Tuesday, October 09, 2007

Fish funerals and salsa flings

Hallelujah for cold fronts!  This one brought in a modicum of relief, unfortunately not early enough for a good night's sleep last night.  Oh well, I hope that it will be better tonight.  Being overheated makes it difficult to get any rest, but at least it did not kill us.  And that which does not kill us makes us stronger, right?  Too bad the same couldn't have been said for the fish.


Sadly, Rachel's and Abby's new fish bit the bullet sometime yesterday.  Rachel had moved George, her guppy, downstairs in an attempt to keep him cooler (it's regularly 85º upstairs, night and day) but, as I've commented before, it's not much cooler in the basement.  Friend Husband and I were getting the twins to bed last night when she came up crying and wailing the news, "He's dead!  My fish is dead!  And it's all my fault!"  We tried to calm her down and talk to her about the fragility of fish and the fact that our house being so hot is not terribly conducive to keeping them alive.  Meanwhile, Abby went downstairs to check on her betta and came upstairs with the news that Starlight was dead and "looked freaky". 


Friend Husband concluded his twin duties while I attempted to comfort the girls and figure out where to conduct a fish funeral at 9 PM.  And where in the world was my hand trowel?  I scooped the defunct fish out of their respective bowls, hid them under the measuring cup that I used for a scoop, and took them upstairs.  We eventually hacked a hole out of the baked earth in the garden next to the driveway and committed the remains of Starlight and George to the ground, from whence they did not come.


It's pretty bad when your house is too hot for fish to live in it.


Just this afternoon, I opened the refrigerator to get an apple out for the twins' lunch.  Well, let me back up to Saturday, when I spent some time making the last batch of fresh salsa for the year, tomato production being down now and all.  I probably made a quart or more of salsa, put it into a Rubbermaid container, and put it in the fridge.  Sometime between Sunday, when I had a bowl of it, and this afternoon, someone moved said container to the door of the refrigerator.  When I opened the door, it seemingly unbalanced the tub and it crashed to the floor.  To describe the scene as carnage isn't too far off.  The salsa splashed liberally inside the refrigerator, coating the contents with a fine patina of tomatoes and garlic.  It also spread widely in the kitchen itself, splash distances of at least 4 feet being recorded.  And, to add insult to injury, it also filled up my Crocs.  Crocs are wonderful shoes but the major disadvantage of them is the openings on top.  The salsa leaked through, oozing between my toes and settling into the bottom.  After screaming in surprise and inquiring (stringently, I must confess) as to who balanced a quart of salsa inside the door of the fridge, I stood there in amazed contemplation of the mess.  I eventually snapped out of it and started cleaning up with paper towels.  I realized that, my not being a paper towel heiress and all, this would be a pricy clean-up at this rate, so I scooped the salsa up with my hands and deposited it in the trash can which, happily, was within reach.  I was eventually able to clean up most of it but I'm sure we'll be finding hidden pools of salsa for some time to come.  I had two other thoughts, in passing.  One was that this probably would have put Friend Gina over the edge (of course, Friend Gina's family knows better than to balance anything in the fridge door) and the other was "What a waste of the last salsa of the season!"

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ah yes, you know me well! As I read, I thought to myself that at least salsa isn't sticky.

This afternoon we witnessed a major leak coming from a pile of Pepsi at Costco. My kids have been well trained because they discussed how awful spilled pop is to clean up. :-)

I'm influencing the next generation! LOL

cindy kay said...

As we always say at our house, "You never know how far a gallon of milk will go till you drop it." (I wonder how we know that....*wink*)