So for the past week or so I have been pondering fish tank ideas and acquiring any unwanted tanks and supplies I can so it is less I have to buy. I am pretty familiar with fish tanks so I know what I need, what works best, and how to set it all up. I decided to just set up a small 3 gallon salt water tank. I know that is not an ideal size for saltwater setups but it’s not my first rodeo and I will eventually be getting larger tanks to incorporate this one in.

I eventually would like to tie a couple tanks into each other and use one as a sump, one as a refugium, and one as the main display tank. That is the ultimate goal but for now a small 3 gallon will work just fine. Maybe put some seahorses in it eventually. They don’t need much room and have to be in a tank by themselves. They are to small and slow to compete with other fish in a tank for food. Plus their mouths are so small they can only eat certain foods. (“That’s enough Bob”) Yea so just best to keep them separate.

The setup was simple, I just went to Petco and grabbed the water and substrate. Usually I will buy RO (Reverse Osmosis) water from a LFS (Local Fish Store) for like $1.50 a gallon but I did not have a container so I had to buy it in bulk from Petco which was still convenient. It is already mixed to the proper salinity and has been treated.

Next I went to a smaller LFS called Go Fish. There I bought a half dozen hermit crabs, 2 pounds of live rock, and some grass which will help with filtration as long as my light keeps it alive. Basically when I got home I combined all the ingredients and came out with a pretty cool 3 gallon tank that I can stare at when working on my desk. In a month or so it should be ready for a piece of coral and some inverts to liven it up a bit. It’s to small for a fish but it will be an awesome coral and invert tank, plus I can use it as a quarantine tank when I get my larger set up going. Hopefully soon! I ordered the parts yesterday!

I wake up out of a slumber to my phone vibrating on the table, luckily I heard it. It was 11:16am and I was suppose to be somewhere to get furniture at eleven. It was her calling by the way so I declined the call, sent her a quick text, and within five was out the door. From there the day got better and better, no lie. It was one of the best days I’ve had in awhile other then the first of March, that day’s not blog material though.

So I get to where I’m going and within 20 minutes I am loaded up with a coffee table, 11×15 carpet, and entertainment center/tv stand, 6 black curtains, and a lamp. Can you say steal? When I get back home I head upstairs and do a quick clean to get ready for everything and I get a text from my cousin who is coming to help me, it reads “Dude, I got into a car accident”. I’m like no way, he always says dumb shit like that. He will eventually be the boy who cried wolf, he almost was today. Anyway, he really got into an accident. Thankfully everyone was okay, his tire blew and caused him to lose control.

Basically this is just another day in the life of me, Bobby’s World. Maybe I should rename the blog. I can blog all day about things like this happening in my life on a daily basis it seems. You know the best part about it though? I know that I don’t have to use drugs to get me through it, anything for that matter. I know I have people I can go to and much healthier ways to cope with daily stress or worse a trauma.

“Trauma challenges an individuals view of the world as a just, safe, and predictable place.”

APA

Speaking of trauma someone told me once that you cannot compare other people’s trauma to your own. For that matter no two persons trauma’s are comparable. Something that may be traumatic to one person may have no effect on another so it’s important to always remember to be cognizant of what others have gone through and until you have walked a mile in someone else’s shoes please do not judge them. Let’s all try to be friends, the world needs more of that and less hate.

Well it is getting late people and I want to play DragonAge before I go to bed. Yea I’m a nerd too.

-Bobby

I wake up out of a slumber to my phone vibrating on the table, luckily I heard it. It was 11:16am and I was suppose to be somewhere to get furniture at eleven. It was her calling by the way so I declined the call, sent her a quick text, and within five was out the door. From there the day got better and better, no lie. It was one of the best days I’ve had in awhile other then the first of March, that day’s not blog material though.

So I get to where I’m going and within 20 minutes I am loaded up with a coffee table, 11×15 carpet, and entertainment center/tv stand, 6 black curtains, and a lamp. Can you say steal? When I get back home I head upstairs and do a quick clean to get ready for everything and I get a text from my cousin who is coming to help me, it reads “Dude, I got into a car accident”. I’m like no way, he always says dumb shit like that. He will eventually be the boy who cried wolf, he almost was today. Anyway, he really got into an accident. Thankfully everyone was okay, his tire blew and caused him to lose control.

Basically this is just another day in the life of me, Bobby’s World. Maybe I should rename the blog. I can blog all day about things like this happening in my life on a daily basis it seems. You know the best part about it though? I know that I don’t have to use drugs to get me through it, anything for that matter. I know I have people I can go to and much healthier ways to cope with daily stress or worse a trauma.

“Trauma challenges an individuals view of the world as a just, safe, and predictable place.”

APA

Speaking of trauma someone told me once that you cannot compare other people’s trauma to your own. For that matter no two persons trauma’s are comparable. Something that may be traumatic to one person may have no effect on another so it’s important to always remember to be cognizant of what others have gone through and until you have walked a mile in someone else’s shoes please do not judge them. Let’s all try to be friends, the world needs more of that and less hate.

Well it is getting late people and I want to play DragonAge before I go to bed. Yea I’m a nerd too.

-Bobby

So step one upon moving in was of course a day of gutting the joint out. My buddy Damien and I came in and literally ripped everything off the walls and floor and chucked it out the closest window. Took about two hours of solid work, dirty solid work that was. After that was mixing up a concoction of Simple Green, water, and bleach. I like to keep things as biodegradable as possible, hence the Simple Green, but every now and then shit gets nasty and needs some bleach, like “Butch’s Old Place”. With a mop/bucket and a couple different scrub brushes I got to work soaking and scrubbing EVERYTHING down. More then a couple different times from a couple different angles too. I scrubbed her down goood needless to say, I’m kind of a clean freak as it is so you know I was going hard.

Once the place was scrubbed and dry I had to figure out some sleeping arrangements. Now I haven’t really gotten into my life to much and what I do and do not have, however I’m basically starting from the bottom. I don’t have much, fortunately though the pawn shops wouldn’t take my camping gear so I do still have all that and I put it to good use. Set up my tent to keep the creepy crawlies out and I was in business.

This is where I spent most of my evenings for the past couple months and I have to say I will never forget it. I’m taking it down tonight or tomorrow but I will be sure to hang on to it for awhile, it has some sentimental value. It was pretty fun though I have to admit. I had a 19″ TV and my Xbox One hooked up so I had plenty of entertainment as long as WiFi was working, which is another story in itself. So to those of you who thought I was literally like sleeping in a tent outside, no, this is what I meant. I’ve been fortunate to always have a roof over my head and can thank my parents for that. But some people really did hit me up on messenger asking if I was “ok” because they thought I was homeless and in a tent. God bless their souls but even if I was I’d probably be happier then they were, I’d do that shit right too.

So I have a futon now and tonight will be the first night sleeping on it. I’m excited but I still do not have blinds and curtains and this is the front room right on Kresson Street so the noise and light should be pleasant. But that will be addressed so it is only for one night. Which I will be sure to let you all know about. If you have read this, my second blog or post, whatever they are called I just wanted to say Thankyou! It means a lot!!

–Bobby

“Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I built my life”

J.K. Rowling

Well here goes nothing, I’m starting a blog. In the past few months I have been told a couple times I should look into it and so I did. That led me to thinking about it more and thinking about it more led to starting one. And to be honest, it really wasn’t as hard as I thought it was going to be.

You see I’m an addict, which you mar or may not have known by now. More importantly I’m an addict in recovery and not in active addiction. Plan to keep it that way too. But without getting to deep into my bottom and addiction right off the bat one of the things that keeps my brain off of drugs these days is remodeling my apartment. I landed it purely by being in the right place at the right time.
“Butch’s Old Place” is what the guys in the shop call it. You see the “apartment” which is really an overstatement is located in the same building my work is. It’s a shop in downtown Baltimore called Chesapeake Woodworking.

No one really knows exactly what happened to Butch. The key just showed up in the office one morning in and envelope with “Apartment A Key” written on the front. Some young lady was said to have dropped it off, the guess was maybe his daughter? If I had to guess though it had something to do with mental illness and he was taken to some sort of health facility for monitored care or inpatient treatment. The place was an absolute disaster…still kind of is!

        For starters the smell was absolutely awful which made sense because all anyone really knew was that he had a handful of animals he never let outside. Which was true, so you can imagine the stench. Everything in the house under approximately 3 ft. was ruined due to animals doing there business wherever they could. I’ve never seen anything like it. The bottom hinges on all the base cabinets and doors were so corroded with rust they were unrecognizable. So it goes without saying every room had to be gutted, stripped down, and bleached. Only then caould the fun stuff begin.

So back to the reasoning behind all of this. Let’s go back to about when I snapped the photo just above. Something resonated with me upon entry to this place. It needed a complete makeover, kind of like my life I thought. Both this apartment and myself needed to be cleaned out and built back up to a better version. So that’s what I aimed to, wait AIM to do, wait AM doing! Lol…wait, are you suppose to use LOL when writing like this? Oh well, it’s my damn blog. I’ll cuss if I want too, that’s right.

Anyway after a little progress I became proud of myself and honestly wanted to show my efforts to other addicts or anyone else who is struggling in hopes of inspiring them to better themselves. Hell, even if it is only one person. My goal here is to show people that hard work pays off and you can make anything beautiful again if you put in that work. This is only the start of my story though and I hope you stay tuned for more in the coming days.

Am I suppose to sign when I’m done or something?

Just in case.

Bobby

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton