Heartbreak in the Age of Aquariums
Are we in it? Image (and answer to the question) on AstrologyNewsService.com
Wading further into the year, I’m reminded of a few things.
Read the Label
Where did January go? It’s already the Super Bowl Valentine’s Day. Then, the dreary slog through March. Winter melts away to spring, May flowers bloom, and then it’s summertime barbeques. Time passes, and the journey is the dream.
I spend about a half hour a week cleaning my daughter’s aquarium, a little five-gallon tank that houses her current fish, a beta named Luna. Cleaning this aquarium is my weekly moment of Zen. I’ll take the mindfulness practice whenever I can get it. Nothing seems to help me stave off a trip down Anxiety Lane quite like an empty mind, filling only with the concerns of the process, scrubbing algae off the glass, netting fish shit from the dingy water. It’s therapeutic and instructive, with the lesson being that you won’t make a mistake when you’re present in the moment. I remember this every time I clean the aquarium.
This February marks Luna’s second year of survival. It had been a rough stretch for the pet fish in our house up until we got Luna. Neptune, another beta fish we once had, made it over a year before his untimely death, when I added this anti-algae liquid to the aquarium water to help inhibit the spread of green algae. It worked, but it also killed the little fella, who apparently had algae growing on his scales. The chemicals in the liquid I added to the aquarium reacted to that algae and ate away at Neptune’s flesh. I wasn’t mindful when I grabbed that glass jar of liquid and squirted a few drops into the aquarium. Had I been mindful and read the warning on the label, I may have noticed that I wasn’t supposed to do that with the fish in the water. I had to explain that to my daughter when she got home from school.
Luna.
Poop Dreams
The Lakers almost pulled off the upset win over the Warriors tonight, on the road no less. Almost. They couldn’t close the door on the “W”, and lost their third in a row and continued their slide towards the Western Conference cellar. The disappointment of this loss is another brick in the wall going up between the Lakers and the 2021-2022 Larry O’Brien trophy. We’re getting close to the top of that wall. LeBron and company might as well abandon the title chase and instead look to join the BAC. It’s going to be a long off-season for the Lakers.
With the Lakers season dying a slow death, I’m throwing my full support to my new favorite player in the Association, Ja Morant. The Super Bowl is kicking off in 3 hours, and NO ONE outside of a few lunatics in Cincinnati thought they would see the Bengals in the big dance, but here they are. Perhaps Ja and the Grizz could land a few haymakers during their playoff run and shock the world.
Ja bless ya with his game.
The Ides of March
Spring training has been delayed thanks to the MLB owners locking out the players. Football wraps up today. The bad times are here, again. Forget about inflation and Russia teasing an invasion of Ukraine. After March Madness, there’s nothing but fútbol and Formula 1 until April when real baseball games are played, and that will likely be delayed this year because of the ongoing lockout.
“Oh, you poor first world whiner! Shut your trap!”
Noted.
Jokes aside, the 2021 season was a lot of fun.
