Local Color

Today's local color is gray. Three days into April and it's still a fershluggener winter wonderland outside my window. Inside, we seem to be having a Ladybug Festival. They're all over our windows and DD even had one on the back of her chair while we ate breakfast in the living room this morning.

We get dissed a lot for eating in the living room. I think it's that annoying ad campaign that urges families to "try to have dinner together at least once a week". It's supposed to help families bond or something. (If you can't get together more than once a week for meals, I'd say you have more serious issues than can be solved by a chat over meatloaf and potatoes. But that's just my opinion.) Our family spends all day bonding, or at least the kids and I do, because they're home all day. Geekdaddy is a power-bonder, so he gets it done before and after work and on weekends. And even he manages to eat with us just about every night and most mornings too. But I'm straying from the narrative path here, as usual.

Back to the ladybug and DD. She noticed that it had something sticking out from under its front wings, so she hauled out the bug book and looked it up. It was a Convergent Ladybug, if you'd like to look it up in your bug book. They eat aphids and small insects and often overwinter in houses. (Note to self: Install several ladybugs near the bananas downwind from those pesky fruit flies.)

Their front wings are very hard and protect their back wings, which are usually underneath the front wings. So, why, DD wanted to know, was this Ladybug sticking out its back wings? We all took a stab at guessing. I thought it might be because the Ladybug felt threatened by DD sitting in the chair, so it unfurled them, ready to fly away. The geek thought it just did that once in a while to stretch them. (Actually, he just wanted to get back to his breakfast and probably thought nothing of the kind, but he's quick with the answers.)

DS was still upstairs, communing with his sick cat who overdosed on rodents when she went out yesterday and now has a hangover or mouseover or whatever. But he did yell down the stairs that he's seen a lot of Ladybugs doing that and he thinks it's just something they do, like we fold our arms or cross our legs. DD read on and discovered that Ladybugs have five parts to each leg, including a tarsus which also has five parts.

We were all amazed that those six tiny legs could have so many parts and that one of those parts could also have five parts. On closer examination, we could see the edge of each miniscule leg section, sticking out just a little, but boy I wouldn't want to knit socks for the critters. You'd need to use spider silk and cat whiskers for needles.

DD finished her toast and took the Ladybug upstairs, so that she could make it a playground. They were both pleased with the results, and she assured me that it can fly away if it wants to, so she's not keeping it in a cage. She placed it in her dollhouse and gave it a tiny swingset that goes with her mini-pandas, some little chairs and a table. She says it seems to prefer the swings, but it doesn't like being pushed too high. Understandable. If I had legs that thin, I wouldn't want to swing too high either.

The plan for this morning - and I always have one - was a little geography via planning a trip to the coast for when spring really gets here, but like a lot of my plans aft do, that one gang agley. However, in addition to biology courtesy of the Ladybug, DD has taken photos of the winter landscape, played a very complicated game with her stuffed neopets, spent an hour on Club Penguin chatting with her cyberfriends and earning whatever currency penguins use (maybe a couple of fins?) so she can enlarge her igloo so she can throw bigger parties, and skipped up and down the muddy driveway with the dog for fifteen minutes.

DS has been drawing all morning and keeping an eye on the sick cat and yells down to me once in a while with a progress report. He's also been looking out the window and commenting on how beautiful it is and how tired we are of this kind of beauty. He wants some green. Enough of the gray, white and black of snow, bare trees, and cloudy sky. Even the evergreens look black or gray instead of green, he says.

I bet the Ladybug was having the same thoughts, as she sat on the back of the chair, looking out the picture window. Maybe that's why she put her wings out. Maybe she was daydreaming about flying on a warm spring breeze. Well, I hope the Ladybug playground cheered her up and I hope she gets to fly up into a bright, blue spring sky pretty soon. We can all sit out on the deck and watch her, and then we can get out the map and plan our spring flight.