I'm drinking watermelon juice...

...and I know you're completely jealous!

It's a boy!

On Saturday, the chrysalis was still green like before, although it did seem slightly lumpier in the middle. It twitched when a friend blew gently on it. Today--surprise! Hubby was on his way to work and came back in to tell me that the butterfly had emerged. I watched it for long time while it sat there, gently folding and unfolding (just slightly) its wings and gaining strength.

Eventually the breeze was too much for it, and it flitted down to the ground and then to some weeds under the car to sun itself further. The large yellow spots indicate that this baby's a male black swallowtail butterfly. What an amazing thing that those caterpillars, who just two weeks ago were munching the parsley, are now emerging as these beautiful creatures. Now, on to planting some more flowers and parsley for our new friends. Namaste, little butterfly.

I have not slept in 8 years

I have various theories on this:

1. My husband is HOT. Seriously. He emanates body heat like nobody's business. This is convenient a lot of the time for me, particularly in the winter, since I have thin blood vessels and thus do not regulate heat well. Sometimes I complain when he goes to bed long after me, because I cannot get warm enough on my own, no matter how many blankets I pile on. However, a few hours of this during the summertime and I'm throwing covers off of me because I'm overheated.

2. My husband steals the covers. This he will adamantly deny, but it's true. I should know; I'm the one waking up, not him. I like to be snuggled in even when its warm outside.

3. My husband sleeps like a log. I am a light sleeper and wake up at the slightest stimulus. This can include, but is not limited to: a) becoming over or under-heated b) having the covers stolen from my side of the bed, and c) crazy nocturnal cat shenanigans. Deep down I think I resent hubby for sleeping so well. Perhaps the Universe has some comic need to balance his heavy sleeping by making me sleep less.

OK, since I know some of you are snickering and planning to give him a hard time about the above, on to some reasons that don't involve blaming my husband, and which perhaps have more physiological validity:

4. I'm stressed. When I'm worried I toss and turn for hours while various (usually negative) scenarios play out in my head. Also, this pattern of sleeplessness has been around 8 years long, which while it coincides with my marriage, also coincides with starting my job with corporate America. While marriage can be stressful, ours has been on the blessedly happy and content side (yeah I know, gag gag, whatever). And college was a stressful time, too, but I slept like a baby back then, most of the time. I would wake up a few minutes before the alarm clock rang every single day. I stopped using the alarm clock because my body always knew when to get up, even when my schedule changed. Now I wake up before the alarm clock rings, but its hours, not minutes before. So, working for the man is the more likely culprit. Ultimately, however, I think stress has more to do with why I can't get back to sleep than with why I wake up.

5. I have some imbalance or intoxication in my liver. According to Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), energy flows through 12 different meridians over a 24-hour period. Each meridian is associated with a different organ, and since I generally wake up at about 3am, this could indicate my liver is somehow involved. Of course TCM also suggests that heart/spleen issues commonly cause insomnia. Actually, looking over that list (at the prior link), I have all of those symptoms involving both the liver and heart/spleen. Maybe I should go see Steve Chen as my mother-in-law keeps insisting.

6. An imbalance of my Vata-Kapha nature, based on the ancient Ayurvedic tradition. I've been reading about this, and I'm still pretty rough, but I think I'm getting a slight grip on it. It all relates to the body and what types of food is better for different doshas, or natures, of people. Vata is the air/space side of me seated in the throat and heart chakras, which gives me, of the three doshas, the "greatest potential for a profound spiritual life" (I'm not making this up), but also makes me vulnerable to worrying and insecurity. On the other hand, my Kapha nature is the more grounded side of me (water/earth related to the root and sacral chakras), giving me my motherly and practical nature, but on the flip side vulnerable to lethargy and depression. The Vata and Kapha natures are fairly diametrically opposed, but together it seems they can balance the other's weaknesses. Basically I'm spacey and grounded, spiritual yet practical. Down to the main point here . . . Vata energy is most active between the hours of 2 and 6 (am and pm), so are most likely to become restless and lose sleep during those early am hours. And it seems fairly plain to me that both my Vata and Kapha natures are imbalanced, since I'm showing negative signs on both fronts, although the symptoms seem to overlap somewhat.

7. I am deficient in minerals, possibly including magnesium. My herbalist confirmed that I'm mineral deficient, which I've discussed briefly before. My chiropractor recommended a magnesium supplement, because it helps the body relax, and is needed to balance the effects of calcium in the body. We hear we need calcium all the time, but hardly ever hear about magnesium. This stuff is supposed to help me sleep better. Well it works great for Steve but has yet to do the trick for me.

8. I have hypothyroidism. I have never ruled this out even though my doctor did some test saying I'm not, since I show so many symptoms. And the normal blood test isn't supposed to be that reliable, according to nearly every alternative medicine source I've read. Thyroid function is connected with the production of serotonin, which helps regulate mood, temperature, blood pressure, sleep, etc. etc. Another complication is the common prescribing of antidepressants like Prozac, Zoloft, etc, which are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). If depression is due to hypothyroidism, then the underlying cause is not being treated, and the drugs are not effective until the hypothyroidism is addressed.

9. One of the other 442 causes of sleeplessness.

10. Alternately, I'm just thinking about this too darn much and it's keeping me awake.

So what do I need to do? For starters, follow all the normal advice that it's so hard to do:
1. Exercise
2. Drink lots of water
3. Eat healthy
4. Don't eat after 8 pm
5. Go to bed at the same time every night... the earlier the better ("an hour of sleep prior to midnight is equal to 2 hours of sleep after midnight")
6. Take my magnesium and other supplements even when I can't tell it's making an immediate difference
7. Get checked for hypothyroidism before I jump on the SSRI bandwagon
8. Get regular massages!! (Olivia, I know where to come!)
9. Hire a personal chef who can provide healthy and enticing meals for me every single day at the right time of the day
10. Hire a maid to do all the crap around the house that I just don't want to
11. Heck, while I'm at it... hire a personal assistant and a personal trainer and a life coach to help me keep organized and motivated with everything else
12. Win the lottery to make all the rest of this possible (not just so I can afford #8-11, but so I have time to do the rest!)
13. Sigh (aka remember to breathe), try not to get overwhelmed, and at least start...baby steps, right?

and last but not least

14. Just pull the covers back over and go back to sleep!

Chrysalis away

So, over last week, the caterpillars disappeared a few at a time, before all the parsley was eaten up. I never saw them crawling away, so I feared that our caterpillar's all-you-can-eat parsley buffet had become a bird's all-you-can-eat caterpillar buffet. Which is the way of things, I suppose. I have yet to become an active bird feeder, although along with the squirrels they find a lot in our yard to keep them around.

However, at least one has survived and is well on its way to butterfly-dom. Steve noticed one of the caterpillars hanging from the side of the house one day, and within a day or two it had chrysalized (is that a word?). It's pretty small--it seems about half the size that the caterpillars were. I will keep you updated on its progress!

I have so many famous friends!

Just to name a few more... there's Emily, a local singer/songwriter, who I finally got to see play last night at The Loft. We had a great time and stayed the whole evening even though hubby had to get up early for work. I had one too many Cosmos, though. My headache is finally fading.

And then there's Jerry! He's in the Free-Lance Star today, in an article about his now-ended yet famed career at the local coffee shop, Hyperion Espresso. Jerry's bound for bigger and better things so this won't be the last you hear from him. We had a great weekend recently with Jerry and Jason at their new Culpeper digs.

There's more of you out there! I'm excited to see you each get your turn in the sun. I'm famous, too, the world just doesn't know it yet!

Name that caterpillar...

This weekend, hubby and I found these little guys hanging out on our parsley. It's second-year parsley, so it's gone to seed. Momma must've laid her eggs there, but it didn't seem to me to be a great leafy place for caterpillars to grow up. But they seemed full, since they were just hanging out, not eating. And they look pretty fat and well-fed. We counted about 10 caterpillars that evening.

Actual parsley-munchers in our yard

Today I noticed that there were only 2 left on the second-year parsley, and all the seeds and remaining vegetation was nearly gone. A few feet down is some self-seeded first-year parsley, and there are about 5 of these guys on there, munching away. Where the other 3 are, I don't want to know. They could've found greener pastures, or they could've made someone a green tasty snack. Hopefully not my neighbor's 18-month old son.

Not being a bug expert, I went online to try and identify these guys. I was desperately hoping that they didn't turn out to be the caterpillars of some nasty creature or boring moth or something. At least they weren't those terrible things that have the giant nests in trees and when they hatch they devour the tree and fall on top of you when you get near it. The Eastern tent caterpillar-yeah, that's it (I had to look that up too). Please don't let these be anything nasty like that.

Thank the universe for the interwebs, and all the people out there crazy about caterpillars who set up these great identification search engines. It took me a few tries, but I found our guest: the American or black swallowtail butterfly. Ahhh... big sigh of relief. A fairly common butterfly in these parts, and cousin to Virginia's state insect, the Tiger swallowtail butterfly. These are evidently full-grown caterpillars, so soon they will turn yellower as they enter the pupa stage. Someday these critters will be nice and pretty like this:


As it turns out, they lay their eggs on plants that the caterpillars most like to feast upon: members of the parsley family (including carrots, fennel, dill, celery, and Queen Anne's lace). It would be great to watch them as they enter their chrysalis stage and then turn into butterflies. The only problem with that plan is that they're going to run out of parsley sometime tomorrow. I either need to find more parsley-like material for them to munch on or find someone else who can host them. Hmmm...

Who would have thought caterpillars would work their way to the top of my priority list?