Johnny/Giant Girl is Sick

I'm not sure I could be more bummed. Last night when I peeped in at Johnny/Giant Girl and South Africa before heading off to Loft class, I noticed that Johnny/Giant Girl has developed two... I'm not sure what to call them... bumps? tumors? on his body. The weirdest part is that they're huge (compared to the size of his body, anyway,) and they seem to have developed over the course of an afternoon.

The saddest part is that I'm absolutely certain that discovering those bumps totally threw off my teaching.

I have fourteen students, and I'm going to have to talk to the Loft about our location. Currently, they have us all in a room upstairs that has the funkiest set up. The tables are in their usual circular set-up, but there's no centrally located blackboard/white board. They have both a white and a black board, but they're on the wall that is one of the two longest edges of the rectangle that makes up the room. So a large group of the students have to sit with their backs to the board, and it's not like the chalkboard is in the center of that area... it's off to one side, the far side, closest to the door. That's probably hard to visualize, but trust me, it feels WRONG. Plus, I don't know if it was my own dampened enthusiasm or the acoustics in the room, but I felt like I was screaming into the void last night.

And not making a whole lot of sense.

I tell myself that the students have signed up for twelve weeks. Even if they went home shaking their heads after last night's class, they're bound to give me another chance before dropping out completely. Fortunately, there were a number of people I knew from the previous semester's class, so I suspect they'll hang on.

Bleah.

I think between freaking out about Johnny/Giant Girl and Shawn's immenent departure (she left this morning at 6:00 am for Indiana), I just wasn't up to full potential.

This morning was rough too. Shawn woke Mason up to say good-bye, which I totally understand, but meant that he was up at 5:45 am and wasn't going back down. This is one of the only true flaws my son has. He doesn't sleep nearly enough, and once he's up, he's up for the duration. But, I managed to get him fed and out the door and to school on time, despite all this commotion and -30 (F) wind chills. I even went to work out.

Then I changed Johnny/Giant Girl's tank. The only information I could find last night for a possible cause was "dropsy" which is basically fish cancer. It can be brought on by bad water conditions or old age. Given that South Africa seems perfectly happy and healthy, I suspect the latter with Johnny. There's no cure for dropsy, if that is indeed what is wrong with him, but the only up side is that it's not likely that it's caused by a diseased tank.

My attempts to help fish have all been such utter failures that my current plan with Johnny is just to wait and see. I thought frequent water changes and lots of kisses might be a good place to start.

sigh.

Betta Update and Blindsided

Well, from the research I was able to do on the internet, my best guess is that Johnny/Giant-Girl has two tumors. There’s nothing that will make them better, but at least one site seemed to imply that as long as he isn’t acting sick, he isn’t in imminent danger. Apparently, some bettas with tumors live on to a ripe old age. My only concern, of course, is how rapidly they appeared and that there’s not one, but two!

And, of course, this whole thing seems like some kind of horrible real-life metaphor for everything that’s going on with Shawn’s dad.

That just goes with my general feeling of being blindsided*, because this morning my mom e-mails me and tells me she was watching some late night show and she heard the Bucky will be the new Captain America. My mom! (At least my mom said “Bugsby” so I could still feel vaguely superior), but why am I the last to know, people?

Then on Facebook someone tells me some information *I’m* still waiting to hear from my agent.

And John Edwards dropped out of the race? He was just here in Minnesota last night. Did call me to give me a little advanced warning that was coming down the pike? No. Well, hell. Just when I was feeling all decider-y.

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*Note: I re-read this after said-Facebook friend apologized and realized that for a writer I did a piss-poor job of implying the correct tone. This whole little rant isn't meant to be taken too seriously. I figured starting with my mom spoiling Cap's secret would clue the reader into realizing that the rest of these bits made my day brighter, actually. But, I think maybe that's hard to tell since the rest of my life has been so crappy lately (Shawn's dad, sick fish, etc.) Anyway, the point of this addition is to let you know that I actually found the rest of the blindsidign things kind of funny in a "sheesh!" sort of way.

Oh, and it looks like I'll have an announcement to make tomorrow.