The Story of Herman, Plus Broccoli.

I have today off. Yes. Off. I don't have to work todayyyyyy. It may just look like letters written on a page, but I'm dancing around the room and singing it. Heck (although I just wrote the word heck, I am not wearing overalls, nor do I watch Hee Haw reruns. not that there's anything wrong with that.), I had a whole couple years off. But when you work, a day off means so much more than when you don't work and it's just a regular thing. You forget the value of "the day off." So, on my day off, one thing I'm doing is cleaning out Herman's aquarium with Jay. 

We have three turtles. Two aquatic and one tortoise. One aquatic lives in a 75 gallon aquarium and the other, Sally, lives in a ten gallon one. The big one, Frank, is about 9 inches across. Sal is more like an inch and a half.  They just swim mostly, and bask in artificial light. They're cool. And they're social. And I'm not even going to discuss the "but wouldn't they be happier in a REAL pond out in the WILD?" issue. For that debate, you'll need to bring over a bottle of wine on a summer night and plan on sitting on the porch for a couple hours. 

Back to the turtles. After Sally and Frank, I was not planning to get another turtle. It's a small house and already filled. NO MORE ANIMALS I would say. Well, one day Jay and I were in New Frontiers, this local health food store, and we needed to make a bathroom stop. Coming out of the restroom, in the back of the store, I saw a note on the employee bulletin board (I like to read bulletin boards, although not as much as fronts of refrigerators because they can be really interesting and what people put on their fridges is like reading a short story about the refridgerator owner). There was a handwritten ad for a turtle. In big letters, I"M MOVING AND I NEED A GOOD HOME FOR MY TURTLE." Of course I was in. I took down the number and called when we got home. Some NAU guy had graduated and was moving to Alaska. He had had his turtle for 10 years! On the ad on the bulletin board he had said it would 20 bucks to own this turtle but when I said, solemnly, yes, we will give this turtle a good home, he said to just keep the 20 dollars. He said it was just to weed out people who didn't want his turtle enough to pay for it. So, Jay and I loaded the aquarium, the bark tunnel, the food and the turtle itself into the car and headed home. 

There is a small happiness about driving home with a turtle in the backseat. I like the responsibility that comes along with little things. It's not like a child or a companion or paying the mortgage, it's just a part of dailty life. We feed Herman regularly, although I'm sure a day goes by here and there when we forget. He lives in Jay's room and he makes odd noises (Herman, not Jay) when he eats and drinks. Jay told me how sometimes he wakes up in the middle of the night and can hear Herman eating (crunchcrunchcrunch) and wonders for several seconds what IS that? then remembers and goes back to sleep. But we know it's up to us to keep Herman alive. We must feed him, make sure there's water, and occaisionally clean up his digs. And we get the experience of strange noises and examining the beautiful scales on his legs and wondering if we should trim his toenails yet.

And that brings me to broccoli. Strangly. But broccoli is one of those things too. A small happiness. A little responsibility. I did not always know what broccoli looked like as it grew. Now, I grow it. It's cool. It's a broccoli head growing straight up on a stem. Like a broccoli pop. Once you pick the head, it still grows shoots out the side. I have 8 broccoli plants and 4 cauliflower (which grow the same way). I water them most days. I look at them often. Growing them is so much different than buying them at the store. I don't know that they'll taste better. They'll probably look asymetrical and not as "pretty" as store brocc. But it's that small happiness in growing them that I love. When the head starts out it's as tiny as a pea. But it still looks like broccoli. Cool. But then there's the beauty of the leaves and the growing itself and the taste of eating food that grew RIGHT IN THE BACKYARD. Nice.

I'm having a good day off.