It has been a really rough week

This week is over...and I have to say, I'm really glad. It started out with a bang on Mother's day. On Saturday evening, my husband cleaned my pre-filter on the pump in my fish pond.

Usually, he only uses water pressure, which is what you're supposed to do. But this time, he decided to do something a little extra.

Sunday morning, Mother's day, he came upstairs and said "I've done something really bad." He had used carwashing solution to clean the filter. It was 7:00 am and when he had gone outside to use the hot tub, he discovered that the pond was covered in foam.

I asked him if the fish were alive, and he said that some were on the bottom. I ran downstairs and started pulling the fish which were most severly affected out and putting them into clean tubs.

The pre-filter has pads which are about 7" x 12" inches, and I couldn't believe that there was enough of the solution on them after they were rinsed to be a huge problem, so I started pumping some of the water out and replacing it.

More fish began to die. I smelled the detergent, and decided at about 1:00 to completely drain the pond (about 3,000 gallons) and rinse everything down.

The fish were sort of special to me. One of them was one of the original fish I bought in Connecticut about 12 years ago and she was about 12" long. 5 others had been the offspring of two deeply marked shubunkin (calico) males which looked like koi, but were goldfish. These were wonderfully colored, and a few of them had names. One of the "children" I named "Spot", another was "Blue", then there were a few others which had names.

By Monday night, 42 fish were dead, 5 survived. If I had it all to do over, I'd empty the pond immediately. I think I might have been able to save more that way, but as I said, I just couldn't believe that there was that much of the solution. The real kicker was the company which makes it said that it was biodegradible and safe, but they didn't have any tests done on toxicity to fish. I told the guy that they did now, and that it was pretty toxic. I just can't imagine how much dilution would need to be done before it became ok.

Monday during the day, I got an email from my husband to take care of a problem. Someone had used our credit card number to charge airplane tickets to England, and a few other rental things. I'm not sure how this happened, but it is the third time it has happened, the first time for this particular card. I'm a littled ticked as this might affect our stellar credit rating as it happened on another card either last year or the year before.

Then...my tooth broke. An old filling had caused the tooth to crack and 1/4" of a molar fell out. So, on Thursday, I got the first step in a crown. While it doesn't hurt per se, my jaws ache and the temporary crown is too high, so my molars don't hit on the other side.

The first day I could get in was on Thursday, so ...I had my oncology appointment Thursday morning, and then the dentist in the afternoon. At least they were able to draw blood the first time instead of turning me into a pin cushion. I'll hear what the tumor markers have to say next week.

I had hoped to finish a quilt for the Aullwood show...but that was a no go..I finally gave up on that on Friday afternoon.

Meanwhile the garden continues to fill with weeds and teenage drama abounds.

All of this is pretty petty....but it is pretty annoying. Let me just say, I'm looking forward to next week.

While I suppose it is pretty morbid, I took a picture of "Spot" so I would have a record of how pretty he was if I wanted to do a quilt or something. I shot pictures of some of the others before I buried them in my garden. At least my plants will benefit. So, here you can see Spots unusual markings. I think he was about 6 years old. The picture at the beginning of this post shows some of the fish near the submerged strawberry pot I use for them to have cover in the shallow end before the waterlilies get going. I do this so that racoons, cats and Great Blue Herons might not make a complete run of the fish. Only one in the photo survived.