11:22 AM: Even though I got to bed a bit later, I awoke this morning a little before 9:30 without an alarm. When I sat up and opened my eyes, I was certain Pepe was dead. He was lying on his side at the bottom corner of the tank, not even gasping, looking much the way Vlad did when he passed. I frowned and began contemplating the post mortem procedures. As I got up and walked toward the tank, he stirred, just a little. I immediately grabbed a five-gallon bucket and put just enough water in it to get him in it, move him, and commenced as near a 100% water change as I could manage. I’m still not sure what went wrong. A few weeks ago, the water became very cloudy after a water change. I read it could have been a bacterial bloom and to just give it a few days. Pepe was acting fine, so I waited. The water started looking worse and worse, and got even more cloudy after another partial change. Everything I tried seemed to make it worse. A 100% change is drastic, but I didn’t know what else to do. He’s a tough little fish and I hope he pulls through. He doesn’t look good, but he definitely looks a lot less dead now.
Thoughts from bed: I am grateful that I did not walk through the door and lose my shit on Adora for not putting the ladder out on the porch as I had asked. Corey had planned on coming to take a look at the roof and needed a ladder to get from the first to the second section. After talking to Adora later in the evening, it is apparent that had I yelled at her, it would have made things a lot worse on her.
I’m also grateful that I went in and actually sat down to talk to Adora. Or rather to listen. It took deliberate effort to refrain from throwing advice at her and instead to empathize, but it was surprisingly effective.
A short while later, I did the same with Suzi. She became upset that I expressed more than disinterest in going to a local show on the 28th. There is a myriad of reasons why I believe myself righteous in the situation; however, rather than argue, I simply tried to paraphrase her thoughts on the matter, namely that she has to fight with me to get me to do anything she wants to do. I wanted to shoot back that it’s always the same things that I never want to do, so how can it possibly be a fucking surprise, but I withheld and just stated that I understood how she felt. If she didn’t feel better at the end of the discussion, I did, and at least in my feeling better, I did not make things worse, which is better for both of us.
