Day After Labor Day

 Ok, well………….
I made it thru the weekend with lots of tears and a broken heart.  I don’t understand why my family does this too me.  I am ok.

Yesterday I met a friend at church and we sat in the library and chatted while playing Bananagrams.  What a fun game.  I call it Scrabble for Dummies.  Even though I lost, it was still fun.  Then we went to Subway and had sandwiches, because she had a coupon for Buy 1 get one for 99 cents.  Then last night one of the girls I used to work with called me and said:  "Hey, whatcha doing tomorrow?  Want to go to lunch?"  I said I’d go to lunch, but only drink water because I don’t have any money yet.

As of Sept. 3rd, it has been exactly one year since I received a pay check.  If you don’t think you can do it, you should try.  It’s amazing what you can do without if you really want too.
The hardest thing I’ve found so far is washing towels in the bathtub and trying to wring them out.  It works the best if you take a shower while you’re washing the towels.  That way when you wring them out, you don’t get soaked.  Found this out the first time I did the towels.  I was soaked.  It was like trying to wash the dog.

The coolest thing that has happened without an income was the night I took all my bills over to my church and laid the bills at the foot of the cross and prayed and told God that I couldn’t pay the bills without money.  I took the bills home and waited until the next month when the bills came in and whoa!  The light bill was marked:  PAID IN FULL.  I don’t know who paid it.  The only one that knew about it was God and myself.  No one else knew.  So I figured that God paid it.  Anyway, that’s what the cross means.  Paid in Full.

Do you know how long an 1/8 of a tank of gas lasts?  A month.  Yup, I’ve been driving around on an 1/8 of a tank now for over a month.  I even run the a/c.  I love my little car.  Gets 40 mpgs on the highway.  It must get 30 in town.  I drive a 1996 Chevy Cavalier.  4 dr. Orange.  Yes, I have an orange car.  Who cares about color when the price was right.  It doesn’t have alot of stuff in it.  Like no power windows, no cruise.  Pretty basic on the inside.  But she’s paid in full.  Backseat folds down to extend the trunk into 6ft.  Love this feature.  I know if someone locks me in my trunk, I’ll be able to get out by pushing the backseat down and climbing out.

Oh good grief.  I gotta tell you about the Adventures of the Aquarium.  This is a riot.

My friend Chris decided that he wanted an aquarium.  So he found a tank in Dubuque, Iowa for a decent price and he asked me if I’d take him there to look at the tank.  I said ok, and we planned a day to go.  Well, we had to drive around for awhile, because the dude was supposed to be home, but he was late cuz he and his kids had gone to Cabela’s in Prairie du Chein, WI.  Which is about 2 hrs. north of Dubuque.  They were coming home down the WI side (why? don’t know) and didn’t know that everything was tore up.  I mean every road from here to Prairie is a mess!!!!  So it took them longer to come home.  So Chris and I window shopped at Pier 1, Bed, Bath and Beyond and PetCo waiting for the guy to get back.

Well about an hour later the guy calls Chris and says he was home.  So we go to the dudes house.  In his living room he had this 6ft. tank filled with African Cichlids.  It was really cool.  This is what Chris wants.  Then he says:  "come down to my basement and look at my other tanks."  Holy Cow!!  This guy has another 6ft. tank with a bunch of cool fish in it, and he has two 10-12ft tanks with sharks, pirhanna, and other territorial fish in it.  We aren’t talking your normal size fish that you get at the pet store, we are talking about fish the size of a large skillet, and the length of my arm.  These things were huge!!!

Then the guy takes us into another room in his basement and shows us his breeding room.  He had 4-5 tanks with all sizes of fish from egg to babies.  Amazing.  He told us that Cichlids are mouth breeders.  Meaning the daddy fish lays the eggs in the mouth of the mommy fish.  She holds them there until they hatch and pop out of her mouth.  But he pops the eggs out when her mouth is really full.  He says you can tell by the way her lower sac on her mouth is.  And he uses a toothpick to pop out the eggs.  That’s just too weird for me.

Anyway, Chris buys this huge tank from this guy.  I wasn’t so sure the thing was going to fit into my car.  But I had 1/2 inch on both sides by the doors.  We get the tank home and get it into his apartment.  Next step.  Clean it.  
This is a big deal this fish tank thingy.  I have been on pool sand runs, rock hunting trips up the river at a friends farm, and pet stores looking for stuff for this tank.  The day we went to the river for rocks was a big adventure.
We had to cut thru a corn field and then walk along the river bank until we could find a clearing to cut down into to reach the river.  I later find out that if we would have just walked about 400 more feet, we would have been able to just walk in the creek without cutting thru the trees.  I’ll know next time I have to go rock hunting.
Then we had to carry those 5 gallon buckets full of river rocks, and not the little ones either.  These rocks weigh about 5 lbs a piece.  The are huge chunks of limestone.  

Honestly I don’t know how I get talked into this stuff.  Maybe it’s because my crazy mixed up head doesn’t really realize what I’m getting into until after I’ve said yes.

Anyway, I need to get off of Chris’ computer.  He was nice enough to let me use it today to do some looking up stuff for my sunday school class that I’m in.  We’ve had some discussions that have kinda turned into arguements.  So I just wanted to get my facts straight before I said another thing.  But what I’ve told them so far, has been right with the sources I checked today.

Take care all,
Until next time.
Love:  Carol