Butterfly joy and a heartwrenching scare�

2005-04-02

It's something I've never seen before, a butterfly migration. The only butterflies I'd heard of migrating were the monarch butterflies.

I thought that these weren't. They're not quite the right size, a bit small. They're not quite the color; they're more yellow and black than orange and black. And they don't fly the same. Monarchs are sort of 'flap, flap, glide, flap, flap, glide.' These are flitter, flitter this way, flitter flitter that way. Don't you just love my technical description of butterfly flight.

Initially people told me that they were Monarchs. I accepted their word for it, I don't know why. All the evidence of my eyes said different.

Still it was, and is, wonderful to watch. They flutter continuously/erratically across the sky.

I saw the first of them a couple of weeks ago, flying through a parking lot. Over a week ago I sat out on the patio and counted over a hundred fly over out tiny yard in less than five minutes.

Since then I've seen them everywhere. The street I've been driving to the hospital every day runs east-west. The butterflies cross my path continually. In the office when I'm working on the computer, the shadows of butterflies passing are cast across my workspace. It's an amazing thing to see. But, I wonder what caused it. I�ve lived for very nearly fifty years in this area and never seen anything like it. Migration suddenly seems like the only way to balance the unbalanced seasons.

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At this point in my diary entry there was an interruption. We�d decided to go to MIL�s on Sunday and the Spouse tried to call her, around 5:30 pm. Then again at 6:00, 6:30, 7:00. MIL doesn�t drive. She lives in a very bad neighborhood. She usually pronounces it 'Hood.�

I was agitated. Upset. I said so to the Spouse and so we went into one of the very poorest of places in SoCal, San Bernardino.

I was agitated and the Spouse picked that up from me. An hour�s drive, with us calling her phone every 10 minutes or so..

This might seem kind of extreme, except, MIL doesn�t drive. MIL lives in one of the poorest areas I�ve seen. MIL has neighbors who have abused, killed and tortured her cats.

So. I was worried. I asked husband that we go check. He was peeved. I was OK with him being peeved as long as we went to go check.

We drove for nearly and hour. He called several times, once nearly at her door.

We got there and exited the car. The windows were dark. We walked alongside the apartment and there was a light in her living room. Then I saw her inside the house.

I can hardly describe how glad I was to be wrong. I told the spouse on the way that he had my leave to be mad at me for a week, and he does.

MIL, against all habit and tradition, got herself up off her couch and went to a concert. If it had been any other day than today she would have been home.

The timing was just bad; and then again, perhaps not. I think the spouse realized how vulnerable she it. We�re going to get her a cell phone so that she can call us if she needs us. Really, it�s so that we can call her, and know that she doesn�t need us. I call that �Peace of Mind

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