Enter Dictator Cadaverous and General Libido.

fish day was fantastic, truly it was. bethany and i went along with my mother to thrift stores, starting out the day by blowing my money on a little glass goblet (which would later be forgotten in ashley's van) and two bottles of jones soda. god, i love me some jones soda. i have this nasty little habit of shaking everything i drink, and i don't drink soda all that often, so, being as distracted as i was by the idea of fish day, i shook up my jones soda, opened it, and was sprayed with sticky crushed melon drink. great. we went to the bargain box, where i tried on some random crap and laughed hysterically at my image in the mirror.
then we were off to ashley's, where we flopped down to watch The Fantastic 4 while we waited for ashley's mom, tanya, to get ready. the three of us had different opinions as to which Fantastic 4 hero we liked the best. can you guess which one i liked? no, no, think about it first. do you really think ashley or bethany would go for the huge, creepy rock dude? that's right, i chose the rock dude. now, i'm not saying i'm romantically interested in the dude, i'm just saying i like him. he's so sad. i just want to hug him, cheer him up a little bit. bethany liked the awkward elastic guy ("imagine what else he can stretch!") and ashley liked the jerk-off flaming dude.
and away we go! we headed down the new bypass - which i had never been on before - to ottumwa. we gave tanya an extreme craving for cigarettes with all of our blabbering, screaming, and - on bethany's part - hysterical squealing. we hopped out of the car at aldi's grocery store or whatever, leaving tanya to smoke while we ran inside. we spent a fairly decent amount of time there while tanya collected her month's supply of groceries. the three of us ran around, leaving tanya to herself, but we saw her discussing us with strangers on more than one occasion. one dude was openly pointing at us and smiling broadly at her. yeah, we're awesome. after that, we went straight to THE DOLLAR TREEEEEEEE, the most amazing "everything-for-a-dollar-or-less" store i have ever been to. i mean, it's honest! dollar general claims to be a dollar store, but it's almost kind of a rare occasion when i find anything good for a dollar there. well, of course we had a grand ole' time at the dollar tree! we ran through every aisle, candy and toys alike, talking way too loudly about god knows what. the whole place was full up of "I LOVE YOU" balloons, which i made sure to kick when they drifted too close to the floor. ashley made me go into convulsions by playing with these nasty skull toys (there was even an Iron Man one, what the hell) that had little bubbles full of fake blood and maggots inside so that when you squeezed 'em, the blood and gore came out of their eye sockets. after that little episode, we ran to the holiday section, which even had st. patrick's day stuff already. i put on a tall green-and-white striped hat and pink-and-white oven mitt, and then i chased ashley across the store, chopping at her with the oven mitt and demanding that she give me back the dollar that i loaned her. well, it turns out that stores don't like pseudo violence, because soon the intercom came on with a panicked woman's voice saying, "security, please scan the aisles." ashley and i quickly turned our attention to the candy, exchanging a panicked look before beginning a discussion on airheads and warheads. bethany, apparently, was staring at holiday sunglasses and laughing at our misfortune. we didn't get into trouble - we never do - and we probably didn't learn a lesson. hurrah for ignorance!
FISH TIME, FISH TIME! tanya drove us off to SUPER WAL-MART, and we rushed to the fish aisle (taking a few moments of slow-mo for bethany's video camera). bethany and ashley had no trouble at all with picking out their perfect fish: $.28 feeder goldfish, each one maybe an inch long. bethany picked out a flashy one with a rad black horseshoe type mark on the top of his head: King Gabrielle, and a plain, kind of sickly-pale (in a cool way) one... uh, i keep forgetting her name. ashley picked an orange-and-white, koi-looking one: Cristoff, and, uh... a multi-colored one?: Gary. okay, i wasn't impressed with the teensy fish, though i did love my friends' choices, and i was panicking because my last goldfish died in less than twenty-four hours and i didn't want to kill anybody else. i was checking out all the prettiest, most expensive goldfish, with flowing fins and pretty scales, but every time i chose one, tanya would look at it and say, "no, it's sick." so i didn't get a cute, chubby little goldfish. i got the little feeder fish like ashley and bethany, and it didn't take me long to fall in love with them. Dictator Cadaverous is bright orange with a white face and, get this, an orange mustache. General Libido is... uh... i think he's multi-colored. he's small. i bought a new vase/tank thing for them: some awesome, tall thing, with walls instead of inhumane, vision-altering bowls. it was $15, which i didn't really want to spend, but i figured it would be okay, since my grandma and grandpa had shown up unexpectedly this morning to drop off my christmas present: $50.
the ride home was moderately quiet for some time, while we stuffed our faces with gummy worms and tried to make sure our fishies weren't bumped around to death. after a while, though, ashley put in her panic at the disco CD (yeah, yeah, hipster friends, grimace if you will) and we listened, me singing quietly, all my my lonesome. ashley doesn't sing in front of her mom, and bethany didn't know the songs. soon we were replacing words in the dancy songs with "FISH!" so that every song was about fishies, whether it made sense or not. it was pretty exciting, and i was sad to go home, but Dictator Cadaverous and General Libido needed to get settled!
it's amazing how quickly i lost my good mood. i swear, the moment i walked through the doors, waves of hostility hit me and knocked me over backwards. my kid brother, jace, didn't seem to notice how pissy the atmosphere was; i quickly concluded that he was the reason that mom was so "GRRR." he followed me to the kitchen and stood right next to me, which i do not appreciate, and when i told him to go away, he just scooted his chair a little bit. it ticked me off, it really did, because it wasn't like mom greeted me, or cared about the new members or our household or anything, and jace is just kind of a brat sometimes. i explained to him that i was rinsing out the new tank with hot water to kill the germs, and he said, "you can't kill the germs, because germs aren't alive." i told him that they were, ask mom, and he went to mom, who abruptly told him that no, germs were not alive. well, he was awfully glad to hear this, and came running to rub it in my face that "mom said," and i got really pissed. i asked mom why she would tell him that, and she said something along the lines of, "i don't want to get in the middle of your retarded arguments with a four-year-old," all angry-like, though i hadn't even started an argument with the kid, i had just told him to ask mom. why she had to lie to him to end the "argument," i do not know. telling him the truth would have had the same effect: someone would have been wrong and that's it. but heaven forbid that dani be right! oh, no, that just can't happen! eh.
anyway, during all of this, Dictator Cadaverous and General Libido were still in their bag, which was floating in my old tank, which had all of the room-temperature, already-cleaned water in it. i was letting them adjust, y'know. well, i decided they had been in there long enough, and took them out to pour the water into my new tank. i cut off the top half of their bag and poured some of their old water into the new stuff, then i crammed their half-empty bag into the new tank's water, for more adjusting. well, as i got ready to do the dishes, i heard a sickening POP, and all i could think was, "oh crap, how did their bag pop when it was cut open?" but then there was water gushing all over the counter, and i realized that the nice, new tank had snapped clear in half. i quickly rescued my little babies and put their bag in the sink while i desperately tried to avoid making even more of a mess. eh, it was definitely unavoidable. Dictator C. and General L. are fine, sulking in the old tank, which is safely placed on my nightstand. they haven't figured out that i've fed them, but they'll get it eventually. i'm just ticked off that i managed to cause my new, snazzy tank to explode.
i really hope my new fishies aren't dead in the morning. that would be pretty depressing. i might just cry. not because i'll be depressed about two, insignificant little feeder fish that lost their lives (though that would make me a little sad), but because i couldn't even keep something alive for a day. it will prove that i am a pro at killing fish, even when i don't want to. granted, this does make me a pretty wonderful fisher(wo)man, but i don't even want my gamey fish to be killed! i don't eat fish, so i just throw them back in the water to live their sad little lives. i don't want to kill them! so hey, if i'm crying tomorrow, that's why. everything i try to house in a tub of water dies. and my cats get run over, die of leukemia, get full up of maggots, or piss on my bed. waaah, i SUCK at taking care of things! do you see why i won't have children?! i would be such a downer that i would make them kill themselves, if i didn't accidentally kill them already.