The Truth About Butterflies

Phobias are weird things. A person can suddenly become afraid of anything, anything at all, no matter how ridiculous -- or how sweet and innocent.

Well, I'm here to say butterflies are not as sweet as everyone thinks or as innocent. For one thing, they have a diabolical sense of humor.

I had a friend who would sit very, very still in a field full of butterflies for hours on end in the ecstatic hope one would land on her. It never worked. Then she'd try to catch one.

They'd flutter all around her, woosh past her and you could almost hear them say, "Oh, almost got me that time! Almost! Whoohoo, over here, oop, almost had me!" laughing and taunting.

But let me tell you, I could be sitting with not a butterfly in sight, enjoying my day, minding my own business when the next thing I know I've got one on my arm. And believe me, when you've got a butterfly on your arm, you know.

They have poky little feet and nothing else feels like a butterfly foot.
I know how it goes. I know what they say.

One butterfly sees another, jabs him with an elbow and says,

"Hey, Erle."

"Yeah, Stan?"

"You smell what I smell?"

"I dunno."

"Fear pheromones. That there's fear, Erle. Take a deep whiff and breathe that in, you don't get to smell that everyday."

"Yeah. That smells good. That's cause we're butterflies, ain't it Stan? That's cause we're fierce, ain't we Stan?"

Stan rubs his chin with his nasty little butterfly foot."You know what I'm gonna to do? Land on her!"

"You can't! That's against the butterfly code!"

"Butterfly code don't say nothing about landing on no people what are scared."

"I dunno. That don't seem ee-lusive to me. Butterfly code says we gotta be ee-lusive."

"Oh yeah? Watch!"

You want to know something about butterflies? They have tiny little hooks in their feet. Those little suckers can hang on like nobody's business and it takes a lot of flapping, jumping around and screaming to get one off.

"Whooooo! That there's one wild ride! You gotta try that!"

Another thing about butterflies. They're fearless.

"My turn, Stan!"

Have you ever tried to dodge a butterfly? They don't exactly fly around in predictable patterns. It's not like running from a bee you've managed to disgruntle.

"That's right Erle, keep her off kilter! Ha, ha, she don't know which end's up no how!"

Next thing I know, I've got to go through the whole exercise again, after which I feel like I've run a marathon, because on top of all the necessary screaming and jolting maneuvers it takes to get the thing off, my heart's already in panic stricken overdrive from the very presence of the horrid little beasts.

Meanwhile, Erle and Stan are having the laugh of their life and considering their day well spent.
Although phobias are bizarre and take some unusual forms, the good thing about them is, they don't have to be permanent. After twenty or so years of expensive intensive therapy, a butterfly can cross my path and I may not even notice it.

It certainly doesn't make my heart pound or do any other remarkable things to my system. I wouldn't even mind if one landed on my arm, because I always found bugs fascinating, and it would be interesting to get a closer look at it.

I do find it highly suspicious, that after years of being landed on by who knows how many butterflies, not one butterfly has landed on me since I've gotten over this phobia, not one.

Mountains

I grew up in the Mid West near Lake Erie. It was humid, lush and green. It's all I'd ever seen and all I'd ever known.

When I was young, my family decided to go on a trip that would take us into the Appalachian Mountains. These were enchanting times. I was actually going to see something I had never seen before -- mountains!

I was practically quivering with excitement. Mountains were something I'd always wanted to see and my family was always raving about how beautiful the Appalachian Mountains, in particular, were.

We got into the car and drove. I waited impatiently to see the mountains, my eyes pasted to the window. I was afraid to blink. We drove into rolling hills, and more rolling hills and more rolling hills.

I asked when we would get to the mountains. To my utter horror, I was informed we were in the mountains.

I looked around. They were covered, completely covered in trees! I couldn't see the mountain at all! Nothing but vegetation all around! These were mountains?????? What!???

All I could see were a bunch of trees! I didn't want to see trees! I saw trees every day of my life! They were everywhere! There was nothing new, or novel about a bunch of trees!

Where were the rocks? Where were the crags and rills? All covered by massive vegetation! NOOOOOOOooooooOOOOOOOoooooo!!!!!!!!!!

When I was nearly 20 I moved to Utah. I got off the plane, and besides being instantly in love with the total lack of humidity (this is a topic for another day) I could see something that made my heart leap in joy.

Mountains! With rocks! Gobs of rocks, tons of rocks, gazillions of rocks! And not a tree on them! (I was wrong about this, I was later to find out, there are trees on them, you just have to get closer to know that.)

Now here, here were mountains! The real deal! Rugged, huge, and majestic, rising up from the valley floor in rocky wonder!

Imagine my excitement when my family came to Utah for a visit a couple years later and I could show them these amazing, beautiful, real, rocky mountains!

'Look!' I said, 'You can see the mountains! Aren't they amazing?'

'They're ugly,' they said, 'Where are the trees?'

That was when I realized I'd been switched at birth.

The Killing Season

It's that time of year again. The birds are singing, flowers are on the trees, tulips and daffodils are waving in the breeze and the lawn is turning green.

For some people, it's the season of renewal and hope. For others, it's the killing season, not of animals, not of people-- of plants.

It's also that time of year when every legitimate plant in my yard is quaking in their boots. They would run for their lives but they are frozen in fear, unable to move, caught in rigid terror. There are huge creatures bumbling around amongst them and not one of them is safe.

Unless of course, they are a weed. Weeds have nothing to fear from us.

Gardening used to be a hobby of mine. I had originally hired someone to make a design for my yard, but when gas lines and electric lines ended up being in incompatible places to the design, I chucked it; started from scratch, and designed my own.

I planted trees and shrubs, vines and perennials and patiently waited for it all to grow, mature and look stunning. And it did look beautiful. Until I found out I had lupus, and couldn't go outside any more.

Then it was up to the other members of the household to take care of the yard.

Then came death. Lots of it.

There are people in this house (who will remain nameless in order to protect the guilty) who do not like to weed, do not like yard work of any kind and wish we lived in the middle of a cement ocean.
Not only that, but the care and maintenance of plants seems to be some kind of mystic, incomprehensible science that only the select few have the ability to decipher. The survival of plants comes only from pure chance, a capricious whim of the earth gods.

The answer to this problem is to panic and pour something on everything. Preferably something that isn't compatible with any kind of life.

Are there weeds around the trees? Yes. Pour stuff on it. Look. More weeds around the trees. Pour more stuff on them. And more weeds and more stuff.

And when the trees aren't looking so good, pour stuff on them too.

'Why is the tree dead? We did everything we were supposed to do to this tree! We poured stuff on it's roots. We sprayed it with stuff. It should be thriving! What do you mean it absorbed the weed killer we poured on the weeds around it? We poured it on the weeds, not the tree! Only dumb trees would drink weed killer! We can't help it if our trees are completely unintelligent!'

And so another tree dies. Everything lovely dies.

In the meantime the weeds are still there, standing green, tall and proud, laughing at us. They chug up weed killer; lick their chops, and ask for more like a certain ethnicity drinking certain ethnic alcoholic beverages.

(Okay, so I've been told I have to be politically correct here. This is a family friendly site, remember? I say one little borderline thing about a specific group and I get nasty messages. I'll probably hear from the weeds -- Who are you to call plants 'weeds'? How do you know what determines a 'weed' and a 'plant'? Are you vegetable matter? No! All plants deserve life! You're nothing but a judgemental, *%#@&%*#, weedaphobe! Weedist!)

Only the hardy lives at this address. If you want to see what absolutely cannot be killed in our climate, take a tour of our yard. Take some clippings, you'll have plants that no amount of abuse, neglect and misguided TLC can kill!

And if they keep pouring chemicals on the ground everywhere, we may end up with mutant species yet unknown to science or man. Think of the bragging rights you'd have crowning your garden with some of that!

My design is gone. The subtlety is gone. Most of the plants are gone too. Forget colors, textures and size, I'm happy with anything that can survive the onslaught.

My yard still looks stunning. Not in the same way though, more in a can't-tear-my-eyes-away-horrified-fascination kind of way, wherein the viewer is stunned. Yes. Speechless.

The Epsitolarian

People are wondering if I like this website.

I'm not sure yet. This seems strange and new. Not at all comfy like my old site. It was all broken in and familiar. I knew all the ins and outs of that one.

Okay, okay, so I didn't. But I knew more ins and outs than I do on this one. The old site was simple enough for an idiot to use. I could just bumble around frantically tapping keys and eventually something acceptable would happen. That's why I stuck with it for so long.

For those of us who are so technologically challenged we need a guide book to figure out how to unlock our front door, blogging is a mind boggling labyrinth of epic proportions. I don't know what I'll do if smart homes become the norm. Sleep on my door step a lot, I guess, or become a hobo.

So why do I do it, you wonder.

Because people don't write letters anymore.

I was a letter writer back in the day. (Waaaaayyyy back.) I loved the feeling of using pen and paper and recording thoughts with them and seeing those thoughts with my eyes. I had lots of stationary. (I still wander through stationery sections of books stores, longingly fingering the paper and deciding what I would have bought if  there had been someone to whom I could write a letter.) And buying stamps was fun.

I'm sorry to say, I didn't have very good correspondents, besides my grandma. (That's what real love does for you.) My mom sent me form letters, which I was thrilled to get, at least they came every couple of months. (What can I say? She had a lot of kids. She adores email now.) I'd write friends and family and acquaintances regularly and enthusiastically and they would eventually send off a few hastily scribbled lines in response -- more often than not, pointing out words I'd misspelled. (I get about as much written feedback on my blog as I did for my letters. And in case you haven't noticed, my blog readers aren't keen on commenting.)

And yes, I was an avid note passer in middle school and high school. And yes, I was in detention a lot.

In my naivete, I thought when email became a thing that my correspondents would be more excited about-- well--corresponding. No such luck. Then the other social media came along and I hoped that would open up new vistas. But no. I simply don't have writing-inclined friends, family and acquaintances (or even strangers for that matter).

It comes down to a love of writing. I love it - others don't. It's that simple.

But it makes me wonder how many bloggers would have been letter writers 30 or more years ago? Perhaps blogs are where all the reliable correspondents went?

And I love reading. I'll read anything. Books of all kinds, ingredient lists on food, instruction manuals, prescription labels, magazines, newspapers, letters, you name it. I love to read. I love to write. I'm the perfect pen pal.

This is the tragedy of my life.

But just as I was in my epistolary years, I'm undaunted by the lack of written enthusiasm and I keep on going anyway. I've been well trained to write in a vacuum. While technology killed pen pals, at least it opened up alternate venues for incurable writers like me. Welcome to my blog.