It's better to have loved and lost.........No. Eff that shit. Why do things have to die?

 I am so torn. Even as a grown woman I am rocked when someone or something I love has any sort of tragedy. I am a softy. There, I said it. I love hard and I hurt so bad when people or pets die. This makes explaining tragedy to my 11 year old very hard. In a way I feel like I can only cave in and be emotional in private because I don't want to encourage the dramatics that teenhood has already bestowed on us. And in another way I truly feel like there's a healthy dose of reality in seeing your parents be real and even vulnerable. I know I am not weak because I cry when my heart hurts or when I feel sympathy for someone else. Being strong is just as important as having enough compassion for your fellow man to feel their pain too.

 But. This morning when my teeny tiny rooster died of an illness he has been fighting, I cried so hard my chest hurt. Like it was the very first fish I ever had to flush down the toilet. I know the reason that I was mourning the tiny rooster. Because just yesterday we found out my dad had a mild heart attack he hadn't told anyone about and had been rushed by ambulance to the hospital. And again, my father is not invincible. I kept it together. I stayed perfectly calm to explain to the kids that grandpa was having some health problems. I stayed logical and levelheaded and didn't cry when I told my husband about it. And then when I found my tiny rooster calmly quietly asleep forever, I caved in. I sobbed for everything.

 Explaining all of this with kid gloves to a child who lives part of her life in an extremely sterile and emotionless environment is very hard. At our house we cry. At our house when we are angry or upset we talk about it together. It must be tough to turn your feelings off and on based on what weekend it is. She has a heart of gold and she's extremely tender so when she feels things she feels about 10% more than the rest of us. It's hard to balance the line between sending her over the edge into a dramatic tween crying sobbing the world going to end episode, and just telling her everything is A-OK. Neither is appropriate in this instance. Thankfully she took my father's heart attack very seriously and held it together and asked me how I was doing which is an amazing amount of compassion for an 11-year-old. We went out to water the garden together and talked about life and death while discussing the rooster this morning. She has a very good head on her shoulders and enormous heart for her age. It amazes me every time we have to have a serious moment. Then we did the usual and she asked about God, I talk about creation and the way that I understand it and we shared feelings about love and loss in very logical terms. And I caught myself just kind of going through the motions because I am really hurting over the last couple days  happenings. So at one point I caught myself crying again and feeling the feelings inside of my body I haven't felt since I was a little kid. It's the feeling of fuck this it's all garbage why the hell do people have to die life is unfair. Though I didn't say it out loud and she didn't say those exact words, I know we share the same heartache about it. I've lost a lot of close loved ones. She has lost a few distant relatives she barely knew and one great gram. I think the hurt is the same when you have big sensitive hearts.


 I know in my heart of hearts the reason I'm so emotional about this tiny rooster isn't because he was just simply wonderful loving and kind. I know it's because my dad's getting old and with every rush to the emergency room I feel him slipping  away from me. I also know that I'm not invincible and someday I will die. A little too much real life tends to get under my skin. I like to pretend these things will never happen because I don't know how to deal with it. In those ways I am in fact too soft.

the world has gone mad

ok. So it's been a long time since I got all agro (aggravated) about something little and stupid. And normally my favorite things to wig out about are those that are so stupid that I am shocked at human kind and MUST post about my outrage. This is one such event.

As we were moving (YES we got the house and moved and long story short about that, it was a nightmare as moving always is. My husband is now a withered waste of a man having used all of his brut strength. But the house rocks.) we became aware that the girls fish was dying. Super sad and her tender little heart was breaking audibly. Knowing it would be the end of the world as we know it if we lost more than one fish in the tank, my husband and I carefully scooped everyone into individual containers for the move and got the tank loaded in record time. We hop in the car and beeline for a local enormous chain type pet store. I am a bit of a nerd ( ok, major super fish nerd. I heart fish ok.) and I knew what the fish had died from and wanted to prevent a tank wide outbreak by dosing the colony with the ever-ready commonly popular blue medicine that anyone who is anyone who has ever had a fish has used. It is in fact the only junk that cures ick ( a cloudy fluffy outer scale infection of the fungal kind that quickly covers a fish and renders him floaty) and it is often simply named things like "rid-ick" or "Ick-B-Gone". I get to the store and swoop into the fish area combing the medication only to find there are no such products. I must be blind or they must just have it elsewhere I assumed. I was in a hurry so I became that jerk who butts into the line of moms and little children who are only going to tell the clerk "We are just looking at the fishies" when he gets to them anyways. I am having a fish emergency people! The clerk is so stereotypical I can't stand it but I waste no time chuckling. I ask for the product by name and he smiles and tells me the have pulled ALL blue ick meds off the market. WHAT THE DEUCE!!! I laugh and think it must be nerd humor. Nope. He says that people were using it to get high. That's where it all goes crazy for me. I seriously said to him " Are you frikken shitting me?" He says no and goes in to point out herbal remedies made from garlic and west African tree roots. ARG!!!! I neeeeeeeeed the blue crap. It is the only thing that works. And not to mention that Ick is the simplest fish sickness. It should have a standard cure. And it did before stupid idiot crack head America started getting stoned on it.


Here is my questions of the day ( I had to go back and make it plural because I started rattling off so many). How absolutely hard up for drugs do you have to be to raid your fish tank supplies? Even better, how many different tank fluids did you have to ingest before one worked? Any science minded person could probably figure that at least one chemical under that treasure trove for a junky would have some upper or downer effect, but I think it is safe to assume that people science minded enough to know this probably aren't the ones gulping down Ick medicine. Jackass crack heads ruin another perfectly good and useful product for the rest of us. And thanks a lot government for pulling the product instead of trying another prevention method ( I dunno about adding it to the school "don't do drugs" programs but hey whatever). Now if my poor kids fish die what do I say? Perhaps " I am so sorry sweetie, but crack heads and a crazy government teamed up to kill your fish." I think that will work.



On a lighter note. She had her first day of school today. And she was "out of bed" at 6 am!!! Lord only knows when her eyes opened or how long she laid there with first day butterflies. So cute. She was dressed and ready and totally full of gusto when I got out of bed. And she practically floated out the door to the car. I seriously cannot wait for the report on the day. Her outfit was perfect so I am sure she'll knock it out of the park with a stellar first impression ( that and I taught her how to zip her lip for the first week and let all the other chatty kids get busted. Then she'll look like the good one).