Swimming with the Fishes

We recently adopted two goldfish.  Hannah named them Goldie and Snowy.  Snowy has slightly more white on his/her (how do you tell gender on fish?) tummy, though truth be told they look pretty much identical to the unskilled eye.  Our journey towards adoption began at Hannah’s school in May.  They were doing a unit on animals and each kid was supposed to bring 50 pesos to buy either a fish or a baby chicken.  Yes, you read that right:  chicken.  

While tempted toward the baby chicken for novelty’s sake, we decided that a dead fish was much easier to recover from than a dead chicken, so we should clearly choose the fish.  Some weeks later, Hannah brought home a very sad looking Beta fish in a plastic water bottle.  He was already sort of floating on one side.  The prognosis didn’t look good.  We (the adults in the household) took secret bets as to his date of expiration.  I unfortunately won.  He didn’t make it to the next morning.  Hannah demonstrated impressive resilience.  She was quite excited by the idea of flushing a fish down the toilet. 

After returning from summer travels, Hannah and I walked to a small local pet store.  We selected two beautiful goldfish, bright blue tank rocks and a pretty green plant.  The goldfish almost suffocated in our original glass vase for lack of oxygen (strange how they’re always at the top of the water gasping for air ... hmmm).  Thankfully, Joselyn’s daughter is a goldfish expert and her roommate had a large glass aquarium that was only collecting dust.  We have since transitioned Goldie and Snowy to their new home, and they have been swimmingly happy ever since.  

The tank started out on the floor where the girls enjoyed watching the fish and Naomi enjoyed trying to catch the fish.  Unfortunately, Naomi actually fell into the tank one scary afternoon.  I’ll never forget her little feet kicking in the air and the panicked look in her big blue eyes (underwater).  Thankfully I was less than 20 feet away.  She was very scared but fine.  The fish seemed unfazed.  So now our cool tank is high up on a ledge in our enclosed balcony and I have learned a valuable lesson.  Maybe, we should have gone with the chickens?

Brange Bizcocho

Andy was gone.  I was tired of white walls.  I needed something to do at night after the kids went to bed.  Why not paint the house?  My last distant memory of painting was my parent’s rundown rental house in Delavan, IL some 20 odd years ago.  Delavan is internationally famous for 2 locals in the Guinness Book of World Records shooting marshmallows the furthest distance - from 1 person’s nose to the other person’s mouth = )  I digress.  

I clearly needed a painting refresher course, so I spent a few days watching You Tube videos on painting and spackling.  Feeling sufficiently confident that I could replicate the best prep and paint methodologies, I headed to the paint store.  Now my friend had warned me that choosing and mixing paint colors was ... umm ... different here.

My first tip-off was the dirty looks I got taking 10 paint color cards out of the display and leaving the store with them.  When I returned with my chosen colors, they hand-mixed “matching” colors from a different brand of paint all-together and showed me about 1,000 more color options on rings that were clearly not to be removed from the store.  They also suggested that I really wanted a different color than what I’d selected.  You really want this one, it will look better.  Ummm.  No, I really want the one that I chose.  No, you don’t, you should use this color.  Ack.  In the end, I think he was right, but who fights with their customers to change their paint colors?

Apparently I have a talent for picking brownish-orange colors gone wrong.  My “subtle orange” kitchen color was in fact a garish brown-orange.  I returned it for a brighter, definitely-no-trace-of-brown orange and after being blinded by its OJ intensity for a few days, I have grown fond of it.  The living room was a sadder story.  I chose a creamy wheat color.  Ha.  It came out ... drum roll please ... brownish-orange.  Depending on the time of day it looks peach or pink, definitely not creamy wheat.  Andy says our living room now resembles a big wedding cake or bizcocho.  This was not intended as a compliment.  Thus, I have cleverly entitled this blog Brange (brown+orange) Bizcocho. 

At some point in the upcoming months I hope to finish Hannah’s room (pale blue) and Naomi’s room (pale yellow).  I am curious to see what the colors actually turn out to be.  I’m optimistic that neither will veer towards brown-orange, but ... you never know! 

Happiness Is

My freshman year, I was in You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown, the musical.  According to Peanuts, “Happiness is two kinds of ice-cream, knowing a secret, climbing a tree ...”  Sadly enough, I can still sing most of the song.  I would like to add a cute orange rechargeable vacuum and a QVC-special Shark steam mop to that list.

I have literally spent hours upon hours sweeping, mopping, and scrubbing my floors.  I have repeatedly removed every toy and book and rug from my floors so the buckets of soapy water could work their magic before being “gomo”ed down the drains with a big rubber squeegee.  The result? ... black feet and pernicious dust the very next day.  Argh.

With no windows, the pollution walks right into our apartment, especially November through June during la zafra or sugar cane harvesting season.  To harvest sugar cane they burn the fields causing black ash to float miles and land on my floor.

However, I have won.  No more pushing the same dust around via old-fashioned mop and broom.  Ha ha ha ha.  My little vacuum eats dust for dinner and my Shark steam mop leaves the floors sparkling clean, germ-free, and chemical-free.  Booyah.  Our feet actually stay clean for at least a few days now.  Hooray.  And it takes about 10% of the effort.  I am free!  We’ll see how the system holds up come November.