Mother's Day and such

We actually had a fun and productive weekend. (The last of those until at least June, because the next two weekends are already booked.)

El Burrito and DH took me out for lunch Saturday, instead of Sunday. This being Mother's Day as well as graduation weekend at Mizzou, going out to eat on Sunday would have been insane. We went to a little retro-50's sort of diner nearby, since we had a gift certificate to use there (thanks to the credit union annual shareholders meeting, where we get nice door prizes). Their food is affordable enough that we ordered dessert to use up the whole $25 gift certificate. I got a whopper of a 4-inch-square brownie for $1.99.

Also for Mother's Day, El Burrito picked out a card, I got flowers, and I hear there's a box from Amazon somewhere en route. El Burrito and DH correctly decided that I'd rather wait a few days than pay $8 or $9 for shipping.

We worked on a little home improvement project over the weekend. The indoor/outdoor "carpet" on the porch needs to be replaced. It's 20+ years old and looks every year of it. We priced it at Lowe's and Westlake's on Saturday (and Westlakes was almost double the price, unfortunately), measured the porch, and DH went back out to Lowes to buy a piece. He had some lovely luck, too. We need a piece approximately 8' x 20' (the porch is basically a rectangle with one corner lopped off), and Lowe's had a remnant that was 12' x 20' for $1 per linear foot. So, we spent $20 instead of the $80 it would have been if we'd bought straight off the roll.

We spent Sunday afternoon wrestling it around on the porch - we're on the upper level, so we can't spread it out on the ground or anything. It's a nice piece of fake-grass, with no flaws that we can find, so I don't know why it was considered a remnant, but I won't complain. Now we just have to rip up the old, cut the new to fit, and staple it down.

Had dinner with the in-laws Sunday for Mother's Day, as well. El Burrito got to see his cousins, we've got leftover chicken & dumplings for dinner tonight, and we borrowed some stapleguns from my father-in-law for the fake-grass carpet project.

And then I came home and cleaned the aquarium, and tested the water using the test kits I ordered last week. I've been lax in the water-testing department, figuring that the fish are still alive and breeding like rabbits, so they must be doing okay. iwas a bit wrong on that one. Apparently the nitrate and ammonia levels were high before I changed 30% of the water - I need to test again today and see if that helped. It's a 20-gallon tank, and is fairly lightly stocked right now, at least compared to this time last year. Right now I've got 6 zebra danios, 7 platies, and one very large plecostomus. Last year, the platy population was upwards of 30, because they breed like guppies.

Anyway, it's the plecostomus that's creating the overstocking problem. The general very rough rule of thumb is about 1 inch of fish per gallon. The platies and danios pretty well meet that. It's the gigantic 12-inch-long plecostomus that causes problems. And I'm stuck with him. The local pet store is a chain, so they don't do trade ins, and I have no fish-keeping friends who want a pan-sized fish. I need to think on it for a while. And in the meantime, I need to change the water and filter a little more often. Once a month isn't enough for the water quality, and it also helps the funky-smell problem.

There's an internet superstition about plecos. Most people online spell it pl*co, as the superstition is if you spell out the name, the fish will die. It doesn't work for me. I've had Squiggy for 8 years now, and he was not a young fish when I got him.

More on Squiggo later. I'm back to laundry duty and feeding El Burrito.