PTSD goldfish

10/20/2009 08:05:00 pm BenefitScroungingScum 5 Comments

My pity party lasted about an hour. After which I had a sore face from all the gurning and a bored brain after reciting the 'woe is me' mantra for so long. Feeling sorry for yourself is seriously hard work to maintain alongside all the other thoughts in your head shouting 'think me' 'no, think me, I'm a more exciting thought' 'ooo, chocolate' 'ooo, sex'

Today I made it out of the flat and back to the flat without needing to be rescued. Which was a good thing. Not all of my neighbours are cute. I avoided the rescue by not actually going anywhere further than the nearest bench. In the rain. It was high tide and I wanted to see the birds and listen to the waves. Worth every moment even if it did hurt like a bastard. Besides, there was hot chocolate. That's always good. Even if it is the crappy low calorie kind. All the chocolate is not helping my joints. Which will never, ever be good. The impending chocolate ration that is. I think someone should definitely invent a cure for pain which involves special not making you fat chocolate.

So that was high point number one. The bench. As high points go it's not really, you could even call it quite low for a bench. The next one was better. Only cos it involved the related sport of chair standing, water spilling, goldfish hate crime though. A while back I found a little fish bowl in a charity shop. It seemed like a good idea and for some reason I thought Bendycat might like some fish to look at and that's how I ended up with the fish. Fishy and Fish. Don't ask. Bendycat doesn't even like them. Just sits and howls at them in the middle of the night so next door's hideous yappy dogs start barking.

The chair standing, water spilling was cos the fish needed cleaning out. A sensible plan when your legs can't safely hold you up. Well, it seemed more sensible to climb on a chair to empty the bowl bit by bit than to tip the bowl all over myself. Perhaps sensible isn't quite the right word.

The goldfish hate crime was the fluorescent pink ladle I had to use to catch Fishy and Fish. Whoever said goldfish are stupid clearly never spent an afternoon chasing a goldfish round a 5 litre tank with a fluorescent pink ladle. Those fish definitely had better strategies than me. It took ages to catch Fishy, and Fish had definitely learnt from Fishy's experience so cunningly hid behind the water pump thing where the ladle couldn't fit.

If that wasn't bad enough, while I was cleaning the tank and dropping wet fish gravel all over the place I put them in a tiny bowl in the middle of the kitchen table where they swam round in a frenzied pink ladle panic. I thought Fishy was going to kill Fish! I checked but couldn't find Bendycat anywhere so the fishies may well have known something I didn't. They've definitely got PTSD now. Wave a pink coloured thing near the bowl, they go nuts! Although they did that for food anyway. Must be the pink. Hand/ladle. Not a good combination for goldfish. They're still alive though even after all the pink trauma. So that's good.

No chocolate's not though. That's just mean.



5 comments:

cogidubnus said...

Fish usually fare better in a tank with a fair-sized surface area, where you can manage a cleaning out/water change just 20% at a time (ideally using a syphon tube dipped into the poo-iest bits) into a bucket...

When I was taught about fish they said that changing more than 20% of the water at a time could traumatise the fish (too much change of water ambience/temperature) and it was better not to take them out of the tank if it could possibly be avoided...

On the basis that the only time I did, one of my cats got in and savaged a poor goldfish, I'd say they were right!

Think of the effort involved in going to get the chocolate,carrying the chocolate, hiding the chocolate, retrieving the chocolate from the stash spot and then finally opening the chocolate. Chocolate is definitely calorie neutral. And if that fails to convince you, chocolate is quite high in salt and you need the salt to bring up your blood pressure. ;)

alhi said...

Chocolate is a vegetable; Chocolate is derived from cocoa beans. Bean = vegetable. Sugar is derived from either sugar cane or sugar BEETS. Both of them are plants in the vegetable category. Thus, chocolate is a vegetable.

To go one step further, chocolate bars also contain milk, which is dairy. So chocolate bars are a health food. Chocolate-covered raisins, cherries, orange slices and strawberries all count as fruit, so eat as many as you want.

Is it really that bad for your joints: I was going to get your address and send you a bar:)

Veronica said...

I'm laughing at the goldfish PTSD so hard. Thankyou.

Marla said...

Sounds like a big job. We have two cichlids and they want to eat constantly. I walk by the tank and they begin begging.

I think it is okay to have a pity party. Some days we just have to let that happen. I am glad there are those passer bys who are willing to help. I am sorry though that you are in so much pain. There are no easy answers. Hugs.