Well, she's not dead yet!  Robert noticed that, Trippie, one of our triplets--three red-colored goldfishes-- was acting sluggishly in the outside pond. This is how two of our other fishes began to act before they died from unknown causes. 

Robert gently caught her in a saucepan and transferred her to Goldie's vase tank inside (next to the TV--which we think they watch.)  Now she's in hospital, hopefully recuperating.  She looks rather bloated, so we are thinking that she got overfed last week (goldfish apparently tend to eat and eat without much regulation of their intake.)

Trippie personifies depression.  She literally sinks to the bottom.  She lays her head against a rock and gently breathes her gills in and out.  She stares (although I did see her blink when I was watching her straight on.  I was quite excited to see it.) She moves slowly and sometimes lists to the right side.

She's lasted through the day, so we can only keep an eye on her.

We put a little Epsom salts in the water as a laxative.

Goldie, on the other hand, swims around quite perkily.  She seems to recognize us--expected food-- as we get close to the tank. Robert is careful to feed her only two or three pre-soaked fish pellets (the size of her tiny eyeball) to avoid overfeeding her.  She seems to exhibit no sympathy for her tank-mate's predicament.

The neighbors stopped by to chat while the kids were swinging and throwing buckets of water on each other to cool off. It's unusually hot today.

I got to hold Anya's two-month old baby!

Gunther rolled up on his bike from work.  He showed us the site on his new iPhone (courtesy of Inovis, where he works) where he is one of the models for Patagonia outer wear.  He happened to run into someone who works for them on that Tweed bike ride he did recently. They liked his lifestyle and the fact that he raises vegetables and chickens in the back yard.  Did I mention that last week the hens started laying??

You can see Gunther at http://www.golite.com/main/home.aspx

We had a nice birthday evening for Eliza.  She loved the boeuf bourgignon.  I also made stuffed mushrooms out of Mastering The Art of French Cooking.  They are one of my favorites, and the recipe has been a staple all these years.

Last night I decided I'd go see Julie and Julia.  It was very warm so I made a Salade Nicoise, since I had some good olives and fresh greens left over from Eliza's dinner.  This week, I am really liking a simple salad dressing made of lemon juice, olive oil, Dijon mustard, salt and pepper--and a little squeeze of fresh garlic.  

Synchronicistically, I happened to be wearing the pearl necklace that Sigrid gave me when I went to the movie (pearls were Julia Child's favorite jewelry.)

I loved the movie.  I called Sigrid this morning to tell her that I found my old copy of the cookbook.  She and a few friends are having a Julia Child dinner tomorrow night.  Sig is making a beef dish, and others are bringing dishes, too.  Sounds fun.

This is the first week of school--the first week of kindergarten for Auggie, first week of second grade for Chloe and Anders, and third grade for Trevor.  When we asked Auggie if he liked his first day of school he said, "Of course I did."  

The kids started swinging outside my house after dinner last night. Gunther and Colm (my next door neighbor) were watching the boys and talking about their iPhone applications.  I went off to the movies.

I walked with Rainey this morning, and then did yoga at 1:30.  After that I started cooking my beef bourgignon for Eliza's birthday tomorrow night.  This was her choice for dinner.

She had just seen Julie and Julia and wanted to have the beef stew experience.  We dug out my old cookbook of Julia Child's and Simone Beck, the one I learned to cook from when I was first married.  The copyright is 1964 and I probably bought it that same year.  I taught myself to cook from The New York Times Cookbook, Escoffier (too hard, too French) and Mastering the Art of French Cooking.  Wow, brings back old memories.

Sigrid was saying she'd love to have my old cookbook, so I will give it to her.  She is such a fabulous cook--far better than I.  She made us a first class halibut and vegetable dish when I was down there last week.

The smell of braising beef permeates my house tonight.  I was just outside watching the boys swing and giving my succulents a little dousing.  It's cool, with the fog rolling in, but a quiet, delicious twilight. 

I'm looking forward to getting into bed and continuing to read Marlena de Blasi's book, The Lady in the Palazzo.  I read her first book, A 1000 Nights in Venice, where she moves to Italy and marries an Italian.  She's a chef and author. The books are filled with descriptions of markets, meals, and local, rustic food.  She and her husband, Fernando make friends with a woman who opened her own simple restaurant, where she cooks local bounty like rabbit, lamb, chickens, and harvests whatever arrives in the spring--watercress, grains, and other lovely things.  Marlena and Fernando sometimes sit in the evening with two nearly silent shepherds who befriend them. They grill olive-oil drizzled bread on the fire, drink wine and enjoy the deepening evening.  de Blasi is a very sensual writer.

Gotta run and take out the stew.  It is surely done after four hours.  I just need to throw in the sauteed mushrooms and braised onions and I'm, done for the night. 

I spent the weekend at Sigrid and Jim's house.  Chloe turned seven on Saturday!  She had her party at the Pinz Bowling Alley where Trevor had his.

One minor problem.  Chloe and Sigrid went to pick up the birthday cake at Ralph's grocery store.  At the checkstand the bottom came apart and....plop went the cake.  Everyone in line was staring.  Within minutes, the store provided another cake, inscribed it with Happy Birthday, Chloe, complete with bowling pins and balls, and they were on their way.

Trevor and I were at home playing "box ball."  We found an old square box and started shooting the rubber ball into it.  Then we played Connect and solitaire together.  It's fun to tease him and get into a kind of punchy laughter.  Only with a child! 

FISH LORE

(from Fish Behavior in the Aquarium and in the Wild, by Stephan Reebs, Cornell University Press 2001) p. 197

"Late one day, Lorenz (fish researcher and one of the founders of ethology) came to feed a pair of parental jewel chichlids he was keeping in his laboratory.  That pair had just about finished retreiving their young for the night--like many cichlids, jewels at dusk gather their free-swimming young a few at a time into their mouth and spit them into a pit so that they can watch over them at night.

The female was holding station over the pit full of fry, while the male was dashing back and forth, looking for stragglers.  Lorenz dropped a piece of earthworm into the water.  The female did not flinch from her guarding post, but the male rushed to the worm, seized it, and started chewing.  Then he saw a stray fry swimming by itself away from the pit.  Bent on retrieving it, he took it in his already full mouth--and then paused.  What to do?  To eat or not to eat? To retrieve or not to retrieve? Part of the mouth content had to go to the nest, the other to the stomach.

After a few moments, the father found a solution: he spat out both the worm piece and the young.  Both sank to the bottom--sinking is a reflex in young cichlid fry being retrieved, and as for the meat, well, that was only gravity.  Then the father ate the worm, taking his time and watching the nearby fry.  When he was done, he took the fry in his mouth once again and brought it back to its waiting mother. 

Nearby students watching the scene spontaneouslybroke into applause.  The decision by the fish almost made him look wise. 

We bought another "feeder" fish from Petco and installed her in a 2-gallon glass vase in the family room.  She, Goldie, sits next to the TV.  She seemed to be interested in "Cruises We Love" on the Travel Channel.

Robert has her well set up with some Anacharis plant, dwarf parrot feather, gravel, and a little grotto for resting and hiding. She glows gold in sunny spots.

Last night about dusk, I was standing on my patio surveying my plants.  The hummingbird zoomed right up to within three feet of me, and buzzed around while I stared.  I greeted her and she zig-zagged off to perch on a high, orange huckleberry flower, almost lost against the deep blue sky.

The boys came over at 3 pm, already imbued with the desire to "make a tazer."  "In 3-D," amended Auggie, just in case I thought I would get off just making a drawing. I made a luger-type gun before for Anders--we called it the Anders Repeater, and it even had a place for a magazine in the handle (where do I get these skills??)  I have to cut the weapons out of cardboard (four sides--two for each one) and it's pretty hard on the hands.  Sigh.

We wrap them up in Gorilla tape and it makes a nice sturdy, shiny weapon.  I know. I know.  Why do I have to encourage these boys in this deadly pursuit? 

Since Anders has been complaining of being bored, I thought up the idea of making a Bored Box.  I had him think up activities and write them on index cards, folded over.  Then when he's bored, he can pull one out and perform the activity.  We wrote down, Read a Book, Build Something with Nails, Make a Skeleton.  Jump off the third stair five times.  Write a 3-page book.  He got excited about the idea and was concerned that he might get bored at his house and not have the box at hand.  I said he could call me.  I'd pull a card for him. 

If only  Chloe were not such a tomboy, I might be able to make dolls instead of guns.  Actually, I'd like to try  my hand at making some rustic, potent, bead be-decked African-like dolls--like the ones I saw at the de Young Museum last Sunday.  Something dark, worn, powerful and mysterious.  Just for myself. 

Yesterday was National Night Out, to encourage block parties.  Gunther put the word out to five or six neighbor families to come to my driveway after work for "street tacos."  He chose my driveway because it's flat, and now we have three swings to occupy the kids.  He set up his BBQ, a table, some chairs.  Everyone showed up with meat to grill, fantastic hot chili rellenos, wine, guacamole, and chips.  

I enjoyed holding Anya and Mateo's 2-month old Sadie, bundled up like a little loaf.

We talked about Glenn and Sunook's new roof, traveling to Oaxaca where Mateo saw people carrying turkeys on their heads, and chicken ordnances.  Sam has written a proposal to the City of El Cerrito to make it legal to raise a few chickens in the backyards.  He found a really great source where a man put together chicken ordnances, raising all the concerns about  raising livestock in the city limits. 

We were blessed with an unusually warm, non-windy, non-foggy beautiful evening.  Everyone drifted home as darkness set in. 

Red Spot is okay.  But Minnie died. We didn't see her this morning when we put in some mosquito larvae.  Robert was worried so he took out some of the rocks and found her little body caught in the plants.  Why did she die?  She wasn't eating yesterday, but we just thought she didn't want to compete with the bigger fish.

Anders and Auggie were over, so we did an autopsy with my Exacto knife and the magnifying glass, which Robert bought yesterday.  Of course, we didn't find anything conclusive.

We gave Minnie a Viking burial with a little paper boat and some paper scraps.  We set it on fire and then launched the boat in the back pond.  Anders drew some fish friends to help her in the afterlife.