It's been a bit of a blood bath over here.
I got this brilliant idea one day to get a pet betta fish. Which I did - his name is Glitter. (No, I wasn't an idiot who got two males together).
We then discovered these adorable little fiddler crabs and bought three of them (MacBeth, Hamlet, and Romeo). Google told me guppies could live in perfect harmony with our Shakespearean friends.
Google lied. Within twenty minutes Gatsby #1 was dead. A half hour later Stella #1 suffered the same fate. (We like to name our creatures after literature. Call us honors students.) We threw the surviving fish into a mason jar and made an emergency run out to the thrift store to find some vases for our poor refugees.
My mother was of no sympathy. After expressing my frustration, she simply replied with "Yeah, crabs eat fish." Simple as that. 15 years of living on the swamp and I have learned nothing. Apparently I am an aquatics idiot.
We returned to find that Glitter had killed his shrimp (aka tank algae eater) friend. The shrimp that was with the guppies has recently gone missing...
Fish keep dying. (We keep naming the fish Stella and Gatsby. So if you want your fish to live, don't name them this.) And we keep feeding them to the crabs. It's like a train wreck - too horrible to watch, too intriguing to look away. It's like National Geographic in my kitchen. I took a picture, but I think it's too gruesome post on such a lovely blog.
I pulled Gatsby #2 out of the bottom of his guppy bowl this morning. That's five creatures dead in less than a week. I am a horrible mother and should never be trusted with living creatures, sentient or otherwise.
Except for babies. I love babies. They're easier to keep alive than fish, anyway. Babies make noise when there is something wrong, and it's much harder to put them on a bookshelf and forget about them.
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I enjoyed a lovely wedding, celebrating the union of two of my dearest mentors.
I think we were three seconds into the ceremony before I was getting misty.
Thirty-five seconds and I was red-faced, choking back tears.
Thank God for large sunglasses and all eyes on the bride, but good Lord - get this child a tissue and some self control.
I danced with the groom. Which ended up me looking up at him, holding my hands out and saying "I don't know what to do with these." Good thing he is a decent lead, because during half a second of awkwardness of me not knowing what to do with my feet or hands, I wanted to bail.
Of course I let Father Dearest know that I slow-danced with a boy, not letting him know it was the groom/my mentor/someone of no threat or interest. But I gotta make him think that there is a chance of me being married off one day. Mother Dearest chimed in with "Slow dancing is how we got your baby sisters."
Face palm.
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My diet of sugary cereal and Ramen is going well. I don't know when the last time I saw a vegetable, fruit, or hunk of meat is, but I am still alive. (I'm looking at you, scurvy and anemia).
However, my limited menu hasn't exactly saved me time in the kitchen. In two days I had dropped my food three times - one of those times included spilling an entire cup of boiling water on my poor little hand in an effort to quickly pour the water so it would not run down the side of the cup and burn my other poor little hand.
Fail.
Suddenly I found myself running cool water down my swollen, chubby, red fingers and choking down as many pain relief pills as my liver would allow while simultaneously blinking back tears and trying to keep myself from vomiting from the pain. (My pain tolerance is rapidly decreasing as I age).
After a quick Google search (using one hand to type), and many disgusting images that I will never unsee, it was determined that I probably had a second degree burn in the making and that I could possibly need medical attention. I really didn't want to go to urgent care because they take forever and I still owe them money from the rose bush incident of 2012. I made a phone call to a friend asking her to be on stand-by for an urgent care run and made another call to our delightful 24 nurse hotline (I'm a frequent user of them). Unfortunately I got a nurse who, although sweet, took her job a bit too seriously and decided to give me a lecture on the importance of having a solid general physician even while I am in college and a run-down on the difference between ibuprofen, acetaminophen, and naproxen. She then proceeded to give me step by step instructions for caring for my burn as I paced around the kitchen writhing in pain, watching the clock creep closer to closing time for the medical center.
Twenty minutes later she finally told me that unless my blisters busted, I would not be needing an urgent care trip. I finally wrangled her off the phone after swearing on my unborn child's life that I would find a general physician (lies). The excitement for the night was over. My dear friend on stand-by took me out of ice cream, promising that it would make my hand feel better.
It did.
I texted Mother Dear about the incident, certain that her maternal and nursing instincts would kick in. They did - only to tell me I was being ridiculous. She's that person in my life.
After much insisting that I was in fact dying, she gave up on telling me to put some aloe on it and hush. I woke up the next morning to a hand that was still fully attached to my arm with no evidence that such a traumatic accident had ever occurred. No blisters. No chubby swollen fingers. No red streaks that would surely scar. Nothing.
I'm all whine and no wound.
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