I'm pretty sure Mark the fish thinks I'm trying to kill him...and make it look like an accident. But I assure you, that's not my intention. It's been a rough week for Mark. I don't remember if I already mentioned that one fish died. Then one day I saw that the other little fish was looking bad, so I took both fish out of the pond and put them in an ice chest. Well, I left the little fish with the pond guy and he told me to keep Mark in the chest and treat him with this green stuff I bought. Well, in the meantime I kept looking online for info and it seemed like I needed to keep the water aerated (?). I kept testing the ammonia level and it kept showing a little high, but I didn't know what was too high.

Last night, I was looking at Mark and he was not looking good. At one point, I thought he died because he was floating on his side. So I decided to go ahead and take him out and put him back in the pond (it was too late to call Shawn at the pond store). Since I had treated the pond with salt and this other stuff Shawn gave me, I figured it'd be safe from parasites, etc. I was worried that Mark wouldn't make it through the night.

So I was relieved that he was still alive this morning. But I'm still worried that he won't recover. I called Shawn to ask him if I did the right thing to transfer him and he said yes. I'm glad. But the little fish ended up dying. So I check on Mark often and I haven't seen any signs of improvement. I would like to see some improvement. This whole ordeal has made me think that I'd be a nervous, protective mother. I guess all mothers are like that.

I really didn't think it'd be so hard to take in a fish...and noone else seemed to indicate that it'd be problematic. But now that I have him, I have to do everything I can to keep him alive. I feel like a med student in my first semester trying to keep an ICU patient alive with one other med student in his third semester to help me.

Today is a beautiful day so I spent some time outside on the hammock reading a new book. "Eat, Pray, Love" by Elizabeth Gilbert. It's about her experience after her divorce moving to Italy, Indonesia and India for one year to study what she thought those cultures had in some way perfected. I would love to do something like that. Travel, live life, learn lessons, write about it. I like the way she writes - transparent, funny, smart. I'm going to figure a way to do that. Right now, it doesn't seem possible. But she didn't think it was possible for her either, but it happened. I have many things I'd like to do, but what does God want me to do?

What has He placed in my heart? What makes me live more on the practical side? Even though some would not see my life as practical - after all, how long can one be a massage therapist with no health insurance?

Elizabeth notes that she's not a good traveler - problems with her stomach, doesn't blend in with her appearance, doesn't have the poker face that apparently comes in handy when you travel (?), bad sense of direction, doesn't research before she travels. I like what her friend said of her: "You have the opposite of poker face. You have, like...miniature golf face." I don't know why, but that made me laugh =).

As she was pointing out reasons why she's not a good traveler, she said the one thing she did very well was make friends with anyone. I thought about her points, and I have a few good traveler characteristics - iron stomach, can eat almost anything, good poker face, fair sense of direction. But I don't know about making friends with anyone...I'll be an acquaintance, but I don't know about friend =). But I do like meeting new people. I guess I just don't want to hang out with them all the time! People in controlled doses.