butterflies come equipped with their own personal bendy straws! :-)

Well, this is nuts. I feel silly even writing this stuff down, but since I have no one to talk to and, as far as I know, there are at most two people who ever read this blog anyway, I may as well use it as the 'sounding board' I so sorely lack.

So this morning the first thing I craved was potato chips. I almost went down to the convenience store to get some, but held off for various reasons - got sidetracked by the garden, typing, drawing, etc. When I finally got it together enough to get out of the house, I was so hungry that I went to McDonald's instead and had a cheeseburger and some fries. Given that I'd eaten nothing but sugar the last 24 hours, a solid hunk of protein and some 'taters seemed like a good idea.

Good call! My body definitely thanked me, though the 'crash' of trying to process that much food on a stomach which had basically been empty for almost a day made me nearly non-functional for about 3 hours afterward.

So I was glad I'd eaten something approximating an actual meal, but was still hungry when I got home. Ate two packages of Reese's sticks, which helped; chewed on a bunch of gum, which also seemed to get my blood sugar leveled out. About an hour later, I was finally good to go...

While waiting for my blood sugar to get itself straightened out, I sat out in the late afternoon sun, which was fabulous and warm. I watched the billions of tiny orange butterflies swarming all over my mint plants (which have lovely, fuzzy, pale purple flowers when they go to seed), plus honeybees and what looked like mason bees, and even a gorgeous white butterfly (they only show up for the briefest time near the tail end of summer, if I'm remembering right.) I LOVED watching her roll out her little tongue so fast, flickering it like a built-in bendy straw into each of the tiny blossoms (florets?) on the mint plants.

While I was sitting there, I saw something rolling around on the ground near my feet, and, looking closer, discovered that a hornet appeared to be attacking a honey bee! Ack! So I knocked the hornet away with a pen I had in my hand (I was doing a little drawing, too), and then proceeded to try to rescue the injured bee. I don't know if my 'rescue' was what hurt him, or whether he'd been mauled by the hornet, but one of his main back legs wasn't working right, and he kept falling over. I picked one of the mint blossoms and put it near him, thinking maybe he'd at least be able to eat, but he kept pawing his face, over and over again, the way insects do when they're washing themselves. But I couldn't tell if it was because he was hurt, or what? I wondered if maybe the hornet had STUNG him, and he was - hurting, somehow? Often insects seem to carry on as if they feel no pain when they've been damaged. But this guy didn't seem very happy.

However, he kept trying to right himself, and kept climbing on things, and I thought for a while he was taking some nectar out of some of the flowers. But then he crawled off somewhere and I lost track of him.

***
Anyway, after all this saga, I eventually came in and did some more drawing and writing, and came to the realization that that's what I really wanted to do, and stopped guilting myself for not going for a walk or something 'constructive'.

I think the encounter with the family has (had?) me in a bit of a tailspin for practically the entire week since it happened - it's that cognitive dissonance thing, where your mind is trying to simultaneously hold two equal and opposite thoughts.

And then the weather's been all over the map - too hot, too cold, never just right (yes, i know, i said that before!) And today finally being just right had me feeling all guilty for not getting more done.

But I was exhausted - lack of proper food, the endless money/life stress, feeling like the whole family thing is trying to suck me back into its vortex again, while knowing nothing good can come of it. Plus I didn't sleep very well last night - I woke up from a nightmare in the wee hours and lay there twitchy and exhausted until I finally gave up trying to go back to sleep and got up. And one of my contacts has been messed up for over a month now - i thought it was a grease spot, but no amount of cleaning seems to remove it. I tried swapping lenses (they're identical, same prescription for both eyes), and that solved it, so evidently that lens is just past its sell-by date. Which isn't surprising - I haven't gotten replacement lenses in nearly a year. First the place I'd been ordering them from went out of business, and I couldn't find anyplace as cheap as that that would sell me lenses without a prescription; and then I just didn't have the money. Or, when I had the money, it just didn't seem urgent enough to go through the whole agony of finding a new vendor.

But now I can't put it off any longer.

***
I've lost the original thread of this, but I'll just say that I finally went and got those chips about an hour ago (at almost 11 p.m.) and you know what? They were just the ticket. I felt the adrenaline that's been fizzing in my veins all day long calm right down. I feel sleepy and almost relaxed, or as relaxed as I can get under my current life circumstances.

So I should just always trust my instincts, right? Right!