A Day That Will Live in ... Well, Not Infamy Really

Put it down on your calendars, people.

Today was the day that directions-challenged me actually printed out a map and followed it successfully to a location here in the new town that I'd never been to before. This coming from the girl who got lost going to the Target that Google Maps told me was three miles from here and ended up at the airport instead.

For those of you who do this all the time and who always seem to know through some moss-on-the-tree or direction-of-the-sun zen kind of way whether you are driving south or west or whatever, this may not sound like a big deal. For me, however, it's rather notable. I even had to wing it once, when my directions said I needed to go south on a road and I was only given options for east or west.

My reward on the other end was to sit on a bench in a pretty quiet, slightly humid and just warm enough to be comfortable without my jacket, butterfly conservatory. After walking around and taking a few pictures with my it's-too-much-for-me-but-it-was-free-with-the-plan camera phone, I sat quietly and very still on a bench for several minutes before the butterflies decided I was part of the scenery and started to land on me. Maybe it was because my shirt was light pink and some of the flowers in the area I was in were about that color; I don't know. It was rather nice once they warmed to me.

Before I decided I had to get up and drive back to my part of town to do the grocery shopping that was the more practical reason I had for leaving the house, I had at least five or six on me. Maybe more...I'm not sure if any were on my back or not. One of them lit right on my knee for about a half minute before flitting off...a very small, pretty, black butterfly with bright red markings on the wings.

There were hundreds of butterflies in there, many more than in the other butterfly house I visited a few years ago in Wisconsin. It was well worth the forty minute round trip, plus I found a bunch of blessedly-familiar stores on the way there and back which I will visit on some other day when I am possessed of more energy.

It was a full day, just a bit more than I probably really have in me at this point. It was worth it, though. Even as I'm being whacked just behind my belly button by my passenger and constant companion, too tired to get up and take my plate downstairs (and thus had to con the mister into doing it), I am glad that I went and proud that I did it all with only one very minor u-turn. Maybe I'll get the hang of this road system after all.