You know how when you're hungry, you keep revisiting the fridge and freezer to see if something new and more appetizing has appeared since the last time you checked? Yeah? Never works, does it?
It works even less when you investigate an unfamiliar ziploc bag from the freezer and (re)discover the pet fish that died last month.
Adding "bury Gibby" to the to do list. And avoiding the deep freeze for the rest of the night.
This is an absolutely awesome idea. Turn old sweatshirts into pet blankets/beds. And no sewing!
It would be nice to make lots of these and give them to an animal shelter. If I had any old sweatshirts laying around, I'd add this to my procrastination project pile in an instant.
Today's procrastination exercise is taking the form of a cleaning spree. I've done laundry, cleaned the litter boxes, and as a coup de grace, I cleaned the fish tank.
The dirty, filthy, hadn't-been-cleaned-in-over-6-months aquarium. Poor fish.
I haven't been taking very good care of them lately. I forget to feed them (luckily they can go safely without food for several days), ignore them, and don't clean their home as often as I should. The cats can at least remind me of their presence by yowling, tipping their water over, and peeing on things; the fish have no such recourse.
Several fish have "disappeared" I'm down to three, total) over the last few months. I'm guessing that the culprit is the huge sucker-mouth catfish in there. He either got hungry and decided on a little snack or someone died and he took care of the remains. Hey, he's actually a scavenger fish, so at least he's doing what nature intended. Unless he's hunting down fishies in cold(er) blood; then it's my fault for not keeping him fed.
In my hallway I have an extra, empty 35 gallon tank with a smaller 2 gallon tank inside of it. Kind of zen, actually. But it's also sitting there and reminding me that I need to decide what to do. Should I get rid of the fish and all the accouterments I've collected over the years? That's hundreds of dollars of equipment and years of effort. Should I switch the tank's denizens to the tank with the smaller footprint and relocate my little underwater world out of the living room and the sunlight (which isn't really good for aquariums), like I planned to do last year? Would that actually address the problem or exacerbate it, taking the fish out of my immediate view and leading to even less frequent care? Do I even want to have fish any longer? Should I sell them? I absolutely hate moving them from one residence to another; it is truly a pain in the ass and takes a lot of preparation to do it right (set up the main tank, let it condition for a few weeks, move the fish from their old home, etc.). I am moving in another year, come hell or high (aquarium?) water. Is there another option that I haven't thought of?
Either way that I decide (and if you have any advice, I will willingly hear it), I rolled up my sleeves and cleaned the damn thing today. The bathtub now needs a really good scrubbing and at one point I slopped half a bucket of thankfully clean water over the living room floor, but I did my much belated duty as a pet-owner.
And now the tank is clean. The fish are able to filter oxygen out of the water without sucking in mass quantities of sludge and are swimming around happily, thinking little fishy thoughts. Now if only the light worked so that I could actually see the little buggers.
I didn't go to school or work today (hmm, better let my boss know that I didn't show up) because I was feeling sick and exhausted. Some day, I will get the hang of NOT WAITING TO THE LAST MINUTE TO FINISH ASSIGNMENTS and become a better student. Yeah, right. I simply have become physically unable to stay up past midnight. At least, stay up and remain a coherent person, partying is another matter.
And then I spent most of today not catching up on other schoolwork, but upgrading my wireless router and troubleshooting the connection. But it appears I was successful, so my neighbor (I am a wonderful and generous person who doles out free internet access) and I will have our normal laptop connections again. And I discovered my PC's motherboard manual, so I can go and buy some much needed memory for my poor 4-year old PC that's been limping along on only 256 MB of RAM while running Windows XP. I'm tired of screaming at the computer to hurry up when loading Firefox. Damn, I've become quite the computer geek, haven't I?
But my day just got a little bit better when I spotted this on CuteOverload, a site that I most heartily recommend to those of us who need a little humor and warm fuzziness (or cute reptile stares) to get us through the day. Go look. And shriek like a little girl at the cuteness. Hmm, I wonder how long my plecostomus would sit still...
So, here I sit feeling sorry for myself because I am sick. I didn't go out last night because I was trying to preserve my health for an out-of-town trip today to the Festival of the Hunter's Moon. But I woke up at 8:30 feeling like death-warmed over (mmm, leftover death...) and decided that it would be better to stay home than wander around a park outside all day hacking and blowing my nose. I'm sure I would've been such a pleasant companion.
But now I'm bored. And still feeling yucky. And there is nothing good on TV on Saturdays and I've downloaded and watched all the episodes of The Office that I could. And now I want a hug. Or at least someone to go buy me some more Sudafed.
...
And I just looked over at my aquarium and realized that about 6 fish seem to be missing. I thnk that the plecostomus might be the culprit. Stupid giant catfish. He's supposed to eat algae, not other fish.
Great. Now I'm sick AND I've lost a third of my pets.
