Identity Crisis By Proxy

Fear not, gentle readers.  There is absolutely no crisis at hand.  But when a catchy title smacks you in the face like this one did to me...you just mustn't pass that opportunity up.  Plus it's a four word title.  Bumper day for me!

Actually, side note...bumper day for both Genevieve and myself.

I digress...and I don't care...on with the digression.

Long day for me.  Not bad altogether, just long.  Got home from babysitting just in time to walk Genevieve before it got dark outside.  (Is it just me...or should we have fallen back two hours for DST?  I never really cared until I had a dog to walk!)  It must be said, that babysitting was not a long part to my long day.  It was too short of a time to hang out with too wonderful of a kid.

Karl is so awesome.  He is the three-year-old son of my former boss (in an arena other than babysitting) and his wife.  I don't know how to explain it other than by saying that they are simply one of the most pleasant families that I know.  Gus and Mary are both so very unique and beautiful individuals and they have passed that along to Karl.  Karl and I get along famously.  He thinks pretty much everything that I say is hilarious.  And I say a lot of things.  Our only moment of "disagreement" today came from me trying to explain to him that no matter how many times he asked me, the tan pencil was still the tan pencil and the turquoise pencil was still the turquoise pencil.  Our little back and forth bit about these colors brought laughs to at least half of the other people in the lab (my other work).

Anyway, now I've digressed from my digression.  Got home.  Walked Genevieve and got back just as the sun was setting.  I'll tell you what...walking your favorite dog under a pink sky has got to be one of the best things in the world.  We went to Petsmart to get Genevieve a very specific toy that I have been researching and just knew she would love.  Incidentally, she couldn't care less about it.  However, I got her two toys today, and the spur of the moment purchase...I don't think she's ever loved anything more in her entire life!

I swear to God I did not pose this.  Genevieve does not pose...she does things her way.

So anyway...that was the bumper part of the day for Genevieve.  Mine was a cookies and cream milk shake from Chick-Fil-A.



So when we were on our walk, I met a man who asked me what kind of a dog she was.  I replied that she was a cross between a German Shepherd and a Chinese Shar-Pei.  The man said "Oh, she kinda looks like a Belgian Shepherd with that black snout."

I forgot about this until I sat down just now to do some Bible study.  And of course...me being me...I had to look up Belgian Shepherds.  I had never heard of them.

What do they look like, you may ask?  Well friends, they look like Genevieve.

Belgian Shepherd

German Shepherd

Oh no!  What do I do?  I don't know every single fact!  Luckily...it doesn't matter.  (Yes...I'm going to get all cheesy now...so if you want to stop reading...do so...just know that I'm judging you.)

I love my dog.  Genevieve is awesome.  I don't care what kind of a dog she is.  She's my dog.  She's got my back.  She's waiting for me when I get home from classes.  She's waiting foor me when I get home from work.  She's at my feet while I'm cooking dinner (no, I do not throw her scraps, she just loves me, so there).  She's laying in my bed...at two in the morning when I'm trying to pull an all-nighter, finishing a scale model of my set or a costume rendering...reminding me that maybe...just maybe...sleep might be a better idea.

Speaking of that...I was getting to my Bible study early...to go to bed early...to get sleep.  Then I just thought "Oh, that's right, I should look up what Belgian Shepherds look like!"  Those digressions will really get to you...especially when you digress from them.

But I digress.

Leviticus will not read itself.

Stay classy everyone!

Peace,

LT

I'm NOT Piscicidal...Honestly!

Those of you who know me are most likely aware of Spaz, the feeder fish that I adopted from Petsmart last year for 12 cents.  He's no llama, donkey, dog, cat, or bird...but he's a fantastic fish and I'm allowed to have him in my dorm room, which is a plus.  This past year I've been trying to find him a friend, not just for him to have some company, but also to keep his tank a little cleaner.

Plan A was to get a Red Cherry Shrimp and name him Jacques after the French cleaning shrimp in Finding Nemo.  I was rather excited about this prospect but there were two problems with it.

1. Petsmart did not have any of these shrimp.
2. Kyle thought that the name lacked originality and creativity.

From Plan A's failure Plan B was born.

1. Kyle decided that regardless of what kind of cleanly friend I got for Spaz, Kyle would be the one to name it and its name was to be Lee Harvey Oswald.
2. Since the shrimp were not in stock a nice young woman named Audrey, touted as the "fish expert" by her fellow Petsmart worker, told me that an Otocinclus would work quite well in my one gallon tank with Spaz.  She said that it would be good addition to help with tank maintenance and that its contribution to ammonia production would be negligible.  Sounded great to me.
3. And so it was...that on that day, in that Petsmart store, an Otocinclus was bought by myself, and as it was decreed by Brother Kyle, he was called Lee Harvey Oswald.

Plan B worked out pretty well...Spaz and Ozzy got along just fine most of the time.  Once in a while Spaz would have the need to nudge Ozzy around just a little bit, but it was nothing that my fishy little assassin couldn't handle.  Then, months later, Ozzy seemed to be kind of off...my friend Stephanny was over to work on some of the Woyzeck design with me and I informed her that it seemed as if Ozzy's end might be in the near future.  I checked around the tank and saw that some of the gravel pieces on the bottom seemed to have no more color to them, as if Ozzy had gotten a wee bit overzealous with his cleaning duties.  Shortly thereafter, Ozzy was no more.

Rest In Peace

Lee Harvey Oswald (Ozzy)

? - February 12, 2010

So I came up with all of my possible reasons for Ozzy dying.  I didn't know if it was from the gravel...or if he just died...or whatever...or if it was Kyle's fault.  In the long run, I decided to blame it on Kyle, thinking that surely only bad things can come from naming one's pet for an assassin.

Then came Plan C.

1. I got sick and rushed to the emergency room which prompted my mother to come down from home to take care of me.  (Yes...for anyone who was wondering, I definitely just slipped into my default phrasing for writing down the backwards dominos of action for Play Analysis in accordance to David Ball's Backwards and Forwards: A Technical Manual for Reading Plays.)
2. During my mom's stay with me at school, she bought me a new Otocinclus to cheer me up/give Spaz some company.
3. Seeing as Ozzy died because my brother gave him an unfortunate name...I carefully chose the name of my new fish on my own.
4. I chose to call her Antigone, after the title character of Sophocles' tragedy.  For with such an honorable namesake, I reasoned, a fish would never die.
5. She died.

Plan D.

1. My mother decided to take me to Petsmart on Monday because she wanted to try once more, fearing that maybe Antigone was injured during the move from Indianapolis for Spring Break.
2. Learning from my past two problems with fish names/deaths, I decided before even laying eyes on this new fish, that its name would be Lazarus.
3. Then...after picking out the fish that I wanted...the unthinkable happened...when I asked the Petsmart woman to get me the fish that I wanted she started questioning me about what kind of fish I had at home...what kind of tank...yadda yadda yadda...she then told me that it was probably my fault that Ozzy and Antigone died, because my tank was not big enough to support a goldfish and another fish.  I was greatly saddened by this...but then she continued, telling me that my tank isn't even big enough to support Spaz himself!  "Well I have two goldfish and I have them in a 20 GALLON TANK!!!!" She says to me.  Basically she went on to tell me that I was suffocating my beloved fish by denying him the proper housing.
4. You could tell that she was at least making an effort to be nice about it...but her eyes told me that in her mind she could see Spaz's internal organs trapped in vice grips.
5. We left Petsmart...without a new fish...and much to Petsmart Girl's chagrin, without a 10 gallon tank.

In the car on the ride home I really felt bad about how I'd been stifling Spaz's ability to grow...but when I could no longer take the guilt I diagnosed this Petsmart girl that I don't know with a random mental illness and deemed her, therefore, an unreliable source of information.  That made me feel better for a while...and when I sat down to blog about these fish tales, if you will, I found the following article:

Italian Town Bans Goldfish in a Bowl

So the question is now this...is ignorance really bliss?  Because honestly, I don't find dead fish to be all that blissful.