I am most definitely not a morning person.

DB most definitely is.

During the week I have to be dressed, breakfasted and out of the house by 7am (7:10 at the very latest), and DB demands that I eat breakfast with him at least once per weekend which involves being up by just gone 8. Over the last couple of years I have managed to gradually move breakfast time from 7:30 to almost 8:45, but that is still too early for my idea of a leisurely weekend breakfast… (Remember how I said DB is a morning person? 8:45 is practically lunchtime in his mind ;))

That leaves me ONE day per week when I can sleep until I wake up, instead of when I’m woken up. I look forward to those days*.

***

Yesterday was our ‘common breakfast day’ (with fresh breadrolls from the bakery down the road, courtesy of DB who is glad to be up and doing something, anything, even queuing for breadrolls at early o’clock in the morning, as soon as he wakes up. Plus, it gives me 15 extra minutes to humanise enough to be able to make breakfast table conversation, so we all win ;)).

Today should have been my sleep in day. Instead, I was out of bed and in the bathroom before 8:30. Voluntarily. On a Sunday. I must be mad.

***

We got new fish and a couple of new aquatic plants last weekend. We still need some (=lots) more plants, and maybe some more fish. That’s quite an expensive game in ‘normal’ shops, so when we found out that the local fish club has a sale on the first Sunday of the month we decided to try our luck there. Being a very morning-orientated country, the sale opened at 10am. Being a very morning-orientated person, DB said we should be there when they open the doors. We were taking DB’s dad with us, so we needed to plan in another few minutes to pick him up. ETD 9:40.

***

Being busy in the evening has disadvantages. I’d fallen into bed, passing neither ‘Go’ nor the bath, despite knowing that we had a very important fish sale to get to relatively early and that I had to wash my hair before going anywhere near other people. Not sensible.

Plus, I wanted to cut another few centimetres off while it was still wet.

Hey ho. There went my lie in.. The things you do for love (and fish) and all that.

***

The fish sale was held in a cellar. Close to 40 mini-aquariums were lined up In the middle of the room; the current owners on one side, the prospective owners on the other. There were more people than I’d expected, and most of them had sharpened their elbows specially. There were obviously no ‘reserve fish’ so once they’d been sold they were gone.

We were approximately 10 minutes ‘late’ (if you can even be late to a sale), courtesy of my breakfast** and already there were seriously depleted aquariums.

DB looked for plants while I fell in love with some white catfish. I asked for two, so they could keep each other company. The first was out of the water and into the bag before I’d finished asking. The second got a fin caught up in the net so he gave me a different one and hung the net in the water so the fish could “free itself”. I paid and went to find DB. After looking round the rest of the sale room with a bad feeling, I went back and said I wanted the one in the net too. It was still hanging and didn’t look like it was capable of anything more than struggling. It took a while, and a lot of under-breath-cursing, but eventually my baby catfish was free to join the other 2 in the bag. In retrospect, I should have demanded it be freed immediately, but anyway. I think 3 is better for them anyway. Probably 6 would have been even better than that, but I don’t know enough about them yet.

In other news, DB’s dad bought 20 assorted small fish and I won a bottle of aquarium-plant-food in the raffle.

***

Once home, it was time to get the fish and plants into the aquarium. I let the bag float on the surface and concentrated on the plants, since the fish have to acclimatise to the temperature and new water before you can let them out.

Our biggest aquarium is 2m long and about 65cm deep. To plant anything in the 2inch gravel layer, you have to remove the outer lid, climb up a stepladder, slide the glass lid to one side, and lean over – one hand in the water, one on the edge for balance. Usually DB does Aquarium-related things, this time I wanted to be involved, especially since I had my first very own fish.

What I didn’t realise was just how short my arms are, and just how sensible it would have been to get undressed first!

There were something like 20 plants to go in. The first went in ok, the second was just far enough away to get the edge of my [short] sleeve wet.

The third was enough to submerge the rest of my sleeve.

By the time I got to the last one, I might as well have got into the tank.

***

The fish were happy to be released, and darted round the tank like mad things until they realised they had so many hiding places to try out, whereupon they vanished, seldom to be seen again.

***

I left them to it and went off to have my second (/third) bath of the day 🙂

* I realise that there will most likely come a time when I can’t sleep as long as I want on any day, but in the meantime I intend to treasure all the chances I can get 🙂

** I would’ve been happy to eat in the car, but DB isn’t a fan of crumbs….