We have baby fish of several different sizes. All small, all fast. We had the great idea of catching a few and putting them into the tank inside, but they were way too quick for us.
So today, during my daily filter rinse, what do I find but a 3/4 inch baby on top of the filter media. Dumped him into a medicine cup, scooped up a couple of eggs that were exposed when the water level went down, and they all went into the tank. Once they’re big enough to actually see, I’ll take pics.
Tuesday, the electrician and the plumber showed up. Once they were settled in (hubby was working from home that day) I took the kids to popcorn park zoo. It was a nice trip, the animals seemed well cared for, and the kids had a great time feeding them, especially the bears, who were crazy about peanuts. Their trick of popping the whole peanut into their mouths and spitting out only the shells would be a neat thing to do in a bar, you know.
Wednesday, after music lessons, we headed up north. We hit Fairfield Garden Center for pond stuff, then Gencarelli’s in Bloomfield for most excellent desserts, and had a nice visit and dinner with the Davises.
Thursday, we were back in Bloomfield again – time to visit the orthodontist. Paying in advance seemed like such a good idea before we moved. Drove up to Palisades Center in Nyack, only to find that the Japanese tableware store that sold my favorite dishes is no more. So we scarfed down lunch and headed to Ridgefield Park to Han Ah Reum for lovely kim chi and oshinko and seaweed salad and laver and fruits and veggies you don’t find in the supermarket. But then. . .we were on the Turnpike and the Parkway at rush hour. Just not a good thing, ever. One thing I’ve noticed is that when there’s an accident up north, you get rubberneckers who slow down to scope out accidents. Down South, they come almost to a complete stop, so they can do a thorough visual search for blood and guts.
Today, after running errands, it was cooking and cleaning time. . .visitors coming from modthesims2 tomorrow, sister’s family on Sunday! Woohoo! Went to a place on the corner of Fischer Blvd. and 37 called Joppa Road Interiors – got a good bargain on a Chinese four panel screen, and some stone nature god faces that I hung on the fence amidst the ivy. Now there’s a focal point at the top of the back steps. They had a lot of really nice decorative items – I’m going to have to drag hubby out there when we’re feeling flush.
So, Friday both the kids had sleepover parties to attend. Hubby and I broke out the movies we couldn’t watch with them. First we watched “Monster”, the movie with Charlize Theron and Christina Ricci, about serial killer Aileen Wuornos. It was a pretty darned good movie, and Theron had a lot of guts to look the way she did in it. She gave an excellent performance, and was very good at being a sympathetic character all the way up to the point where she snapped, and even then portrayed that self-justification the woman had for what she did. Next, we watched Mystic River. It was great, too – until the end. There was absolutely no foreshadowing, and no justification for the (ahem) “twist” at the end. The cast was brilliant, the script was great, and then the resolution of the murder came completely out of left field. Good thing I was so tired at that point that I had to go to bed right away, or I would have been really, really angry.
Yesterday morning, we picked the poor tired children up from their parties. They said they weren’t tired, but you could tell they were running on adrenaline. We went to another party at my friend Janet’s house after they were all cleaned up and changed. She and her husband Jim put on a lovely party twice a year for Solstices, and it’s always fun to see this group of people. The weather was rotten, so we didn’t do any hanging out in the backyard, but there was plenty of room inside to circulate. We left a bit after 7, and the weather didn’t seem so bad until about the time we hit Monmouth County. The rain was torrential, and when we were almost home, the lightning was so close that it lit everything up like daylight and made the hair on our arms stand up. It kind of made me miss the old house a bit, because when it stormed, we could go out on the front porch and watch it. Our front door is under cover, but it’s not anything close to a porch.
So today, I woke up at 5-something. Not quite 5:30. I’m tired. My back was hurting too much to sleep. I have a whole bunch of things I want to do today, but right now, if I thought there was any chance of falling back to sleep, I’d be in bed. Since I can’t, of course, I feel too miserably tired to get myself motivated to do any of the things I wanted to do. I’ll have to force myself, I think, because one of them is to exercise, and that will help me sleep. It’s one of those little unfair things – you can’t sleep because you need to get more exercise and lose weight, but you’re so tired you can’t even think about exercise. Eh. I’ll make the grocery list and the dinner menus for the week. Then I’ll shop and get the Asbury Park Press to look for jobs. I’ll start the bread dough. By that time, maybe the hubby will be up and I can pull out the treadmill.