Flowerhorned

(excerpt from my journal entry dated May 11, 2012)

I paid up our telephone bill yesterday. For two months. Not that we neglected to pay last month. I was disappointed because last month, they did not send us a bill, and then this month, they sent us two-months’ worth of phone bill, and that’s almost P3.5K. And in just a couple of days’ notice, they expect us to settle the full amount or they’d cut their services. Well, that’s why I went out yesterday. To pay the stupid bill and buy methylene blue for my fish, a female flowerhorn who had been autistic for some weeks already.

A neighbor who is now into raising and trading flowerhorns saw my fish and he said it’s sick and severely stressed. He gave me five more flowerhorns to raise, all younglings, with guarantee that they’d grow heads that are really humpy, and then he suggested that I kill off my old flowerhorn and those of the five he gave me that would not grow up to my liking.

Of course, I didn’t want to do it, we’re talking about life here. Although from his end, it’s all just business—making sure only the fittest survive for “re-breeding” and trading. I guess I won’t make a good flowerhorn trader if that’s the industry SOP.

Anyway, after I’d paid the telephone bill and bought the methylene blue, I went for siopao and siomai at Kowloon and satiated my long-time craving for their dimsum. So when I got home around lunchtime, I did not eat lunch anymore, and instead ate lunch around 4 p.m., with merienda for dessert and lots of extra-extra food on the side, and so I got myself all bloated up. Let that be my lesson for not eating on schedule.

I feel fat and think about doing something about it, but then I keep putting it off for when the time is most convenient. And when would that be? It never comes.

Well, that’s that for yesterday’s overindulgence. As soon as I got home yesterday, I immediately poured a bit of the methylene blue into the fish bowl in which I quarantined my old flowerhorn, and then poured some into the aquarium where the new ones are, to kill off bacteria and diseases in that aquarium in case there are.

My old flowerhorn seems to have improved. Before, she’d just stay down in one part of the fish bowl. But now, she’s “exploring” the “smallness” of the bowl, and I think she’s dissatisfied, I can almost hear her complain, “Why is my new home very small?”

I also think she’s hungry. Hungry for protein, not the pellets we give her. I’m going to have to go out and buy her some worms then. My friend recommends pellets called “Humpy-humpy” or something, which kinda reminds me of something else, although it’s about enhancing growth of the hump on the head. Ah, yes, now I remember. It’s “Humpy Head,” which kinda reminds me of something else, yet again.

Anyway, I’ll go look for it later when I go out. I’ll tell everyone in the house that I’m going out to pay up the phone bill (which I already did) and buy Humpy Head instead. I didn’t tell them that I’ve already paid up the bill yesterday. That’s two days of gala for me. Wow.