A lot happened today. Notably, we decided to resurrect the old 55 gallon fishtank in the garage.
So I’ll back up, Minnow ended up getting some jars of “pet” caterpillars and this resurrected the whole pet thing, but of course the animal shelter is closed right now, and someone recently threw out the idea of fish so we decided let’s do it live and here we are.
Years ago I got really into fish for a while and had several tanks, and even got into freshwater plants and snails (I really got into snails, actually). At some point I lost interest and dismantled my tanks but I kept the supplies and the 55 gallon survived to this point. We’ve decided to start a goldfish tank. Re-researching fish, I think I’ve decided on a basic setup using sand and a canister filter. Marlin had the idea we would set up the tank and immediately put fish in it, which stressed me out a little because I hadn’t had a chance to research anything and figure out what we should do, but I’ve decided to try cleaned filtered pool sand, which can be gotten at the hardware store, and order a canister online. And maybe read r/Goldfish compulsively now, since that’s what I do. It takes about a week to prep a tank so that gives me some breathing room.
We ended up doing a non-grocery-store shopping run, which we haven’t done in over a month. The stores were absolutely packed, and only about 33% of people were wearing masks, and Minnow and I ended up sitting in the car for a couple hours which frankly sucked, but the upside was I finally got several items I’d been needing: soil, seeds, a trash picker, etc., etc. So I seeded some pots today with sweet basil, lemon basil, cilantro, and I started a tray of mixed peppers. That’s one more thing off my back.
After so much time in isolation forgoing many things I wanted to do, it’s nice to finally be doing some things again, even if going out is a major pain and I have a lot of generalized anxiety around people now. Marlin does the grocery runs so I don’t think I’ve even been out to a store in at least a month. I’ve had some issues with delays and out-of-stock trying to order things online, I think I’m going to start being more proactive about using curbside services. The majority of stores have them now and hopefully that will save some time.