not from inebriation but from lack of coordination) followed by chocolate chip coconut chopped date cookies (YUM! thank god they were so yum, erasing any memory of flying wine mugs and stained... everything) - I wished my Polish friends adieu at the front door and...

HELLO MR. LEAF-TAILED GECKO!

s/he hung out with me about the house for about 20 minutes.

I desperately searched the kitchen for cockroaches - which is like finding candy in a candy shop - when you turn on the light a whole lotta cockroaches scatter (and I say hold on fellas...), the floor and all the countertops positively wriggle themselves into shadows - or when you're popping toast in or grabbing a glass a cockroach might fall from the ceiling at which point I say, "Thanks for dropping in!"

I even thrust my hand into the rubbish bin where I knew there were cockroaches because I had thrown out my housemate's infested indian spices box (inFESTED, eggs, the mamas, the works). But when you really need a cockroach?!

oh come oooon!

Probably better I couldn't find one of our cherished domesticated variety, as it might have passed on some of the poison that we have strewn about in hopes to eliminate them. (That so far have proven merely a placebo... at least now our perception of the cockroach population has diminished.)

So back out on the front stoop, the Leaf-Tailed Gecko jumped to the wall and clung.

And in the morning we wake up to our housemate Sam, "Hey guys, there's a gecko in my room!" A different one, a slightly larger body, and smaller tail - from re-growth. (They can lose their tails exactly once and regenerate one, but after that them's the brakes) A beautiful species with a heavily textured back skin and black eyes with slim yellow iris slits, ear holes on the corners of the "diamond" width of its head, 5 fingers and 5 toes.

They make a loud chirping-screech that sounds like the prelude to a toddler's tantrum -

or the whimpering cry that precedes,

"Risotto! Again?!"