Eels and Urban Drama

I was going to take a photo walk yesterday, but I just could not get myself motivated. I wound up hanging around the house all day, reading more New Yorkers. I finally caught up on all of them and enjoyed some fascinating articles, like one about the mysterious life cycle of eels -- I kid you not. Did you know that no one has ever seen adult eels reproducing? And that they don't even have gonads for most of their lives? Apparently Sigmund Freud dissected thousands of eels in an attempt to find their sex organs -- which seems a very Freudian thing to do, somehow -- and he never did because they weren't there.

There was also an article about Shecky Greene, the comedian. Remember how I had a dream about him not too long ago? I thought that was pretty coincidental.

Anyway, in the middle of my reading, as I was sitting quietly out on the back garden bench, a blood-curdling scream suddenly issued from Mrs. Kravitz's house. It scared me to death. The Russians upstairs ran out onto their balcony, and then Mrs. K came out onto hers and screamed again. Like, literally, at the top of her lungs. Her daughter ushered her inside and closed the door, where we heard more screaming. I have no idea what that was all about, but I think maybe she was having a conflict with her maid (who is actually named Martha, believe it or not).

My heart was left pounding by the whole episode, but I saw Mrs. K later in the day and she seemed fine. So whatever happened must have been a transient thing. Talk about drama! If I hadn't seen her walking around and seen her family with her I would have called the police.

Dave and I took advantage of our continued surreally fantastic weather, drying laundry on the patio and sitting outside with our lunches. That's Dave in the photo above, sitting in the corner behind the clothes, giving Olga a tuna cracker. You can only barely see Olga, standing at his knee, paying close attention to the food.

This was our afternoon treat -- a cookie I picked up at the butcher, of all places. (I guess there is a connection between lambs and butchers, but I'd rather not think about it.) It was baked in Shropshire -- a ginger cookie.

And this was our evening treat. Well, not all of it -- just a portion of that center bottle. I went wine shopping and, of course, bought stuff based on the labels! We've had the "Boom Boom!" wine, from Washington State, before, and the white version of the "cats in space" wine on the left as well. (It's called "Felicette," after the first cat sent into space, by France in 1963. Felicette came back to Earth safely.) Anyway, we'll see what the red is like. The "two skulls" wine on the right is called "Time Waits for No One." Better drink that bottle first!

Last night we listened to our high school's annual drama production, "You Can't Take it With You." It was supposed to be a stage play, of course, but since we can't gather in the school auditorium as usual they turned it into a "radio play" and streamed it online. It was a cool idea and I enjoyed it, once I was able to differentiate the voices and figure out how all the characters were connected. (I've never seen that play so I had no clue about the storyline -- it's basically a light family "dramedy" questioning American capitalism.) Coronavirus innovation, once again!