Fish

bleak
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry

Last night I got home in the freezing cold - yeah, did I mention that I, along with the rest of Asheville and indeed WNC, have magically been transported to the Land of Eternal Icy Fucking Cold Where It's Too Goddamn Cold to Do Anything Except Whine? - and after I had thought up that evenings entree and popped it into the oven to become not particularly good, I decided that my fish were lonely. My fish. Yeah, I have fish now. Three dogs, one cat, two theoretically grown up kids, thirteen fish and me, the partridge in the pear tree or some similarly Seussian character, if there is a Seussian character in a red fleece bathrobe - it's too cold even for my usual winter wardrobe of various layers of mismatched plaid flannel - with a bottle of beer in one hand and an epic fantasy novel in the other.

I only had two fish before last night. Annie had had eight fish, as recounted elsewhere in this blog, but when the aquarium got to me, there were only two fish in a tin bowl. I have figured out where the other six fish went and I hereby offer a heartfelt apology to their ghosts, their families and the god of small fish: I am very sorry, fish, and I promise I will never, ever again attempt to assemble an aquarium pump and filter after drinking the better part of two bottles of wine at Christmas dinner. Those fish went up into the filter with the sort of results you see in video games where the hero has to make it through one of those large industrial sized fans. Yeah. Well. Let's gloss over that bit - I fixed it; it's not a fish killer anymore - and hope that the resultant chum at the bottom of the tank is actually making the aquarium all, um, bio and stuff. Healthy.

So yesterday I went off to the fish store with Audrey. Not the good fish store - they might remember me from the purchase of the dearly departed and I didn't want to be greeted with shouts of Murderer! Fish killer! - but the big giant chain fish store that ends with Z and affects signage that uses Z to pluralize, as in, Dog Foodz! Accessoriez! Eee. However, the lady there was extremely knowledgeable and helped us find the kind of fish who will hopefully live in fishy peace and harmony. Did you know they have invented new fish recently? Egads, yes, they have and they glow in black light, as all artificial beings must, by law. They're called Glo Fish and they are extremely cool in a freaky, Spencer Gifts, black velvet kind of way. I would have gotten them, so that I could enjoy the spectacle of tiny swimming chips of day glo paint but since they cost like $6.50 each and you really need about ten to get the full effect, I opted for old fashioned glowing fish: neon tetras. I like neon tetras, who have nifty stripes. And orange platys, both male and female in the hope or fear that they will lead to more fish and, to top it off, a couple of some kind of sword tailed dalmatian something or other, because they are so elegant.

Then we had to get decor. There is a lot of decor available for fish, let me tell you, more, in fact, than in your average home decor store for humans and far more interesting. I want my living room as well as my aquarium done in faux castles with holes in them and tacky pirate chests and big plastic broken faux amphorae, actually, but alas, I ended up opting for a rock with holes in it. It's a tasteful rock with holes in it - holes are key for fish; they have to swim through them so you can exclaim "Look! He swam through the hole!" - but I'm having a little buyer's remorse, in that I actually just spent $10 on a rock with holes in it. Oh well. Anything to appease the fish ghosts! The living fish are living in fish paradise so that I won't be haunted by swimming ghosts, which is all well and good, and the sound of the bubbling water is restful and calming, or it would be if I didn't keep waking up, sitting up bolt upright and thinking that I'm actually hearing the restful bubbling of broken pipes.