for the love of maurice

fish.

such complicated emotional little creatures.

from the tips of their puckered lips to the ends of their sweet little tails, they make me happy.

i brought my 6 fish home in two plastic water filled bags from the pet store.

wait. i have to tell you about the pet store.

ok so. it was back when it was still hot out and i left work early and drove into town with mom and some of the kids (they needed a thrill). i had been there before to buy fish with my friend for her fish tank (which now that i think of it, i actually have that tank now. ha).

her fish died, by the way. she was such a bad pet owner.

there was a very fish-wise lady there, and even though she lead me away from the ones i loved right away, im glad i went with what i thought was a drab choice of marine life.

Platys.

small and a little boring compared to the neon tetras i was staring at or the chubby mollies with bulging eyes (omg i thought they were hysterical).

but the fish-wise lady told me that these were hardy. and as a first time aquarium user, i would want the hardiest.

so i think i spent $22 on 6 fish and fish food.

don't look at me like that

back to the water filled plastic bags. i let the bags containing the fish float in the aquarium water for about 20 minutes. needless to say, i was a little excited. a little very excited.

i cut the bags open and released the fish into their new home. decorated with synthetic plants and fake gravel.

then i saw him.

maurice.

ok. i had no idea that i had such an adorable fish in that water filled bag, people. i just thought they were all that long thin type with the black tails. but alas. i "awwwwwwed" for about 5 minutes.

look at his chubbyyyyyy tummy! what a precious little squeegiekins!

immediately i knew i had to name him maurice. no idea why. he just was a maurice.

for some reason. i just haven't named all my fish. just him and Juan Pablo (thats another story). naming pets is hard and i only like to do it if i feel moved to. and when i feel the need, i name them "human" names. trust me, the bond is extra tight if you go with "human" names.

maurice has kept me entertained for hours. we've watched movies together. we're stared at each other. i've spoken to him. hes always pooping in the tank when i get home from work. and he's always the first one to kiss my fingertip in the morning when i dip it into the tank.

they've lived through some pretty rough times. various objects like money, cellphones, toilet paper, and toy cars have been dropped into their home. an entire jar of food flakes have been dumped into the water........nearly killing them all with clogged gills. ive been horrid enough to forget to turn out their light at night causing them to lose their sleep.

but they love me still. and i love them even more. because they can fogive me and move on.

fish, maurice, and juan pablo, i love you. no matter what. and even though i completely set up your home with ten gallons of water and 5 pounds of gravel making you all a whopping 100lbs right on top of a chest i need to get into more than i thought i would, ill always be there for you.

we are family.

worst movie review ever

no no no.

i just wasted my time watching a BBC produced movie when i could have been napping.

sigh.

i am not going to use this blog as a movie review (although that would be fun. but my taste in movies has shocked and confused so many people. so ill make it a rare occasion).

some woman wrote this novel and one day some bored bloke at BBC decided to produce it into a very drab, very heavily suppressive movie.

if i wanted to boil the whole thing down. make it super short and sweet. cut to the bone. id tell you about the ridiculously pathetic and teeth grittingly naive character, Cassandra and her distasteful love for her sisters fiance.

Cassandra. passionate writer (though only in her diary, of which we enter many times during the movie) and 17. helps her beauiful and complicated sister, Rose, lure and capture their very wealthy landlord (the son of the late landlord. go figure) into engagment. why? well duh. the family is in dire need of money. 2 years of rent unpaid. never any food. the father is a lost, once famous author. their stepmother is a crackhead 20s style hippy.

they have nothing.

so clearly, Rose should marry the landlord so she can be rich and support her family?

oh yeah. i had a cousin that did that once. not.

at one seemingly innocent scene of the movie. Cassandra is visiting her future brother-in-law. although this sounds extremely uncomfortable, it wasn't. but he asks her to dance. aaaaaand he kisses her.

what did he say again? something like "oh im really sorry about that. i hope it wasn't a terrible kiss"
to which she has the childishly stupid brains to say: "it was my first kiss".

awkward pause. 'cause im going "um helloooooo? hes engaged to your sister what the hell are you doing?!"

i hate it when movies fail to help you along. like. i honestly didn't see it coming and when it did happen, i cheesed out.

so being, as i said, ridiculously pathetic and teeth grittingly naive, Cassandra, like a fool, takes that meaningless kiss and totally ruins the movie.

Stephen, the hot boy in the back, friends with her since they were very young, LOVES her. and allllll because her landlord kissed her once she is consumed with him and totally brushes off Stephen.

you know what? im stopping.

my blood pressure can't handle Cassandra's stupidiy.

what is a kiss in the real world? how unrealistic is it to be kissed by your sisters fiance and even though he is like "meh it was just a kiss. i think you're a funny little girl", and aside from the fact that you should be like "whoa pervert", whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy would you fall head over heels and center your life around it??

fail. fail. EPIC fail. this movie had many other parts. nothing redeeming.

I Capture the Castle. watch at your own risk.

watch something with a positive message. be a designated driver. don't do drugs.

sorry to have wasted your time. i needed to vent.

goodnight.

rural life

on my way to this babysitting job im doing today (as we speak actually....child #1 just plucked an old sticker from the couch cushions and gave it to me "i don't want it. its fuzzy") i thought long and hard about what i could possibly write about in a blog every single day.

it was incredibly foggy too, by the way. being rather early for a saturday morning. and i practically hit a mennonite boy on a bike. aaaaaand my good friend was txing me as she was driving out of chicago, so i was forced to answer her.

do not text and drive. this is a dangerous, if not fatal, habit.

anyways. blogging. everyday?

impossibility.

its just not going to happen because.......nothing happens. at least, not everyday.

its this darn rural lifestyle.

no no. i love the lifestyle. i think its the best style. its quiet. friendly. simple. you work in a small town and you seriously get to know everyone. if not personally, you know the name. you've heard of them.
you can have impecible gardens. own big cows. grow your own eggs with chickens.

and no one gives a hoot.

but rural blogging.....meh.

you'll hear from me a few times a week, i suppose.

i gotta go grab the kids and hit McD's.

one time in a canoe

yea. so. i don't have my laptop atm. dan decided he needed mine today at work. he switched out our hard drives and left me with his broken down shell and my put-putting harddrive. apparently his LAN port doesn't work and mine does. thats what she said?

anyways. the "a" and "s" keys are pretty much sshot (notice 2 s's there?). so. ignore the typos.

canoes.

clearly not a topic im keen on. as you would know, if you knew me. but you don't. so here's to elaborating.

we got back from the family vacation on wednesday. it was a week long, although i didn't show up til sunday afternoon. originally i wasn't going til saturday because of work. but lo and behold, i got sick. and OMG thats a whole other story.

blah blah blah.

on our last full day there, at the cabin on a lake secluded from the world, two of my sisters and i took the canoe out and i paddled in back.

ok so. looooooong story. but im very uneasy around boats in general. so canoes to me are like...screaming red flags.

but im a big girl. this year at least. and at the moment we decided to go out.

we went slowly along the shore. it was around 4. shady. cool septembery. and quiet. the other kids and that stupid dog, Klaus, were inside watching "alladin". so for once the mirror like lake had its proper soundtrack. utter stillness.

id grabbed a fishing pole at the last moment and mary, who sat in the middle, cast out.

and you know what? we caught a fish. well. she did. but it was a cute little fish that stirred up such excitment in us, that we headed back to shore for more poles and a dish of the most disgusting nightcrawlers imaginable.

becky, stuffed in her life-jacket (she named it tom.....yea...) was at the front TXTING. seriously.

i don't know why im talking about this. i suppose i just wanted to say that i enjoyed myself in that darn canoe. i even let us drift into darker water. i even sat sideways with my leg propped on the edge. now that took guts.

as for fish. i caught 3. two miniscule perch and a bluegill that i think died. yes. but it happens.

when we came back to our sandy shore it was after 6. charlie ran from the cabin to look inside our pail. and as any 3-year-old, he was decently entralled by those little suckers.

amen to family vacations. amen to sisters. and amen to overcoming canoe discomfort and admitting it.