i got up before mandy this morning, which meant she didn't have to go to work. she got up soon afterwards and told me she still had to go in, just a little bit later, after noon. last night she said something about making crepes this morning, but i had to go out with amy to wellesley to look for monarch caterpillars in less than an hour and i only had a single egg in the house anyway. we just had some tea, while mandy was getting all antsy because i didn't have any coffee in the house. amy arrived soon afterwards, right on schedule, bringing with her muffins, which we all shared, while watching an episode of dawson's creek. amy and i left, leaving mandy to her own devices.

once we got to wellesley college, it was all very business-like as we walked along the perimeter of the water, towards the site of the milkweed field that contained so many monarch butterflies from our last visit. along the way we saw some of those stinkhorns. this time around i purposely poked at one with a stick. the smell was something awful, a combination of rotten meat, the sewers, and death. both amy and i took a wiff, the stench probably doing permanent damage to our olfactory system.

there was excitement once we found the milkweed field. after fueling up with some fresh raspberries, we waded through the near knee high grass, going from milkweed to milkweed looking for caterpillars. we saw the signs, eaten up leaves and caterpillar droppings, but no caterpillars, not even the chrysalises, which was the real reason why i was here: if we found some chrysalises, it'd be all the fun of watching butterfiles hatch, but none of the hard work of feeding these voracious caterpillars. we were pretty much ready to give up, all the caterpillars we saw from last night obviously hatched into butterflies already, which didn't quite make sense, since our caterpillars were still caterpillars, and because they're all from the same batch, you figured they'd still be caterpillars too, or perhaps chrysalises, but not yet butterflies. i decided to give it one more look, and that's when we saw an "adult" caterpillar, followed by another one nearby, both very animated, both very busy eating. we pull them off of the milkweed along with a few leaves, putting them inside of empty pasta jars i had brought along just for this occasion. loaded with another set of caterpillars, we backtracked our way out of the forest and went home.

i came home, my old caterpillar (cat v2) having crawled off of the lid and back onto a leaf eating again, so last night was just a false alarm, it wasn't really ready to spin some silk and anchor itself to the lid, waiting to tranform into a chrysalis. i took a shower then ran some errands, paid some bills, rode to cvs to pick up a prescription, then to harvard square to buy a map of long island for tomorrow's 5 hour road trip and get some money from the atm. i had some lunch, the leftover wine chicken mandy made last night. the afternoon soon turned into evening, mandy coming back home from her day of work. we decided to order pizza instead of making it ourselves, got some hot sausage pizza from top speed pizza down the street. we ate in the living room while watching the hour, later turning to will and grace, followed by a special nbc broadcast of this past tuesday's queer eye in the coveted thursday night er timeslot. mandy went to bed once the evening approached midnight.

cat v2 eventually crawled back onto the lid, leaving a messy trail of silk on the glass jar. it seemed to shrink once it got to the lid, spinning more silk. eventually it secured it's tail end to the middle of the jar lid while it hanged upside down in a j-shape, preparing to become a chrysalis. cat v3 has also started to crawl up to the lid, leaving behind it a trail of silk as well. hopefully by tomorrow morning i will have two caterpillars in the final stages before transforming into chrysalises.