Green haze
has settled on the far shore, but only where the poplars are. The maples remain bare. Interesting to see the pattern on Silver Lake Mountain. It's barely visible, but there's a stand of poplars in about the center of the photo of the mountain, which I zeroed in on as best I could. Anyway, this is the far shore from the boat house. Not much leaf activity at Silver Lake, though the rest of the world is greening up with reckless abandon at breakneck speed. Metaphors ahoy!

Last night I got my guppies. I bought a fancy female, then I broke my cardinal rule about fish investment and spent $3 on a blue male. He has a huge, showy tale and is the horniest fish imaginable. The poor female, he follows her, tags her with his nose and will not leave her alone. The rest of the fish wonder what the hell is going one. The two orange plays hide from the whole show--he's far too boisterous for my tank. Someone told me that guppies breed, well, like guppies, but I find it difficult to believe that anything could breed in the hostile environment that is my tank. If anyone can do it, it's this male. I now have 7 fish in my tank, which is too many but unless someone dies on its own I'm not sure what to do. Julie lost 2 fish from her tank here at work so I was contemplating bringing in a platy to her, but when they're feeling good they swim together in a really nice way. Isn't it great that the most complicated thing I contemplated this morning was what to do about my fish?

Not so yesterday, however. I had an appointment with my psychiatrist, with whom I shared the events of the past several weeks. I've been suffering from my version of a manic episode, which is pretty mild compared to other bipolars, but still is manic for me. Since I'm not really Bipolar II, but more the not-yet established Bipolar III (which is a milder form), my episodes are not the Save the World type. I got teary and said how much I mind that these are not things I can solve myself and he very gently and kindly said, "Yes, but you can always call me." Of course he's right and I should have done that a while ago, but we are always in denial about some things in our lives, and it wasn't until I was sitting there, facing him, that it all came together and the patterns fell into place. I could describe what I'd been doing and thinking and it truly, clearly was my version of mania. So we came up with a solution--2, actually, and I'm trying the first one. Nothing major, changing how I take one of my meds before increasing the dose. He pointed out how important it is to take care of this now because, as we know, a manic episode is usually followed by depression, and that is really nasty. So here we go, wish me luck.

My mother wasn't on Antiques Roadshow last night. The most exciting thing, which they saved for last, was a woman who had her great great great great grandfather's rifle and powder horn. Turned how he was a famous gunmaker and it was incredibly rare to have both the rifle & powder horn, which his name on them no less. They were worth $100,000-$125,000. Then the show ended. So we watch again next week.

I left my seedlings out last night: their first night alone in the dark. It only got down to 40 so I figured they'd be fine. They looked quite perky this morning. I left them out today but will bring them in tonight because we're supposed to get rain and they are too tender to withstand that--it would flatten them. I'm thinking of stopping for pansies tonight. Yum. The place I get them has this lawn that's just covered with pansies in all colors, too many to choose from. I've been trying to decide what color to go with this year.

Did my book order yesterday. What's up for today? Clearing my desk, I think. Some DVD's for us that aren't in OCLC, some videos for Upper Jay, figuring out whose names go on the bookplates for the bookmobile books I selected. Doesn't really sound like a very stimulating day, does it.