Last Day of Summer

Well tomorrow Mirs heads back to school, Kris will be volunteering at the library again, and I'll still be job-hunting. Kind of weird being unemployed on Labor Day, it becomes a personally ironic holiday kind of like when you're alone on Valentine's Day or something like that.

The five caterpillars Mira got at the State Fair all made their cocoons about 5 days ago and haven't hatched yet. One of the more gruesome aspects of the metamorphosis with this particular species of caterpillar is that their head pops off just before they morph into their cocoon. You end up with a bug cage that has five cocoons on the ceiling and five caterpillar heads on the floor. Gross. Mirs actually got to see one of the heads pop off, some kids might be traumatized witnessing something like that but she was rather fascinated by it all.

One cocoon fell off the roof of the little bug cage we have for them and Friday I was sitting on the floor trying to tie a string to the little stem that's supposed to hold it up so we could suspend it. But these things squirm when they're on the floor and you touch them, and I'm not really a squeamish person but trying to handle a squirming, headless, legless bug thing was giving me a serious case of the willies.

Today is my dad's birthday! Dad is 30 years older than me, Mira is 30 years younger, and Susie is 10 years older, so 2008 will be another big 'year of the zeroes', with Dad turning 70, Susie turning 50, me turning 40 and Mirs turning 10. Cool. Geez, where did all those years go. I'm reaching that point where I can remember my dad being the age I am now, and start realizing that I'm turning into him sometimes when I say certain things or adopt certain mannerisms. The very kinds of things that drive you nuts about your parents when you're a teenager but then you start doing them 20 years later. Time seems to enjoy doing this kind of thing to us.

We visited the Kris' folks at the cabin up on Mille Lacs this weekend, that was fun. Little biking, fishing, roasting marshmallows, garage sales etc. Kris' brother mike took us out on the boat, didn't catch anything but Mira got to drive the boat back. Good fun but good to be home again too. Though Mira wanted to play hide-and-tag around the block at 8:30 after we got home which is kind of hard after a day of driving when you'd really just rather watch a half hour of TV and go to bed.

Mirs is up out of bed now and determined to cram as much fun as possible into this last day of summer vacation so I'm sure it will be a busy day.