C.J. Cherryh's Blog, page 15

First day I’ve been able to look out the window and see fishes…

It’s been so cold that fishy brains have been on hiatus. They get instinctive and spooky when their system is on the edge of winter sleep, and our weather has been that cold. The brain is a very energy-hungry part of the body, and it goes on holiday when the fishes are hunkered down by the bottom pump to stay warm. The instinct says go deep, keep in the dark, and run if you see movement. And that’s all that’s processing.

Also, these are babies which have had nothing in their lives but ‘run when the school runs’ and ‘stay together.’

We got Goku and Sanzo to shepherd them but they’ve been so cold they’ve hunkered down too.

Now we’re getting warmth, and the fishes are beginning to swim quietly, with purpose, the mouths are working, skimming the bottom, and they’re beginning to take in the idea that food happens when we’re close, so we’re not a bad thing. They’ve been coming into the sunlight, seeking warmth. We have several 4′ diameter patches of water lilies, white, sunset, pink, and yellow, and they hide there, but come out to see if food is available. They’re also hiding in the bridge shadow, but coming out into the sun warmth.

So nice to see.

The kitchen

The carpenter talk went well. We like this guy, and he can do big jobs or little jobs, which is a good thing. Jane and I have skills, but we have reached that stage in life that makes crawling under cabinets and hefting heavy objects up at awkward angles involving power saws is just not worth the week of recovery afterward, and the risk of medical bills. We have sent off for material samples—color matching anything online via computer monitor can give you nasty surprises. We may do the floor, which involves a Rubik’s cube of furniture moving (the hutch in the kitchen is the elephant we have to waltz with) but we have a do-able vision of what we want and how we’re going to turn a shotgun kitchen into a kitchen with storage for what normally sits out.

Generally doing a lot better.

Wearing astigmatic correction glasses has helped a lot. Been gardening—time for the iris to be whacked down to 6″, so we can see other nice things in the gardens, and I pretty well filled the big green recycling bin all by myself. Jane’s been shoveling gravel and using it to fill the under-fence and under-gate gaps so that we can let the kittehs outside. Shu got his first harness-free tour of the new arrangement today and had a good time. Sei is more timid, but we’ll see if he can enjoy the sun too.

We’re getting our first day in the mid to high seventies, so the pond water will warm, and hopefully the fishes will really wake up, get to know us, and quit spooking.

I’m feeling well enough I’m actually going to drive myself to the store solo. I was able to demolish another huge iris clump this morning, plus shovel a couple of wheelbarrow-fuls of gravel, and the stretch feels good.

Had my Logitech headphones die on me—online gaming just doesn’t work well without them; so we went out and got a set of another brand: Corsair, Void model. I’m kitted up so it looks like I’m ready for a fighter-jet, but, hey, it does deliver nice sound. And has a good review. I have had the old headset fail so often it’s been a real frustration, but we did well last night.

We are also calling in a carpenter to assess the long-promised kitchen redo. Our kitchen has been a frustration to me, and I want some pull-out pan shelves and lid racks, and a kitchen floor that’s not white and doesn’t have warped boards. All our cabinets are recessed a good 3″ from the cabinet tops, and that’s wasted. Whether we’ll give up the soffit space above (and our Russian plate display) in favor of more storage, I don’t know, but we’ll consider it: storage in this kitchen—well, the basement serves, and we do have a little pantry, but I cook, as in, really cook, and cooking in this kitchen is sort of like camping minus the conveniences…

Love is—

We have lousy hot water delivery. I frequently turn on the bathroom sink hot water to get hot water in the kitchen (we are going to install an auxiliary water heater in the coming kitchen revision)—and sometimes if you want a hot bath.

I most always shower. But I hurt so bad from a stint trimming iris leaves (filled half a monster green city bucket) that I opted for a hot soak.

As I finally reached tub-fill and continued to hear a water sound, I began to realize—it’s not the tub. It’s the—OMG! sink! The flood had gone over the sink, filled two drawers, and was cascading onto the floor.

I got out of the tub in a hurry, flung down towels and my bathrobe to try to stem the flood short of the hall laminate…and yelled for Jane.

Well, the flood went through the floor and down to the basement, so we had a double mopup, which actually saved the hall from getting wet. And we mopped, and moved makeup bottles, and generally mopped, mopped, mopped and now have a fairly dry bathroom, an only slightly soggy basement floor (the unfinished side, concrete) and a pile of towels and bathrobe in the washing machine.

Many a spouse would be furious and there’d be a fight for a week. Jane laughed and helped me mop. No recriminations, no fuss. Love is—sense of humor while mopping and bailing.

We ARE going to get that water heater.

We have, btw, gotten two more fishes…

Sanzo, who is a lot like Goku—there are pix, but we’ll have to get more organized.

And, officially, Maddy ii, a platinum butterfly fin.

We’ve been worried because the fishes are so spooky and don’t seem to be eating much, though we’ve had temperatures more like April than June—but I think we may have hit critical mass with these two new ones: the fish generally race now between the pump (depth) and the shallower waterlily clump. But they ARE moving, and are getting restless. This is much more normal behavior, instead of huddling close in cover. Now they’re making forays out to explore, and have established a second ‘safe place’ to go to. This is good.

We have also gotten the water clear as drinking water—I got clever and ordered 10 feet of HVAC blue-white filter that is meant to filter air. THIS gets the pollen that was clouding the water. (Pine and cedar, we think.)

Anyway, we did observe them eating a bit. I’ve also ordered some special food—silkworm husks, probably silkworm remains, which are now being sold commercially by Hikari (food). This is a staple of koi diets in Japan, and they are generally very highly colored.

Went to the doc…

ENT guy swears it’s not the ears, or if it is, it’s probably neurological…etc.

OTOH on the way home, after thinking about a statement he made that the bilateral brain does rely on having input from senses in some sort of agreement…I began thinking about the time of onset of some problems, and the cataract surgery, the new reading glasses, but also the fact that, within 6 feet of me, I have astigmatism as a fairly major problem—read: I can’t see the ground I’m walking on without glasses, and the reading glasses are too short-focused. SO I took an ancient pair of driving glasses out of the overhead of the car, put them on, and it was as if my brain relaxed. Mmmm. Not dizzy, which I have been nearly continually for months.

Well, the other issue is blood pressure. Dunno if fighting vision problems can elevate your blood pressure (I’m now on very mild meds for that) but definitely blood pressure could affect the vision.

Complicating everything was the adventure with a generic thyroid med—which did affect my blood pressure.

Well. The blood pressure problem remains: I’m reducing salt a bit, watching the coffee intake, and generally trying to be good, and it is trending down…so we shall see.

I at least have some hope i am not stuck with this dizziness for the rest of my life.

DId I mention a glitch with my headphones took out my laptop mouse, keyboard, and headphones and delivered, repeatedly, the Blue Screen of Death. Was on the phone with Dell for an hour, ran diagnostics, and finally figured the keyboard wasn’t working. Nor was much else. We happened to have a usb keyboard and a usb mouse, so we got it to go to safe mode.

The problem started when the headphones glitched and the Logitech site said uninstall the ‘gaming software,’ meaning itself. Well, it glitched partway through, hence the initial Blue Screen. And I couldn’t finish the uninstall. After I got off with Dell, Jane got the brilliant idea of going up in safe mode, finishing the Logitech uninstall, doing some stalled updates caught in the mix, one of which WAS for wireless, and, ta dah! the Blue Screen gave way to proper behavior. She’s got the system running. Including the headset.

Dell was going to send me a box to ship the machine in for a reinstall of Win 7, but I think I’m going to tell them what we did and how we did it and suggest they not ship me the box for a bit, in the case we have actually fixed the hangup.

Desperation cooking…

I started to drive myself to the store. And lo, somebody left some door open on the Prius, their one Achilles heel. It’s hot, it’s nasty, I’m not about to tackle the problem in the heat: we have to call AAA to get the jump. So…do it tomorrow. In the morning. I called the grocery and ordered my list. It wasn’t easy to navigate their software, but I got it.

We’re having what’s left in the fridge tonight: one cabbage, bacon, half a bell pepper, and a potato. Cut up and fried together with ample pepper, probably not bad. We’ll see. At least it’s within the diet.

The little fishes wouldn’t come out of cover…so…

We went back to the store and bought a 6″er. You could almost hear little fishie voices exclaiming “Nee-san!” in great relief. Now we have five little noses lined up under the pump shelter. But big brother comes out to eat, and the little ones are coming out too. We have a lot of traffic just outside the back yard, and it has to be strange to these fish. They’re getting bolder. Maddy made it clear to the bridge, a whole 5 feet away from the hidey-hole.

We also completed the netting—we had half of it up, on the more vulnerable side. So now the fishes are protected. The pond looks as if it’s the den of Shelob, in certain sun angles, but Mr. Raccoon does not get sushi.

The new guy’s named—we absolutely couldn’t think of an appropriate name for him—Goku. The always-starving monkey-boy whose name means something like Bottomless Pit—who grows up into the Seiten Taisei, the Great Sage Equal of Heaven….This from one of our favorite animes/mangas, Saiyuki. Our Goku is the most unusual color I’ve ever seen in a koi, the color of a new-minted penny. With a bandit mask of black dots. There’s no knowing how he’ll grow up or out, but right now he’s just unusual. A doitsu type, with big heavy scales on either side of the spine. Getting a picture isn’t easy: the water he came in was absolutely clouded with pollen. (It’s that season up here.) But we’ll get a good one sooner or later. Meet Goku.

now we’re getting blog-join requests from Palau as well as Russia and Nigeria…

If you are one of my readers from those addresses, do write (the e-mail is up there ^) and let me know—you will be most gladly welcome. But if not, within a certain number of hours, the application will be denied.

Pond report

We did lose 2 of the little fishes—they’re very small, and at this stage of life, fragile. Two kohaku (orange spots on white) didn’t make it, what with the crazy weather that’s also made the pond murky. I did a drain down of all but 1000 gallons, we are putting in clean water, and I rejoice to report that four of our six are together, hanging out in the little ‘houses’ Jane built of rock, and around the filter intake pump—which makes me very glad I put that thing in a mesh bag. They can get too snuggly with a pump and get into trouble.

But using the auxiliary pump, the draindown only took about 3 hours, we are now (much more slowly) refilling: I’ll have to test and adjust the chemistry again; and hopefully we’ll be able to see our fishes from time to time. Ari, Maddy, Wesley, and Ichigo all are ok. Pix are impossible: you’d only say, what fish? Clarity isn’t perfect, they are opting to stay in the deepest water, next to or under a black mesh bag.