Pupa

I'll admit it. I can't stop watching the freaking caterpillars.

The kids plucked some monarch caterpillars from some milkweed a couple of days ago and I can't stop obsessing about them. I know that something ridiculously amazing is going to happen and I don't want to miss it. I had to tear myself away from the jar on the hall table so that I could get upstairs and go to bed. One of them has spun that little sticky web from its butt and is hanging upside down. So I know it is going to do something really, really cool and I want to say that I SAW it happen.

But I should really go to bed.

Monarch butterflies do not "spin" cocoons. They suspend themselves from something relatively sturdy and then their caterpillar skins SPLIT and the chrysallis is INSIDE. That is just funky. I can't even imagine what their little innerds are doing. I'm spellbound by the whole process. So I've been staring at this motionless thing hanging upside down in a mason jar covered with cheesecloth hoping to catch some kind of glimpse of the activity going on inside.

Of course there is also a horrible, negative part of me that watches this process and thinks "I just know I did this wrong and I am going to kill this thing if I haven't already." Maybe that's why I am not anywhere I want to be in life. I keep thinking that I've already fucked up just by virtue of it being me so all I can do is wait around to see the bad result. Intellectually, I know this just isn't so but I can't help but look to this metamorphic process as a sign of how my life will evolve. If these caterpillars become butterflies I might just be able to believe that I am not a total fuck up.

If they die, I'll just have to blame the kids.