Turns out I love tropical fish. Turns out I have gone from being giddy in love with a fat Lab whose weight ranged between 85 and 110 pounds to being in love with a half-ounce Killer Dwarf Frog.

Today while my husband was distracted doing a search, destroy and clean-up mission on our son’s room (Toys Per Square Inch: Six) I went ahead and bought a 20-gallon fish tank to combine all the little aquatic beasts who are now housed in two separate puny little five-gallon tanks. I’m still waiting for the water to heat up, it’s taking hours. Then I can move ’em in. There is a mix of live and fake plants, a nice big rock, a plastic hamster and plastic pirates, small shiny rocks and marbles, a castle, a mermaid, a turtle and a frog. Uh, ceramic.

I may have to add some taller stuff and a fake ship and a plastic skull. I am nothing if not classy when it comes to decorating the tank.

(Vixen, I know. I know I know I know. It is not the 300-gallon salt water tank that belongs in the living room. But it will have to do.) (Also we have all these new guppies. Nine are left, plus the mom.) (Thank you, Funsize, for the tips.)

I’m going to leave the frog alone in his tank upstairs until the guppies get a little bigger. I anticipate many froggy backflips, cuz he’s a little anti-social, that boy. A week or two, then in he goes. Survival of the fittest, I’m sorry, and I’ll be cleaning just one tank a week. Michigan J. seems pretty terrified of the black-skirt tetras, so maybe they’ll keep him in line. You know, I still miss my dog. I miss him every day, several times. Sometimes more than several. And we’re still set on no more pups. I can’t take the heartbreak again. The fish are good because they’re entertaining, do not need to be walked, and don’t really care if the kids forget to feed them. I am not getting attached to them the way I did the dog, see? That is just a-OK with me.

Plus, they don’t do the puppy dog eyes. The frog tries but you know what — he’s a frog, not a dog. (I love you, dear dear Wacky Dog. No one will ever replace you in my heart.)

Yeah. And we gave one of the five-gallon tanks (along with heat, pump, fish net, food, and water conditioning drops) to our super-nice neighbors who live across the street. Their two-year-old needs a starter tank, doncha think?

Yeah, I thought so, too.

Who knew?

Bullets? You like bullets? Me, too! What a quincidence.

* It was one hundred and something degrees here today.

* All of you who say “Portland never gets hot! It’s only hot here, like, two days out of the year!” can kiss my foot.

* Sal’s, our favorite Italian restaurant in town, closed. No notice, no nothing. Mio Sushi and Pause, here I come.

* And McMenamin’s Kennedy School.

* But not Chapel Pub, because my kids think the food there is made from dead people.

* I’m pretty sure it’s not.

* They also think the hush puppies at Roux are made of real puppies, so we can’t eat there, either. As if we could afford it. Ha! We’ve been there twice I think. Once was for dessert.

* I love being back to work. Love, love, love, love, love my work. Love. Nothing but love.

* I can’t remember the last time I worked out. You?

* Turns out if you eat smaller portions of food, and limit yourself to one drink, you lose weight. Who knew?

* But the work-outs are key, for me anyway.

* Our snails are procreating. By themselves. They do this well, apparently. Ensures the survival of the species.

* “We see snails as being a nuisance pest in the aquariums.” — fish guy at the fish store.

* “So why do you sell them?” — me, to fish guy (Isn’t “nuisance pest” redundant? When I ask him what I should do with the extra snails, ie, can I donate them to the fish store? Or something? Craigslist? Foster homes for wayward snails? He suggests I put them in the garden. Snail killer!)

* Hmm. The frog is not a nuisance, he is adorable.

* Our garden is coming along great — corn, zucchini, cukes and more cukes, tomatoes coming on strong, herbs… it’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood.

Later, gator.

wm

“You. Lady whose name I don’t know. Get back here. I. Don’t. Care. For frog pellets. Pellets? What are they, dog food? Do I look like a dog in need of kibbles? BLOOD WORMS. Blood worms are what I like. Pour them over my head and I’ll gobble them up. You leaving? You coming back? With the BLOOD WORMS? Aiii.”

(kicks legs, swims away angrily.)

My son tells me he wants to breed guppies. In fact, Grandma broke out all of Grandpa’s old fish-raising and -keeping gear and there was a breeder box in there! Who knew such a thing existed! It’s a clear plastic cube, with two compartments.

“You clip this onto the side, see? You put the mom and the dad in there,” (may I interrupt, please, to say that I have no idea if ours are indeed male/female? One of the guppies does look a little preggers, though) “they have the eggs, they fall through the bottom, see?” (He shows me the slats.) “Then the dad fertilizes them and you have babies! We’ll need another tank.”

Steve: “What do they do to get in the mood? Drink a little wine? Play some Barry White? I’ve been thinking of you all day, baby…“

Enough with the five-gallon tanks. Bah! Ten gallons or 20 gallons or nothing! Yeah. (Secretly I want a 55-gallon tank for living room.) (Or 100 gallons.) We set up another little five-gallon tank. Vixen has a 150-gallon salt water tank. (Cute pix right here.) I am dying of envy over here. I do not know that I am Woman Enough for 150-gallon tank. Also, we have no space. I don’t want them in our cold, drafty, unfinished basement, I want them where I can see them fifty times a day. Aquariums really are soothing (says the stress case who is finally relaxing. Thanks, little fish!).

Hmm. Maybe the kids could share a room? I digress. We got a new snail for the one tank (the other one starved to death. Bad on us. They are vegetarians and enjoy lettuce, cuke slices, and the occasional green bean. Our tank was too clean for him. We loved you, Scarfy.) New tiny tank is now home to two somewhat psychotic guppies, a big snail in a yellow shell and the cutest little wee dwarf frog you ever saw in your life.

“They are one hundred percent underwater!” my son told his dad. (After his dad said, “A frog?”)

He’s got the funniest damn personality. The frog. (But Steve does, too. Heh heh heh.) One of the guppies dive-bombed him, to grab a frog pellet (good luck getting food, frog — I’ll keep trying). He kicked the guppy right in the head with his bitsy-witsy little frog leggie. I don’t think I can adequately describe how teeny he is. Look at your thumbnail. About that big.

Oh. My God. He is allegedly full-grown. All I can think of is that crazy frog from the cartoons because for real — that’s who he reminds me of. Exactly.

“Hello my baby, hello my honey…” Michigan J. Frog!

If you make friends with the science teacher at school, chances are you’re going to end up babysitting the class fish for the summer.

Chances are this will turn into a “If You Give a Pig a Pancake” kind of experience, wherein… (more…)

suspire (suh-SPYR) verb tr., intr.

[From Latin suspirare (to breathe up), from spirare (to breathe).]

(Thanks, Anu.)

I don’t really like being wide awake at 3:30 a.m., the cat pressing on my leg, a kid snoring in my ear. I like my kid — I like both of ’em, thank God — and I like my cats — all three of them, but at 3:30 a.m.? What I really like is sleep.

I’m running the dishwasher (finally), blogging, catching up on work e-mails. Yeah, baby.

You?

wm

We love chickens around here. We don’t have our own, mind you, but the neighbors do. They have three (per city ordinance: three chickens allowed, no roosters). We love other people’s chickens, would be a better way of putting it. The cats? The chickens are bigger than any of our neighborhood cats. And we have some big scrappers over here, so that is saying something. They are free-range chickens, in the truest sense. They go for several strolls every day, and they have their boundaries. Our driveway is their eastern border; the neighbor directly across the street from us is their southern border. A half-block north is their northern border. The edge of their own yard is their western border. So I wasn’t surprised this morning to hear my son ask:

“Dad, you know chickens?”

“Sure, I know chickens. What about ’em?”

“Well, one time, at Grandma’s work, this guy brought in chickens!…” Long, rambling story about chickens follows.

Now I’m thinking — Denver grandma? Iowa grandma? Portland grandma? Hmm. Who knows?

Here’s a joke from Julia Roberts — she told it to David Letterman when I saw her on his show one time. She sez: “Actually, it’s just the punchline — You have to come up with the joke.” Ready?

“You might be living off love, but you’re killing the chickens.”

happy Saturday, all of youse.

wm