Sammy the Suicidal Fish

This is Sammy:

Yes, he’s a fish.  Why am I writing a story about a fish? Because it’s worth telling!

For the last three years, we’ve been raising children, not pets. Hubby and I have discussed at great lengths the idea of a pet.  But cats make me sneeze, and I just don’t like them. I love the idea of a dog, but #1- I already have 2 littles around the house that I have to stress about bodily functions with, and #2 – I’d much rather carve out space in my budget for diapers than for dog food. So, no, on a dog.  Birds are too noisy. The idea of keeping mice or other rodents just doesn’t work for me. And don’t even get me started on the idea of a snake.

 

So that left us with one good choice: fish.

 

We’ve had fish before. But we haven’t had any since we moved out of Euless.  So two months ago, we finally decided to buy a tank. Hubby came home with a nice 20 gallon set up and we filled it up.

 

And waited.

 

And waited.

 

And waited for that stupid thing to cycle. See, the thing is, if you just fill a tank up with water and dump in some fish, they will die. You have to wait until you have enough good bacteria for the water to be healthy.

After 6 weeks of waiting, the tank was finally ready. An last Saturday we headed as a family to the store to pick out our pets.

An hour later (after a 30 minute screaming fest, courtesy of ‘Lil), we had our selections in the tank. We picked out 2 neon tetras, 2 male guppies, and 1 glofish. All species we had experience with.  And all was well.

 

Until we realized that the glofish was a bully. He chased those guppies everywhere.  He wouldn’t let the other fish eat. And he just was a nuisance. We’ve never had that problem with fish before.  After thinking about it, we decided it was because the glofish wanted someone to school with, and we needed to buy more.  But those silly fish are $5 each! (they were on sale the week we bought them, but of course not now!) Slightly grumbling, we decided to go pick up one more that day.  After we made the decision, that dumb fish was just bugging everyone else so much (and the other fish were starting to appear sick), I decided to take it out of the tank until it had a friend to play with.

I grabbed a large bowl, filled it with tank water, and grabbed the net.  Anyone who has ever actually tried to catch a fish in one of those nets will be able to visualize the scene that occurred next. Eventually, I emerged victorious, dumped the stupid thing in the bowl, and went to tell Hubby what I had done.

 

I sat down to try and eat breakfast for the third time that day.  Hubby came into the room and looked in the bowl.

“Where did you put that fish?” he asked.

“In that bowl.”

“What bowl, there’s no fish in this one.”

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN there’s no fish. I put that glofish in there.”

“There is no fish in this bowl. Did you check the net?”

“Of COURSE I checked the net. I put the fish in the water, and he was swimming around like crazy, totally hyper.”

“Well, there’s no fish there now.”

“What did it do, jump out?”

We looked on the floor. We looked in the bowl. We looked back in the tank. Eventually we found a small puddle next to the bowl, and a track of water leading . . . back behind my awesome dresser!

Sammy the suicidal fish had jumped ship.

At this point we were both worried about the smell of a decomposing fish more than the idea of a rescue. After all, it had been about 5 minutes since he’d jumped out of the water.  Adding a 20 gallon tank to the top of a large dresser made it very hard to move. Eventually Hubby succeeded, and much to his surprise, Sammy was still flopping around. He quickly put the fish back in the water, and to everyone's surprise, Sammy started swimming around like nothing had happened.

 

 

 

 

He doesn’t bother the other fish anymore.

'cause I like it

I get to teach the women in my church this Sunday. I love to teach. I love the preparation, the new ideas, the things I learn.  In fact, if anyone is listening, I'd GLADLY give up my current calling to teach the women instead.  MUCH MUCH less stressful!

Anyway, I had this idea to make one of those fancy smancy word art thingies for a handout.  And then I decided to not actually print it out for the ladies, but just email it.  Why you ask? First of all, it will look much better in color, and I'm not going to blow the entire month's budget on one lesson.  Second of all, I also know that 99.9% of all handouts end up in the trash, and I'm not in the mood to waste paper OR money.  So, if anyone actually wants my cool picture, they can print it out for themselves!

Including you!  I saved it high res, so just click on it and save it to your computer.

This is from the book "Daughters in My Kingdom" pg 59, and I love the feel of the quote. So much courage, and joy in there.  And yes, I'm going to print it out for myself. The wall art in my bathroom has become a motivation theme - this fits just perfect!

Laree and the no good rotten very bad day

Some days disappearing to Australia really does sound rather nice.

To start off, 'Lil woke up twice screaming last night. To be fair, the first time she'd managed to soak clear through everything, but changing everything in the middle of the night doesn't make waking up in the morning any easier. And then she woke up for real at 6:30, which my body did not agree with. (apparently, it didn't agree with my alarm either. My alarm failed to go off at 5:51, so I didn't get to exercise today too).

Then I had a boy who could not cope with ANY trial today. There were 3 episodes of running away sobbing just before breakfast was over.

And it snowed today, which made everyone cranky.

And my Valspar paint sample - which I've been trying to get on Facebook for weeks now - finally came. And instead of the pretty soft green I thought I clicked on, I got neon grass green. Which after attempting to mix with other paint colors at my house, the best I was able to come up with was a dingy forest green.

So a trip to the store was in order. And while I got a better sample color mixed, I had a crazy hard time finding almost everything else on my list.

And then I forgot to go to the two other stores I've needed to go to for a week.

When we got home, everyone was starving. And my house looks like a giant picked it up, spun it around twelve times, and then tossed it back down.

But I finally got everyone settled and attempted to sample paint my kitchen. The color I love; the paint not so much. So I'm going to have to try to get a different brand of paint tinted to just the right color to match (yuck!)

And my baby has learned to sob whenever she can't get her own way, so my head has been pounding all day.

And then I tried to hang up my new shelf - which I somehow made yesterday at Happy Mom's house (in between helping her clean, cook 1495 things, and play with all the company she had). This super cool shelf . . . I measured wrong. And it's 1/4 and inch too big to fit on my wall.

So I finally FINALLY got a minute to myself to check emails. And kohls is having this great sale and I find this awesome bedding that I love to try for my new bed. (yup, I got a new bed. It's awesome, but I haven't blogged about it 'cause it looks really stupid with my deader-than-dead bedspread on it. And I tried to get a new one online, but when it came it looked really REALLY stupid, so I had to send it back and I haven't been able to find anything better until today that didn't cost an arm and a leg).

And instead of telling you everything I tried to do in the next 90 minutes, lets just say kohls didn't have it at their store, their charge cards are stupid, and since my house is 45 years old, I'm pretty sure my city and zip code are right, no matter what their data base says, and no I don't want to take a phone survey about it!

And I forgot AGAIN to go to those two stores I've needed to for a week.

And the bread I was making for dinner rose too long so it's going to taste funny.

And I seriously SERIOUSLY wish it was just bedtime right now so this no good rotten very bad day could just be done!!!!

2.5 hours and counting. Anyone know a good movie about Australia?

Scherenschnitte and other new vocab words.

(yes, I want to say bless you after that title too!)

SO I should be packing for a fabulous trip to see some family tomorrow. But, since the plane is now full, we aren't leaving until Monday. So instead I thought I'd kill some time on the computer.

'Lil has Roseola. It's one of those diseases that I've heard about, but never really thought about before. I had no idea she had it until last night, when she broke out in this weird rash all over her body.

On the plus side, I know why she had a pushing 105 fever for a couple of days. And, once the rash shows up, they aren't contagious, and are pretty much over it. And since there isn't a thing a doctor could do for it, it's really ok that I never took her in.

A few months ago, I learned about scherenschnitte from this site. Her work is amazing! (even more amazing, check this place out!) Scherenschnitte is basically German for really REALLY fancy paper cutting. I love that she posts free templates. She does it all with an exacto knife. I prefer to let my silhouette do the work!

(this was totally Happy Mom's b-day present. The first one was cuter - with blue paper. But it was too big for the frame.
So she got the less cute cream paper instead!)

My son is currently declaring every toy in the room as a "bad guy." This of course means that he then gets to knock them over and make strange sounds. Listening to boys play is always interesting!

had to share

I really am working on posting a fab tutorial, but I had to share this. My daughter just got a pretzel rod stuck in her mouth.

My 13 month old daughter.

Stuck like you'd prop open that man eating crocodile to save your life.

it was freakin' hilarious!


*She's totally fine. It's not like she was eating unobserved or anything. She just bit off enough to make it the wrong size, then wedged it in there. At least, I sure thought it was funny!

Just a little something to smile about

(this is honestly the milk ring from 'Lil's bottle. Now how fun is that!)


*There is no school today (like 3 inches of snow last night!)
*My house is clean.
*Everyone is still asleep.
*I got a new book in the mail yesterday.
*I've had 5 whole days with Hubby home.
*I'm off to bake something yummy for breakfast.

What makes you happy today?

Woot Woot!

Do you follow Ana White's site? You know, the one with all the fabulous FREE furniture plans (which I've made a couple now)?

I do. But I don't always read everything in her posts. I mean, I don't have any interest in making a doll highchair, so didn't click on that one.

Her last post was about bunk beds. Well, I already did that one too. So again, didn't read it.

Then, all of the sudden, I was getting a ton of comments on the girls' room. I was surprised, since it's been a while since Remodelaholic featured that one. So I looked at my referrals, and realized they were all coming from Ana. I clicked on over, and she totally featured my room with these bunk bed plans.

I have to tell you, I needed this today. I have a wonderful life, but all morning long I was feeling very not wonderful. Very not important, not inspiring, not cool. You know how life has a tendency to get you down with the daily dishes, cleaning, running around, not to mention feverish kiddos. I was just really struggling.

It's amazing how a little affirmation can really help you remember that life is great!

Thanks Ana! You rock!

New finds I now love

1. Good Eats. This is one I've loved for years. We do not have cable at our house. We did, for one full year back in 2007, but only because it was included in our rent. Since then, we just haven't had the desire spring that much dough for that much crud. But one of the tragedies of this is the total lack of Food Network. It's been a thorn in my side for years now.

However, I just discovered that they are now posting limited episodes of the best shows. We just spent an hour watching Alton Brown teach us about tuna, oil, and crackers. I have so missed the insane amount of knowledge I glean from these. (Full confessions, I remember staying up way too late watching an entire episode about pepper. Seriously. Who knew you could talk for 21 minutes just about pepper?)

And now, my kids are walking around the basement telling each other how to combine plastic parts of chicken with one part cucumber, a pear, and to bake until golden brown and delicious!

2. Confessions of a Cookbook Queen. This one was a link of a link of a link. But after perusing her blog for an hour or so (what can I say, all those yummy pictures!), I'm a new follower. Her stories are funny, the pictures are yummy, and it's a food blog full of stuff I might actually want to make! I'm totally picking up some candy corn to whip this one up later!

3. Uncle Jay explains again, a link of a link. Basically, he posts videos every Monday talking about the past week's news. He also puts things very basically, so kids could understand it, but the little jokes and side notes are all for the adults. Very funny, very easy, very worth a bookmark.


So that's what I spent my morning on (instead of preparing my primary lesson, cleaning my house, or working on a project that was supposed to be easy and amazing and blogged about this morning, but instead has turned frustrating, complicated, and procrastinated for another day!) What new things have caught your fancy recently?

Words in my Heart

There have been several blog posts in the past few days that have touched me. To be honest, I do not have words to explain just why. Some have talked about family. Some about womanhood. Some have been funny. Some have been poignant. But each one has made me grateful to "know" this friend.

Did you ever think something like this was possible? Blogger friends go so far beyond the old pen pal routine. Words that you write, words that you read, can touch someone you have never met in person. Your presence is there for anyone to find. Sometimes that's good. Sometimes it's not so fun. But what an amazing responsibility we have, to bless others' lives.

I have an inkling why I'm so pensive lately. But that's a topic for another day, another post. For tonight, I just wanted to do a general shout out.

Thank you.

Thank you for reading my ramblings. Thank you for writing back. Thank you for making me think. Thank you for making me laugh. Thank you for making me know I'm not alone. Thank you for inspiring me. Thank you for chastising me. Thank you for helping me to find myself again.

And yes, if you are reading this, know you are included in that thank you. By helping me connect, you have helped me too.

Did my girl have a lobotomy?

'cause I swear she's a completely different girl since we moved.

Maybe this needs some background information. You see, Girly-Lou is a wimp. That's not the nicest thing to say about your stinkin cute daughter, but it's also the truth. The first thing she was ever terrified of- bubbles. Now, granted, she was only 10 months old, but still, what kid is scared of blowing bubbles. She has a very hard time with perseverance, and in all honestly, most days would make a perfect queen. To be able to sit there and have every whim granted by servants so she never had to lift a finger - yah, she's all over that.

Other things she has been scared/terrified of:
the vacuum
sand
dogs
birds
cats
skunks (not that she's ever actually seen a real one)
failure
new shoes
anyone with a beard
any stranger
any family member she hasn't seen in more than 2 days
anything that can move on its own, especially if it has 4 or more legs, including on occasion, crawling babies.

You can see some of these are normal things. But others (new shoes anyone?), not so much.

Which would be why I was totally shocked when this happened:

That would be my scared-of-babies daughter holding a hermit crab. She was in heaven. No fear whatsoever. Let him crawl all over her and just sat there with that satisfied smile on her face. Buddy was fascinated, but was not going to touch that thing with a 10 foot pole.

And then last night, when I thought they were asleep, she comes downstairs holding something between two fingers. "Mom, this was in my hair." Me, thinking it was a rock or a leaf or something said, "what is it". "Um, I don't know", as she shoves it in my face. It was totally a bug. Some flattish brown kind the size of my fingernail that I've never seen before. And the legs were still moving. No fear at all, just calmly showing me this bug that was sleeping with her.

Maybe I can grow a spider smasher yet.