Pool sweet pool...

Tips for the pool!
(according to the Ish meister)
Step 1 first you get the sides and put the up!
Step 2 you plug the water in!
Step 3 you get the hose!
Step for you fill et up!
Step 5 you wate for the water to get warm!

It's much cuter with the diagrams and heart shaped exclamation points.

Instead of the blow up pool that raises as it fills, we went with the metal framed kind. It's larger, it's has more swim area, it's costs more, but it was bound to last longer. Hopefully, the carpet we put under it this year will keep the rocks from penetrating it's big blue skin, too.
Took some doing, but we got it done.
Now we are faced with a whole new myriad of issues:

1. It's deep. We knew that when we bought it, but we figured we just wouldn't fill it all the way. However, in order to use the filter, we have to have it filled a minimum of about eight inches from the top. Having it that deep puts it nose level with Ishee. She was not at all excited to see that one. Sorry to all the short relatives who played in it last year and may visit me again this year...

2. The filter return is also quite close to the top, which means it sprays it's water out above the water. This was fun to watch until we put the solar cover over it and realized it sprays water on top of it therefore sinking the solar cover and making it useless. The only way to remedy this is to add another six inches of water, therefore making it way over Ishee's head. We're still working out a solution for that one, in the meantime, we just unplugged the filter for a day or two until it warms up!

3. The ladder we have is too short. This is not really an issue since the new pool came with a ladder of appropriate height. However, this is an issue for the husband who didn't want to put another ladder together. Those are a pain!

4. Is 60 degree water really too cold to swim in when it's only 78 degrees outside? I'm thinking... yes....

Funny girl...

For her brother's birthday, Ishee took a dollar bill and two pennies out of her bank and wrapped them up and gave them to him. Isn't she sweet?

When he opened it, she asked him how much it was.

"One dollar and two cents" he said.
"No, I mean, how much is it?" she asked.
"One dollar and two cents."
"No, I mean, like, how much is it?"
"One dollar and two cents."
"No really, how much money is it?"
"It's one dollar and two cents."
"What I mean is, how much money is it?"
"It's still one dollar and two cents."
"HOW MUCH MONEY IS IT?"
"ONE DOLLAR AND TWO CENTS!"

Of coarse, she was good and angry by now... LOL
So I looked at her and said "It's 102 cents."
Oh? Okay. Question answered, problem solved. I took my camera in to be repaired. My camera is a Sony Cybershot H-5. Sony is very proud of their camera's, or so they told me at the camera store. I'm not sure what this means, other than perhaps they charge through the nose to repair them or maybe it is that they will bend over backwards to fix them? Anybody ever had a Sony repair done?

They are sending it back to Sony and I should hear something in a week or two (That's an eternity! Can I go that long without taking pictures? Who will photograph the progress of my inlaws house? What if the event of the century takes place in the next two weeks? What a travesty this is becoming!!!).

It should only be about $15 for a new flash. They'll also run a diagnostics test for free to see what else is up with it, and that will cost who knows how much! Hopefully it will magically resolve all it's problems on it's own. Can I get that lucky?

I tried to talk the man into touching the electronics, just for fun, to see if he also got the shock of his life, but he wouldn't fall for it, not even after I showed him the loverly burn marks on my thumb. Chicken.

I would rather eat cement than a tomato...

Just one of Ishee's best lines from the past few days, along with:

"Do cats know when their birthday is or are they stupid?"

As well as:

"I've been contaminated" after her grandpa spilled his beer on her. Don't ask.

Clever girl!

Speaking of Ishee... I'm running away from her this next weekend and she isn't happy with me. At.all.

She has always been so attached to me that my sister refers to her as "Cling-on". She has begged me every day "don't go" between pauses of barking orders and yelling at her sister. "Why can't I come with you? Don't you love me anymore? It's not fair."

Oh, I'm SO leaving you home with your dad for a few days! He's scared of her. I do this every couple of years to remind him just how scary she is, too, which makes him in turn appreciate me just that much more.

He also promised to take them shopping. The boy has outgrown yet another pair of shoes. He'll hate himself after that one, I'm sure, especially after he balances his bank account as it turns out his little girlies have him wrapped around their little fingers for whatever his little girlies want, his little girlies get and I won't be here to lay down the law and say absolutely no way, no how, you cannot have that, and like every good girlie, his girlies love a good shoe store. He'll buy it for them. It's his way of dealing with their scariness.

Yes, I'm running eight hours away to visit my parents along with my sisters. It's mom's birthday this week and we've tried to make it a tradition to pay her a visit as her gift. I do need to bribe someone *ahem ~ my husband ~ ahem* to plow the driveway so that I may drive my car again, though. It only has 300 miles on it. I hate to break it in on a long drive eight hours from home, but thanks to all this snow, I have been unable to get out of my driveway in it for weeks. It's hard to put many miles on it driving it in and out of the garage, but what'dya do?

The husband did assure me he'd try to remember to put in a call to his favorite uncle Merlin today to see if he had any spare snow plows laying around he'd set us up with. Seems every snow plow in the valley has been sold. Luckily, Uncle Merlin's four wheeler dealership is just far enough out of the way to make it inconvenient for anyone in their right mind, including us, so with any luck, he has one he's willing to part with.

So... remember that new fish tank we upgraded to a few weeks ago? Turns out the instructions on the box that said "fill with water, let sit 24-48 hours and add fish"... were slightly wrong.

I joined a tropical fish message board to see if they could help guide me down the path of proper fish maintenance after my fish were dropping like flies, and all they seemed to do was tell me how dumb I was for:

A... buying from an ordinary pet store, and
B... taking the advice of an employee from an ordinary pet store.
Oh, and C... obviously killing fish just for the fun of it, which violates every ethical bone in their tropical fish loving bodies.

Well, I'm sorry folks, but around here, all you get is ordinary pet stores with ordinary every day folks just like you and me as employees. And furthermore, I wasn't killing the fish on purpose. I enjoyed the guilt trip, though.

I learned about this thing called "cycling" where you build up the bacteria in the tank before adding the fish. Seems as though the fish produce ammonia in their poop, and ammonia kills them, but the bacteria that builds up dissolves the ammonia and there's also something about nitrites being turned into nitrates... I might as well be reading farsi, it makes that much sense to me, but I have figured out that it's all required to get anything but ordinary 12 cent goldfish to live. I put up with two 12 cent goldfish for nine years. I'm tired of 12 cent goldfish.

I found that out the hard way... I was taking their deaths so personally. I felt so guilty I couldn't even bear to return their dead little carcasses back to the store for a refund.

A fishless cycle is best and easiest. "Return your fish to the store and start over" they'd say. I don't wanna. I've become quite attached to Cedric the pleco and the five shrimpies I've managed to keep alive. They are family now.

I could hear them groaning through their posts and I just knew they were thinking "what.an.idiot this lady must be." Really.

Fine then! You have to do a "with fish" cycle... which means daily, sometimes twice daily, water changes, which is humanly impossible to keep up with. Just watch me! I'm just that determined, I'll do it three times a day if I have to. I would, however, think that would defeat the purpose of allowing the bacteria to build up, but what do I know about fish other than how to kill them?

Anywhoozle... I chatted it up the other night after scouts with the scout master and his wife who know a thousand times more than I will ever know about tropical fish as they have three ginormous tanks in their house. They asked me "how are those fish we gave you a few weeks ago?" Oh, they are doing quite ... um... well... um... they're dead.

So I asked them... "what in the world am I doing wrong and how do I fix it? I researched. We went back to the pet store. We've tested our water countless times. They're still dying. I can't take it anymore."

Thirty minutes later I came away with loads of advice:
A... toss in a couple of feeder goldfish, and guess what? It's "okay" if they don't make it.
B... don't listen to the online freaks who tell you to change the water twice a day because it IS totally defeating the purpose. I knew it! Every 4-5 days is sufficient. I can handle that.
And C... quite possibly my biggest mistake of all... never ever ever ever buy or take advice even from that particular ordinary pet store (Petsmart). Since we have no other choice here, at least go to the one next to the toy store (Petco). I'll remember that next time, that.is.for.sure!

Everything else, I'm doing right, including treatment for what I assume is Ich (local petsmart fish are notorious for carrying the disease... thankyouverylittle). Now to just keep the two gold fish who survived the trip home from Petco on Saturday night alive long enough to properly cycle my tank. *sigh*

I wonder if they'll still be alive when I get home from my mini-escape? I'm afeared removing the dead carcasses out of a fish tank might be just one too many responsibilities for these people I'm leaving behind! LIVE, little fishies, LIVE! We can't take it another death in the family ............

Now SHUSH....

Picture this... daughter #1 is looking through a yoga book and doing her best moves. Daughter #2 is styling her mom's hair in the latest fashion as any seven year old can do best. When the mom winces in pain from having her hair pulled, not all of it, just 10 or so hairs (those are always the worst), the reply to the distraction was "Oh, quit whining about your hair. I'm trying to watch the yoga, now SHUSH!"

The mother was frankly, too stunned to react over what was just said to her with anything but a small giggle. What kind of a child is this mother raising, anyway?