6/20/11

Things that Have Happened Recently

Rodger and B.A. have pretty much outgrown my 10-gal tank, so I have passed them on to my uncle for his backyard pond. B.A. is easily twice as large as the fish already in there.
To replace the koi, I have gotten three mollies and two platy. Cece is a creamsicle lyretail molly, Percival (Percy) is a dalmation molly, Mambo is a black molly, and then I have Sanguine and Ganymede the platy.
Add this to the list of things I never thought I'd say: "I think that two of my fish may be pregnant. I have no clue whatsoever how this happened."
This was followed by a text message conversation with Patrick that went as follows...(which can also be added to the list of conversations I didn't think I'd ever have)
Me: So, Cece and Percival may be pregnant.
P: Oh?
Me: Yeah. Remember how we were commenting on how large Percy is, and I mentioned jokingly that maybe she and Cece are preggers? Turns out I'm kind of right. Female mollies tend to be slightly larger, and the bigger and rounder their bellies are, the closer to dropping fry they are. And they're constantly pregnant. Females always have eggs ready to be fertilized, so if there are females in a tank with males they'll go at it. And often mollies that you bring home from the pet store are already a few weeks away from dropping fry.
P: How silly. But one get fifteen free?
Me: More like buy one, get 13-30 free. Experienced mothers can drop over a hundred fry, if she's large enough.
P: Christ.
Me: Yeah, as long as I don't really care about keeping the fry alive, though, most of them will probably get eaten.
P: Good population control? Could be hard to name them all.
Me: Well, okay, molly moms don't usually eat their own fry, and it's not unheard of for mollies to just leave the fry alone altogether, since they might not see them as food. So, fingers crossed that most get eaten?
P: Well damn, Maybe the others will eat them?

Aaand they might not, mollies and platy aren't big and cannibalistic like goldfish and koi. I may soon have quite a lot of molly babies on my hands. Um...

A lot of friends and family and so forth have been asking me how my job at Wawa is going, and I find myself telling them the same sorts of things. It's fun, hard, enjoyable coworkers, long days, more money than I ever made at Pizza Hut... and I'm happy. I come home from work tired, but it isn't the soul-sucking exhaustion that Pizza Hut inflicted on me, it's the normal "I've been up since five and on my feet for eight hours, so yeah, I'm a bit tired" kind. And that's nice.
I'm not doing six days a week for a month straight, or twelve days straight over two weeks. I'm not getting bothered by my boss about overtime because we're so understaffed that I have no choice but to work 40 hours a week, usually more.
And that is all really nice.
I did 39 hours just this last week, which was only because several people were out on vacation. This week I'm down to 24. I get paid week to week, which is also nice because it means that I'm not waiting for payday to be able to go grocery shopping.
Every job has its down sides, and I'm finding them as I go along and get comfortable with the way things work. They are comparatively few.

The nicest thing is that since I'm not so exhausted all the time that my days off are actually like days off. I get the things I need to do done, and then I have free time to myself. At Pizza Hut, I didn't have the energy left to do the things I needed. I spent my days off building up energy for my next working stint. Today? Today I got up and cleaned the bedroom. Then I had breakfast, and fed and walked Kobold. Then I cleaned the kitchen. And then all my chores were done, and I was settling down with my laptop. I had lunch, and did a water change in my fish tank.
That was when I became a little worried about the expanding stomachs of Cece and Percy, and decided to do the research that started this post off.

I've been spinning and knitting a bit more than previously, but I've already settled in with the fact that I will never be as prolific a knitter as my mother. I'm okay with that.
Patrick's final day of class is Thursday, when he finishes his Associates Degree finally. He's terribly excited, and I can't blame him. Friday we're going down to Atlantic City with my family for our typical summer trip (we find a nice buffet somewhere and feast mightily), and then Saturday is the Miles for Mandy walk. Em and Jim are going to crash here over night Friday into Saturday so they don't drive down to AC, back home that night, and then down to South Harrison for the walk the next day. Our couch folds out into a tolerably comfortable bed, and we have air conditioning.
That's a big plus.

Well, that's all the news from my neck of the woods. I'm going to go watch my fish swimming around with Kobold. He likes watching this group, they're more active than Rodger and B.A. were.

And it was just any old kind of day,
The kind that comes and slips away,
The kind that fills up easy my life's time.
~Harry Chapin, "Any Old Kind of Day"

1 comment:

Donna Lee said...

I am hardly a prolific knitter. Slow as molasses uphill in January.

For the record, I do NOT want any fish.

I'm glad to hear that you are happier at your job. Soul sucking jobs take such a toll on your life.