Dog & Butterfly

Okay, there are really no dogs in this post, but its the only song that I could find that I could stomach with the word butterfly in it in the 5 minutes I bothered looking on Itunes. Why I need a song with the word butterfly for the title of this blog will become apparent shortly.

Since I hadn't seen my mother in a while, she decided to come down last weekend. When she comes, we have a bad habit of doing dumb things like going out to eat a restaurants that we've already been to because Mom has trouble getting really good Chinese in Maine. We also then end up going to Target, Walmart or Bestbuy and dubbing around, because going anywhere like that is a production where she is in Maine. It would take me 5 minutes to walk to the Walmart by my apartment and 10 to walk to Target. It's about 10 to 15 minutes by car to the mall that has the Bestbuy in it. However, this time I wanted to make sure that we did something different and interesting, as I'm trying to re-implement my plan to not be vegetative on weekends and see near by attractions that I've never bothered to go to, despite the fact that I have lived in NH since 1997.

Kat D. suggested that we go to The Butterfly Place in Westford, MA. I ran a couple of suggestions by Mom, including this one, and she picked this place. It's just outside of Tyngsborough, so it was only about 30 minutes from Manchvegas. There is an enclosure where there's a garden, a koi pond, little birds and all kinds of butterflies flying about. It was fairly early in the season, so it looked like the garden was not as lush as it will be later in the season, but it was still beautiful to see all the butterflies. I'll post a few pictures here, but if you're one of my friends on Facebook, the whole set is there.

Believe it or not but the blue butterly and the brown butterfly that looks like an owl, are the same butterfly species, but open and closed they look completely different.

Mom bought some praying mantis egg cases for Wren and Noah to hatch. They apparenly hatch out 200 or so baby praying mantises but only 2-3 make it to adulthood. I was so jealous. If I didn't live in an apartment and had a good place to put them once they hatched, I would have loved to get some. How cool would that be to watch?? They also had butterfly hatching kits as well.

We ended up going to Taipei Tokyo for dinner as usual, and then we hit Ocean State Job Lots which just opened in Hooksett. I got a bunch of random stuff, including $4 pajama bottoms, a $5 purple umbrella and $10 plastic mats for office chairs on the carpet that I'm going to use under Kiwi's play palace in the living room. They had a lot of really cheap gardening stuff too, which is good because I'm going to attempt another balcony garden this year. Tomato Topsy Turvey, here I come!

On Sunday we hit Walgreens to attempt to get last minute Easter stuff for the boys that Mom could deliver on her way home. I got trapped in the "as seen on TV" aisle. Those of you who know me are aware that I have a problem with this stuff. I don't expect it to work, but I just want to see if it does. I am the proud new owner of a Titan Peeler, and the 8 foot tomato trees. I haven't tested the peeler out, but I will let you know. I'm planning to start the tomatoes today. In a related topic, I saw a new commercial for a robo stir, which is a battery operated thing to automatically stir your food. I'm convinced that this is a portent of doom for the end of Western civilization.

Still working on the fatigue thing. Mindy C. came up with an idea that it may be a food allergy or intolerance, and researching about it, the symptoms seem to fit. I'm going to stay away from a few things and see if it helps, and then if I notice a difference, I'm going to contact my doctor about a food elimination diet. One of the articles noted that as you head toward midlife (read menopause) women can experience new allergies, food intolerances and exacerbations of current allergies. We'll see how it goes, at least it would be something I could fix.

Still working on secret projects. We're nearing the deadline for the group project, and I've got quite a few back from the participants. On the Secret Project for Sally, I'm nearing completion of the first thing. Have to say though, I'm disappointed in the yarn company authoring the pattern for severely overestimating how much yarn it took to do the project. I'm going to have several full skeins left over. This does not help with my stash issues.

I still haven't written anything more on the novel. I'm considering whether I skip this month for writing group, or I need to produce something ASAP to have it posted on our group's website. Shawn and I are planning to try visiting the Seacoast Science Center on Odiorne Point, but I'm not sure if we'll get there today.

Stay tuned for breaking news...