Just got back from seeing the movie.  Here’s my review:

I will never get back those two hours of my life.

I spent pretty much the whole day working on the pond.  I spent part of that standing in the pond.  The fish are not afraid of the pond vacuum, or my legs.  I couldn’t get every bit of debris out, but I ended up replacing almost half the water, and getting out almost a gallon of goo.  Maybe more, since a lot of it was particles too small for the mesh bag to capture.  I’ve decided that next year, the vegetable garden is going closer to the pond outlet.  Heh.  I only hope that the pond water doesn’t make the vegetables smell like pond.

So now the fish can be seen, and they’ve been very amusing.  The 3 inch koi look like they’re almost 4 inches already.  It’s been only a week and some!  The shubunkins have been bullying them around – that situation will change soon enough, I’m sure.  Dennis, the biggest shubunkin, was chasing Kyle, Audrey’s koi, and Kyle jumped straight up out of the water and back in.  Those little guys are pretty fast.  They’ve all been ambushing each other from behind the plant pots, lying in wait behind them until another fish comes by, then darting out from between two pots.

And in other pet news, Toby’s off to the vet again.  The fur is coming off her head and neck in tufts, and the skin looks awful – and her chin is getting gross again.  The worst of it is that all this stuff is itchy, and she wants us to scratch it for her.  I love this cat, but. . .ewww.

So I woke up this morning in incredible pain.  I had ended up sleeping on my right side, and couldn’t get up out of bed.  It took several small movements, but I turned myself onto my left and waited until the pain had subsided enough to lift myself up.  This new chiropractor I’m seeing today is going to earn his money, for sure.  While I was lying there waiting, I was listening to the birds.  They crack me up.  Gayle says this is not what their songs say, officially, to birders, but I swear we have one that says “cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheap!”  There’s another that sounds like “chirpy, chirpy, chirpy, chirpy!”  and another that says “furNIture!  furNiture!”

Carolyn had to be driven to school today, because she had a huge display board and a model of the Tower of London to take with her to school.  I stopped by the middle school, right next door, and made sure Audrey had dropped off her sister’s form for joining the Pinnacle program next year, and she had.  Thank goodness she’s got a better memory than her mother.  Thank you, Audrey.

When I got back, it was time to do some stuff – load the dishwasher, water the law, and skim the bubbles off the surface of the pond.  Google last night led me to a site, http://www.fishpondinfo.com/ and I got good information from them.  Rather than put more chemicals in or re-engineer the pond so I could install a skimmer, the site owner said to just skim it off with a fine mesh or a bucket.  No luck with fine mesh, but the bucket worked great, and I had nice fishy water for the plants.  The fish weren’t scared of it, either, since I had just fed them grapes, and now I’m their bestest friend in the world.  Hubby picked up a book on koi from the library last night, and while it was badly written and poorly edited, it had some good information – like, that koi love grapes, apples, and bananas.  Well, mine kind of like the bananas, but the shubunkins were clearly pissed that I was tossing in stuff that only masqueraded as real food.  The grapes, however (cut into teeny pieces) were a big hit with all of them.  Who’d’a thunk it?

Now I have to call the inadequate chiropractor and ask to pick up my x-rays so I don’t have to have new ones.  Then I have to call the vet, because Toby has found a different place to start losing huge chunks of fur.  And. . .write up resume, cover letter, and application.  Gotta do that.