Fish: The Perfect Pet

Those parting moments between fish and aquarium keeper are neither particularly pleasant, nor particularly refined.  Watching a dear friend slip and swirl into the eternal void is never easy---even less so when you say your goodbye's kneeling in front of the fabled porcelain god.  But such is life, or so you think.  That is until it becomes obvious you'll have to plunge.  

This is the beginning of a really bad day, as well as the end of a two and a half week long emotional roller coaster ride, one that taxes your strength mentally, a struggle for life--a fight against that eternal wheel of fate, a battle that you lost against the inevitable.  Two and half dollars down the drain, well, in reality, on the bathroom floor.  You're not going to count the fifty three dollars and eighty cents that you spent on medication, tank supplies and supplements or the phone consultation with an 'expert'.  All that mattered was that stupid goldfish.  Yeah, the one that's now in the trash can wrapped in a series of paper towels.  You start to mop up the bathroom floor--Sydney, the cat, seems overly interested in the trash can and it takes you a few precious seconds too long to realize why.  Well, you think as you slam the back door behind the cat, nursing the three deep scratches on your left arm, at least Sydney's happy.  Sadly, you'll never know where to look for that stupid fish.  But that's not what gets to you, what gets to you is that it won't be the first.  

You, like every other amateur aquarium keeper, have dealt with days and weeks like this time and time again.  You repeat this same process, over and over--expecting a different result each time.   Fish are supposed to be fun, a family pet, those tanks are supposed to add dimension to a room, the endless undulating motion of the fish relaxing.  Instead fish are torture.  The only dimension that's been added to your living room is hell and the painful darting and spasmic death rattles that your fish seem to go through on far too regular a basis are anything but relaxing.  Yet still you persist.  

The tank was specially chosen--you read book after book, web page after web page, on what you needed to do, and how to do it.  You had the perfect beginner's tank.  Ten gallons--neither too big, nor too small.  You then meticulously picked through pet store after pet store until you had the perfect gravel, the perfect heater, the perfect lamp.  Your next step was to purchase a plethora of chemicals and medications to test your tap water for 'fish friendliness' and then alter it if necessary.  Next you let that ten gallon tank with ideal chemically altered water sit in your living room and grow algae for a month and a half--just to ensure the safety of your first six fish--zebra danios that lasted less than half an hour.  Maybe your mistake was in the fish, so you try guppies--they're supposed to be pretty hardy right?  Wrong.   As far as you can tell  they ate each other, since most of them disappeared that first night.   And even the guppies weren't as bad as the  neon tetras.  You discovered, far too late, that they were small enough to get sucked into the filter--they died first, but still the overall impression gave your four year old nightmares for a week.  So much for family fun.  

The tank sat empty after that for almost two weeks, until a friend suggested aquatic plants.  They weren't fish, true, but they were a lot easier to care for and if the filter could be turned up really high, the leaves and stems would undulate relaxingly in that crystal clear water--that is if you can keep the water 'crystal clear'.  If you add fertilizer your plants grow beautifully--but then so does the algae coating the tank walls.  Not a problem until you discover that scraping off that algae and cleaning the tank kills your plants.  So you're back to square one: fish.  At least they don't dissipate when they die-- not if you find them in the first couple of days anyway.  

This time though, it was going to be different.  You were getting goldfish.   After all, they were nearly immortal, right?  Your mother kept two of them alive in your kitchen sink for three months after you won them at a school science fair when you were seven.  If she could do it, you could do it--and at your disposal, you had far better equipment than a kitchen sink. 

Two flushes later, you're taping a paper sign to the toilet--warning your children not to use it, and wondering if this is some sort of postmortem vengeance on the part of the goldfish?  

You double bagged it on the way home--just to be sure it didn't go the way the miniature cat fish had.  Then the transition to your newly cleansed and balanced tank was slow.  A teaspoon of water from the bag into the sink, a teaspoon of water from the tank into the bag.  Twenty four hours later your fish was still alive.  A first.  Unfortunately it had developed small white spots on all of its fins and its tail.  A phone call to your aunt--a woman with a beautiful fifty gallon tank--garnered you this advice, "It's a fish, honey.  Flush it."  Instead you drove twenty miles back into town to consult with the owner of the pet store.  You came home with no advice and roughly fifty dollars worth of medication--most of which required you to immediately contact poison control should it ever touch your skin.  Strangely enough the medication did nothing but prolong the spasmodic suffering of your fish--the probable cause of your clogged toilet.  

For two and a half weeks it languished in the back of your tank.  Staring dolefully at you every time you entered the room, that last day it had gotten so bad that you refused to go through your living room and instead sent the nine year old to sign for the FedEx.  Then you woke up one morning, and it was gone,  Gone with it all the responsibility for its life, liberty and well being, leaving you with an empty fish tank, fifty three dollars and eighty cents short on rent, a sick cat and a clogged toilet.  

Maybe you'll try feeder fish next--after all, they're only ten cents each and your house can hardly be the worst place for a fish already slated for something's dinner, to end up.  

Can it?             

Christmas Letter Guide

As a single person who is frighteningly close to 30, I get a *lot* of Christmas Letters each year, but almost never send one. I just haven't really figured out how to approach them, what to write--why to write it. So I went looking on the internet and discovered a dearth of "how-to-write-a-Christmas-letter" articles. I thought I could help.

How To Write a Christmas Letter:

Greeting:  1-2 paragraphs on how it’s Christmas.  Assume we have NO IDEA WHAT THAT MEANS.  Seriously.  Just gush on and on about how quickly the year has gone by and blah blah blah about how each year is better than the next, then joke about Santa.  Insert something here about how charming the weather is where you live, or how you can’t possibly believe that another WHOLE YEAR is just GONE!  Vague sentences about how well “everyone” is doing (except Grandma who kicked the bucket in March, or The Challenging Teen whose goal in life seems to be to struggle) and how excited you are for next year are appropriate in this space!  Details can include prizes, top grades, new cars.  The works.  Lie if you need too.

The Adorable Child(ren): This section is where we can all oooh and ahhhh over your child aged 3-10.  Quotes are good, as are sweet parental notes about what a good singer, or listener, or etc. your child is.  Favorite foods can be included.  Notes sent home by the teacher about bullying behaviour should be avoided, but if you must address this try something like “Henri(etta) has developed a great ability to assert herself with other children!”  When you are doing your family photograph do remember that blonde children are preferred.

The Challenging Teen: WE LOVE THEM SO MUCH DESPITE HOW HORRIBLE THEY ARE is basically the gist of this bit.  You will brush over the hours you have spent screaming at your teenager, and ignore the pot you found in their bedroom and the watered down Whiskey you and your spouse have been sipping on the last few weeks to cope with the kidnapping of Elf on the Shelf which has traumatized The Adorable Child(ren) and made the Santa-lie harder to maintain.  In this section your teenager, while still a teenager, is charming and really enjoys volunteering at that Animal Shelter!  Even if it does happen to be court mandated community service.

The College Kid!: You are probably wiping a tear away as you tell us about another year on honors for your little adult (squee!!!!).  Who knew a 19 year old could still gain an inch!  And that mission to trip to Africa that just *changed* Eric(a)’s life forever.  It’s Nobel Prize Material here, and Eric(a) will now be studying Ancient English Literature (switching from French Art) so that s/he can get a job working for an aid agency rocking orphaned children to sleep someday for a solid middle class income, travel benefits and health insurance. Add a note about some anticipated graduation date, and a suspected significant other.  Remember you are SO looking forward to meeting the “special friend” of your young adult--and really, who cares if they swear they’re “just friends,” you know better.

Pets: Fido is probably technically younger than everyone besides The Adorable Child(ren), however as having accomplished a higher percentage of his life span, he can go last in the “children” section.  In this space you can plug in a sentence or two about how lucky you are to still have your geriatric dog or cat.  We all know he shits on the carpet, bit a neighbor kid and can’t keep food down.  But what we really don’t know is how grey his adorable little whiskers are.  Include that.  If Fido is a fish, lie.

Spouse: If you are under 35, we all know (from last year) that a promotion has got to be on the way soon here!  Mention how much fun (insert hobby here) is, and spin marital discord as “diverse interests.”  If over 35 and employed refer to work as “stable and great” and if unemployed, refer to life as a an “adventure” and say spouse is “trying new things.”  If divorced, make some sad attempt at a witty comment before slinking off to the watered down whiskey to feel lonely by yourself.

Self--If pregnant talk about how exciting baby bump is, and how much fun sleepless nights sometime in February are going to be.  Joke jovially about the 15 pounds you have gained as a result of the pregnancy.  Hahaha what a surprise! If not pregnant make a nice note about perfect family size being exactly the number of children you have.  Refer to work as “fun” and family life/housework as “rewarding.”  Avoid detail.  Avoid mentioning the 15 pounds you have gained.

Travel: No matter where you went in the last twelve months it was AMAZING.  Camping for 9 hours in the rain?  Best trip of your life.  An overnight in the Wal-Mart parking lot because Spouse forgot to change the oil in the minivan and it quit running en-route to the in-laws?  As a family you have never felt so close. Migraine in Hawaii for four days with a screaming Adorable Child(ren) with The Challenging Teen gone missing?  You have never been happier.  Were you in Europe?  You met the pope!  Who has heard of The College Kid and would like to preemptively congratulate them on discovering poverty in Africa!  What a trip!

Conclusion: And finally, wrap this puppy up with some trite quote about how blessed life can be and how much you are looking forward to school starting again so that your little darlings can go back to earning perfect marks far, far away from you for ⅔ of the day.  Observe that each year is better than the last (don’t mention your aching back, pot belly and wrinkles) and make sure you scrawl something unintelligible in the corner of the paper so your 792 relatives and close friends know you thought about them specially.

And don’t forget to mention Jesus.