I love bugs. But most of all I love praying mantids! Here is a picture of me and a female. I can tell it’s a female because I found her and 1/2 of her mate on her back and now she is carrying an egg case! The picture on the left is the praying mantis on my face and the picture on the right is the praying mantis on my hand. I am going to tell you a story about a very very ill mantis I found:
One fine morning I was just minding my own business when my sister Megan brought me a dead praying mantis. Or so she thought. I was showing my mom, and then it kicked its leg!
I got a little bottle cap and put a dab of milk in it. Then I fed the milk to the praying mantis by dabbing my finger in the milk, and touching the mantis’s face.
While I was feeding it, it was clinging to my fingers with its little poker-thingies that it grabs its food with. I fed it for a little while, then I got a piece of cloth and laid it on a little bug bed, and made it a Get Well Soon card. Really, I did.
We went to some friends’ house. When we got back, I discovered a tragic event. The praying mantis (sniff) was dead.
I flushed it down the toilet as I sang Amazing Grace.
The end.

PS. I promise this is a true story.

It’s Monday.
My tailbone still really hurts, and my back is a close second from the contortions I’m using to avoid using muscles that pull on my tailbone.
Evolutionists have suggested that the tailbone is a vestigial piece of anatomy, but I think they would quickly change their collective mind if they experienced childbirth-like pain every time they used their collective tailbone. They would realize that tailbones are still very much in popular demand.
In keeping with the Monday theme, my dryer, like my tailbone, is out of commission. This is a major inconvenience, since we are way behind on laundry thanks to our mud/texture/sand/paint marathon last week. But after my initial fit of whining I realized it’s really not a big deal.
I suddenly recalled that we didn’t have a dryer for the first 4 months we lived here, and I dried all our laundry on the deck. In the winter. And I liked it.
Yes, dear, you were right and I was wrong.
So please forgive me for the whininess.
Thank you, Lord, for the lovely weather.
Laundry is progressing nicely today. Especially for a Monday.

My Dad sent me an email requesting that I write a story about one of our neighbors. These are my favorite memories of her. Her name was Betty. She was about 76.

When I was about 4 or 5 my sisters and I used to ask Miss Betty if we could come in her house and she would always tell us to ask Mom so we would ask and she would usually say yes. So we went back over and told her. She let us in and she always gave us those suckers with gum inside – oh yeah, blo-pops. Then we would sit down and watch DragonTails (the cartoon) . After a while she would show us her key chain collection, give us 6-9 caramels and send us home.

I guess that’s all I remember about good old Miss Betty.

P.S. our friends Paige and Amber Whittington would come also.

Kaitlyn