Navy Yeoman

Received my first real letter from Nick today. He is doing quite well and seems happy. He was made Yeoman in his division. He's in charge of making appointments, paper-work, filing, etc. This cracks me up because he is not a detail person. He loves it because he has more freedom. He said boot camp was not too hard so far, you just have to listen to instructions and pay attention to detail. He says his glasses are horrible. Big black ugly things. Also, he is second oldest in his division of 76 men. Another guy from Tulsa is the oldest at 30.

Porcupine Puffer Fish

We quarantine all new fishes in a separate building before putting them in the aquarium tanks. We treat them for parasites and diseases. We have a large Caribbean Reef with some large fishes including one huge puffer and one small puffer. Big puffer bites little puffer and even took him into his mouth while trying to take his food away from him. Little puffer had to inflate before big puffer would let go. Little puffer's eye was injured and is now blind in one eye. He has been in quarantine for several months. We received a baby puffer recently and has been in quarantine along with little puffer.



Each department has their own name according to what animals they care for. The puffers are cared for by "Warm Salt" (there is cold salt, fresh water, inverts and shark quarantine). Warm salt decided both puffers were ready to be back on display and put them together in one small tank (80 gallons). Baby puffer was happy and swimming around. Little puffer was anxious and breathing hard. He sunk to the bottom of the tank and just lay there. We were all worried about him. He started swimming and kept bumping into the glass so we knew he didn't see well. Until he saw baby puffer. Off he went, like a rocket, and bit baby puffer on his back. We all know what puffers do. He blew up and little puffer had to let go. When baby puffer finally deflated it looked like his hair was ruffled and sticking up, except they are spines. He kind of looked cute, you wanted to stroke his spines down. The biologist intervened a couple of times using a net to keep them apart. She finally had to take little puffer and put him back in the big reef tank and just hope big puffer leaves him alone. He seemed so happy to back in his big tank and away from the boring quarantine tank.

When I dive in the Reef I have to be aware of the big puffer because he is such a bully. We have to feed him at the top before divers get in because he is so aggressive towards food. His favorite food is live crawfish. Once I was moving my hand in the water and it felt like I had touched a cactus then I realized big puffer was following me around. It taught me not to wave my hands around. One of the volunteer divers decided to dive without gloves and insisted he wanted to wear his gold wedding ring. Puffer bit his ring, smashed it and the volunteer had to have his ring cut off.

I'm diving in the reef tomorrow. I'm thinking of taking my underwater camera with me and taking pictures of the people on the outside who will be taking pictures of me. Just think, these visitors have pictures of me in a wetsuit. Yuck! I've got to remember to take my swimsuit back to work so I can wear it under my wetsuit. All of the 20 year olds are buck naked under their wetsuits. They still have these perky boobs and flat stomachs. I have to take an old swimsuit because it has to go in a bleach bath along with my wetsuit and mask. More about this later

Good Karma or Bad Karma?

Harvey is always saying, "The Aquarium is a dangerous place to work". I've had stitches twice for cutting myself while filleting fish. I've been complaining that we don't have an exhaust hood in the chem lab because some of the chemicals we use during testing is carcinogenic. Namely the molybdate mixed with amino acids. I have to hold my breath when dumping it in the sink and rinsing the cylinders. Have you ever had a whiff of industrial strength hydrochloric acid? It sends up visible fumes. I have to wear a mask and rubber apron and gloves. I still cough.

The guy I work with is a royal jerk. He's mostly stoned. He'll go for a couple of weeks being the nicest guy. Then "Mr. Hyde" shows up and he gets real nasty. He gets turned in by other employees because of yelling or talking ugly to them. I'm trying my best to learn how to get back in his face, but that's just not my personality. I HATE confrontations. Sometimes our boss comes in to tell me something she wants us to start doing and she tells me to tell him. Cop-out.

Well, one of our hardest jobs is to make salt water. We fill up a 9,000 gallon tank with filtered fresh water. Then we slice open around 40 boxes of salt. Inside the boxes are two 27 lb plastic bags of salt. We lift them up to a cat-walk where I stand, receive them and stack them up 3 steps. He slices them open with a box knife and pours them into the top of the tank. Talk about a dirty, sweaty job. I try to look on the bright side and realize I'm getting a weights work-out. Well, yesterday I was stacking away when he (not going to use his name to protect myself)walked underneath the catwalk. The bags were wet after sitting outside for 3 months. That made them slippery. They slid and one fell off and hit him. Smashed his hand against a pipe and macerated his hand into two huge gashes. The funny thing was I didn't particularly feel bad about it. He was yelling and cussing and dripping blood everywhere. They bandaged him and sent him to the work-med clinic for stitches. We had to spend 45 minutes cleaning up his blood he flung everywhere. We were concerned about his blood because of his drug use and his past, so we were really careful. We used tons of industrial bleach.

One of my funny co-workers said, "Well you know how bad karma can really be good karma, considering he was the one who got hurt". I was shocked when he said that, but he said, "Come on, Cheri, you were thinking that too, weren't you?" Well, yes, I was.

Sending my son to the Navy

Yesterday I drove Nick to the Navy recruiting office so he could leave for boot camp. I had such mixed feelings. I was so glad to so him go and get out of my house. He had been lounging without a job since the end of August. He didn't try hard enough to get a temporary job and must have had enough saved from his camp counselor job he could be a goof-off.

Nick is 26. He joined because he was doing nothing with his life.

I was sending him off to learn to do a dangerous job. As I hugged and kissed him good-bye I was thinking about how parents feel sending a kid off to Iraq. I'm lucky but who knows what will happen in the next 6 years.

He doesn't stay in touch much, but now I'll never hear from him. He tested high on his aptitude tests that he was offered a post as a missile tech on a nuclear submarine. It is a volunteer post and he will have special psychological testing to determine if he can handle being on a sub. He'll make more money and when he gets out he will be eligible for high paying work in the private sector.

Nick was always a difficult kid and he turned into the grown-up version of the kid who screams and throws a temper tantrum in the grocery store. The one who punched his brother (two broken bones and a facial burn) and never got along with his little sister. But then, that worked both ways with his sister. Both of his siblings were glad to see him go. I had to make them stop telling "Nick" stories about what a jerk he was. As his mom, I see his negatives, but I love him too much to hold them against him. I told Allie and Greg that I would always love him no matter what he did, except maybe commit murder. But I would have to be in that situation before I could be sure how I would feel.

Nick will be having the worst two weeks of his life according to his recruiter. I'm sorry for him, but he got himself into it. The best part is that he has to quit smoking. I curious to see if 9 weeks of not smoking will cure him. I really doubt it. He won't get to drink and Nick does love his alcohol. Harvey and I had to hide our alcohol in our house to keep him from drinking it. I admitted a long time ago my son was an alcoholic. He never agreed. Really, only his opinion is the one that counts. You can't make someone stop.

I have started looking at the military in a completely different way now. Two of my uncles were in the Navy, but that seems so long ago. I have to admit I am proud that I have a son in the military. That surprises me a lot. I'm just glad that he won't be on the ground in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Wow, I feel better now that I have written this! I'll post something in a few weeks when I hear from him. I made sure to have our family pics taken.

Is he my son or just the new employee?

Greg started working at the aquarium yesterday. He is starting a new job titled Marketing and Production. It was weird thinking that my son was starting his first day on his first real job at the same place I work. How do I keep from crossing the line of mom? I offered some suggestions to him that he clearly was rolling his eyes at. But then I thought I didn't say anything different than I would to any new employee.

Since most everyone I work with is under 30, I call them the "kids". I had taken home 3 new aquarium t-shirts (they provide)for Greg to wear. The kids told me I had crossed the line and that was a "mom" thing to do. I told the kids to keep me informed when I cross the line into mom-land. They promised to do so. And they will do it with glee.

We went to lunch together both yesterday and today. Remember how strange it is your first day anywhere? When and where do you go to lunch? That strange feeling of the lunchroom at school, carrying your tray and thinking where am I going to sit? Will someone be nice and invite me? Do I have to eat alone? Of course, I paid for both lunches. I told him I was glad to pay, but when we went out with the other employees they would start giving both of us grief if I continued to pay for his during group lunches. We all tease and rag on each other and they would really go after both of us.

I'm always cheerful about helping anyone at work. Well, I really screwed myself last night. The aquarium has a big Halloween production called Hallomarine. I noticed a few employees waiting in the office after work. I sat down to talk and they were complaining no one signed up to help. Well, dummy me, said "I'm not busy. I'll help you". They had rented a big truck to load and transport the walls to the Haunted House. We moved 25 huge walls, plus assorted and sundry other decorations. At 8:00 pm my t-shirt was drenched in sweat and I had three cuts on my legs when we finished. The whole time I was helping I was mad at myself for being the Good Samaritan. Plus I missed out on a drama going on in our sting-ray tank. 5 fishes died over the day. It was a big mystery as to what killed them. We were worried they were poisoned with pesticides. I could have been there watching all the drama as they necropsied the fish and did a huge water change. I could have learned something instead of schlepping huge walls!