lizard psychology

This is Norm. Squint, you can see him.



This is Norm's penthouse.



He resides in our living room.

For those of you who don’t know how Norm came to us, let me tell you. Norm, the lizard, came in the mail. U.S. Postal Service to be exact. It’s a miracle really.

Norm faked his own death twice this week.

I don’t have the most affection for Norm but I thought I’d check on him one morning. He was sprawled against the glass, eyes closed, slightly blue. Dang. The sight of the dead lizard was upsetting so I turned his bowl around to eat my Cranberry Almond Crunch in peace. When I went back over Norm had changed position (although still sprawled, shut-eyed, and blue). So he wasn’t dead after all.
The next day, Sierra texted me to say that Norm was dead for sure this time. The roommates shook his house, poured water on him, and did many other obnoxious things to verify it. But once again, Norm deceived us, came alive and crawled on a branch.

I don’t understand Norm.

Here are my theories,

Norm:
a. really is nearing death and these are just signs of illness. Or of hunger because we haven’t fed him in awhile.
b. hates us because he’d rather be named Dragon Slayer.
c. is actually a girl. And tired of his/her plastic wrap ceiling. Wants to call Hillary Clinton.
d. was awake when we watched Count of Monte Cristo and learned that faking your own death is a sure way out of captivity.
e.is haunting us with his ghost when he leaves consciousness. This explains why food randomly goes missing from the freezer.

So who knows if the days of Norm are numbered or not. But one thing’s for sure, cats aren’t the only ones with nine lives.

The Wal-Mart Problem

Anyone who knows me knows that I LOVE food. I want to marry it. My love for food is maybe only challenged by my love for Harry Potter and/or listening to Disturbia on the way to school. So naturally, I love the place where all food comes from: the grocery store. The average American consumer probably doesn’t enjoy going to the grocery store, but for me it is a pilgrimage to the Mecca of all things edible. There are aisles of possibility at the grocery store.
So much to my dismay, I was peer pressured into grocery shopping with my roommates at Wal-mart. I hate Wal-Mart. Besides the unusually high ceilings and the pervading sense of gray, I have strange feeling that every time I walk through those automatic doors I am contributing to some corporate conspiracy that is taking over small businesses worldwide.
Obviously, the only way to combat this spoiled shopping experience was to be decidedly grumpy the whole time. It worked for quite a while: all through the produce section (too many peaches, too little apples) and into the bread aisle (no wheat to be found). But then . . . I saw it. Post Select Cranberry Almond Crunch. The best thing that ever came in a box. There it was, the gem of all cereals, for the very low price of $2.78. Normally it was in the exorbitant range of $4.99, but, here, the miracles of capitalism brought this joy into the range of my college budget.
It was a dilemma indeed. Because I still hate Wal-mart. I do. But in that moment I had to resist the urge to run gleefully to check out with a cart full of Cranberry Almond Crunch. So, folks, we have a Wal-Mart problem. Is it cheap prices and bowls full of cereal . . . or gray, oddly echo-y, crowded, and monopolizing? The jury’s still out.