Last Monday started with cooling down the fish, warming up the fish, lubricating the fish, and then feeding the fish.
Eh? Wuzzat? You need an explanation for that?
Well…all right. You see, ever since I resituated the fish tank onto the bathroom counter for convenience’s sake (although it may or may not be convenient), we have had trouble controlling the temperature of said tank. Any time someone takes a shower or a bath, the tank warms up several degrees. Any time we leave the furnace vent open and the furnace comes on, the tank warms up several degrees. Any time we forget to turn off the tank’s hood light, the tank warms up several degrees. And goldfish do not like to be kept toasty warm, thank you very kindly; they prefer a water temperature of 65-68°.
Sooo…I dip a couple of gallons out of the tank, and replace it with two gallons of cold water. Sometimes I decide to do a partial cleaning job, and empty the tank down by half--and that’s when I occasionally get the water too cold and have to either turn on the hood light for awhile or replace a cold gallon of water with a warmer gallon.
Once that is done, I put in a teaspoon of TetraAquaAquaSafeMakesTapWaterSafeForFishNeutralizesChlorineChloramineAndHeavyMetalsHarmfulToFishEnhancesNaturalProtectiveSlime-CoatingOfFishCompleteFormulaWorksInSeconds Water Conditioner, after which I give them a helping of TetraFinGoldfishFlakesPrimaryMealFoodForGoldfishAndSmallKoiNutritiousDietCon-tainsEssentialNutrientsAndAddedVitaminCForBestResultsFeedTwoToThreeTimesDailyOnlyAs-MuchAsYourFishCanConsumeWithinSeveralMinutesSeeStoreForDetails.
And there you have it: cool the fish, warm the fish, oil the fish, feed the fish.
So the only questions you might still have are:
a) What does ‘Tetra’ mean? and
b) What are Koi?
The answers to these questions are:
a) ‘Tetra’, literally a Greek prefix meaning ‘four’, also comes from the name of an Italian coloratura soprano, Luisa Tetrazzini, who was especially admired for her high notes and staccato passages. Therefore, we can safely deduct that TetraAqua and TetraFin are products that will assist your fish in singing high notes in four-part harmony to the Fins; and
b) ‘Koi’ is a kind of carp that originated in China, where, as you know, people once spent a good deal of their time carping--i.e. ‘finding fault and complaining fretfully’--about foot-binding, which is not at all a comfortable practice, as anyone who has worn their shoes too tight can attest.
And with these fishy matters properly explained, explicated, and elucidated, we shall proceed on to more important Topics of Interest.
Hester has been going to my mother’s house each day after school this week, taking Dorcas’ place for half an hour or so, while Dorcas goes to Hannah’s house to help tuck Aaron in bed for his nap. Aaron weighs about 35 pounds, and Hannah cannot lift him for another week at least. Aaron loves Dorcas, and accepts this little change in routine with aplomb. He is delighted with his new little sister, and never even acted like anything was out of the ordinary when they brought her home from the hospital.
“Waa-waa!” he says, pointing at baby Joanna. (Take-off on 'Jo-WAAna'.) After the first three days, he learned to say ‘Baby’.Hannah is still a bit worried about the baby; when she tries to feed her, she falls asleep before she has hardly eaten, and will hardly wake back up and eat. But she’s gained weight, and seems contented and healthy…
Larry spent most of the day Monday working on our front porch. He got it poured, and then covered it with burlap so the cement didn’t freeze.
I have been hauling bag after bag of High-Class Stuff and Things to various used-clothes drop-boxes. At several of these boxes, there are signs that say, “We need clothing and shoes.” Sooo…which category do you think a little red tricycle fits into? How about toddler bed railings? (I removed our fingerprints before I deposited those items, just in case the Box Managers didn’t properly appreciate them.)It snowed a bit Tuesday, just enough to make the back drive and the bumper of our enclosed trailer slippery, right where I needed to step. I spent most of the day hauling boxes out to the trailer and packing them in as tightly as I could so as to avoid avalanches, landslides, and sudden mass descents of jetsam and flotsam. It was cold--about 14°--but I was hot. I soon shed my coat. I had to take a break every now and then; those boxes are heavy. Especially the ones full of books. The littles helped for a while when they came home from school. I started at the front of the trailer, worked my way around one side…and we realized just how heavy all that stuff was when we noticed that the trailer was sitting decidedly whoppyjaw.
Caleb climbed into the trailer, came rushing to help me lift a heavy box atop another --and smacked headlong into a wide, low shelf, hitting it so hard that it knocked him flat. I grabbed him and carefully hoisted him back up off that cold metal floor, holding onto him so that he didn’t tumble back down again, expecting to find an enormous gash on his head requiring multiple stitches. But there was no cut, thankfully; I could hardly find a bump, even. He must have hit the flat side rather than the edge. Whew. I sent the poor child into the house for a Tylenol and told him to sit down and read something. Or color. But just sit, and practice The Art of Not Getting Hurt. Caleb might not know it, but I like his head just as well as he does!
Larry worked at the house a good deal of the day, measuring and cutting and figuring out how to make the stairs.
“The landing will be slightly slanted,” he told me, explaining where he was going to put it so that people coming down the stairs wouldn’t bang their heads on the rafters.
When he finished his explanation, I said, “That sounds good. Tell me more about the sloped landing.”
“No, no,” he replied, “Not sloped; slanted.”
I laughed at him. “That was a joke, you.”
For supper, we had Canadian bacon pizza and vegetables, with the latter served first, and no second helpings of the former until the latter was finished. Larry went back out to the house, and I, aching from the topmost vertebra to the bottommost toe, seated myself in a big chair to do nothing more strenuous than push buttons on the remote. I would watch Installing and Refurbishing Hardwood Floors and Landscaping Made Easy.
Before I was done with the first video, the battery went dead on the remote.
Isn’t that just the way???
Luckily, Caleb was nearby, and he helpfully took the remote and trotted off to find a battery. After only one false start with another dead’n, we were off and running again. I wrapped my afghan closer about me, sent Hester and Lydia around the house to see if there was an unlocked window somewhere or perhaps a door ajar, after which we cranked the thermostat up another five degrees, and then I learned how to lay a decorative brick sidewalk. Ooooo, I’ve got so many Big Ideas, I’d have to be triplets and all three of me live to be 500 years old in order to get everything done that I’d like to do. I have always been completely mystified by people who are ‘bored’. They’re bored with this, they’re bored with that, here they’re bored, there they’re bored, with everything they’re bored, bored… EIEIO.
Bored! How could anyone be bored, when there is so much to do in this ol’ world of ours??!!! Once a body has done every last necessary thing he ever needs to do (how one arrives at such a point, I don’t know; but … anyway … ), and then after he does all the things he likes to do (take pictures… play the piano… sing… read to the children… play with the grandchildren… sew… cross-stitch… paint pictures… plant flowers… bake cookies… teach the dog a new trick… bathe the cat… go ice skating… go hiking… go bike riding… go mountain climbing… build a house… rebuild an SUV [Subterranean Underwater Vélocipède] ), there are still umpteen things to learn!
Hmmm…how did I get off on that tirade? Let’s see… Oh, yes! I was bricking the block (variation of ‘paving the planet’). (Bunches of our friends who work for the Ready-Mix company have bumper stickers reading, Pave the Planet!)
Wednesday, I finished sorting all the clothes. I mean it! I really did!
Er, that is, I thought I had. I suddenly noticed a black and white belt with seashells printed on it, and said to Hester, “I never found that black and white dress that goes with this belt. It must be in your room still?”
“Oh, yeah, it probably is,” she said in nonchalant fashion, “with those others,” she added.
!
“‘Others!’” I howled, “Does that mean there are more dresses in there, dresses too small for Lydia?”
“Yeah, probably,” she answered, looking slightly more concerned than she had been doing.
Good grief, there’s no end.
I found two more bins full of dresses in Victoria’s size. So much for her closet not being quite as crammed full as it yoosta be.
I began carrying out all those boxes I’d packed with clothes and stacked downstairs. I wasn’t nearly done when Larry came home from work--he’d worked at Walker’s shop on the boom truck all day. When some of the other men have no work on account of the weather, Larry can still stay busy, because he can do the mechanical things that need to be done on all the equipment. We must have some money now and then to support our habit. (Eating, that is.) (And using electricity and water, that is.) He can’t work on only The House, much as he’d like to. Anyway, he carried out the rest of the boxes for me, taking three or four at a punch, so he got done much faster than I would have all by myself. I put the boxes into place in the trailer, stacking them close and all the way to the ceiling. It was ‑1°, but I’d gotten so hot that I’d shed my coat. My hands then started sweating inside those fleece gloves I’d made myself, so I’d taken them off, too…but when I was staying in the trailer, stacking things, that one-below-zero temperature made itself felt, let me tell you. When Larry arrived and saw me out there sans coat and gloves, he wasted no time bringing them to me and ordering me to put them on, right that minute. I obediently did so.
At church that evening, Robert read an excerpt from one of Charles Spurgeon’s books. A man who didn’t believe in the doctrine of election--that is, the doctrine that says God chose His own before the world ever began, and knows His own from the beginning--told Spurgeon that he’d read the Bible a ‘score’ of times (twenty), on his knees(!), and had not found anything at all to support that doctrine. Spurgeon replied he shouldn’t wonder; the man should have made himself comfortable in his easy chair before he started reading, and then he could have concentrated on what he was reading, and perhaps he would have found something of value. Spurgeon’s only surprise, he said to the man, was that he had found anything edifying at all, reading the Bible in such an unpleasant position! Further, if he really had read the Bible twenty times and found nothing about election, then he must have galloped through it, and probably missed most of its other main truths, too.
Spurgeon not only was a wonderful preacher, he was quick-witted and utterly practical, too.
By the time we came home, I was more frozen than ever. I played the piano for a while, till I was nicely warmed up. Best way I know of to get warm--playing the piano with all vim and vigor. The house was cold. It was ‑8°. (Well, not inside.)
Thursday morning, Lydia’s and Caleb’s teacher called to tell us that their classes would not go to school that day, because she had the flu. Caleb would have missed school anyway; he had the flu, too. He was glad that he would not be counted absent after all. And Lydia was glad she was not sick on an unexpected day off.
Larry worked for Walkers most of the day, then came home in the afternoon, split some wood for the woodburning stove, and went out to the house. I went on filling boxes and bins and carrying them to the trailer.
The man from whom we bought the lot gave us a big box full of fresh fruits--apples, grapefruits, oranges, papaya, banana--and vegetables--onion, squash. I baked the hazelnut squash, and put the onion into potato soup.
We sat down to eat.
Victoria held up her hand and said to me, “My bones are showing, I’m so hungry.”
“Most people’s do, in their hands,” I responded.
She took another look at the back of her hand. “But mine are blue!!”
She was talking about her blood veins.
After supper, we went to the library. I have now done learnt how to make a hexagonal picnic table and install tubs, sinks, toilets, and bathroom tile; and I have a very good idea what makes landscaping be landscaping, rather than a shabby shamble of shrubs.
Saturday, I spent the day working downstairs, packing clothes and knickknacks, and washing clothes. I started emptying out drawers in a big oak dresser in the bathroom downstairs, and, lo and behold, there were all the boys’ sweaters I knew we had, the sweaters from which I’d planned to pick one for Caleb to wear to our church dinners for Thanksgiving and Christmas Day. Botheration! Ah, well; at least he hasn’t grown out of them. Yet.
As I was packing boxes, Victoria asked, “How do you spell, ‘Fancy Things’?”
I turned to see what she was doing, and there she was with a smallish white box, marker in hand, looking up at me expectantly. She had already written, ‘Victoria’s’.
“What’s in there?” I asked, and peered in.
There inside the box were her gold high-heeled play slippers with marabou at the toe, and her small jointed bear, soft and woolly, in the ruffly pink and white crocheted dress that Hannah had made for her. And that was all. I gave her the requested spellings.
Caleb found his tracks for his Matchbox cars, so, once again, we have ramp slopes and rises coming from a high bookcase shelf and heading down the hallway. We must be cautious when we exit a room and enter the hallway that we don’t get wiped out by a Matchbox car traveling at Mach speed and about nose level.
Teddy came to get a haircut that evening. He’s been sick for at least two weeks, feeling worse and worse right along. His glands were so swollen Friday that he looked like he had a double chin--and you know Teddy doesn’t have a double chin. He didn’t work Friday, and, as I’ve said before, when that boy doesn’t work, he must be sick. Saturday morning he had a fever of just over 100°. He worked for an hour, felt terrible, and finally, finally decided to go see the doctor. He got some medicine; Dr. L. said he has a virus and a bacterial infection.
We’d fixed fish and broccoli for supper. Teddy thought it looked good, so we gave him some fish. He didn’t have any broccoli, although he really likes it, because Amy hadn’t had supper yet, and they were going to eat when he went home. So the house stinks. I mean, it really stinks. (Uh, er, that is, not on account of Teddy not eating his broccoli; rather, on account of our cooking said broccoli and previously said fish.)
When he got here, Larry hadn’t come home yet, so I called him. He asked one of us to come and get him; Teddy said he’d better not drive that far, as he was feeling decidedly woozy. When I got out to the house, there was Larry with his pickup blocking the lane--or, rather, the garage he was hauling to our property was blocking the lane.
This is a garage that belonged to one of the neighbors down the hill. They were going to knock it down. Larry offered to take it off their hands, and they gladly consented--so we have a free garage! We’ll have a place to store our bikes and trikes and unikes! We won’t have to rent a storage unit the whole while we are getting the attached garage built.
Larry had spent the day lifting the garage and putting it onto his trailer. He’d then pulled it up the hill…turned into the lane--and a supporting board broke and let the back of the garage right down onto the ground, causing one wall to bow in rather alarmingly.
Leaving the whole rig there--pickup running, lights on, and all--he climbed into the Suburban and came home with me.
When Larry finished cutting Teddy’s hair, he went with Teddy to Tom’s shop (where Teddy works) for another come-along (winch), and then he drove on out to the house to try to get the garage a little further up the lane, so that the neighbors could come and go, should they decide to do so. Well, he had no end of troubles. A board at the front of the garage broke, and down came the garage again. I called at 11:30 to ask how things were going; they were not going well, and the rig was still in the same place in which it had been at 7:00. He told me he’d better hang up quickly, because the garage was creaking dreadfully--so I hung up faster than he did.
He got home at 12:30 a.m. He’d gotten the garage moved through the lane entrance and almost to Richard A.’s property (aka The Old Man of the Junkyard). He will have to jack it up farther in order to tow it the rest of the way to its designated resting place amongst our ponderosa pines, because the ground is uneven, and the garage would drag. A piece of siding popped off, but that can be easily repaired. There are big windows on either side of the garage. It’s white, matching our house.
There were 54 people missing from church Sunday morning. People have the flu, bad colds, earaches, sore throats… There has been such an epidemic of sicknesses around this part of Nebraska, several schools in nearby towns have closed for a few days.
Baby Joanna had on an adorable pink dress, slathered with lace, that a friend made for her. It even has teeny tiny bloomers to match. Such a beautiful baby.
I stayed with Mama tonight. We looked at a video about making scrapbooks; I have a scrapbook kit that my sister-in-law, Janice, gave me. Now I need to rush off and take a few hundred world-class pictures, so that I can fill up my new scrapbook!
Janice came when I was looking through some toy catalogues trying to find a big horse to give Victoria for her birthday, one that will take the place of a couple of big stuffed horses Janice made for Keith and Teddy one year for Christmas. The poor thing has been loved to death, and Victoria still loves it dearly. Her ‘halter’ is one of Aleutia’s old choke chains, and her ‘tow rope’ (yes, that’s what she calls it) is one of the girls’ old belts.
I told Janice what I was looking for and asked, “If I can’t find one, could I borrow your pattern?”
“Don’t look any farther,” she instructed me, “because I’ve got one just like those others, one that I sewed back when I sewed them, that is just lying under my bed doing nothing.”
“But I remember that you wanted to keep it,” I protested.
But she insisted she would give it to me.
“Then I will buy it from you,” I said.
“No!” she retorted, and I grinned and gave up.
Victoria will be delighted.
One night, Larry tried watching a video, ‘Old Yeller’, that the children had borrowed from the library, but he kept falling asleep… I was cold, so I went and sat by him, covering us both up with a blanket… The video was almost to the place where the boy Travis was sitting in a tree, lassoing piglets and marking their ears… He was about to fall out of the tree… Larry must have been listening with his subconscious ears, because when I popped my gum right then, he jumped about three feet in the air.
“I’d better go before I get hurt,” I remarked, and did so.
Larry laughed, and kept on laughing, the recalcitrant bloke.
Back to the packing!
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.