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Well, despite my husband’s heroic efforts on his behalf, my beta fish died yesterday. Hubby called me in the late afternoon to tell me, and he sounded very broken up about it. I, on the other hand, had not been dealing with the creature’s rapidly declining health all day, every day, and thus had not formed much of an attachment in the mere week we had him. (Not that I didn’t feel bad that he’d been suffering, but still…)

My husband would not let one fish’s tragic demise shatter his vision of a beautiful, healthy fish for each of us. By the time I got home, he’d handled all the last rites for poor Spectre, cleaned out the tank and filled it with fresh, treated water, replaced the filter, evaluated a series of prospective residents at a trustworthy pet store, and installed a vivid red, orange and blue beta. My husband’s suggested name for the new fish: Phoenix. I told him that would remain to be seen.

For now, though, the new fish looks robustly healthy. He darts around his tank, displays his gorgeous “plumage” and treats mealtime like a hunt. He’s a lot bigger than his predecessor, so that might be an advantage all by itself.

The whole experience has quelled my desire to have a fish at the office, however. The last thing I need while I’m trying to work is to worry about pH levels, water changes, and swim bladder disorders. Under the circumstances, I think I’d be better off bringing in a lava lamp.

I went shopping for contact lens solution yesterday and discovered, to my amusement, that my brand of choice has abruptly reversed an incredibly stupid packaging redesign that they’d perpetrated on their consumers not terribly long ago.

I buy Opti-One contact lens cleaner, and for some reason I have a hard time remembering the name. For the first umpteen years I bought the product, it was easy to spot in the store because it came in an orange box. If you’re a contact lens wearer, you already know that every other brand of contact lens solution on the market comes packaged in some variation of blue or green.

Not too long ago – it may have been within this calendar year – I went to Target to get a new bottle of Opti-One and I couldn’t find any. More careful investigation revealed that it was there all right, now repackaged in a dark blue box just like all the other brands. I finally committed the name of the product to memory and went on buying it in the new box, even though each purchase made me a little grumpy at the extra effort it took to discern which of the nearly identical boxes I wanted.

Yesterday I made my way to the contact lens solution aisle and there, shining like a brand-differentiated beacon, was Opti-One in an orange box again! I would venture to guess that not every consumer had been willing to put in the extra two seconds to make the leap to the blue packaging. Sales probably declined. Perhaps the company finally did some market research. One way or another, common sense finally prevailed. Isn’t that refreshing?

Here are a few things I’ve been thinking about this week:

• Once I completed Eats, Shoots and Leaves, I thought I’d be spotting bad punctuation all over the place. Instead, I found another misuse of the word “grizzly” in place of “grisly.” It was in this week’s Entertainment Weekly magazine in a review of the book The Italian Boy: “Wise’s first book uses a grizzly 1831 murder…”. When, oh, when will people stop murdering those poor grizzly bears?! Then again, EW has never been anyone’s standard for superior editing practices.
• I worked until 9:00 p.m. last night restoring the content of a website that underwent a catastrophic three-server meltdown which wiped it out along with all its backups. A site that helped the process immensely was Archive.org. They store website archives at various intervals for pretty much any site you can think of. They didn’t have anything beyond June 2003 for the site I was working on, but it was close enough to be a very valuable head start. A big shout-out to the Webdawg, who did all the really hard technical stuff.
• My fish is still alive, but acting strangely. I keep finding him draped over the top of the thermometer in his tank with his head and most of his body out of the water. Betas are air-breathers, so it isn’t quite as freaky as it may sound. Still, it seems somewhat alarming, but the next time I check on him, he’s usually swimming around again. He’s only on his second day of an eight-day medication cycle, so I’ll just have to wait and see.
• We’re switching health insurance companies at work and the new company asks a lot more questions than the last one. It’s such a drag to try to figure out the dates of every illness I’ve had over the last five years. Did I have my appendix out in 1999 or 2000? Did I have pneumonia last winter or the winter before? Are these six medications the only ones my husband takes, or are there more hidden somewhere else? I thought that was the point of agreeing to fork over your medical records. Who remembers these things?

That’s all for today, folks. Have a lovely day!

If you have to ask how my ambitious Monday plans worked out, you either don’t know me or haven’t read Average Jane very long. Oh, I made it through my usual tasks; I just didn’t exactly exceed and excel. Perhaps things will work out better today.

On top of everything else, my new beta fish is ailing. Yesterday I came home to find him jammed head-first down into the rocks at the bottom of his tank, which seemed to be a bad sign. We promptly went to the local pet store and procured some medicine, but although the fish is no longer wedged into a crevice, he’s still bumming around and looks, well, rather hopeless. In the parlance of The Princess Bride, he appears to be “mostly dead.” I hope that time and medication will do something for him.

Note added 7/10/04: I’ve noticed this blog entry coming up a lot in searches for “sick beta fish,” so I thought I’d pass along the best site we’ve found for comprehensive information about the little fishes: BettaTalk.com. Faith knows everything about bettas/betas.

My only unqualified success with a living thing of late has been the pumpkin vine. Man, that thing is getting enormous! The stem is now about five feet long and about as thick around as my thumb, except at the very tip. If I don’t train it onto a trellis pretty soon, it’s going to wind around and strangle all of my zinnias and marigolds.

When it comes to indoor plants, I definitely don’t have a green thumb. Over the years I’ve learned which varieties can survive being watered only when they’re starting to droop, and those are the only house plants I keep around. When my husband got his beta, we displaced a Syngonium plant that had never really thrived. I took it to my office where it now gets watered at least weekly. It has doubled in size in just a few months, and has tons of new, healthy leaves. Kinda makes me feel guilty about the plants that were left in my irresponsible hands.

The best news I’ve heard lately: I’ll finally get my car back this week! It’s been in the shop for almost two months, but it’s almost put back together. After puttering around like a granny in the emergency backup car, I’m going to have to be exceedingly careful not to get a(nother) speeding ticket when I’m back to driving the sports car. Now I have an added incentive to get all my work done this week: I need to free up a weekend day to wash and wax my car!

I’m beginning this week with the determination to be shockingly, stunningly, mindbogglingly efficient and productive. I’m not sure how I’ll carry through that determination in the absence of strong prescription stimulants, but I have to start somewhere.

I had a good weekend that gave me the time, sleep and companionship to shake off much of the lingering melancholy from the previous week. Last night we all had a good laugh watching the Lewis Black DVD we got my father for Father’s Day. Things are back to normal, and perhaps better than normal.

The Possum is so dramatically improved by last week’s chiropractic adjustment that it’s almost impossible to believe we had recently been considering whether she might have to be put to sleep. She looks and moves like she’s five years younger, her appetite has increased – everything about her manner and behavior marks her as feeling significantly better. She’s even renewed hostilities with her archrival, Chunky, so I know she’s back to normal.

Well, off I go to pack a UPS shipment, bake a batch of scones, and make myself semi-presentable for the office. Tomorrow: giant pumpkin plant update.

I left the house at about 8:15 a.m. yesterday and didn’t get home until nearly 9:00 p.m. I followed a full day at my “real job” with a number of hours at my dad’s office and came home exhausted and hungry. I didn’t feel like going anywhere to procure a meal, so I had a peanut butter sandwich, vegged in front of the TV for about an hour, then turned in.

I woke up at 5:00 a.m. to the sound of a huge thunderstorm, made noticeable by the sudden absence of the noise of my beside fan when the power went out. I lay in bed listening to the storm for a while and watching the flashes of lightning. The cats could tell I was awake, so two of them came to see me, sit on me, mew at me, etc. It became obvious that the power wasn’t coming back on, so I got up, grabbed our battery-powered candle (so handy!) and called the power company on my cell phone to report the outage. Then I went back to sleep.

I woke up a little later than usual, but an interrupted sleep is never as satisfying as a continuous one. This has been a very taxing week, and I’m looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow morning. I wonder how I can convey that plan to the cats and the weather?

Good morning, everyone.

Yesterday was a long, sad day, and I just don’t feel like talking about it.

Instead, enjoy some of the bloggers in my links to the right. Pharmgirl has a dramatic story this week. Always Curious is chock-full of fascinating photos. Finslippy usually makes me laugh out loud at least once in each blog entry – I wish she’d post more often.

Heck, they’re all good! Just have a happy little link-clicking party over there. I do it every day. You won’t regret it.

I don’t have a lot of time today because our friend’s funeral is at 2:00 p.m. in a town about two-and-a-half hours away. I need to spend all the morning time I can at the office.

Here’s a little summary of recent Average Jane events to keep things going:

• According to this article, there is going to be an NBC show called “Average Jane” in the same vein as “Average Joe.” I hope that the many people who run across this blog while searching for the TV show site are not too terribly disappointed.
• I loved all the comments on my “Average Jane Entertains” story, especially since most of them boiled down to, “Don’t host any more parties.” I actually enjoy having people over, but I agree that there’s a definite point of diminishing returns. I think I’ll stick to attending other people’s parties for a while and see how I feel about it later.
• I took The Possum to the chiropractor vet today because our regular vet had mentioned that her pelvis (that is, the cat’s pelvis, not the vet’s pelvis) did not seem to be the proper shape, which could be contributing to her, shall we say, elimination problems. She’s also been pulling out huge chunks of fur from her side and tail, clearly in response to some feeling of irritation. The chiropractor likened it to migraine patients pulling on their hair to relieve scalp tension. After the adjustment, The Possum immediately began swinging her tail more freely and walking far less stumpily. I think that’s a sign of improvement.
• I had a very productive spate of insomnia last night. I woke up around 4 a.m., washed the pots and pans, cleaned the kitchen counters, and loaded and ran the dishwasher. Then I went back to bed. If only I could find a way to sleepwalk through all my overdue projects; I’d never miss another deadline.
• Finally, after watching my husband’s beta fish thrive, grow and develop its own happy “feed me” dance, I decided I wanted one of my own. I strongly considered taking it to work to keep on my desk, but decided to leave it at home for now. I got a pinkish-white one with pale bluish fins and black eyes. I’ve named him Spectre (admittedly under some influence from the movie “Big Fish”). He’s rather small now, but if he develops the kind of appetite that my husband’s fish has, he’ll be increasing in size soon.

Have a lovely Wednesday!

Remember the recurring schtick on the old “Mary Tyler Moore Show” where every time Mary tried to throw a party, it was a disaster and practically no one showed up? I felt a little Mary-ish on Saturday once my bingo party began.

The guest list included the members of the club for which the party was being held (about 70 people) and another 10 or so of my friends. The ultimate guest tally was 10, plus two people serving as bingo callers. I’d gone to a great deal of trouble to round up tables and chairs, clean the house and back yard, buy refreshments, etc. By the time the party started, all I really wanted to do was take a nap, and the low turnout did not help tip the party/nap desire scale in the party’s favor.

When I was a little girl, we had some neighbors who occasionally invited me over to play with their kids. Sometimes they’d offer to come by and get me for some outing but then forget, and I would sit forlornly looking out the window, long past the time the fun was supposed to begin. My mother would be absolutely furious at them for getting my hopes up and then flaking.

A lame party always bring out the forlorn little girl in me, shadowed by a faint flicker of fury inherited from my mother. I know it’s nothing personal – it’s a spring weekend, people have plans – but it’s still disappointing.

Luckily the party was mercifully short, so I had the opportunity to put away all the furniture and food, stash the cooler of soft drinks in the basement, and move on to reading the copy of Eats, Shoots and Leaves that I’d purchased while party shopping. I ended up with a good supply of leftover hummus and pita chips and some lovely raspberry cookies that make a good garnish for vanilla ice cream, so everything worked out in the end. Just don’t ask me to host another party anytime soon.