Creature of the New Page

My hourly employment is largely volume based, and this summer has been Unusually Awful for work. My brother works with me but started recently and so has less training, and is getting even less shifts than I am.

I also had to take 3 weeks off for my health in April, which turned into almost 7 weeks because my scheduler literally just forgot to put me back into the pool of available workers until I broke chain of command and went straight to upper management to remind them that I existed and wasn't sure if I still had a job.

Shortly after that, the work just kinda Vanished into the worst summer lull we have had since I started 4 years ago.

We are now struggling to pay rent, as my mother's social security payments are keeping us fed and keeping the lights on.

Friends were able to help us for July, but finances are so strained for EVERYone right now that we have only been able to cover about half of what was originally due on August 1st, but now we have late fees.

Tl;dr: I need help raising $1678.93 (USD) to get rent paid and keep a roof over our head.

I am also waiting on some paperwork that would let me renew my attempt to apply for municipal housing assistance, but those programs are often super sparse this time of year.

If you have a couple dollars to spare, and would like to donate, you can reach me by ca$$happ, v3nmo, or p@ypal with the following links:

https://www.paypal.me/SpaceKingChana

https://venmo.com/code?user_id=2987516428812288381&created=1786049186

https://cash.app/$SpaceKingChana

But also just sharing this post goes a long way!

Cat tax, for those interested, here's my baby girl of 14 years, Mikey:

She's kind of like my nurse and helps me manage my chronic fatigue xD idk how she knows! She just DOES

Anything extra is going to go straight into preparing for September's rent due on Sept. 1st because August is Notoriously awful about work volume.

The core values of Stupidism are

Caution: because we, being stupid and surrounded by stupid people, are liable to do something stupid or be subjected to the stupidity of others at any time and in any situation.

Compassion: because it sucks to be stupid, and we are all stupid together.

- 1-5

- 6-12

- 13-19

- 20-30

- 31+

- no cousins here

So for those of you not familiar with my recent descent into fishkeeping, about 2 months ago a friend of mine who does Hazardous Waste cleanup (specifically cleaning up hazardous places like meth labs) called me up and asked:

"You have fish, right?"

"...Why?" I asked, having become aware that the Fish Distribution System is even more aggressive than the cat one.

"I found a fish in the back of an abandoned trap house. Alive." She clarified.

I could feel my fate settling upon my soul.

"...Send me a pic so I can ID the species and I'll see what I can do."

She sent me a picture of a small purplish squiggle in six inches of fetid green muck. But when I arrived to collect the sludge creature he turned out to look like this:

He's difficult to photograph in focus, but he's a deep wine-dark creature with an iridescent blue sheen. The red patches on his fins mirror where the fins of a Plakat/wild Betta splendens would be, and the rest of his fins are a ghostly shimmering white. This fish was in six inches of toxic green shit.

Naturally, he needed the finest tank I could put together that afternoon.

I think I did alright.

He's so fucking cute. He always swims up to watch when anyone approaches. I've got him trained to do a little dance when I feed him. He likes watching me doing anything in front of his tank.

That's all actually pretty typical of Bettas- they're very intelligent and curious creatures and like learning, which is more than I can say for some of my relatives.

Where Upstairs Kevin (so named because his tank is in my upstairs bathroom) really shines is that a lot of Bettas are... Not sociable. They often eat shrimp, attack other fish in their tank (or get stressed out of they can't commit enough violence to maintain their personal space) or constantly harass and nip the snails in their tanks. Most Bettas are genuinely happier being alone.

Kevin fucking loves his snail (Bluebert) and will shimmy as fast as he can over whenever Bluebert falls off something (it's fine, this is a normal way for mystery snails to get from one place to another).

When I had my Nego D'Aguas in the holding tank, I had to put three of the smallest ones in with him because they were being harassed in the small tank, and he was a perfect gentleman with them. He was trying very hard to shoal with them, but they're very zippy. He was visibly upset (lethargic, dulled colors) when I moved them back to the big tank.

Today was the real acid test: I'm going to move him from his 5 gallon to the 10 gallon so I can use the 5 as a hospital/spare plants tank, and I needed to know if I could have shrimp in with him. Even Betta that are cool with other fish can still see a shrimp and decide they're at the buffet. Unfortunately, there's no real way to know without putting shrimp in with the Betta.

So earlier today, I got half a dozen super-discounted Rilli shrimp (LFS has a massive overstock of them for some reason) and added them to his 5 gallon. There are a bunch of hiding places for shrimp in there and if he was aggressive with them I'd move him to the 10 gallon immediately (I don't want to do that just yet because I need to move the furniture around in there a bit).

Friends.

The shrimp are fully swimming in the open and Kevin is just following them around, curious, but only curious. No gill-flaring, no posturing, no lunges or snapping. Some of them are red, a color that normally triggers aggression in Bettas, and he's just. Hanging out, watching them eat biofilm off the moss. One of them accidentally landed on his head and stayed there for 3 seconds and he only went "???" Until it took off again.

They're both so curious about each other.