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The dreaded Tank o’ Death

 

(Let me guess that you’re smiling, M. – you know what’s coming!)

 

My kids are pet-deprived.  They beg and wheedle, pleading for anything with fur and legs.  When their heartfelt beseeching falls on deaf ears, they lower their standards and implore for scales and tails.

 

It’s not as if I want to deny them a pet.  I had pets while growing up.  We had a dog around the house for as long as I can remember.  We also had the occasional goldfish or two, turtles, hamsters, mice, strays or wildlife that needed mending.  It was an important part of learning to appreciate the rest of the living world around us.  It was an essential part of learning to nurture and care for others, too; we learned to worry about some other creature’s well-being besides our own.

 

My husband, on the other hand, is not a pet person.  His father was raised on a farm; animals do not belong in the house, ever, was the dictum under which his father lived and raised my hubby.  So, no pets.  Ever.  (Since my hubby wasn’t raised on a farm, no pets outside, either.) 

 

To a pet person like me, it seems so incredibly sterile not to have a pet.  It’s a shame not to have a little creature who unconditionally accepts you the way you are as a child, when everything else seems to be working against you.  Your dog or cat doesn’t care that your hands are dirty or that your homework isn’t done; they’ll still cuddle and sleep at your feet whether you’ve taken your bath or not.  They’re happy when the ice cream falls on the carpet, even if your parents aren’t.  I want this for my kids.  The pet part, not the ice-cream-on-the-carpet-undone-homework part. 

 

Hubby and I continue to butt heads about this matter, not seeing eye-to-eye at all.  The only thing that seems to succeed with him is the argument that it’s science to study animals.  The argument just doesn’t seem to work with getting furry-legged creatures, only on tails-and-scales.

 

Because the kids needed a pet and because my husband had little defense against it (at some point in college he’d actually broken down and deviated from his personal programming, keeping a good sized aquarium), we acquired a 10 gallon aquarium and a handful of fish.  He actually bit on the science thing, thinking that it would be good for the kids to learn more about fish after seeing them at the zoo in aquariums.  The kids were tickled, sitting and staring at the fish the first week we got them, amazed that some other living creature made it into and survived in our house.

 

Not for long.

 

They began to die, randomly, one or two at a time.  It was probably just shock, maybe the water wasn’t conducive to the type we had.  After they ALL died, save for one lone white Comet, we tried another batch of fish, adding treatments for stress and improving the fishes’ protective slime coat, etc. 

 

They died anyhow – except for the one lone white Comet.

 

Now we’ve been through several dozen fish.  The man who had successfully kept a much larger fish tank for all his years in college had no idea why they were dying; perhaps it was the algae content in the tank, he wondered. 

 

We got more fish.  They died.  More slowly this time, but they still died.

 

Except for the lone white Comet who the kids now affectionately called “Whitey”.

 

(Yeah, I know, how original.  But they’re kids, what do you expect?  They didn’t want to anthropomorphize him any more than they had to; they’d already been through so much trauma, couldn’t handle bonding any more intimately to Whitey through better naming only to lose him too.)

 

My daughter was getting really quite frustrated.  She tried to be as banal and blasé as my spouse about the repeated fish deaths, but she’d still break up in tears when we weren’t looking.  She’d say, Oh nuts, another one kicked the bucket, fish him out with a net and flush him down the toilet.  I’d find her later in the day, sniffling quietly to herself.  (You can imagine her heartbreak when Whitey died after two long years.  She even skipped the toilet burial and placed him in his own special grave in the garden, complete with customized headstone.)  She’d say angry things about her dad, wondering why we had to put up with lousy dying fish instead of just getting a nice, cuddly cat. 

 

I don’t get it either.  Very hard to argue that one, having had a beloved pet cat for 17 years.

 

I’d gotten pretty fed up with it, too, begun to call that burbling cesspool in the guest room “The Tank of Death”.  The Tank o’ Death.

 

Even my parents feel sorry for the kids.  My dad, another non-pet person growing up, has softened considerably after having pets for the 20+ years that kids lived at home.  While they stayed with us this winter, my mom caught him saying good night each evening to the couple of tough fish that lingered in the Tank o’ Death.  Hmm, maybe that helped their longevity.  The folks bought the kids even more fish to add to the tank this past winter, before leaving for Florida.  Like their predecessors, they all died within the month.  My folks were as disappointed as my kids at this development; my mother sighing into the phone before she yelled to my dad in the distance, The fish died -- all of them.  Yes, again.  Dead.

 

A week ago I took the kids to the annual Fun Fair at my daughter’s school; they were all worked up about the goldfish game.  My daughter won a few fish last year at this event; they survived several months, surpassing our now highly limited expectations.  They both won coupons for more free fish this year; I didn’t let them get free live fish at the Fair, having seen the kids manning the booth rustling them out into plastic bags with their bare, grubby hands multiple times.  Why jinx the already lousy odds for these fish, I thought.

 

Last night we went to redeem the coupons and get the fish, while hubby was out of town and couldn’t protest.  I had an ulterior motive, though. 

 

While up north visiting this past weekend, my son had a massive freak out when a friendly neighborhood dog came up and licked him.  Licked him, for crying out loud.  My poor son screamed and cried for fifteen minutes, sounding more like a pit bull had ripped off his leg.  It took forty-five minutes to get him to stop clinging to me.  That was the last straw – there is no way my child should be this terrified of a dog.  We’re going to get a dog.

 

Between picking out more Comets and getting aquarium supplies at the pet store last night, I had the kids check out dogs as well as cats.  I’ve counseled them: their dad will be incredibly angry when the day comes, that we will take our time and shop for the special four-legged furry creature who’ll become a family member.  Warned them that they will have to learn to pick up after something else as well as themselves.

 

Read them the riot act all the way home from the store about squealing to dad about the dog until after I've handled discussing it with him.  Cautioned them not to get all worked up until they see the pet cross the threshold, while testing the pH of the Tank o’ Death and slowly coaxing the new victims into the tank.  They were giddy with excitement anyhow, over both the promise of new fish and the promise of a new furry pet.

 

One of the four new fish died already overnight.  But at least the kids took it better, talking to each other as they stared at the poor little carcass about how great the dog will be when it gets here.

 

I’m even getting a little excited.  Maybe when the dog arrives we can retire the Tank o’ Death.

 

  3:57:22 PM    comment []

O

 

Funny, you don’t look anything like yourself!

 

It’s always amusing to me to hear someone and then compare the auditory-based image I’ve formulated against the actual person when I meet them.  People rarely look the way they sound – what do red hair and freckles sound like, after all?  Does a tall, skinny Asian guy born and raised in Houston sound any different than a short white guy born in the same neighborhood?  Did my voice change as I got older and added a dress size?  Not likely (thank goodness).

 

Several of the jobs I’ve held have been phone intensive.  I worked on the phone with people for years, hearing their voices every day, yet never meeting them in the flesh.   I could hear emotion; I knew their state of happiness, sadness, stress, but never their physical appearance.  Sometimes age was apparent, but not always; the age I heard on the phone more often mirrored the speaker’s self-perception of their own internal age, not their chronological age. 

 

At one job, I handled logistics, ordering transportation for commodities; I was on the phone with brokerage firms all day, asking for trucks and expediting freight.  One broker in particular became rather smitten with me although I never encouraged him.  I’m not certain what he thought I was like; I never asked, Gee, do I sound like a tall, leggy blonde?  Maybe I should have, to straighten him out.  Intent on seeing me, he traded his job for a day and made a sales call which ordinarily would have been handled by their representative.  We expected him, so it wasn’t like it was a creepy stalking kind of thing.  My supervisor warned me, He sounds so great on the phone, but he’s a crusty old farmer-looking kind of guy.  (I had to wonder why she’d shared this observation herself, but I didn’t want to go there.)  My mental image wasn’t of a male model for GQ – the man had his own farm, drove a truck for more than 15 years before moving into dispatch and then a broker’s position.  (What do you imagine in your mind?  You’re probably pretty close.)

 

I wasn’t disappointed.  He was.  Imagine his dismay, expecting a tall, leggy blonde woman and finding a short, mystery-ethnic girl instead.  Poor thing. 

 

Only after reading this article at the Calgary Herald so many years later did I wonder why he thought I was blonde or leggy…what does a tall, leggy blonde sound like? 

 

Uma Thurman?  Gwyneth Paltrow?  Anna Nicole Smith?  Jessica Rabbit?

 

  11:31:04 AM    comment []

U

 

Surprise!  Looting and vandalism, just for you!!  Antiquities and books, too!

 

On-going idiocy.  Oh sure, Iraq is a humanitarian nightmare, or so we’ve been hearing for a long time.  The Iraqi people have been oppressed and malnourished for years.  Rah-rah hooray, the military's rescued them, instantly alleviating their suffering; how could they steal and destroy their own assets after being freed? 

 

Duh. 

 

Take a bunch of people that have tormented into submission, starved for at least a decade, suddenly take off the cuffs, rapidly throw them into an environment without any accountability or social structure and what exactly do you think will happen?  

 

Looting and vandalism happens here in the States in times of crisis (let alone day-to-day); we plan for it along with the rest of the fall-out that normally accompanies a crisis.  Heck, the Army was prepared for it in advance of the RNC convention in 2000.

 

Why in the hell did the military think it wouldn’t happen in Iraq?

 

(And don’t give me that “would you rather save lives or antiques” pap – it was never an either-or proposition.  If the military was really intent on saving Iraqi lives, they would have handled humanitarian aid differently.  Like embedding aid workers instead of or with journalists.)

 

  9:21:43 AM    comment []

U

 

RantsCounterRants:  Thick as a brick, or a compulsion to spend money we don't have?

 

Does this guy not understand that if the checking account is low we don’t want give away more monetary gifts?  Does he have a personality disorder manifesting itself in overspending?  Who the hell are the so-called economists advising this guy – Cheney?  Rumsfeld?  Corporate cronies?  No actual appointed economist with post-graduates in economics and experience in private sector economic planning? 

 

I have to believe there’s no real economists on staff advising you-know-who.  Otherwise I’m being ripped off not only for the amount of time Bush and Congress spend arguing about this stuff and any useless, counter-productive tax cuts; I’m also being nicked for incompetent economists’ wages.

 

That would really piss me off.  Especially if veterans and poor children suffer the most for the financial shortfall caused by misallocation of funds.

  

  9:05:24 AM    comment []

m

 

Full Pink Moon

 

Hurry, check outside your window facing west before 6:00 am local time if the weather is clear in your area!  You may yet catch the Full Pink Moon!

 

It wasn’t officially a full moon, but it was pretty close and lovely to behold last evening from what was a balmy Michigan location at that time.  (It’s now a cloudy and brisk 37 degrees F.)

 

Unfortunately, the full moon always seems to mess with my son’s sleeping habits.  He didn’t want to go to sleep until 11:00 pm.  Very predictable; by the dark of the moon he’ll be crashing early each night and sleeping hard.

 

Next month:  Full Flower Moon on 15-MAY – add to your calendar!

 

  7:06:06 AM    comment []