Twenty Gallons of Belly Up

This post on Daddy Scratches brought back vivid memories of our first fish tank.

After spending a few petless months in our newlywed apartment, I complained to The Oracle that I wanted a pet. He worked days and I worked 3-11, and I wanted some sort of company during the day while he wasn't home. I'd grown up with all sorts of pets, and being without was lonely. The problem was our lease wouldn't permit anything with fur or feathers.

With the intention of coming home with a Dorothy-in-a-bowl setup, we exited the aquarium store an hour or so later with a couple hundred bucks' worth of stuff including a twenty-gallon tank, filters, stone, plastic plants, aerators and I forget what else.

So we set all the stuff up and waited a couple days as instructed before returning to the store for the thing I really wanted - the fish.

The same clerk who sold us the stuff led us to the freshwater fish. After lots of looking and indecision, I decided on a pair of blue dwarf gouramis, two little orange fish with spiky black tails, and a pair of something that looked like goldfish but weren't. I don't remember what they were except one was a red and black and the other was pink.

Anyway, we brought our little fishies home and put them in the tank. In less than two days, the gouramis went belly up. I called the fish store and complained. That same clerk THEN informed me that gouramis are somewhat sensitive and need a well-established tank in which to surive. Ours was only two days old and didn't have enough of the bacteria and whatnot in the water. I was furious! That jerk of a clerk had no problem selling us everything under the sun two days before; the least he could have done was tell us what wouldn't survive in a new tank.

Shortly after the gouramis died, the red and white fish started fighting. I'm not kidding. They were chasing each other around the tank and attacking one another. Mostly the red one was attacking the pink. It was frenzied and hyper, and not at all what you'd want in a fish tank. (And no, I don't believe it was some sort of romantic ritual, because it NEVER stopped.) I felt sorry for the pink fish, and finally swapped them at Petco for a few fancy-tailed guppies.

The guppies did something I didn't expect. They multiplied. I came home from work one day to a bunch of teeny-tiny fish swimming about the tank, trying desperately to avoid being devoured by the bigger fish. Off to Petco I go, and I buy a cutesy little netted box to isolate the baby fish.

BIG mistake.

Because those little baby fish grew up and made more baby fish.

(Several months later...)

With a cycling population of guppies, The Oracle and I were moving into our house. We rented a U-Haul and stuffed our belongings inside. Due to a last-minute flurry of paperwork from the bank, our moving date wasn't set until shortly before settlement. I didn't have a whole lot of time to consider the logistics of moving a tankful of fish.

On moving day, the last item out of the apartment was the fish tank. I ended up catching as many fish as I could and stowing them in a mayonnaise jar. I siphoned as much water as possible out of the tank and into two clean buckets, leaving four inches of water or so in the tank so we could move the tank onto the truck.

I'd originally considered dumping the water, but I didn't have clean water waiting for me at the new place, and four inches of water isn't enough to run the filters until clean water was ready. Instead, I put the two buckets of water on the passenger-side floor of the truck at my feet.

The ride to our new house, thankfully, is a very short one. The Oracle gently pulls out of the apartment complex and pulls up to a traffic light. When he makes a left turn, a hefty amount of 84-degree water sloshes out of the buckets and slops all over my shoes. Ewwww. At every stop the same thing happens, and by the time we arrive at the house the U-Haul smells and my feet are squishing inside my shoes.

We set the tank up in the corner of the living room, gently replaced the water still in the buckets, and returned the guppies and two orange fish to the tank. The guppies maintained a steady population of a dozen or so fish in the tank. The orange fish eventually died.

And, eventually, I got sick of the tank. Cleaning it was a pain, filter-changing was a pain, and it always smelled no matter how clean it was. When the detectives I worked with decided to set up a tank in their shared office, I offered my guppies to the new tank, and they accepted. When the tank was ready and their new fish were moving in, I bagged up the guppies and brought them in too.

Within a half hour, my guppies vanished. I didn't see that coming. At least it was quick.

I cleaned the fish tank and its paraphernalia and relegated the whole mess to the basement. A few years later we sold our couple-hundred-dollar investment for twenty bucks at a yard sale.

When Mighty B. recently voiced his desires for a fish as a pet, it was all I could do not to bellow the word, "NO!" in response.

"D" is for "Drat!" "Darn!" and "Dagnabbit!"

A few weeks back, Her Nibs got her mitts on my computer and irreparably popped the letter X off my keyboard. Fortunately, X isn't all that commonly used (fourth from the bottom behind Z, J, and Q). It's annoying, but I can adapt.

Yesterday, the little cherub picked off the letter D. Depending on which list you use, the letter D is either the 10th or 12th most-commonly-used letter in English vocabulary. I am not a happy woman. First, it's annoying to have my finger striking the springy plastic normally hiding beneath the key. Second, my keystroke isn't always noticed by the computer, so I have to keep going back to fix errors.

I guess I should be happy that she only popped the keys off; she didn't eat them.

Inconvenienced

Our 15-year-old oven has been malfunctioning for quite a few months now. When you start it up, the element doesn't always switch on. For a while, we could get it to reset and work for a while. Eventually, though, it turned into a situation where you have to bake fast because it might not cycle on again to maintain temperature.

Well, during the height of summer, not having an oven wasn't so bad. It was too hot for hours-long oven usage.

I finally broke down and called a repairman.

After arriving two hours later than his promised time slot, he gave me the bad news: $440.00 plus tax. Ouch. It's going to take several days for the part to arrive. Yep, I said "part." ONE PART for $440.

The first thing I'm baking when it's up and running is a batch of chocolate chip cookies. That might take the sting away.

Hair - Left High and Dry

I called to set up a hair cut this morning and was greeted with the last bit of news I wanted to hear. My favorite hairdresser has retired.

I can't find the post, but I know I've written before about how Mae is the only person in this world who cuts my hair in a way that looks good despite my wash-and-wear hair attitude. My hair is thick and wavy. Someone who knows how to work hair would love to have hair like mine. I don't know how to work hair. I never have, so I've tussled with it all my life.

She owned her own shop for years, and when her hairdresser daughter entered another line of work, she sold the shop and went into retirement. I spent months wandering from shop to shop, limiting each haidresser to only trimming my bangs as a trial run before allowing their shears to touch the rest of my hair. In all those months, I couldn't find one person worthy of cutting beyond my bangs.

When Mae came out of retirement to work three days a week for a well-established shop, my follicles rejoiced, and I've been content with my hair for the last decade or so.

We know that all good things eventually come to an end. Mae has once again retired. My selfish heart hopes that it's a brief hiatus, but the information they gave me on the phone leads me to believe otherwise.

I'm very thankful that Mae was available for Her Nibs' first haircut last month. I've been meaning to post these pictures for quite a while.

No, she didn't have much to trim, but Mae says a baby's hair grows in better when it's evenly trimmed. None of my kids had much hair to start with, but the older two have really nice hair now.

Her Nibs was so good. She wasn't scared or the least bit fussy. She's such a good baby!

And this is the post-haircut lollipop. She is the first of my three kids to not chew through the stick before finishing the candy.

Hatin' on Verizon

I am forgetful. I think I may have mentioned that before..

Last month, I forgot to pay the Verizon bill. Yeah, I got letters and a phone call, and I put it off and forgot about it. They got nasty and restricted my services for the past-due payment.

With two kids living the tail end of summer vacation, I admit that I use the electronic baby-sitter a little too often when I hear whiny complaints of boredom. "Mom, I'm bored," was once effectively answered with, "Go clean your room," but they tired of that trick and so did I.

Aaaaaaaaanyway, I forgot to pay the bill, and on August 10, Verizon slapped me around for it by making sure I was trapped at home with whiny kids on a rainy day. In desperation, I paid the ransom.

Oh, hey... if you ever run into this situation, you need to pay the bill to the penny. There's no rounding of digits. If the bill is $179.48, rounding it up to $179.50 will make them put the money somewhere else and not restore your services. I still don't understand this flawed logic, but sometimes Verizon really sucks.

I rounded the pennies and got rewarded with an extra four hours of waiting for my services to come back.

And, now, the reason for this post.

I turn on the TV and nothing happens. The clock on the cable box isn't working, either. It turns out that I had another bill come due and they restricted me again. COME ON!! I just paid you boneheads a fat chunk of money two weeks ago! The woman on the phone gave me some highly-inaccurate song and dance about the bill spanning three months (bunch of snot, I tell you) and that I had to pay the full amount due.

Yeah, I paid them. But I'm really pissed about it. They're not my only utility!

A Wake-Up Call

The last few days have been a little bit challenging. My FIL is going through some medical stuff that slammed home the issue of "what do we do with mom?" Fortunately, FIL's issues aren't life threatening, just very painful and require a fair amount of wait and see. It also meant spending a decent amount of time at my in-laws' house keeping grandma company.

Clearly, we need to have a backup plan when this kind of stuff comes about.

Yeah, I'm here.

I just haven't had much of a desire to blog. I haven't had much time, either.

I miss my dog.

The convenience-store job is good. It's hard work, though, and timing is everything. I've never been much good with time management and that makes things difficult for me. Certain things need to be done at certain times. I think I'm going along just fine, but when something goes awry I'm scrambling.

As the third-shift food-service person, I not only make sandwiches, slice cold cuts, and fill hot-food orders on request, I have to check every scrap of food in my section to make sure it's within its codes for timely consumption. If something hot is going to expire or run out, I need to anticipate the need and get more going so I don't run out. The hot food comes premade and frozen, so it needs an hour in the rethermalizer to come to temperature before I can put it out. I suck at anticipating what I'm going to need. Customers use touch screens to place their orders, and I have to keep those menus current as well.

I rotate out all the stale rolls and put up fresh ones, not only in the loose-roll cases for customers, but in all the sandwich stations. Ditto for the doughnut case. I also have the absurd task of prepacking cookies and pretzels for impulse sale at the register. (I never get this done quickly. I start as soon as it's delivered, but I keep getting pulled away from it to fill customer orders or do other things on schedule. I hate those things!)

Coffee has to be made and kept fresh 'round the clock. We don't have every pot running; we keep roughly half of them going through the night. It doesn't take long, but it's a time suck all the same.

From the minute I walk in the door, I'm making food. I never knew how many people ate late at night. The after-hours cleaning service closes shop at midnight, and all those guys come in hungry. The bars close at 2:00, and there's a stampede of hungry drunks for the next thirty to forty minutes. Spattered throughout is a steady flow of emergency-services folks grabbing what they can when time allows.

By 3:15 a.m., all of the hot food for the start of the morning rush has to be in the rethermalizers and put up on the steam table an hour later.

By 4:30 a.m., every coffee pot has to be filled and ready to go.

By 5:00 a.m., breakfast sandwiches have to be cooked and boxed and in the cases. I have to keep that stuff replenished until the person who mans that station comes in at 6:00 a.m.

From 6:00 to the time I leave, I must not only keep doing all the stuff I listed above, I still need to sweep the floor, wash all my dishes, and clean the deli slicer.

Oh, and then there's spoilage. Everything I discard during my shift has to be logged and entered into their computer system. You can't just chuck a panful of chili. You have to count each measure you discard. Every roll, bagel, and croissant is counted and tallied.

I haven't clocked out on time yet. The Oracle hasn't been on time for work since I started.

And I thought staying awake all night would be difficult. Ha! The difficult thing is finding a minute to use the restroom.