A picture of my incredibly-difficult-to-photograph dwarf puffer.

Compare the above picture, taken in June 2008 of the same puffer as the below picture:

As you can see, the poor puffer was much smaller when I first got him, nearly just a sack of skin and bones. While I still don’t really know what he eats (today he turned his nose up visibly at a nice, fresh, frozen block of blood worms, which the guppies promptly gorged themselves on) except for pest snails–a frightening and terribly entertaining ordeal to observe–obviously his diet has improved from whatever it was he ate or didn’t eat at the pet store.

He still remains rather unfriendly, easily bored, and restless. Possibly quite annoyed with his tankmates, which include a large, dumb, but harmless pleco, and two guppies, a male and a female. I’d had more guppies but the babies are separated right now, and the other female died. Oh well.

That’s the last remaining male guppy bred several months ago. His predecessors have all passed away. I believe he is the father of the current batch of guppy babies I have sitting in a coffee pot, but they are much too small right now to even tell sex, let alone coloring.

At the moment, as you can see, they are still tiny. The puffer would snap all of them up in a day or two (and so would the two guppy adults, probably). Right now they’re still only about a half an inch long, and will have to grow much bigger (probably another month or two) before I can plop them back in the main tank.

And, because I felt bad leaving him out, here’s my oldest and biggest goldfish. The other two are camera shy, but I managed to catch this guy off-guard when I moved him into my 5-gallon hex tank randomly one day.

Strange things have happened to me in the past few days.

- Last night. I lean against my car, my jaw set, my whipped about by the wind cast off from cars passing by quickly on Northside Drive. The gas pump must be the slowest one in existence, but when I look at the clock only a minute or two has passed. It seems an eternity. A woman comes up to me and I am so concerned with myself that it takes me a moment to hear her saying softly, Could you put some gas in my car? For a moment I am so shocked by the fact that someone is vying for my attention that I forget to answer. I stare at her. I feel hollow. Then I remember that I am in public, and deny her gently. I don’t have any spare money (I am only allowing myself exactly $20 in gas on my last credit card) because I won’t get paid for another three days and my funds are running precariously low. Too low (I have a suspicion that several checks are going to bounce, but that’s neither here nor there).  She tells me that’s okay that I don’t have any money. She just wants gas. Just put a little gas in her car for her. Off of my tab. I blink. Can this be happening? Is it a scam? I stammer and sputter for words for so long that she finally just shrugs and gets back in her car. Drives away.

- Last night. I get to the gym much too early and end up waiting outside for the Hip Hop class to end. The girl I met several weeks ago is back taking the class. I tend to do that. Become interested in certain people for little reason other than that they’re intriguing. This girl is skinny, always barely clothed at the gym, has some kind of burn scar on her right eyebrow that gives that one eye a hooded look, and seems as happy. But her happiness, I believe, is a thin veneer for something else, considering she slipped into the conversation (in a single night) that her boyfriend just broke up with her and that somewhere along the line she had ‘caught’ liver disease. At both these admissions I’d stumbled again and blinked at her, told her sorry?  So she is there again for that class before mine. I sit, stubbornly waiting. Megan, the instructor shows. We talk. It is the first time I have spoken to her in two months of taking her class. I am sure she knew me by face the third time or so, but now we have spoken and so I feel a personal debt to her to do well. The class isn’t very hard, but I have had a crummy week and no sleep and can hardly keep up.

- Last night. We fight again, the Boy and I, but suddenly something is different and we’re talking again like we used to when we were first dating.  It reminds me of many nights past staying up and chatting until the sun rose. In fact it is six o’clock in the morning when I finally get back to sleep after giggling and laughing for much of the early morning after we had calmed down.

- Today.  Although yesterday I had felt that the radio had been predicting negative things for me, this morning all of the conversations were positive. I felt the same way, uplifted. Things have turned out well for every one. The morning shone brightly and was warm.  Two strangers smile at me and say good morning. The wind chimes are sounding in their low, melodious tones outside of Building 3. I read my book and feel peaceful.

- This morning. I look into my fish tank. Puffer is no where to be seen, and I grow worried. I spot him in the same place he was last night, only this time he looks more still. Pale. Oh no, I think. He’s died. So I take the green mesh net and begin poking at the plant. Sure enough, the little body is stiff and simply jostles with the water movement. Increasingly sad, I shake the small pale body out of the plant where it drifts to the gravel and stays. Too bad, I think. I really liked the little guy. Then, with an angry flourish, the puffer springs to life. His eyes swivel, seeming to focus on me.  I feel relief through my chest and smile, although now I feel terrible for disturbing him. The puffer begins to pace back and forth across the glass. He is irritated. Because I feel bad, I dump in a few pond snails as a treat for him to hunt down later. The big ones. Whoops.

I’m very down right now. I didn’t get much sleep last night and I woke up this morning to an alarm I didn’t think was mine. It was. I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from though, and it took a good five minutes for me to finally realize what it was. Morning came too early.

Read the rest of this entry »»

This weekend is turning out very well so far.  I will write more comprehensively when it is through… but I’m very happy at the moment.

And yes, it is in part because now 13 guppy fry now exist in a small tub next to my main tank. Although I haven’t decided whether I can afford to keep all of them (or where they’ll end up), I am enjoying watching them for now. I could not bear to watch the other guppies suck down the young fry, and so I caught as many as I could. I know though, that there is at least one more in the tank. I can see him as we speak… and in all likelihood he will not last the night, with five predatory guppies and a skulking puffer.

Well, now to live the rest of the weekend. I’m excited.

After 18 hours of waiting, I saw little tiny things flitting about inside the cup whose label is “SHRIMPERY.” I guess it worked after all then. So I dumped the water into the puffer’s bowl, and watched as he first froze, and then uncurled himself. Then he noticed that there were small things twitching, moving. He darted forward and snapped one up, realized it was completely edible, and snapped up some more.
For the next half an hour I watched him as he circled his way around the tub chomping up as many brine shrimp as possible. Not a nutritious meal by any chance, but at least it was a meal. He would stare intently at a spot, focus both eyes on it (for puffers can move their eyes individually, like chameleons), and then dart forward, like a cat.

So he is still alive, as of right now. Good news fo rhim and me. Tomorrow… is another day. Will he starve? I’m running out of snails, so I honestly can’t say.

Today at work I spilled tea all over my desk. I’d taken off the plastic wrapper from the cap and given it a good shake. It made a weird noise; I shook it harder to listen again, and pop! The top came off and splashed peach-mango tea everywhere. On my pants, shirt, chair, keyboard, mouse, and desk. Whoops.

I scrambled to clean it up, convinced that if I didn’t, Bruce would come out and make fun of me.

A few minutes later, Adrienne walked by. “It smells like oranges!” she said, and I burst out laughing. I had been using lemon-scented towels and tissues to clean up my mess. I guess the peach and lemon was just citrusey enough to smell of oranges. Busted!

The following keep me sane while living here away from my family:

1. While driving to work this morning, the skyline. Today the buildings stood out, stark against the morning sky which darkened to a moody cobalt to the southeast. Most mornings the sunrise is so bright over the city that it’s hard to tell the difference between the sun and the light glinting off of the glass skyscrapers.

2.Puffer. Every morning so far when I have awoken, he is sitting close to the bottom. I would assume he’s still asleep except for the thrashing about that his tankmates start just after I switch on a light. The poor puffer is skinny, although not so emaciated as yesterday, but with a shrunken belly. He swims listlessly around the small container I now have him in; I wouldn’t have to keep him there except that he won’t eat in the larger tank (thanks to the big stupid fish that gobble all of the food before he can get to it. I have taken to crushing snails for him, snails which he eats with gusto (after circling them like a predatory feline and then striking), but I am also incubating some brine shrimp eggs. While most sites I visited calmly informed me that brine shrimp should only be a treat, not a staple, what else am I supposed to do? Let the puffer starve while I magically produce more snails?

3. Step sculpt. I thought to myself, upon entering class, this will be easy! I’ve done step before; how hard could it be? One girl behind me began to tell another newbie about the difficulty level (intermediate), but this didn’t phase me. It began to phase me, however, ten minutes into the class when I glanced desperately at the clock, willing it to move faster. Only another 50 minutes! I told myself despondently, wiping away rivers of sweat that had gathered on my forehead already. “What’s wrong with you?” the teacher screamed over the throbbing techno. And then, “Don’t worry if you’re new and get lost, stay at the basic step-touch! It’ll take you about six to eight weeks for the steps to make sense!” Six to eight weeks? Holy crap. And for the record, my legs burn with every inhalation of breath today.

4. The Boy taking so great an interest in the state of our bedding that we got into a fight over it last night and today. How he now knows more about Egyptian Cotton than I do, and exactly what kind of comforter we will be getting: a 600-thread count down comforter with baffling and at least 500 fill power, with a 300+ thread count Egyptian Cotton duvet. I can envision this next trip costing around $400, although I wish it didn’t have to. But sleeping in luxury has its price, I suppose.

5. A trip for people to come see me, starting December 26th. This is the only thing getting me through the knowledge that Boy is leaving for two weeks (from the 18th to at least the 31st of December), and that for the first time in my life I will be away from my family and friends for most of the holidays. I can’t wait for those who said they would to come visit; I only hope that things will turn out well.

6. An old friend from home coming to visit her sister this weekend, here in Atlanta. While it is not a trip to expressly visit me, we will be getting together at least once since I owe both of them a thank-you dinner for helping me get this job. Cafe Alsace and the World of Coke, anyone?

I’ve found a food that the puffer will eat. Snails.

Unfortunately, I can’t grow snails at the rate at which he will need to eat them. I wish I’d had several weeks longer to cultivate them; I could have set up a snail farm or something.

My, this is going to be some hard work keeping him alive. Figures I got the picky dwarf puffer and not the amiable dwarf puffer…