Fish Picking

After a week of careful water balancing and monitoring, our aquarium was ready for new fish. I suggested a pair of Oscars, knowing full well that E despises them, but hoping I could sneak them in by using their scientific name (no luck). So I constructed a list of likely candidates based on size, aggressiveness and community living, while E looked at pictures from my horde of aquarium books. A half-hour of analysis resulted in E’s recommendation for a marine aquarium. It took me some time to recover from the horror of his suggestion, since a beautiful and healthy marine aquarium unquestionably requires a Ph.D. in Aquarium Science plus a six-figure income. After some debate (and another request for Oscars), we headed off to visit our local pet supermarkets.

Only one pet store in town existed when I was a kid. A mediaeval place called Jerry’s Pets--where I purchased many a scrawny newt and lanky salamander. An anathema to modern pet lovers, it was unsanitary, foul smelling and inhabited solely by animals of increasing decrepitude and disease. Remarkably, Jerry’s Pets had a monopoly on the industry until I reached highschool, when overnight the city seemed populated by competitors. Only one out of the almost ten stores was tolerable, the rest were regrettably Jerry’s clones.

The arrival of the pet superstores quickly changed that. This year Jerry’s Pets and the last of its former rivals closed due to the opening of a second pet superstore (Pet’smart). While I believe that big business wrecks local enterprise, and that only a devoted hobbyist can manage a superlative pet business, I’ll invariably frequent any clean, modern store with healthy stock.

Despite my preoccupation with the parameters of fish selection, beholding acres of colorful and vigorous fish restored my childlike wonder. Welcome to our new danios, gouramis and rainbowfish!

Agua Peligrosa

I suspect that our swimming pool is sentient. It is obviously warmer and more buoyant than other pools and it even seems to quiver with gratitude when I haul out the cleaning equipment. Most convincing of all are the sacrifices. Every week, particularly on Fridays, I find a bloated body conveniently circling the skimmer intake. Usually it’s a lizard or toad, occasionally a bird. As a rule, I recover the offerings, since E has a morbid horror of anything remotely reptilian (and dead).

After a year and a half of collecting pool victims, I had yet to rescue a living creature. But today was different! Inspecting the latest casualty, I noticed a feeble wriggling, almost obscured by the whirling induced by the skimmer. It was an upside down toad, which had cleverly managed to float himself at an angle to keep his nostrils above the water.

After putting the toad in a peaceful place to recover from his ordeal, I spent the balance of the afternoon constructing a toad-proof section of fence around the pool. I think the pool will have to content itself with birds and lizards for a time.

After The Downpour

Preparing for new fish!

Step one: Sterilize the aquarium. I bombed the aquarium with every medication I could think of since hauling it out to the driveway to scrub everything with Kosher salt was impractical.

Step Two: Siphon out the old water. The ucky old water was transported to the drain at the back of the house with our fancy siphon/garden hose contraption we bought a year ago when we were moving.

Step Three: Holy Crap! It's not supposed to rain!!! It rained. I mean it RAINED. The sun room flooded. The bedroom closet flooded. Our back porch area became--a lake. When I opened up the back door, water whooshed in, practically floating Misty's water bowl away. Water was even pouring through her dog door! As the water level rose, I was praying that E would be home before the it reached the living room carpet! Fortunately, the rain dwindled away and E dashed home, rescuing the carpet. Nevertheless, the sun room was filled with a mixture of murky rain and foul aquarium water.

What a mess! And yet, how amusing as well. Ironically, we used the monster siphon contraption to suck the water out of the sun room--we were sure to put the hose outlet far away from the drain!

Low Fluid

Today my ultrasound revealed that my amniotic fluid is low. That means that I need to drink plenty of fluids and lay on my left side (good luck). Since low fluid can be dangerous for Malootka, if my fluid rating drops to a 5 my midwife Clara will have labor induced.

So I need to go to the doctors office every day for a non-stress test. That means being hooked up to a monitor that records the baby's heart rate and my contractions. If the baby's heart accelerates in a predicable pattern, he's just fine and we don't need to induce labor. Will I be able to do this without staring at the heart monitor non-stop? Unlikely. Time to enlist a team of distractors to preserve my sanity.

Bulldozers

This morning the droning of bulldozers once again shattered the quiet of our semi-rural neighborhood. Our home is adjacent to two empty lots beyond the city limits, deliberately avoiding the burgeoning tracts of houses sprouting up to the east and west of town.

Six months after our purchase, new houses began erupting around us at an alarming rate. So much for believing realtors. The bulldozers began clearing the chaparral scrub directly behind us two months ago. I was devastated. From the sunroom, I witnessed the dozers caroming about, belching black smoke and stirring up clouds of opaque dust that left my skin feeling gritty.

Later, as I watered a new segment of my rock garden, one of the drivers had the audacity to wave at me. Reflexively I waved back and spent the next three hours wondering if his next act of friendliness would include leaping over the back wall and dragging me off to spend the afternoon riding shotgun on his dozer. Since then, the bulldozers return at irregular intervals, roaming the lots behind us for few days only to disappear for a week or two.

Despite their ritual, the lots look much the as they did after their first day of development, as if the bulldozers were simply rehearsing for some more sinister task. Resigned to their presence, I ignored them today, until I encountered the Waver at an intersection silted up by yesterday's rain. He was scooping up sand and delicately depositing it onto a remote mound. I watched in puzzlement, since the intersection is far removed from their work site.

Maneuvering his machine, he noticed me, and gave me one of the goofiest, most sincere smiles I have ever seen. He backed up and motioned for me to proceed. I waved back mechanically, a bit stupefied by the situation until I grasped the altruism of his actions. Although I cannot totally embrace the idea of bulldozers happily clearing the land for smiling people who will love their new home as much as we do, I will return greetings to the Waver with genuine sincerity.

Water Damage

We spent most of the early morning bailing water out of the sun room with an assortment of towels, mop buckets and a garden hose-powered siphon. The rain was beyond torrential. Driving to Lowe's in the afternoon, I was shocked to see the damage to our local roads. Landscaping was washed into the street, arroyos silted up intersections and even E's work was flooded with three inches of water. What an ungodly mess! On top of that, the plumbing in the bathroom is acting up again. We were flooded (again) over the weekend when the water supply in the main bathroom broke overnight and soaked everything. The worst part is the smell. Sickly sweet, like rest-home rooms and pungent rooibos tea. There must be some secret, unwholesome process involved in constructing particle board bathroom vanities. Blah. Nothing like a reality check via Fox news to make all my problems seem inconsequential. Mopping the floor versus waiting on the roof for a helicopter. I suppose everyone feels the same across the nation. Daily hassles frequently seem all consuming until you connect with others who cope with much worse. It's humbling. I should make more of an effort to appreciate my life on a daily basis.

Farewell to Fish

Today, the last of our tinfoil barbs passed away. I will miss their googly eyes and spooky antics, especially since I feel responsible for their demise. I suspect that they outgrew their tank--four nine-inch fish in a 65 gall on aquarium is pushing capacity. Lately, it seemed as if they were continuously ill, covered with cottony scratches from ricocheting about the aquarium. Every fish owner knows the litany of water quality, filtration, aeration and medication necessary for healthy pets, and how frustrating it is when all your best efforts fail. I suppose a little death should not be so troubling. But it can nag at you. A piece of the world that you were responsible for is gone forever. This little failure generates thoughts of future bigger failures. When will I witness the deterioration and demise of a loved one, with the same feelings of impotence? Life continues despite your success or failure. Maybe that is why some people think that God must be forgiving. Actually, you have to forgive yourself. Maybe in a week or so I'll buy some new fish.

Clarke-mas

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Ewbliette and I have been friends since college when we met at an on-campus work study job. One overcast day, we were monotonously filing GRE scores when the subject of a mutual acquaintance’s suicide came up. The young woman ended her life by running a car in her mother’s garage. Since I was friendly with the girl before she switched to Ewbliette’s high school, I had a clear impression of her. She was a dramatic, but very popular person. So I asked Ewbliette, "God, where were her friends?"

Ewbliette replied, "Well, they certainly weren’t in her garage." Shocked by her own candor, her eyes widened (was she formulating an apology?). Before she could comment, I laughed. And laughed a little bit more. The world is too terrible to do anything but laugh when you can.

We became instant best buddies, now and then sneaking off early from work to drink mudslide cocktails behind A mountain. I wish I had a tape recorder--our afternoons were so hilarious. As a matter of fact, she is one of the funniest people I have ever met. She has more than mere wit, she has an uncanny knack for absurd observations and incongruous connections. Salvador Dali meets Mitch Hedberg.

I remember overnights at Ewbliette’s with great fondness. I lived at home (cheaper) and was therefore awed by the idea of having a place to yourself. The smell of her home was a mixture of "somebody might have smoked here once, long ago" and books. If you walked through her door, you would have the sensation that you were in a well loved but overlooked bookstore. The only thing missing was a string of bells on the door handle. Funny, even today I always leave her place with an armful of books. Old habits die hard.

After graduation, Ewbliette’s work relocated her several times throughout the country. Ultimately, she said, "Screw this," and returned to New Mexico. Once again, she lives in an awesome place--an authentic adobe home in a historic settlement just outside of city limits. As if that is not cool enough, her neighbors raise roosters. Roosters! I love, love, love, the racket they make! Perhaps I could attribute my affection to the countless pleasant evenings I’ve spent listening to them crow.

Aside from gobbling nachos and gabbing endlessly on her back porch, the two of us do the usual girl stuff--lunch, dinner, movies, and shop, shop, shop. In general, we get stares because we are too loud, too happy, and too silly. When we are not scandalizing various sales associates with our outrageous commentary or deafening fellow restaurant patrons, we cast runes, review tabloids, take long spontaneous drives, and discuss the evils of spiders. Everybody should have a friend like Ewbliette!

Patricia, AKA Ewbliette

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Ewbliette and I have been friends since college when we met at an on-campus work study job. One overcast day, we were monotonously filing GRE scores when the subject of a mutual acquaintance’s suicide came up. The young woman ended her life by running a car in her mother’s garage. Since I was friendly with the girl before she switched to Ewbliette’s high school, I had a clear impression of her. She was a dramatic, but very popular person. So I asked Ewbliette, "God, where were her friends?"

Ewbliette replied, "Well, they certainly weren’t in her garage." Shocked by her own candor, her eyes widened (was she formulating an apology?). Before she could comment, I laughed. And laughed a little bit more. The world is too terrible to do anything but laugh when you can.

We became instant best buddies, now and then sneaking off early from work to drink mudslide cocktails behind A mountain. I wish I had a tape recorder--our afternoons were so hilarious. As a matter of fact, she is one of the funniest people I have ever met. She has more than mere wit, she has an uncanny knack for absurd observations and incongruous connections. Salvador Dali meets Mitch Hedberg.

I remember overnights at Ewbliette’s with great fondness. I lived at home (cheaper) and was therefore awed by the idea of having a place to yourself. The smell of her home was a mixture of "somebody might have smoked here once, long ago" and books. If you walked through her door, you would have the sensation that you were in a well loved but overlooked bookstore. The only thing missing was a string of bells on the door handle. Funny, even today I always leave her place with an armful of books. Old habits die hard.

After graduation, Ewbliette’s work relocated her several times throughout the country. Ultimately, she said, "Screw this," and returned to New Mexico. Once again, she lives in an awesome place--an authentic adobe home in a historic settlement just outside of city limits. As if that is not cool enough, her neighbors raise roosters. Roosters! I love, love, love, the racket they make! Perhaps I could attribute my affection to the countless pleasant evenings I’ve spent listening to them crow.

Aside from gobbling nachos and gabbing endlessly on her back porch, the two of us do the usual girl stuff--lunch, dinner, movies, and shop, shop, shop. In general, we get stares because we are too loud, too happy, and too silly. When we are not scandalizing various sales associates with our outrageous commentary or deafening fellow restaurant patrons, we cast runes, review tabloids, take long spontaneous drives, and discuss the evils of spiders. Everybody should have a friend like Ewbliette!

A Week of Friends: The Folks

From the Left: Mom, Dad and their best friends Bob and Pat in San Carlos, Mexico.

 

Dad

Raised in rural Tennessee, my father still has the distinctive drawl and mannerisms of a Southern gentleman. Ten years older than my mother, Dad is a retired Doctor of Mathematics. In his younger years, he was an adventurer in the Hemmingway vein. He split his time between hunting big game, working in Alaska’s gold mines and attending the University. In college, he developed an unexpected talent for theater. In fact, his yearbooks feature many photos and comments on his singular style and humor. Even now he receives emails from his old buddies asking for him to visit or liven-up reunions.

Dad abandoned hunting after an epiphany in the Alaskan wilderness. Now, if you ask him about hunting, he’ll tell you, "I only shoot wildlife with a camera." Since he retired, Dad pursues his favorite hobbies with abandon. He reads continuously, often fiction from 1920-1950. He devotes a few hours every morning to playing guitar and singing in Spanish or Russian. And finally, he grooms and maintains the website Ramblin' Cameras featuring the over seven hundred photos that Mom and he have taken over the years.

 

Mom

My Mom was also raised in a rural area and came to New Mexico "to escape Ohio." An expert on southwestern flora and fauna, Mom has a prodigious memory for roads, trails and paths. If she saw a clearing of Echinocerus triglochidiati between two arroyos north of Bishop’s Peak fifteen years ago, she can take you to the exact spot today (provided there is not a house on top of it). She seems incapable of getting lost, and has an impressive store of detailed logistical information for every place that she’s been.

Mom’s talents are eclectic. She can give you sound advice on automotive repair and specific instructions on making Yorkshire pudding or Hollandaise sauce. She pampers her collection of exotic flowering cacti; often adjusting her elaborately contrived shade panels twice daily to produce optimal flowering. Mom writes the most delightful stream of consciousness emails. You almost need someone playing bongos in the background when you read her messages aloud--they are half James Joyce and Irma Bombeck.