Waked this morning with the headache from hell after NO party last night, which is not fair at all. I still have a bit, and a nagging post-nasal drip cough. Xyrtec is good, but not that great. Benedryl plus 2 Sudafed seems a better combo for me—they used to sell it in that combination in a capsule, but thanks to the meth problem (makers wanting Sudafed) that went off the market. I have my DIY version, but opted for Xyrtec as a one pill solution, and since it’s one per 24 hours, I’m stuck with it and it’s not working that well. 🙁

It’s raining…and will rain for days: a surge of Pacific equatorial air, AKA the Pineapple Express, is headed our way, bringing moisture we need, but it’s kind of a drizzly four day event.

So WHEN do we need to a) wash out the Matala filter and b) install the waterfall pump? Of course we didn’t do it yesterday when the sun was shining. We do it today. In the rain.

So I put on my rain suit (if you don’t own one of these, I highly recommend them: Walmart, cheap, but a way to work pretty toasty warm in a blizzard or to stay dry in a monsoon. Goes on over as much coat as you think you need. With hood. Anyway—the Matala spitting water once it needs cleaning and our automatic topoff being disconnected, the pond was down enough to just pump out the waterfall skimmer well, so we could (she says: Jane actually does this miserable job) attach the waterfall pump to the very stiff 3″ hose.

We then had to fuss with the hoses, in the brass octopus of connectors that branch five ways, then have another brass Y connector attached to one of them—it’s a mess, but it let us get the topoff running to refill the pond. The fish are all accounted for, and have grown immensely while asleep—I swear, I think they digest the algae they inhale all winter, and use that for fuel. I otherwise can’t account for it. The fish are tootling about, the Matala filter is running after I washed out all 8 filter pads, some of which were impossibly gunky, as in four times their normal weight. Which is why it was spitting water.

We haven’t fired up the lotus pond yet, but we are now possessed of a functioning koi pond. I stayed dry and relatively clean. The rain suit, totally disgusting, is drying off in the kitchen before I send it through the washing machine.

All this a few days before St. Paddy’s Day, so we’re pretty well on schedule with the pond.