A very hungry caterpillar

Every now and again in our daily struggles, one goes through a period where one feels like a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest. As one ages, one realizes these periods are usually short-lived, and eventually the sun peeks through the clouds again and one is ready to continue pushing that boulder back up the hill....

It's been a rugged couple of weeks--nothing major, some setbacks, a couple of stress filled weeks at work that make your back feel like a twisty-tie--and Sunday night I'd had another long day and was completely exhausted (as in twelve or thirteen hours of sleep in the last three days exhausted), but the beautiful boy wanted to play. So he raced around the sidewalk with his garbage truck and I did my best to keep up with him. Periodically in our travels, I had to walk ahead of him after he had stopped and be the stop light (which basically means he tells me whether I'm red or green and he stops or goes accordingly). On our third trip around, while I'm standing there preparing to shout "green," we noticed a caterpillar crawling across the sidewalk. After a couple of futile attempts to get the caterpillar to crawl into my hand (not too terribly disappointed as I'm not particularly a "bug" person), we decided to watch him slither along the sidewalk...and the grass, and the pine bark, which as you might guess, is a rather slow process. But we watched and watched, and the beautiful boy kept asking questions ("Why isn't he going up the tree, Dad?" "Doesn't he need to eat some leaves, Dad?" Where's he going, Dad?" "Dad? How long until he's a butterfly?" "Dad? How come he rolled over on the bark?") which I tried my best to answer with my limited knowledge of caterpillars (i.e., fuzzy worm, makes a cocoon, becomes a butterfly--pretty much the extent of my expertise), until the caterpillar eventually disappeared in a fluffy bush right as Mommy came out to yell down the sidwalk, "It's time for bed, he's got school tomorrow!" The beautiful boy flew down the sidewalk like a bottle rocket to tell Mommy about our adventure--and I smiled as he ran.

You know what? Every now and again, I'd be willing to bet, the one-legged man gets in at least one good boot before he falls on his fanny....

Peace,
emaycee