I am never opening a pool cleaning business.

Geez, what a day. I find out yesterday that my parents' next door neighbors have called the Health Department to complain about the mosquitos in the pool. (In actuality, my parents have been putting in those bacteria discs that destroy mosquito larvae, so there are actually no mosquito larvae in the pool. The mosquitos in the neighborhood are probably coming from the drainage ditch/creek that runs past the end of the cul-de-sac.) However, me not realizing immediately that the Health Department could come test the pool water and see that there were no larvae, figured that my weekend was now going to be blown by cleaning the pool (something I'd planned on doing this summer anyway, but after school was over so mom could watch the kids - not on a 3 day deadline from the Department of Health.)

Aside from the normal stress of dealing with my parents, being amazingly grumpy to begin with (because yesterday was J's last day at his old job and nobody said SHIT - the owner of the company hasn't spoken to him in a week or so; nobody said good luck, thanks for everything, see you soon, no goodbye from all of us card, no taking him out to dinner - he's worked with these people for 2½ years, is it unreasonable for me to think this is kinda crappy of them?) Anyway, I was short tempered to begin with, and renting a mud pump (which some moron before us had put kerosene in; poor man had to clean it out before we could take it) and figuring out exactly how we were going to do what... oh, raging pain in my a$$.

There was one redeeming part of the day.

I scooped out 101 bullfrog tadpoles from the pool. Yes, I said ONE HUNDRED AND ONE. And I'm nowhere near done. These things were huge; their heads were anywhere from 1-2 inches long, and the tails were 2-3 inches longer than that - big honkers! OH, and the most pleasant surprise was pulling two of these out:



Allow me to introduce you to the Central Newt - a subcategory of the Eastern Newt; we pulled out two in their super-nifty adult aquatic mating phase! Now that I've looked them up, I wish I'd kept them - they were probably a breeding pair, dangit. I'm really hoping that they'll make it in the pond we released the tadpoles in. *sigh*

I am now going to take some painkillers to ease my aching, itchy body.