I just about kilt that cat today...

So there I was, lazily dreaming the morning away, when I heard a THUD! I was hoping it was just the husband leaving for his Saturday round of early morning golf, but I heard no talking, no giggling, and certainly no swearing, so I knew it couldn't be him and the boy. Besides, it was five minutes past his tee time.

Wait... *snarl grumble growl* I know what it is!!! And $#@* that @#*$&%@#$*$ cat!!!!

I jumped out of bed and ran into the kitchen to find a mess of mass proportions. Okay, not mass proportions, but that definitely sounds better than just a mess. Because it was a MESS!

I have to go back a few days to explain it.

The other day, we were headed off to bed, telling the fish and the fry nighty night sleep tight when holy batman! There's more fry! Those fish just don't give up.

Again, like the last time, we decided to wait until morning to see if any of them lived, and sure enough, the next morning, there was still a whole little school of fry swimming around the tank. We are not totally heartless people, so the husband and I discussed it and decided it was time for some rearranging in an effort to preserve the lives of our new little offspring.

This was a big project. Huge.

You may recall that we have two fish tanks. We started out with a nice small 10 gallon tank and decided to upgrade to the larger one. We kept the ten gallon tank on the counter in the kitchen because I like things to be in my way as much as possible, and when we were done cycling the new tank and ready to add new fish, we took the goldfish, because we're not heartless people, and stuck it in the 10 gallon tank on the kitchen counter, hoping it would just die on it's own. So, we have a tank, but it's got a 3" goldfish in it that is determined to live forever and no way am I putting my fry in with it.

Ishee suggested that we flush it down the toilet. She wanted to see if it would ever swim back up. Do I look heartless? I'm not going to flush an innocent creature down the toidy just to see if it can swim. I had to think on it.

Meanwhile... the huge part of all this rearranging... our big tank had been in the back corner of the living room and the husband whined about it being there almost daily. It's just too hard to admire his babies from that viewpoint. But where else can we put it in our crowded living room? That's when I had a lightbulb moment and decided it was time for some major rearranging of the huge variety.

The big beautiful solid poplar and glass curio cabinet my husband built... is now on a different wall, and in it's place, the first thing you now see when you enter my home is... a 28 gallon fish tank. Any idea how much a huge solid wood and glass curio cabinet weighs? Not much less than a 28 gallon fish tank half full of water, that is for sure!

We then proceeded to catch 10, yes 10 little black and silver fry (mollies) and add them to the four we already caught... we now have a total of 14 fry (in case you can't add) in the ten gallon tank on the counter in the kitchen. Baby fish are not as cute as say a baby kitten, but let me assure you, adult fish are way cuter than adult cats, though they listen about the same!



Oh, and what'd we do with that goldfish? Well, again, this was up for much debate at our house. Ishee still wanted to flush it. The husband thought I should put him in a cake pan of water and let the cat have at it. The boy is not a massochist and he had no desire to off it's little hide, even suggesting that we buy yet another tank for his bedroom for him to keep the precious little goldfish until it's demise, and the middle child could have cared less since that is what she does best. Since I was in charge of this rearranging party, I took an old flower vase and filled it with water and poured him in and set him back on the counter next to his former home. He's not got much room to swim around, but that's okay, I think we'll take him back to the pet store anyway. If he lives that long. I just don't have it in me to flush him.

Now we can continue on with the story of how I just about kilt the cat this morning.

So I rushed into the kitchen after hearing a thud... which was brave of me since I sleep in my undies in the summer time and all the windows were open and the father in law is out irrigating this morning... yeah yeah yeah... but I was in a hurry. Afterall, I had a fish to save!

There on my kitchen counter was the fat beast sitting in a puddle of water that she should have been afraid of, watching a fish squirm and squiggle. The cat proceeds to give me a look of "Look what I did! Look what I did! Aren't you so proud of me? I caught a fish!" Her reward was getting chucked off the counter and nearly chucked out the door.

Have no worries, I rescued the fish. I'm not sure why, but I rescued that darn fish. There for a split second, when I was awakened from dreamland, and I knew just what had happened, that I ought to just let nature take it's course and let the cat have at that fish while I continue on into dreamland. I'm glad I didn't. Also in the middle of that puddle of water was... momentos from the past few months I hadn't yet put away such as my nieces wedding announcement, my other nieces high school graduation announcement, Ishee's coupon to Wingers she's been dying to use, the boys final 8th grade report card, and... my new camera!

Yep, it was a good thing I came in here and rescued that fish.

Two of our fish are pregnant... again... and I'm sure we'll have more fry to add to the tank. I haven't a clue why we're doing this... we don't NEED them, that is for sure! There's just something about taking a living creature and raising it, just to prove that you can, I guess.

As for the cat... she's hiding for she now knows just how unimpressive I found her fishing abilities. Hopefully from now on she'll stick to sitting on her perch watching them from the outside like the rest of us do. Who am I kidding? It's a CAT! She listens just about as well as those fish, which is NOT AT ALL!

SPT: Would you like fries with that?

Whoops! Wrong subject. It's WATER this week.

As it turns out, the SPT (She/self Photographs/portrait Tuesday) for this week matches absolutely perfectly with what I had planned for today. What is better than fries and water? No? How about THESE fry....

Aren't they cute?

Yes, as a matter of fact, those ARE baby fish, also known as fry. Our female fish have been pregnant several times but we've never managed to seclude them before the big event. All we know is that one week they are really really fat, and the next week, they are not so fat.

A few weeks ago, I was checking out the husbands pride and joys before bed (he tells them goodnight every night... hee hee) when I noticed a little black spec floating in the corner. Then another, and another. Well, hot dang, we have fry! In all, I think we had about six or seven of them. We decided to wait until the next day to see if any were left, and sure enough, there were three.

A few days later we found one more. We captured them by sucking them up into the cleaner outer thingie ma bob into a pitcher, then pouring them into the net hanging in the tank. The boy says he has seen a fifth one every now and again hanging out on the bottom, but we'll leave that one there. The last thing we truly need is more fish!

As for the "self" in SPT today.... I'm off on a quick last minute trip to SLC for a few days... so behave yourselves while I'm gone! In the meantime, check out Lelly's blog to see everyone else's "water" SPT!

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 ............

A case of the Ich...

Seems that while I was off galavanting next door with a paint roller in one hand and a paint brush in the other, while my youngest slept away the day on the hard floor curled up in a blanket with her brothers new coat as a pillow, which no matter how hard we tried, still ended up with paint on it... my poor new red mollie fish was home catching a good case of the Ich (his previous other "tank" mates had recently passed away, but not from the ich... they just died).

Being a non-fish expert, I'm not 100% sure what this means, other than it can be fatal and medication must be administered immediately. Well, it's Sunday... no medication will be purchased until Monday.

And furthermore... it's a $1.99 fish... is it really worth the 25 minute drive to the pet store, and who knows how much money for the medication, daily treatments, constant water changes, quarantine, possibly infecting my entire tank, my shrimp, my pleco... for a $1.99 fish that I could just flush and be done with?

That is the question!

So now tell me, dear faithful readers who have any sort of experience with the Ich... what is the best thing for me to do at this point? I beg of thee! PLEASE???

And just for the record... I'm stiff and sore and don't care if I pick up another paint roller again... EVER (and no, the painting is not done yet)... and Ishee is feeling a lot better today!

A little bit of this, and a little bit of that...

Without anything profound to blog about, instead, I am stuck blogging mindlessly today. So here goes!


The fish that my neighbor gave me died within 24 hours. We were all sad, especially Monkey girl who had named the biggest one Gregory. I had to pick up a new heater for the tank, so while in the pet department, GM and I also picked up a couple of fish. Nothing exciting, just an algae eater and some funky little shrimp.

The cat found them all rather boring as did GM. Nothing like looking across the room at the fish tank to see... nothing.

Well, Tuesday, it was colder than an old whores heart here, just above 20 below zero... not too bad really. Needless to say, school was cancelled. So we used the time after GM came home from work to go to the pet store and pick up a couple more fish. A severe shortage of calico nightmares around here found us coming home with this snazzy little calico goldfish the kids promptly named Googles... after the search engine and his oogly googly eyes. It's quite an entertaining little creature that swims for it's life pretty much non stop, because when it stops, it floats to the top of the tank. I don't know how it stays so fat.

We also got a silver molly named Ice and a red molly that Ishee named... ajacajacal. No B's... apparently I say it just as wrong as I spell it. Duly noted!

But that was not all. GM decided we also needed a bigger fish tank in which to display our new pets. Not to mention that if we want MORE fish, we would need a bigger tank anyhow. He's always had a secret thing for fish, as have I, so I didn't argue when he picked out a nice bowfront 28 gallon fish tank. I spent a good hour yesterday moving the other fish tank onto the kitchen counter and setting up the new tank in it's place in the living room which just annoys the whale out of the cat as she can't see the fish from the floor and her mean owner refuses to let her climb on the kitchen counter. Poor puddy pat.


In other news... my inlaws have reached a point in their house when all that is left is inside finish work! Yippee kie aye! Finish work is to be done by all of us. Yippee kie aye!

They have a giant, loud, and very warm heater in their house, since the furnace is not actually installed, and in case you already forgot, it has been in the below zero digits around here. It is well insulated, though and this large heater keeps it nice and warm.




(looking in to the master bathroom/closet from the bedroom)
The tub has been installed and they hired GM's cousin Jake to come and do the tile in the showers, so that's one less thing we have to help with. They are however, tiling the floors of all three bathrooms and roughly 800 square feet in the kitchen/laundry area, plus the backsplash.

The cabinet maker has yet to show his face and my inlaws seem confident that despite the miles of cabinets they will require in their kitchen, he can have them built in a few short days. I keep telling them they know more than one cabinet maker (including my most excellent cabinet maker brother in law), but they have confidence in this guy they talked to on the phone one day.

Thus, we are left with only two things to do... work on the siding outside (it's too cold) and ... paint. And guess who they hired and are paying with very much un-needed experience? Me.


Turns out I'm the ONLY person in the family that has held a real paint roller in my hands.
My father in law bought $1500 worth of cream colored paint (to be painted on every wall and ceiling throughout, including the garage), and a boat load of rollers... one for each of us, including four year old niece girl next door.

I just hope we don't kill each other before this whole process is completed and I hope it doesn't take too long as I do have a life that does not include their house... hard to believe, isn't it?


The week also includes lunch at the Olive Garden, really bad Wii bowling scores, a not so great parent teacher conference visit and a much better than last time parent teacher conference visit. But that's another post for another day. Peace out, people!