Awkwardly Social

Sunset Junction is this weekend, which marks the fourth anniversary of the beginning of the Louie time period. I’m not going to the street festival this year because, a - I am kind of against large crowds at the moment and b - the bands always kind of sound like shit anyway, c - I’ve already seen The Black Keys (with Louie) and d - live music isn’t really my thing, throw in a bunch of people who don’t live on the East Side but think it’s ‘cool’ and I’m out. The festival always marks the end of summer for me, so that’s… I was going to say good, but it’s not the word I’m looking for, seasonal? Reassuring? I guess I always like summer to end. As much as I love the tank tops I’m always kind of happy for t-shirts. (haha! I live in So-Cal, I don’t have to wear fall clothes!)

Last week I spent a night at my place for a change, and when I walked in I was overpowered by the stench of rot. It wasn’t me, it wasn’t the dog, there was a possibility it was either the garbage or the dead goldfish that had been stewing in it’s bowl for a week and a half, or that I really was dead, and my corpse was so rotten that my ghost could smell it.

Instead of doing the normal thing and taking out the trash and getting rid of the dead gold fish, I went to bed with the windows open and a sheet over my face. I woke up periodically throughout the night thinking to myself, “Wow, it really still smells in here.” Which led to anxiety dreams of how I could possibly manage to take out the trash and empty the gold fish bowl. Here’s how my dreams would go. I would be standing in the kitchen, tying up the bag of garbage from under the sink, I would take that down to the trash. Then I would scoop out the dead gold fish, but not be able to put it in the trash because I had already taken the trash out. And so I would stand there with a dead gold fish dripping dead gold fish juice on the floor.

I’m not really sure what that all means, but in the morning I took out the trash, then I scooped out the dead gold fish, and was standing there holding the dead gold fish in the net trying to put a new bag in the garbage can while it dripped dead gold fish juice on the floor and I got really irritated with myself about how my dream warned me about this very situation and I just did it anyway. I am really dumb sometimes.  Also, listen to your dreams!

And then I ran over a pigeon. It did that stupid suicidal thing where it just didn’t fly away so I just ran right over it. I mean, there are a lot of things I will swerve for, pigeons aren’t fucking one of them. I looked into my rear view mirror and I didn’t see it, but I had definitely heard a slight thwack when it went under. So I was a little confused about where the fuck the stupid thing went. But two seconds later I forgot about it. Because pigeons are not something I worry about. I could give a fuck.

As I was walking Lula that night, I saw a pigeon carcass all the way on the grass. It was in the same area of my pigeon hit and run so I assumed it was the same dumbass bird. But this pigeon had no head. So I either decapitated the pigeon and it ‘chicken-with-its-head-cut-off-ed’ all the way to the grass, or I stunned the pigeon and one of the local pain-in-my-ass dogs that run lose even though they have owners picked it up and ate it’s head off. I’m not sure which story I’d rather believe.

The pigeon’s body remains unclaimed.

Back when I was trudging through the depths of my psyche with the help of “The Artist’s Way,” I would go on ‘adventures’ to the pet store. I didn’t have a dog yet, and my fish were cool, but I had made a commitment to go do something that involved unlocking my inner child. It sounds un-cool, and believe me, it is. Probably even more un-cool than I’ve made it out to be here.

My favorite place to go on these ‘artist dates’ was Petco. I don’t know. I just really like the giant tanks of fish. It’s very peaceful to me. I feel like a kid trying to throw a ping pong ball into a fish bowl at a carnival, without all the pressure. It’s a good feeling.

I just found this on my computer. Apparently I wanted to bring the fishes home with me. And now, you get to share in the magic.

I started writing my ‘morning pages’ again, because I’ve been having trouble forcing myself to get some actual work done when I sit down at the computer.  My inner child doesn’t want to sit and write, my inner child would like to make fart jokes at Lula’s expense.  My inner child does a lot of nose picking, as well.  I’ve also been suffering from some weird anxiety, so I decided it was time to get back to the cultish teachings of “The Artist’s Way” and work some stuff out on the page, because as much as I like writing here for you people, this is not the kind of work I am trained in.  It’s a nice outlet, but I don’t have a master’s degree in blogging, you know?  (Man, I wonder when they’re going to start offering that.)

It’s already helping, I feel better about my work.  I have decent coping strategies for when my mind feels the need to close Final Draft and open cuteoverload.  My script is something I look forward to sitting down at, whereas this blog is beginning to be my nemesis and I think that’s the way it should be in the grand scheme of things.

The best part about all of this is that when Allie asked if I wanted to do something fun this weekend, I let my inner child answer and she said she wanted to go horseback riding.  So, to steal a line from my main character, “Well, yee fucking haw.”

1. Thanks for the thoughts about my dead goldfish. I really liked having them around and this morning as I was going through my ritual of closing the windows and the shades I glanced over to look at them and then remembered flushing their diseased little bodies down the toilet. (As a side note, did you know you’re not supposed to do that, as it can spread disease to the local aquatic wildlife? Um, ew. And also, the local aquatic wildlife is capable of dealing with my poo but not my dead fish? Wow, that’s evolution.) So I was a little sad. The tank was kind of an investment, and I expected them to live at least a year. I’m going to look into some cleaning solutions and see if there’s anyway to sterilize the tank so I can get some new guys. They helped me get through some serious writing block and watching them swim around brought some much needed peace to my swirling mind so yeah, I miss having them around.

2. Operation Senior Citizen Walk is well underway and surprisingly actually working. For those of you who don’t know, I can’t remember if I mentioned it here, I go for a walk every evening with the dog. I promised myself I would just go for a two mile walk every night and if I hated it, well, it was only two miles and it would be good for Lula. Then because I know how to trick myself, I would always put on the required amount of sports bra coverage and if the feeling hit me I would run a little bit too. Because it is easy to trick myself and I am very competitive with myself (wow, that makes me sound way crazier than I actually am) I end up running at least 2 miles every other day. The best part is I feel better, my clothes aren’t quite so tight and Lula is in heaven. The worst part is Operation Senior Citizen Walk takes place on the lovely Los Feliz Boulevard, which is where many Actual Senior Citizens and their 20 grandchildren take their Senior Citizen walks every evening. It can be kind of annoying to dodge them, but the benefits outweigh the negatives at the moment.

3. I’ve been experimenting with my diet. I stopped drinking Mike’s Hard Lime because I was developing a beer belly and switched to a glass of white wine every now and again (fewer calories, more refreshing and who ever heard of a wine belly) with my black beans, corn and salsa concoction (delicious, satisfying and cheap). I’m planning on trying some of the Mark Bittman ideas (registration required, I think) in the coming weeks. As always I struggle for a three o’clock snack that actually satisfies me and keeps my stomach from rumbling all the way home and gives me a little boost for my nightly Senior Citizen Walk. I like the idea of fruit or vegetable sticks, but in reality I dream of coffee and a donut. I don’t believe people when they say they crave carrot sticks, I think they are lying to themselves and actually want carrot cake.

4. Please watch Greek on ABC Friday nights or ABC Family Monday nights. It’s an adorable show, the writing is on par with Veronica Mars and Gilmore Girls and it’s got a great cast. I’m rooting for it because I know one of the executives involved, but more than that, it’s the kind of show I would love to work on and with the departure of Veronica Mars and Gilmore Girls there are fewer and fewer shows I can say that about.

It was kind of a relief to find them dead this morning. They were really, really sick yesterday and my ick treatment seemed to perk up Rudy a bit, but Theo was a goner for sure.

So now I’ve got to clean out the tank and decide if it will be safe to bring new fish into it. Does that sound like a bad idea? Beth, you seem to have some experience with fish, what do you think? Old fish disease haunts a tank or goes away once tank water, filter, ect. is changed out.

They do not look good, people. Things are grim. This is where the doctor would come into the waiting room with his lips pursed together, and the mother stands up and he just stands there and shakes his head and the mother slowly sinks back into her uncomfortable plastic chair.

They are still hovering around the bottom, but now something is going on with their scales. My google search on goldfish sickness didn’t get me very far, but I think they have some sort of fungus. And I think the Fish that Never Got Named is at fault.

Lula thinks it’s funny and lays around the house like this, singing the Death March, and saying, things like, “Glub, glub, glub. I am dying from fungus. Ach.”

R.I.P, Fish with No Name. R.I.P.

I picked up an algae eater on Friday afternoon to help clean up the tank and was warned by the fish guy at Petco (who I immediately dismissed as a know-nothing…) that if I put it in a tank with gold fish it might not make it. “Might not make it,” was not strong enough for me because that left a ‘might make it’ possibility. (The fish is alive in the above picture, but not for long!)

So this morning when I went to feed Rudy and Theo and the fish I hadn’t bothered to name was floating on the top. I feel responsible for the fish’s death in a weird way. I feel guilty in a way I haven’t in a while. I’m not going to miss the stupid thing, it was ugly and just purchased for algae eating. But I feel bad that I killed it. Watch me snarf down a bucket of ceviche and you’ll know I’m not so worried about fish and their deaths, but find a dead fish in my tank and I feel a little tinge. Like a portent of bad things to come. I’m superstitious, what are you going to do?

Lula looks sad too, but that’s mostly because she just always looks sad unless she looks like she wants to eat that squirrel over there, no that cat, no that bird, no it was a squirrel, ohmygod there’s a dog. She’s not very smart our Lula, but she sure is adorable. And she’s not floating dead at the top of the fish tank so that helps her case.

UPDATE: Oh fuck, when I got home today the fish that I said were doing fine in spite of their fin rot, where hovering around the bottom of the tank looking kind of ill. They might not make it through the night. Fucking fish.

The poor babies have fin rot.  Everytime I tell someone about the fin rot, I get an, “Ew,” but honestly it’s not that bad.  They don’t look like extras from that pirate movie with the fish-men.  Their fins are just a little tattered and frayed, like little match-girl fish.

Aside from their affliction, which is caused by stress (How can my fishies be stressed?  They have the best life!) they are awesome fishes.  I put an airstone in their aquarium, which for you non-fish owners is just a thing that bubbles, and they love to dive face first into it and let it carry them up a little, then they repeat it.  I have to say, I would love to do the same thing.  Also, they come up to the glass like little puppies and beg for food whenever I go over to their aquarium.  Yeah, I got rid of the fish bowl because I read somewhere that gold fish need at least 5 gallons of water per fish and if they didn’t have it they could get stressed and get fin rot.  Which they did.  So I caved and got them an aquarium.  After I got the aquarium, I was suprised I didn’t develop fin rot.  I was totally worried that the very sturdy table we put them on would collapse and the aquarium would shatter and my downstairs neighbor would continue to hate me, only now she would do it with a real sense of purpose because I spilled ten gallons of fish water into her apartment.  So far, the table has held, but there was a period of three or four days where I did a fair amount of research about tables collapsing under the weight of a 10 gallon aquarium.  I am nothing if not well researched.  And I will tell you I only found a small handful of stories, so either fish tank owners aren’t talking or the aquarium people are working some serious scare tactics into their instructions about collapsing tables.

Theo, the first fish I got, has a gold body with a black stripe his back.  He had the worst of the fin rot, but now that his dorsal fin is healing, he’s losing his black.  He’s becoming a totally gold gold fish.  Apparently this happens.  Who knew?  Rudy remains unchanged.

Soon I will post a fish video for you.  If I can figure out how to host it somewhere where the compression isn’t completely oppressive.

Oh my, it is February.  I don’t want to alarm you, but I thought you should know that this is a short month.  I know, I was as surprised as you are.  Can we get a leap year up in here?

Theo and Rudy are doing well, but I’m having a hard time treading the line of over mothering them and totally ignoring them.  I know they’re more comfortable when I’m not staring at them, because I’ll catch them swimming up to the top third of the bowl to check things out and the second they notice me they’re back to pretending they see something really interesting at the bottom of the bowl.

Fuck.  This is becoming a fish blog.  Goddamnit.

I was going to tell you about our trip to Catalina, but that has fish in the story too.  I’m not joking.  I’m even putting four of my digital camera video captures, that I took while we were in a semi-submersible fish watching, together as a little iMovie project.  I just discovered how to use that program (shut up, film school totally spoiled me with Media Composer) and it’s kind of fun.  Now I just need to get some more fish footage so I can give you a whole fish montage.  And then I will alienate all of you but create a whole new fish porn following.

There are new creative pursuits in the making that I’ll be able to reveal to you next month which have nothing to do with fish.  So that’s exciting at least.  And I’m massaging a bar story from the island.  It’s nothing big but the punch line will be available on a t-shirt soon (totally serious), so I want to make it good.  It involves drunk yacht owners, so it’s both really easy and also really difficult.

Now the Gilligan’s Island theme song is running through my head, except I can’t remember the first verse.

The millionaire and his wife, the movie star, and the rest!  Here on Gilligan’s Isle…

Last night I went on my lame “artist date” wherein I am prescribed one to two hours of time alone with me and my inner child. My inner child wanted to watch TV and eat leftover lasagna while cuddling with my boyfriend, but since I am the grownup I have the uppper hand and forced my inner child to go to the pet store and look at the caged little animals because nothing brings story ideas to me like staring at rats and geckos.

I was roaming around trying to keep my inner child from freeing the guinea pigs to wreak havoc upon Hancock Park when I decided to go to the aquarium section and look at the clown fish. My favorite fish, even before Nemo, were always the clown fish. They are a delight to watch and I have seen one in person snorkeling in the Caribbean, so it kind of brings it all back by watching them. Adjacent to the clown fish was one of those tanks teeming with the fish you feed your pirahna. They’re gold fish, but they’re also deemed too cheap to put in a tank without one thousand of their closest friends. And it costs a mere 10 cents to bring one home. I started asking the fish man some questions and he told me it was a better idea to get a Beta. Now, don’t get me wrong, I think Betas are really beautiful, but they are the slackers of the fish world. They live comfortably in small bowls because they don’t like to swim around. They just kind of float there. So I steered Fish Man back to the teeming mass of gold fish and he told me that if I wanted a gold fish I was really advised to get a tank. I told him I wasn’t going to do that. A tank would be too big and really, if I got a tank what was to stop me from going all the way and taking home an angel fish and some sharks and having my own little National Geographic Channel showdown in my own home. He didn’t think that was funny. He did a lot of blank staring and blinking when I told him he couldn’t stop me from getting a cheap goldfish and an attractive bowl. Which I did.

I heaved everything to the check out counter, paid for my purchases and began to saunter out the door when I realized I didn’t get Theodore Frederick Jackson Turner Roosevelt any fish food. I said to the 18 year old working the register, “Oh shit, this fish is totally doomed.” She blinked at me and I left everything at the counter to find the fish food.

I finally drove home and showed Louie our new family member. Then I remembered I didn’t buy any rocks for Theo’s bowl. Poor Theo is living kind of ghetto at the moment. Louie really loves Theo. We’re both rooting for his survival. Tonight, I go back to the pet store for rocks and maybe a friend for Theo, because he seems a little lonely. Hopefully, Fish Man won’t remember me and think I killed Theo.