Yesterday I got to thinking about fish. I needed to clean Chunk’s tank, and I was thinking how he looked lonely. I thought maybe I’d get him a friend. Of course, Chunk is huge. He possibly might have eaten one of my fish before who went missing. Also, he’s in a 10 gallon tank by himself. If I got him a friend, I’d probably need a 20 gallon tank. Then I was thinking how I wanted another betta fish. While in the swimming pool with Colin, I decided I wanted to go to the pet store.

I actually went to Wal-Mart first. Apparently, they don’t sell fish there anymore (not here anyway), which is good because last time I looked at fish at Wal-Mart, every single fish in every single tank was belly-up dead. Terrible. I went to our small, local pet store E&L Pets to see what they had. I found a nice 20 gallon tank with stand for about $140.00. I don’t think I really need to spend that much money on fish right now. So, I decided I probably wouldn’t be getting a friend for Chunk or a bigger tank. I looked at the betta fish, but none of them really jumped out at me.

I came home empty-handed. I did some looking online to see about finding a good gravel cleaner to use on Chunk’s tank. I came across this one that looked really good at PetSmart. Unfortunately, the closest PetSmart is in Evansville, Indiana. After agonizing over what to do, I decided at 6:30 I wanted to go to PetSmart. Colin hates fish. He wasn’t too happy about my decisions, but we went with me anyway.

When we got to PetSmart, we looked for the gravel cleaner thing, but all they had was a 50 foot one. I had wanted the 25 foot one. We got some cat food, cat litter, the 50 foot monster, and then I started looking at fish. I looked through all the betta fish (and there was a lot). I finally found a tiny female I liked that was kind of iridescent blue. She also has a sort of rainbowy patch by her face. I looked around at the other fish too, and found some Calico Telescope fish that caught my eye. The biggest one in the tank is the one I noticed first. It was a pretty fish. And then I noticed… the fish only had one eye.

A one-eyed fish? I had to have it. I decided at that instant I wanted that fish. I decided I’d put him in the 5 gallon tank and not get a betta fish. I asked the lady if something was wrong with the fish. I wanted to make sure he wasn’t sick or something. I thought maybe an eye was missing because another fish ate it off or something barbaric like that. I noticed there was a smaller one in the tank with only one eye too. She went to ask her manager about it. I waited for what seemed like forever. When she finally came back, she said nothing was wrong with the fish. He just has one eye. She also said PetSmart couldn’t sell me the fish because they can’t sell animals with missing body parts or ones with extra body parts. But… she said they could adopt him out to me and let me have him for free. So of course, I snatched him up.

Colin reminded me that I have several small betta tanks I could use if I still wanted to get a betta fish too. Duh! So, I grabbed the female I had been looking at and we headed to the check-out lines.

While standing in line, the girl in front of me told me how pretty Mr. One-Eye was. I think she was curious why it said “free” on his bag. I told her why he was free and that I wanted him because I have a one-eyed cat. She told her mom, so then the mom had to look at it. Then the cashier girl had to show it to another girl who works there and tell her how I am getting a one-eyed fish because I have a one-eyed cat. Yes, it seemed everyone was interested in my slightly handicapped pet choices. The total came to like $100.00. Once outside I looked at my receipt. They had charged me too much for the gravel cleaner. I went back inside to check, and suddenly there were 25 foot cleaners on the shelf. So, I exchanged the 50 foot one for the 25 foot one and got $32 back.

We got home at around 10:00. Colin read the directions for the gravel pump. We couldn’t hook it to the kitchen sink, so we had to hook it to the bathroom one. It wasn’t working like it was supposed to. We finally got it to work, then it stopped working. It was very frustrating. Water was everywhere. The bathroom sink was filling up and not draining fast enough. Colin began pulling wads of hair out of it. Hair that wasn’t ours. :sick: It was pretty rough for awhile. We were both tired and getting frustrated. Finally, we gave up. Colin went to Kroger and bought more water, and I started cleaning the gravel like I always do which takes forever. I think we finally got all 3 fish settled into their own tanks at around 1:30-ish in the morning (Chunk, Dazzle the betta, and Freebie. We were tired and hungry so… we went to McDonald’s and got Happy Meals.

The new theme, which I call “Calm Rainbow”, is up and running! I went with a striped background after all. Please let me know if something is really wonky looking or if the page is still lagging or getting stuck for you.

Edit: Okay, so I started having the same problems again with my theme reverting to the default one (which was Bold Summer), so I had to rename my folders. If you see something that doesn’t look right, it may because it’s trying to come from the calm_rainbow theme. Let me know. I think I got everything, but I’m exhausted right now and am having other issues to deal with.