Monday

I wake up and do most of my morning routine. I head over to feed the fish and notice that Peacock, who's been looking a little off lately, is dead (I think his escape attempt during my cleaning of his tank on Saturday may have been a hint).

I don't have a lot of time left before I have to leave, but I'm not about to leave a dead fish in that small tank with a live one, and the water is looking fairly off to begin with. I grab the single-capacity tank that I have, open it up, and fill it up with water.

I bring the double tank over to the sink and start pouring out the water, keeping an eye on the two fish in the tank. Now, I should point out here that my sink is half-full of dirty dishes, so I really don’t want to lose any fish if I can avoid it.

I place the double tank on the outside of the sink (on a small region of “counter space”, not even a half-foot wide), and I move a few dishes about to try to make a more secure ground for the little tank and the transferring of Stick to his new home.

Somewhere in this process (and the events are quite jumbled, I assure you), I manage to knock the double tank, throwing both fish into the sink, and the tank itself, replete with rocks and a decent amount of water still, onto the carpeted floor.

So begins the rescue attempt for poor Stick, flopping about on the dirty plate. I scoop him up and get him in, pour out a bit of the excess water, and set him aside.

Then, I get to pick up poor ex-Peacock and step over the mess on the floor towards the bathroom, whereby I flush his poor little body down the toilet. Because I was holding him by the tail (first area I grabbed, I promise it wasn’t deliberate) and his tail is soft and slippery, the whole time I was gingerly stepping over the mess and trying to send him on his way, it felt as if he was falling. I really didn’t want to have to pick him up off another part of my apartment.

So, I’m now even more out of time, and I have a great big mess to clean up, because I really don’t want to come home to have to do it. Fortunately, when I moved out I got to take the upright vacuum cleaner with me, so there I was at 6:30 in the morning, vacuuming up fish rocks off my carpet and out of my bathroom (they’d scattered).

I’m sure my neighbours must have loved me, since the noise it made could delicately be called an absolute racket. If only it had been on the other side of the apartment, I could have been getting my revenge against the super-stompy neighbours, but alas; this was on the same side as the quiet ones. I can only hope that it is the staircase that abuts my bathroom wall, and not someone’s bedroom.

Task completed (or at least as completed as I could determine), I moved Stick back over with his other fishy brethren and put the vacuum cleaner away. I did not feed them, assuming that the stress from the cleaning of the tank and the stress from staring at their dead fishy brother all night meant that it wouldn’t be the best of ideas to feed them.

Monday. Kinda says it all, doesn’t it?