today both monarch caterpillars were molting: catone from 4th to 5th instar, cattwo from 3rd to 4th. catone has been molting since yesterday afternoon, and every now and then it'll shudder as if it's trying to shake off its old skin. i spotted bruce coming back from a grocery run and showed my catone. he said one of his own caterpillars had a hard time transitioning from instar 4 to 5, taking at least 2 days. he also told me he came back from the secret milkweed source i discovered a few days ago with some fresh leaves.

i dug out a bunch of crabgrass in my parents' backyard and filled them back up with grass patch, which is a mixture of grass seeds, newspaper pulp, and fertilizer. it says it takes just a week for the grass to germinate. the wetted down patches resemble dog puke.

we tried the rum cake my parents' brought back from bermuda. they'e expensive ($16 a piece) and i think it's because it's a touristy thing to buy. the cake itself looked like a large muffin, nothing particularly special except it has a strong rum taste. my mother said she was feeling light-headed after a small slice. sometime like this we can easily make at home.

i wasn't here to see catone change into the 5th instar but i knew it happened because it started feeding again. it still hadn't fully transformed because its long antennae were still unfurled.