Chinese seaweed

Queenie knows she’s not supposed to anthropomorphise her pets, but if she could, she’d have two happy little fish today. She got up reasonably early for a Saturday, and went to the shop and got a ten gallon tank and all the trimmings, before she got too lazy to do it. And then spent about two hours trying to construct the ‘state of the art’ filter that had the most incomprehensible set of instructions she’s ever read.

And she put a pine-slatted bed together by herself once. And a computer table. And numerous patio heaters. Eventually she just dumped it back in the box and reinstalled the one from the smaller tank and turned it on overdrive. It seems to be working.

Then she had to carefully rinse about ten pounds of gravel and various artificial water plants and a ‘rusted’ bell, which she just had to buy because it reminded her of the day she sat on the shore of Long Island on a cold bright March day, and watched Himself take an abandoned thirty foot stainless steel buoy apart. Singlehandedly Just to get the bell off. Even though he knew it was too heavy to move off the shore. And he wouldn't have taken it anyway.

Queenie reckons Himself just likes beating large inanimate objects into submission.

Anyway, the book that came with the tank said to wait twenty four hours before ‘gently introducing the fish to their new Regent environment’. So Queenie sat for a minute or two, trying to curb her instinct for instant gratification. Then she grabbed the two fish gently behind the gills, lifted them out of the smaller tank and just plopped them in.

And put some ick stuff in to make herself feel better. Although they don’t like the ick stuff. She put it in one day and Alexa swam past as she was doing it and got it in the eye and was very put out for a few minutes.

Anyways, it was interesting to watch their circles getting wider as they realised how much more space they had to swim in. As usual, Alexa is the bolder of the two and has already figured out how to swim around the bell and squeeze past it. They also spend a lot of time swimming alongside the plants. Queenie feels very guilty that they’re just crappy Chinese made plastic ones, instead of the soft-fronded flora they should be used to.

Queenie spent a lot of time today just watching the fish and wondering what Chinese people make of us when they’re standing in some awful work camp assembly line, putting together aquarium plants, or toys, or cake decorations, or Thanksgiving wreaths, or whatever.

Do they dream of some awful retribution when the time comes for them to take over the world. Queenie hopes they do. And they'll start with Walmart, the IBM of Chinese workcamps.