Nature continues to amaze me.  Pretty much…. every day.  I was left in charge of watering some potted plants.  This is not necessarily a good thing for the potted plants…. for I am plant-stupid.  I try to learn, but my thumbs are pinkish… and definitely  not, not …. not green.

Okay. Back to it.  Watering plants… specifically parsley, I think.  I only know it might be parsley because the sprigs look vaguely familiar to those which come as a garnish at restaurants.

On that Parsley plant today… were several… about seven…. Black Swallowtail Caterpillars.  I know they are BSCs, because I have looked them up in years passed.

And I know Swallowtails.  My Butterfly-Loving-Partner makes sure of that.

Those good old Swallowtail butterflies are large and very colorful.  They have a great family name too….. Papilionidae.  And the family is big.  Very big indeed as it  includes over 550 species.

Though the majority  of Swallowtails are tropical….. members of the family occur on every continent except Antarctica. The family includes the largest butterflies in the world… which happen to be the birdwing butterflies.  Birdwing.  Sounds big, doesn’t it?

Swallowtails have a number of characteristic features… one of which includes a fleshy, forked structure…. and it emits smelly secretions from it.  Seriously.  It tries to smear the oogy-smelly-mess onto any attacker who is trying to touch it.

At any rate… they are cool.  At all stages of their existence.    AND…. they know what they need, and like, and know which direction to go ….. instinctively.  Like finding Parsley Plants.

Yep.  When it comes time for them to do what they need to do….  well….. they do it.  Find the Parsley.  Eat the Parsley.  Grow up to be beautiful Butterflies.

We are a bit the same.  Us humans.  Most of the time, we know in our heart of hearts… what is right and what is wrong.

Sometimes our direction isn’t quite clear.  But the steps along the way…. ?  Most of the time, I think we instinctively, emotionally, spiritually… know… what is the next right thing to do.

So.  Next time you eat out…. finish your Parsley.  It might be just what your wings need.

“If we don’t change, we don’t grow. If we don’t grow, we are not really living.” – Gail Sheehy

Someone recently suggested to me that I rename my blog GoonyTown.  GoonyTown.  Now what do you think the implications of this are?  That I am somehow a Goony?  Or I write like a Goony?  Perhaps…. “I bring out the Goony In Ya’.”  Who knows.  Maybe the Universe is telling me something….

Oh…. that wild and crazy thing we call the Universe.  How I love it so.   But  …. I do not understand how the Universe works.  At all.  And I doubt that my wee-little speckish-insignificant-self will ever have a small understanding of how it works.  Yet, there are a gazillion theories about it.

One such theory suggests that we live many lives.  That we come back… over and over again.  A lot of people believe in this one.  They may be right.  I like to think about it… and wonder…

….who…. or WHAT… I was before.  Things I’ve come up with….  I might have been dog.  Or…. I could have been sky writer back in the 1930s.  Sometimes… I think I could have been some really cold-blooded-bottom-of-the-pond-mucky-old-turtle.  Maybe I was a person who rowed one of the viking boats.  Or a dentist.

Just a few theories when I’ve spitballed this idea.

Or maybe… just maybe… I was a Goony once upon a time.

And now it is coming full circle.

The ways of the Universe.  Something tells me… I may just be lost in space.

““The reason why the universe is eternal is that it does not live for itself; it gives life to others as it transforms”” – Lao Tzu

I like to watch Jeopardy on TV.  For a lot of different reasons.   Alex Trebek can be a little condescending every now and again…. but that gives the show a little more umppphhh.

But what I really like about Jeopardy, are the questions and answers, of course.  I love to yell out the questions….. even when I don’t know what the heck the correct question might be.
I spout it out no matter what.

“Where is Peekskill, New York?”
“Who is King Leopold the IX?”
“What are isometric particles?”

You know the drill…..

Tonight, all three players really had a lot to be desired.  In fact…. they were terrible.  The winner only took home…. like….  $1400.  “What is Lame-O?”  The one lady couldn’t even figure out the buzzer.  She just kept trying to answer, without ringing in.

And then.  They missed some easy ones… like….
“This, is the Birthplace of Green Beans.”
And….
“In 1425, he pledged Holland to Phillip the Good.”

Oh man oh man…. I was pulling my hair out… jumping up and down…. hollering at the TV.

And then it hit me, Jeopardy-Glazed Eyes bugging out, and frothy mouth spewing out questions….. dogs cowering in the corner of the living room…..  …..  THIS….  was Friday night.

Let’s face it.  My social exploits have gotten to an incredibly low and pathetic place.
Wellllll…. such is life and getting older.

So.  Thanks for reading, but … I gotta’ cut this short  tonight.  I am going to make one of those popsicle-stick log cabins on green felt grass.  Oh so very coolio.

“The best intelligence test is what we do with our leisure.” – Laurence J. Peter

Seriously. This is just a test.   I wouldn’t jerk you around on a Friday.

My Word Press hasn’t been posting correctly at that “piece of junk” social network called Facebook.  Let’s talk about it for a while.

Facebook has always had a terrible user interface.  This we can blame on Mark Zuckerberg.  I think sometimes those geek types, just don’t get how the normal to semi-normal brain works.

So they try to make things normal to semi-normal…. you know…. they dummy-down to us….

And we end up getting a user-interface which is for crap.  Things aren’t where you expect them.  And then… once you commit to memory where things are…. they change the whole schematics.

At any rate….. my column has not been posting correctly for folks…. so this is a test.

In honor of the Bird Brains who devised the whole thing.

“I didn’t fail the test, I just found 100 ways to do it wrong.” – Benjamin Franklin

Have you ever stood in front of the refrigerator…. for days on end…. looking for the butter?  Finally, out of sheer frustration, you yell out…”Honey?  Have you seen the buttttttttteeeerrrrrr?????”  And Honey walks over and grabs the tub of butter, which was front and center in the fridge?

Or… you hear a riddle.  It make no sense whatsoever…. “What has four square sides, yet is completely round?”  Once you hear the answer, it is so simple you kick yourself….

Another big one with me are names.  You KNOW someone’s name.  It is right on the tip of your tongue.  But it won’t surface.  No matter what.  You think and think and think.   An then someone says it out loud.  “Arnold Zinckerman.”  And you thump your head on the wall because you couldn’t get it.

The obvious.

Yesterday, we had a tiny shindig.  Good friends.  Good fun.
And all of those good friends added something special to the day.

A couple of those sorts of incidents  occurred throughout the day.

Early in the day,  a very good friend was in the kitchen, preparing a Fruit Pizza.  She stood at the kitchen counter working away with this and that for a good 15 minutes.  The she said…. “Hey Polly.  Do you have a sharp knife I could use?”

Well, there…. about 20 inches in front of her nose, was a large knife block filled with sharp knives.  How does the saying go… “Had it been a snake it would have bitten her.”  We laughed about it.

A little later, we were showing some of our out-of-town friends the new Koi in the Ornamental Pond.  (I sure do love those Koi Fish.)  At any rate…. they asked…  “Well, what in the world do they eat?”  I said rather dryly…. “Koi Food.”  (The friend with the knives thought this was very funny. )

At any rate, the answer was…. as plain as day.  Yet…. if you don’t know what Koi eat… you wouldn’t know they eat Koi Food.

A few other things happened throughout the day…. people asking how things worked…. how to turn fans on…. little incidentals.

And then it hit me.  That is a lot like life… really.

Sometimes we just can’t see the answer to something and it is RIGHT in FRONT of our FACES.    Or we can’t decide which path to take… but to everyone else, the answer is obvious.  We don’t know how to do something elemental.

We don’t know… what we don’t know.  It is really that simple.

For me… I have to keep learning ways to figure out “the learning” of that which I don’t know.  Of that which I do not understand.

And as it turns out… there is A LOT I do not understand.

If only I could see the forest….. for the trees.  Or the snake… before it bites me.

“No question is so difficult to answer as that to which the answer is obvious.” – George Bernard Shaw

Wishes are everywhere.
They come in all shapes and sizes too.
There are Genie-In-The-Bottle Wishes, and then there are the kind you make when you blow out your birthday candles.

There are everyday wishes….  “Gaaawwwwwdddd.  I wish this guy would get out of the fast lane for crying out loud.”  And bigger varieties…. “I sure do wish I would win the PowerBall on Saturday.”

Good wishes… we send to someone on their wedding day, or their Barmitzvah.

It just depends on the day and the moment…. and the person.  We send our wishes out to  the Universe, or to God, or to the Wishy-Wash Fairy.  Jimminy Cricket even sang a song to wish upon a star.  Who knows.

But all those wishes boil down to the same thing…. a desire or hope for something to happen.  The want or need for something…. somewhere… somehow.

And that, is the want, the desire, the hope, the yearning.  The one we have all known.

I’ve probably made a ton of wishes in my life…. sometimes with purpose, and at other times…. inconsequently.  But one thing I have learned about them….  Be careful what you wish for… because it might come true.

“We cannot wish for that we know not.” – Voltaire

Truth be told, I love a good wedge of iceberg lettuce.  Oh yes I do.
When I was young, I thought there was a Divine Connection.  At Mass, we would always start things off with  the words….”Lettuce Pray”.  I didn’t get the connection back then.  There is a lot I didn’t understand back then.  And still a lot I don’t get now…. but I digress.

I think iceberg lettuce gets a bad rap most of the time.  People either love it or hate it.

I attribute this “attitude” blemish to…. perhaps…. guilt by association.  I truly think it has something to do with that little mishap involving the Titanic.

No matter to me really.  It is one of my food heroes.  OK.  Maybe food hero is a stretch.   But I like it plenty.

Some say it has no nutritional value whatsoever.  False.

Now…..  it is true that most darker greens are richer in nutrients.  But, that good old head of iceberg lettuce has moxy.  Subtle moxy.

For instance.  It is low in saturated fat and cholesterol (practically none) it’s a good source of iron, vitamin B6, K, A, and C.  KA-CHING.
And if that wasn’t stinking enough…. iceberg lettuce is high in dietary fiber, and contains traces of omega fatty acids.  That’s right.  TRACES of omega fatty acids.  Now there is a buzzword for you….

AND… HOLD ON to your HATS HERE  …… Folate is another benefit that iceberg lettuce provides, which helps fight heart disease.  Now what the heck more could you ask for?

You ask for more???  Well.  Then here.  Besides  ALL of that…. there is no better resting place for bleu cheese crumbles, bleu cheese dressing, and chopped bacon and tomatoes.  Yeah baby.  The perfect WEDGE SALAD.

Guess who brought it here to the U.S.?  Christopher Columbus.  Yes… it was called “Crisphead” back then.  Well…. Crisphead until the 1920s.  They shipped it under ice to keep it fresh…. hence the name.  But it came over on Chris’ Boat.

So there you have it.  Better than Lucky Charms, Beef Jerkey, and Kettle Corn.   Hands down.

 “The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.” – Billy Shakespeare

“All generalizations are false, including this one.” – Marky Mark Twain

Direction.

Or lack there of.
I know there is a True North.  Somewhere.  But what about the times it feels like a Fibbing North?  Or would it be a False South?
Oh, I do not know.
But occasionally, it is hard to know which way we should go.
We can only hope that the Song of our Direction, is in sync with the sound of our footsteps…. on whichever path we choose.

Sometimes, mine feels out of beat.  It should thumpity-thumping … when it boinkity-boinks.

Yep.

You know, when we drive somewhere, without a GPS in the vehicle, and we get lost…. most of us stop and ask for directions.  Most of us women.
I think most men press on at all costs. (But that discussion if for another night.)

Anyway…. if we get lost, we stop and ask.
Maybe life should be like that too… a little bit.
If our direction seems unclear, perhaps we should take pause, and ask which way we should go.
Ask whom?
That depends on the individual.  Some people believe in a god.  That may be the one to ask…. for them.  Some people put great faith in the plan of the universe.  And maybe they should ask that entity.

Then there are others that have iPhones.  They could ask Siri.

But no matter, who you are, or where you stand…. I think deep inside… we are all searching for that one true direction in life.
The way we are meant to go.

“As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.” – Carl Jung

“Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them.” – Dalai Lama

“The only failure one should fear, is not hugging to the purpose they see as best.” – George Eliot

Which is better?
Salt or pepper?

The answer is likely to change every time you consider it.
The outcome depends on the variants involved.  All of them.

Take watermelon, for instance.  Some people like to salt it.  (Others, no.)  But I have never heard of anyone peppering watermelon.  In this case, salt wins by a nose.

Now…. how about a bowl full of ham and green beans.  It is probably salty enough.  But boy, wouldn’t a little pepper be good?  Pepper wins.  Depending on the person, of course.

You see.  There aren’t really any right answers.
Where salt and pepper are concerned.
It all depends on the circumstances surrounding the event.
I am wondering if that mostly goes for all of life too.

“Our lives are a sum total of the choices we have made.” – Wayne Dyer

Okay.
I’ll quit talking about the zoo any day now.  But while we were there, some incredibly interesting things occurred.

At one point, we walked near a pond where some turtles were hanging out.  I noticed that two of them were holding hands.  Hands?  Paws?  No, that’s not right.   What the heck do you call turtle extremities?  Feet, I guess?

Okay.  The two turtles were holding feet.  Gawd, that sounds wrong.

Anyway they were holding feet and …. I said….  “Awwwwwwwwwww.  How sweet.”

And one of the turtles said… “Wellllll.  Thannnnkkkkkssss.”  Real slow-like.
That surprised me, I’ll tell you…..  So I asked….”Are you two in love?”
“Yepppppppppppppppp.”
“Well, how did you two meet and fall in love?”
“Wilma was competing in a big race down in Mudville, Kentucky.  She was going up against this hot-shot rabbit.  She beat him by a mile…. and made a killing off the wagers on the race.  And me… I was a reporter for the Turtle Times… covering the race.  We sort of bumped into one another at an after-race-party…. at Kermit’s Lily Pad….which happened to be a swinging Raw Bar down there.    Anyway…. we got to talking a little…. and snacked on some small insects and minnows.  Delicious, I might add.  We even had slowwwwww dance.  At any rate,  I had to ask her out….  She just wouldn’t come out of her shell,” Luke said.

She wouldn’t come out of his shell.
I sure can relate to that.
And hence… another parallel.  In this big pond of ours.

Beautiful.

“We are actually living in a million parallel realities every single minute.” – Marina Abramovic