Melville family pets

In this post, I'm not going to try to remember everything, but I will try to remember all the pets my family has had while I've been alive.

We had some guinea pigs, but family lore tells me one died because I dropped it. It seems that one was white and brown. I remember my dad burying some brown ones and him insinuating my cousin Jesse had contributed to their deaths. But I can't have been older than four, so who knows if that really happened.

We had a fishtank and we had plecostomuses, sucker fish. Because they are ugly, my family named them Homer, after Homer Simpson, and I think we had several Homers: Homer 1, Homer 2, etc. But then one day that fishtank cracked, so we had to transport the fish to bowls and my aunt came and took them.

One Christmas, probably in 1993 but maybe 1992, my brother got an iguana for Christmas and named it Lizzie. But a few days later it died. That was one of the rare times I saw my brother cry.

Soon after that, however, my parents got him a snake. It was an albino corn snake, so David named it Al. He used to play with Al all the time, and he even measured its length on the closet door where my family measured our growth. (My family got rid of that door. :( ) After a while, though, he quit playing with it as much, and it became less tame. That made it a problem when it would sometimes escape and he had to catch it. We used to go to the pet store to buy pinkie mice to feed it. We eventually gave it to my uncle's wife.

Around this same time, circa 1993, my aunt got a blue budgie bird that she intended to give to my cousins for Christmas, and we kept it at our house, but my family became attached to it and kept it. We named it Tweeters, Tweets for short.

In 1994 (I think), David got another bird, I think for his birthday. This bird was a cockatiel, named Spike for the stick-up feathers on its head. David often called her Spoy or Shpoy. David really wanted a dog, so Spike became his pseudo-dog. At one time we got bird food that looked like dog food. David taught it to bark, wolf whistle, and say "Pretty bird." It would often look in its mirror and go, "Pretty bird. Pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty bird." We tried to teach it to whistle the Andy Griffith Show theme--it got the first notes right, but then it did its own thing. One peculiar trait it had was to put its head in its toy bell, grab the dinger with its beak, and shriek as loud as it could. This was loud to us, so we can only imagine what it was like for her! (Sorry I keep switching pronouns for the bird.) If she would see someone nodding, she would nod too. I used to run around the living room and spin my arms in circles, and that would make her nod too. Sometimes Spike would have night terrors and would thrash around in the cage, leaving bird blood splattered on the cage and walls.

When we would get the two birds out, Tweeters was a little more defensive and aggressive, even though she was the smaller bird. David cut out pieces of cloth to put on his shoulders to keep his clothes clean. Sometimes he would take the birds (at least Spike) into the shower with him, although I don't think they sat on his shoulder but on his finger. David left on his mission and later moved away again, and since birds are messy, we didn't get them out often, and they got less tame. Tweets died just before Thanksgiving in 2003. In 2007, my sister was diagnosed with some disease that was aggravated by birds, so we had to give Spike away.

In 1995 or so, our neighbors across the street, the Reeds, gave us a hamster. I think one morning David found it in a plant holder. Shortly after that, we found it had escaped again and died, probably from eating mouse poison.

For my birthday in 1994, we got a new fishtank, and over the years, we had lots and lots of fish. I was particularly fond of the see-through glass fish, and I liked the crabs we had that used to escape. (I once wrote a post all about the crabs.)

We had a few notable fish. When I was in first grade, we had orange fish in which the males had sword tails, and on one occasion we bought both a male and a female, and soon the female was pregnant, and shortly thereafter there were lots of tiny orange dots in the fishtank. The other fish, including the parents, tried to eat the babies, but one hid in our decorative rocks. We captured it and took it to my aunt's house so it could be safe until it was fully grown. I named it Pumpkin and it lived to adulthood.

In college, David became a biologist and worked with zebrafish. In one lab in 2000 (I think), he injected chemicals into sets of 100 zebrafish, and in one of those sets, two fish survived while all others died. I don't know if they survived because they were superfish, or if they were superfish because of the chemicals, but these were super hardy fish. David named them Ishmael and Queequeg, characters in Moby Dick. They lived for more than four years, maybe even as long as six years. Not only did they live a long time, they lived in harsh environments. My mom took the aquarium to school, and the kids accidentally turned up the heat, killing all the fish except for the zebrafish. We weren't the most responsible at cleaning the tank, and sometimes it became super gross and all the fish died except the zebrafish.

And then there are our cats. In 2001, my sister and her roommates got a cat, Cleo, and we watched it for a few weeks. After that, I really wanted a cat. My mom's friend's cat had kittens on July 16, 2001, so we got one, a black and white cat with a black "mustache." I named it Dinah, after Alice (in Wonderland)'s cat. Dinah was hilarious but mean. She would sometimes bite me and even drew blood. She liked to attack my feet. As she got older, she got tamer.

Unfortunately, after we had had her for just over a year, in September or October 2002, she disappeared. We don't know what happened to her, although my dad saw a raccoon in our yard the night she disappeared. We went to the pound, but she wasn't there.

But I wanted to get a replacement cat. We were going to Taiwan in November 2002, so I asked my maternal grandparents if they would watch a new cat while we were gone. They agreed, so in October we went to the pound and got a grey kitten, which we named Jenny. More than twelve years later, Jenny is still alive and well. And what a strange cat she is. Soon after we got her, my paternal grandparents came for a visit, and Jenny loved rubbing against Grandma Judy's white leather shoes. To this day, she likes to rub against feet, more than she likes to be petted by hands. My dad won't let her be fed inside the house because she tends to throw up. She's picky about her litter box. She isn't particularly loving, hisses at kids, and likes to spill her water bowl. But she's a good mouser, and I like having her.

Presidents' Day 2013 and 2014

Two years ago, I remembered all the Presidents' Days of the past, so now I'm going to remember the two Presidents' Days that happened since then.

2013. In the morning, I went over to Cougar Dental for my root canal. They numbed my mouth up, and they asked if I wanted laughing gas. I asked what they recommended and asked if the operation would be painful. They said the operation wasn't painful; the laughing gas would just be to calm me, and I would have to pay extra, but they could let me try it and see if I liked it. They also let me watch a movie on the screen above me, so I selected Hugo. I realized that I didn't like the laughing gas, so I asked them to turn it off. They drilled a hole into the back of my dead tooth and were doing their thing, but I was numb so it really wasn't a big deal to me. At one point, the dentist looked up and asked what I was watching; but since I was numb and had equipment in my mouth, all I could say was "Ew-oh." He said "What?" and I was worried how I was going to explain, but then he realized what I said. Then I went home, but I don't remember what I did that day. That evening, though, my roommate Scott wanted to host a dance party at our apartment, and I wanted to get some homework done, so I planned to go to campus to study so I wouldn't be distracted. Our friend Michelle came over, and she saw my St. Patrick's Day decorations. She also noticed I was wearing a St. Patrick's Day shirt and asked if I was going to wear a St. Patrick's Day shirt for the next month. I explained no, and I told her I had bleached the shirt; then I turned around so she could see the bleach.

2014. My mom was down in the family room with her broken leg. At one point, we got a delivery of crutches, and Buddy the dog went out and barked at the delivery man. When I came in and told my family that, Susanne said, "He's a jerk." The crutches weren't normal crutches, so we didn't know what was going on. I remembered there was an Irish-themed episode of The Flying Nun that originally aired in March, so I wanted to watch it and get feedback from my mom and sister to see if they thought it was a St. Patrick's Day episode. When Sister Bertrille took off flying in the episode, Allie said, "What the heck?!" When the episode was over, I said, "The show is weirder than I remembered it," and Allie said, "Yeah!" Susanne didn't think it was a St. Patrick's Day episode because that wasn't what it was about. My mom agreed, but she was sure they included all the Irish stuff for St. Patrick's Day. I said that was enough for me to know it was suitable for the holiday. The DVD menu was on the TV screen, and my mom said, "Was that 'May the Wind Be Always at Your Back'?" I said yes, and I wondered why she needed to ask that, since it couldn't be any other episode. Then I asked my folks if it was OK if I listened to a YouTube video for class. They said it was. It was about whether Amazon was good or bad (for the book industry), and Susanne said, "I love Amazon!" I told her she was paying more attention to the video than I was, because I couldn't bear the thought of watching an hour-long video of a seminar, so I was just looking at pictures of weird-looking bats. I might have also showed them a GIF of a peacock spider.

Then it was late enough that I needed to go back to Provo. I think someone had brought dinner, and my family was watching the Olympics.

February 16

I've already considered the other days around Valentine's Day, so now I'm going to remember what happened two days after it.

2014. In the morning, I called my mom at her hospital room to see if she wanted us to come or if we should go to church. She told us she was feeling fine, so we didn't need to see her immediately. So my dad and I went to sacrament meeting together. I didn't want to talk to many people so that we could get to the hospital sooner and so that people wouldn't think we were jerks for going to church without Mom. I drove to the hospital because my car is lower to the ground and would be easier for my mom to get into. I tried to listen to my Lower Lights Hymn Revival Volume 1 CD, but the CD player kept spitting that finicky CD out, so I asked my dad to put in Volume 2 (it was in the little compartment between the front seats). He found Imagine Dragons first, but then he found Lower Lights. We went up to her room, and my mom was told she could leave soon. But it took four or five more hours. My mom said that some other family had visited and had brought a sick two-year-old, and she found it inappropriate to bring a sick kid into a hospital. The nurses seemed a bit incompetent, as they kept coming in with conflicting reports. Sometimes she was informed she could take home a knee scooter but not crutches. Sometimes it was the other way around. But she had originally been told she could have both. While we were waiting, my mom watched the Olympics while I looked up St. Patrick's Day topics on Wikipedia on my phone. At one point, my dad and I went down to the cafeteria and got food. We didn't know what was going on, but we figured it out eventually. I wanted to see if there were any green desserts I could have, but there weren't at the à la carte. There was some green ice cream at an ice cream stand, but I couldn't justify that. Susanne texted me at one point and asked me to take a picture of the head nurse's office near the elevator, since she wanted to report the incompetence of the nurses. Eventually my mom was allowed to leave, so I went out in the parking lot and drove my car up to the door of the hospital. My mom got into the seat, not without some difficulty, and I think my dad rode with Susanne, who had come a little later. I think we were driving up Marialana Way when mom asked if Cherie Call was one of the people singing. When we got home, I think we helped my mom go down the garage stairs backwards and then into the family room. Right as we got her home, Laura Anderson came by, and I think she had cards from the primary kids. I may have asked my mom if she wanted to get revenge on the pizza by eating it, as we still had some.

2013. I remember going to Smith Marketplace with my family, and I got some Werther's candies to put in little pots of gold. Then I drove back to Provo and put out my St. Patrick's Day things. My roommate Cameron made a Facebook status about it.

2009. [Copied and pasted from a Presidents' Day post:] Our district went to Kohl's for P-day because there were supposed to be some good sales. I bought a white-and-green-striped tie for St. Patrick's Day. I looked at the St. Patrick's Day t-shirts but I didn't care to pay the price to buy them. Elder Canova admired the Snoopy "Party Like a Rockstar" shirt. We looked at a shelf with clearance stuff on it; the perverted Elder Stafford talked about the "man thong." I found an orange beanie. I thought it would be good to have, since we frequently had to walk along unlit roads with no sidewalks at night. Then we did our grocery shopping. That year, M&Ms made green candies for Valentine's Day (stupid idea), but since no one liked that idea, there was plenty of clearance candy, so I bought a bag. Then we went to the Days', where Elder Lestarge and Elder Kitchen lived, and played the typical missionary game Bang! Elder Dunn liked the M&Ms. While we were waiting for a ride back to our house, I put on my new hat, and Elder Stafford commented on it. When we got home, I looked in the mirror, and realized how ridiculous my orange hat looked. It looked like a bathing cap. Elder Betenson said that he wasn't going to say anything, but that he agreed it looked terrible. He said that his previous companion, Elder Torrance, had cut up a hat and used it as a neck warmer. I mostly cared about the orange for the visibility, so I cut it up. But he said it still looked dumb, so I threw it away. Then we went and tried to visit a Sister Locarni, who lived close to us. We found out she was an active member, but her husband wasn't a member. We learned that Brother Wilhelm, the ward mission leader, visited them, which was a scary thought, since he was notorious for teaching false doctrine. After 9:00, Elder Wilson called me and said, "I have sad news," and told me that Brother Martin from the Davenport Branch had died unexpectedly. They announced it at stake conference. I think I might have called Elder Love and relayed the info. This is my journal entry for the day:
"Today was my first P-day in the district. It was a hassle with all the people; we had Elder Stafford in the trunk. I bought an orange hat to be more visible at night, but it looked ridiculous, so I threw it away. I also bought a green tie (and green M&Ms) for St. Patrick's Day. We also played Bang.

"Then this evening we met Sister Locarni, who is active, but her husband is not a member. We tried to see others, but they weren't home, and we came back.

"Elder Wilson called me and told me Brother Martin from the Davenport branch died unexpectedly."

2008. This is my journal entry for the day, which I don't really remember. For some reason, I decorated the date with spiders and spiderwebs:
"So since the last time I wrote in here I had sacrament meeting, P-day, a reunion with Elder Chun, Zone conference on Valentine's Day, and the exciting news of a family to teach. The reason for the lull in writing is due to the long exchange [my companion had been sick for a week] and trying to read sixteen Psalms a day.
"Today Elder Chun slept in and then had a three-hour nap after comp study. We tried to contact some people before we came home because Elder Chun was still tired and he slept at his desk for about an hour, while I read and practiced the piano.
"Then we went with Brother Palmer to try to contact some people. It was quite an uneventful evening."

2004. We went down to Provo and saw Dave and Ya-ping. My family was seeing a movie that I didn't want to see, so I was going to watch my new Gilligan's Island DVD at their apartment. As David was going through channels to get the right one, I discovered that Hallmark Channel was having a Gilligan's Island marathon, so I watched that instead of my DVDs. I was working on a seminary assignment where we had to make valentines for our parents. The holiday was over, of course, but it was still an assignment I needed to do. (I had a horrible seminary teacher that year.) My family came back from the movie and had bought lunch at Beto's. Then we went to Old Navy, and I remember seeing they had a lot of St. Patrick's Day clothing, including board shorts. My intuition tells me this was a day we went to the Target in American Fork where I got a Snoopy St. Patrick's Day shirt, and my sister wanted to get Toffifay, and we got some Easter candy--but I can't make sense of why we would have had Dave and Ya-ping with us, because I know we were coming back from Provo, so it wouldn't make sense for us to take them home with us. It could have been a different weekend. This is my journal entry for the day:
"This weekend was Valentine's Day. I got the entire first season of Gilligan's Island on DVD. But it has a scratch on it that causes it to skip, so we need to exchange it. The Hallmark Channel is having a Gilligan's Island marathon today. My family went to Provo, got David and Ya-Ping and went to Big Fish, but I didn't want to see it because it is PG-13 and has sexuality and nudity in it. I stayed at the apartment and watched Gilligan's Island."

Conversation hearts

You know those chalky little hearts we always get in February? Love 'em or hate 'em, they are a ubiquitous part of Valentine's Day. (I'm actually surprised there aren't things flavored like them, like there are lots of candy corn-flavored things.) With it being nearly Valentine's Day, I'm going to remember incidents connected with them.

In preschool, one day we were in the upstairs dance hall, playing around, and when we were done playing, our teacher gave us some with faces on them. (I noticed that was different, so I obviously had had them before that.)

When I was in kindergarten, I decided I wanted to do a Valentine's adaptation of Santa Claus, so when we were at Kmart one night, I wanted to get a bag of the hearts. I made stockings out of paper and drew hearts on them and stapled the front and back pieces together. I was going to wait until Valentine's Day, but I couldn't wait, so I got up really early one morning, when it was still dark and my siblings were getting ready for their school, and I put the hearts in the stockings I had made. I remembered seeing pictures of Santa with his finger over his mouth, so I did that, and then I asked Susanne if she knew why I did that. She said she thought it was because I was telling her to be quiet, but I said that wasn't why. I remember her saying the yellow ones were her favorite.

One January in 1998 or so, I was at Food 4 Less in Bountiful, the one by the no-longer-existing Five Points Mall. I begged my parents to get me a box of  them, and they did. There was another girl who got her mom to get a whole bunch of them for a party.

In third grade, my friend David Christensen gave me his valentine at recess, and it had a few "lacy" conversation hearts in it.

Another time, perhaps around 2000, our home teacher's wife, Ivy Petersen, was visiting us and said she loved conversation hearts and got them right after Christmas. But she didn't like the purple ones, saying they "taste like perfume."

On Valentine's Day 2001, I was at mutual, and I remember someone in another ward saying some girls had helped her decorate sugar cookies, and some of them had conversation hearts. I thought that was a horrible topping for a cookie.

In junior high, I remember talking with my friend Houston about how the white ones were our favorites. Around that time, my family bought a bag that was all white, but they were a strong peppermint instead of the mellow wintergreen in the regular mix. My dad loved them.

On Valentine's Day in eighth grade, I awkwardly gave handfuls of the hearts to girls from my ward as they walked past me on the bus.

One year, perhaps in 2005, I was dismayed that I hadn't had any conversation hearts, and my mom had only a few that she got from her class, and they were weird ones.

In 2006, I put a bunch of conversation hearts in a dish downstairs. Months later, they still weren't gone, and my nephew Preston (between 19 and 21 months) knew they were up on the shelf. He had his own language, with some words in English, some in Chinese, and some that he had invented himself. His word for candy was "ba." (My guess is that it was the way he tried to say "pop," as in "Otter Pop.") He would beg for "ba," so I would get one for him.

A few days after Christmas in 2007, on my mission, we had visited our investigator Cindy, and she gave us boxes of conversation hearts. I think they were of the "smoothie" variety. Perhaps that day, or at least very soon after that, we were out shoveling the driveway where we lived, and I slipped a little bit. I didn't fall, but somehow my slip hurt my ankle, and I felt like I had sprained it again. So I went inside and read on my bed while eating the conversation hearts.

I got some in a package from my mom in 2009, but I got transferred right before Valentine's Day, so I didn't eat many of them before I went to my new area. (I didn't want to take them with me.)

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 2010, I was at Walmart with my family, and I got a bag. They were different from the ones I was used to, and they even had a blue one. That night I went to my dinner group in Provo, and the host had bought some cookies that were heart-shaped with messages on them. That led to a conversation about the candies, and someone said how bad they were, and I told them they had changed them and they were better.

In 2013, I put some ice cream-flavored ones in a jar in my apartment for a decoration. My roommate Cameron loved them, and one day I discovered one on the stairs outside our apartment, I think because our friend Carissa had taken some with her and dropped one. That heart was on the step for months. After he had eaten some, he bought two new bags--one was the ice cream kind like I had, and one was the large version of the fruit variety. He asked me which I would prefer him to put in (he correctly guessed that the ones I had were the ice cream ones); I can't remember what I said. Once Valentine's Day was over, I transferred them to a bowl, but then I quit eating them, and apparently Cameron quit eating them, because they sat in the bowl for months until I decided they were too dusty to be good for anything. (Come to think of it, it was around that time Cameron decided he was too good for us. So apparently he was too good for the hearts, too.)