The robbery I mentioned in my last journal has been fucking with me, mentally. My anxiety spikes every time I have to go to work. Thankfully my boss has been trying to get someone else scheduled on with me during my shifts, but there are still days in the week where it's not busy enough for corporate to allow him to budget extra hours for an added cashier. Hell, even on the nights when I've had someone there with me last week I was still a nervous wreck. I'd had Wednesday and Thursday off last week, Friday I was still so shagged up that the other cashier let me leave half an hour early so I could walk home and clear my head, Saturday I managed to stay the whole shift but kind of wanted to puke the whole time... Sunday was the first night since the robbery that I was there by myself and I was such a fucking state. Even now my sleeping schedule is still fucked up; the night after it happened I was up until 7AM (and I only went to bed then because Dave gets up for work at 7:30 and I didn't want him to get up, see that I still wasn't asleep and end up worrying), and even now I'm still having trouble sleeping until around 4 or 5AM.

I've been trying to take my mind off of everything that happened by simply keeping myself busy whenever I'm home. The day after the robbery I spent about seven hours total going out, picking up the last few supplies I needed and then setting up an aquarium in mine and Dave's bedroom and am now in the process of hatching and raising Triops (in short: dino-bug-fish) in a smaller hatching tank nearby. Having something to take care of has pretty much been keeping me sane lately.

In the adult aquarium (which is only a 3-gallon, mind, though my stepbrother has a 30-gallon in storage that he's willing to give me so I can upgrade) I've already got a bristlenose pleco named Alduin the Algae-Eater, which I picked up on Thursday after having the tank up and running for about 24 hours... Admittedly he was a total impulse buy. Originally I'd only gone out to pick up a couple of small things to start hatching the Triops eggs and had gone to ask about the best sort of snail/algae-eater for a 3-gallon, freshwater aquarium, since I didn't intend to get one right away... Everyone I talked to suggested a bristlenose pleco, and when I saw a few babies at Petsmart I kind of fell in love and ended up getting Alduin. He's my first-ever pet since I moved out of my dad's house almost a year ago, so he's... Kind of a big deal to me. I've been pretty much obsessing over him since I got him, haha. Thankfully he's doing really well and is settling in nicely. He's even out and about as I type this, scuttling along the glass and nibbling away at the remains of his algae pellet.

In other news, the Triops-hatching wasn't going so well at first; the eggs were supposed to hatch within 18-50 hours, and by the time the 50-hour mark was up I still hadn't seen anything... Maybe the water wasn't right, maybe the pH was off, the temperature wasn't right, something like that... Then while I was at work Saturday night Dave text me to let me know that The Firstborn had risen. So I got really excited! I barely slept that night because I kept wanting to check on that tiny white speck bobbing around at the bottom of the tank, expecting more Triops to start hatching shortly after.

Sunday came and went, and there was nothing. Just the one triop. That had me concerned, worrying that maybe I'd screwed something up and that The Firstborn was the only one I'd managed to hatch out of sheer luck. I was worried that I'd have to raise him by himself, transfer him to the adult tank when he was old enough, drain the hatching tank, dry out the remaining eggs and do it all over again and hope they hatched on the second time around...

And then Monday morning came and as I was checking on The Firstborn, I counted another six triops-- seven in all! I'm starting to think it was the water temperature not being quite warm enough. I think I fixed that, though. :D

Most of the triops (there's 9 confirmed, though there may be more-- most are still about the size of a grain of fuckin' sand and don't like to sit still long enough for me to count them easily) are still too small to really pick out much detail on, but a few are starting to get their tails and you can even see the eyes on The Firstborn, who has now been dubbed "Jarl Firstborn" at the suggestion of my friend Suketchi on Facebook. We're kind of going with a Skyrim theme for my aquarium critters, apparently! Once they get big enough I'll be taking LOTS of pictures!

And in other-other news, I'll FINALLY be getting my tax return soon, which should be about $1250. Then I'll be able to finally put in my order for my mermaid tail! <3 I've pretty much settled on my tail design and such, but I can't agree on the fluke shape... I'm thinking I'll just let the builder have artistic freedom on the fluke and fin shapes, as while I liked the original dolphin-inspired shape I had for it, I'm really wanting something flowier and more fantasy-like. I know either way the end result is going to be gorgeous, but I just can't decide! In the meantime, I've got my work schedule switched around so I'll have two nights a week for swimming lessons and practicing for when my tail is finished in a few months' time.

Anyway, that's about it for now. I'm starting to finally settle down again, and now I'm keeping myself busy with a new hobby. Plans for mermaiding are still underway. Yay!