{"id":310,"date":"2007-05-16T11:52:51","date_gmt":"2007-05-16T11:52:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/2007\/05\/16\/love-bugs\/"},"modified":"2007-05-16T11:52:51","modified_gmt":"2007-05-16T11:52:51","slug":"love-bugs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/2007\/05\/16\/love-bugs\/","title":{"rendered":"Love Bugs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here in central Florida, we have these creatures called &#8220;love bugs.&#8221; For those that haven&#8217;t seen them, they are shaped roughly like fireflies, but don&#8217;t glow, and they get their name from the fact that they are constantly mating. The things actually fly around with their ends connected to each other. How they manage that, I don&#8217;t know.<\/p>\n<p>In any case, last Mother&#8217;s Day we hit Dunkin&#8217; Donuts for some morning treats. At this particular place, you can sit on tall bar stools facing a shelf that runs along the plate glass window at the front of the store. I guess the idea is that you can gaze out at the parking lot while you eat. Seems strange, but the kids love it.<\/p>\n<p>While we were sitting there, our oldest spotted a love bug crawling along the floor by the window. &#8220;Look, Mom! Look! It&#8217;s a &#8211; a&#8230;. Hmm&#8230; I don&#8217;t know.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>We all peered at it and I asked the question &#8220;It&#8217;s a love bug, isn&#8217;t it?&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; he said. &#8220;It looks like a love bug, but it only has one mouth.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;What?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Love bugs have two mouths. One on each end.&#8221; He held up his hands to try to demonstrate with his fingers.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; I said. &#8220;Those are actually two love bugs. Most times, love bugs fly around, uh.sort of, um&#8230;&#8221; I have to admit that my brain turned off as I realized I was talking to a 4 year old and a 2 year old, and I wasn&#8217;t ready for <em>that<\/em> conversation.<\/p>\n<p>Seeing my distress, his mom chimed in: &#8220;connected.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Connected?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Um, yeah, like friends holding hands.&#8221; She finished.<\/p>\n<p>He looked at her, confused. &#8220;But they&#8217;re not holding hands, they&#8217;re holding &#8211; &#8220;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;WANT A DONUT?&#8221; I asked, perhaps a bit too loudly. Fortunately, he did.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here in central Florida, we have these creatures called &#8220;love bugs.&#8221; For those that haven&#8217;t seen them, they are shaped roughly like fireflies, but don&#8217;t glow, and they get their name from the fact that they are constantly mating. The things actually fly around with their ends connected to each other. How they manage that, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[123,118,120,119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daddytales-cute","category-daddytales-c","category-daddytales-embarassing","category-daddytales-funny"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DpYi-50","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}