To Hell with Time and Dead Fish

I am stressed and tired, and while I had intended to write a post about how sometimes, I just have to say "to hell with time" and stop trying to cram in the regular routine each and every school night, instead, I need to vent about dead fish. And screaming kids. And a messy house.

So today, the boys had their well doctor visits--5 year for Seth and 7 year for William. They are both great, but Seth had to get two shots. He hates shots. And now the entire building 3-story building knows this. I heard our nurse say to another, "We've got a screamer--I need some help." Fortunately, she was experienced and quick. It took Seth a little while to calm down. Our 3:00 appointment finally ended at 4:30 and I agreed to stop and get ice cream on the way home. (I think I needed the ice cream more than Seth did.)

I had also told William that we could stop at Pet Smart on the way home to finally get fish for his aquarium. We've been "cycling" the aquarium for 2 weeks, so he's been very anxious to get fish. He decided on 4 neon tetras and a ghost shrimp. We brought them home but before we even got the bag upstairs, two of the tetras were dead. We acclimated the two that were left and the ghost shrimp, and the boys went outside to play. We came back in and put the two alive fish and the shrimp in the tank and then headed out to Pet Smart to replace the two dead fish. We stopped at McDonald's on the way home and got home around 7:30. We let the new bag of fish float on the tank and noticed that another tetra was now dead, as well as the shrimp  WTF? After the boys ate we headed upstairs, skipped bath, put on PJs, and saw that two more of the fish did not look well. By the time reading was done, we had 6 dead tetras and a shrimp. William was upset and stressed out and I feel really bad. We had the water tested on Sunday and it tested fine. The woman at Pet Smart said it should be fine for the fish.

I did some Googling, and it could be the water temp is too cold. It could be that we didn't acclimate them long enough. I was supposed to incrementally put water from the aquarium into the bag before putting the fish into the tank. Apparently, neon tetras are a bit "fussy" so maybe we should consider something else. Poor William. It's so hard when expectations are dashed.

So now I'm researching neon tetras and aquarium cycling and acclimation, instead of cleaning up downstairs (Ed is playing hockey tonight--otherwise, he'd be doing the cleaning) or reading, or taking a shower to wash this stinkin' day off of me.

Getting back to the whole the-hell-with-time thing, it can be really stressful to get everything done each night that we need to get done and still get the boys to bed by 8:30 p.m. (I'd really like to have lights out at 8:00 p.m., but it just hasn't been possible. And even 8:30 is sometimes pushing it.) When  we get home, I want them to have time to play. I want them to get outside time, to play with neighbors, to chill out and have time to do whatever THEY want to do. And yet, William has homework to do, and he has to read for 15 minutes and I have to make dinner and they have to eat and they have to clean up toys (if they even got a chance to play with toys) and they have to take a bath and brush their teeth. And of course they want me to read to them and I WANT to read to them. It's too much! I'm looking forward to summer, where we'll at least have no more homework to have to worry about. But I still want William to read every night. I still want to get him to write every day. And I want to work on sight words with Seth. And we're still not going to get home until 6:00 p.m. every day.

When school starts in the fall, Ed and I are hoping to hire a babysitter for 3 days a week, and we'll enroll the boys in the aftercare program the other 2 days. William will be moving to the 2nd-5th elementary school, and they have designated homework time during the aftercare, so that should help. I'm also hoping having a babysitter will help with after school activities and play dates. But still, it's only going to get worse--harder to juggle--as the boys get older and get more homework and projects and are required to read for longer periods and want to participate in more activities. So I better stop whining and we better just come up with ways to deal with it.

In the meantime, as we all agree, it's okay to have days where we eat ice cream, and McDonald's, and go to Pet Smart twice, and skip baths even though we're sweaty and dirty, and don't go to sleep 'till 9:00 and leave the messy house for tomorrow (or for the husband who will be cranky when he arrives home late to said messy house--but to hell with him, too! LOL).

Hopefully, my next post will be a lot more cheerful than this one. (Remind me to tell you about Memorial Day Weekend--the fun run! The parade! Making Ed's cousin's baby barf!) If not, you'll forgive me, right?