Introducing the Ninja Turtles and Notes on Hypochondria

I am at home today instead of broadening my neurological horizons for two main reasons;

1) Janet is unfortunately still with us, whom has made me completely deaf in my left ear over night, and is now coursing herself slowly through my throat and rest of my body

2) I received a note from the lovely UKMail people yesterday to inform me that they had come round to the flat, and been so incompetent that they could not possibly deliver my £60 parcel without my presence, a pretty impossible prospect between the hours of 9am and 5pm. Because of their patheticness, they were only willing to attempt a delivery once more(today), before I would have to travel all the way to trafford to pick the damn thing up. Jesus Christ, if I wanted to go out of my way to get the UV lamp my little darlings so desperately need, I would have walked the 20 minutes down the road to the pet shop, instead of waiting two extra days and risking potential turtle death; something that apparently is worth avoiding the nosey man in the pet shop for...more on that later.

In Conclusion I am housebound, some might say truanting, but in the light of my ill-health, and swine-flu warnings (I haven't sucked it up to get my complementary health-worker vaccine yet), and regular close contact with immune-compromised patients, I feel that this day is somewhat justified.
Plus.....IT HAS ARRIVED!!!! my UV lamp and all it's expensiveness is here, and at least now Janet is the only thing that will keep me from sleeping at night.
So why is this UV lamp so important?

Well to tell you that, I have to introduce you to the story of Edger and Luigi, my baby yellow-bellied sliders(stripey turtles to normal people). Of course, as most stories go...they weren't originally Edgar and Luigi. In fact, they were Edgar and Clarence, and I know what you're thinking but no, I didn't kill Clarence, although you would be right in assuming that Clarence and Luigi are completely different Turtles.
No Clarence's sad story pretty much begins and ends at the pet shop. Within 24 hours of Mr Yeti surprising me with Clarence and Edgar, I was minding my own business, when I kept thinking I was hearing funny noises coming from their tank. After changing my attention onto scrutinising the turtles and what they were getting up to, I realised that Clarence was...did he just....SNEEZE?
Yes thats right people, turtles ACTUALLY sneeze. Imagine if you will, a little turtle innocently sitting on its rock then...'ah, ah, ah,...CHOO' *poooof* flippers and all shooting back inside its shell. I tell no word of a lie, that is actually what happened.
After laughing hysterically at Clarence's expense (for far longer than I am comfortable admitting), I realised that Clarence was actually ill. I took all the precautions suggested across the world wide web 'turn up the heat, clean the tank blah, blah, blah', but Clarence appeared to get worse over the next 24 hours. In a panick (as the turtle vets were unavailable), I rang up the pet shop to see if they might offer some medical attention. I was instructed to bring Clarence back to the shop and they would look at him, so obediently...that is what I did.
Now, nosey pet shop man (lets call him Clive), fancies himself as a bit of a vet and if he actually was a vet at some point, he probably lost his licence through malpractise, else he wouldn't be owning a pet shop.
Anyway, he basically poo-pooed the fact that Clarence was experiencing excessive sneezing, nose-bubbling, and was apparently gasping for breath, announcing it was just stress and plopped poor clarence back in the pet shop tank.
Now, I'm no vet either(although Yeti regularly has to remind me of this), neither am I an expert, and I am definately suffering from a variety of forms of hypochondria, but I think that Clarence pretty much spoke for himself when he sneezed himself inwards. To add insult to upset, Clive all too quickly presented me with a brand new turtle, and shoved me out of the door faster than I could say 'but what about clarence'. Thus is the story of the Clarence-Luigi switch. To this day, I am not sure of poor clarence's fate.

Since Clarence, I have become somewhat of a turtle ailment specialist, there is no illness I haven't read about. This is actually a bad thing for me, as now I know every possibility I'm a smothering hawk, spending most of my free time staring at the turtles instead of doing normal people things.
After Clarence left, I became obsessed with the turtles eyes; are they puffy? cloudy? and decided that their diet needed enriching with Vitamin A, thus trip no2 to the pet shop to come face-to-face once again with Clive, who forbid me to buy live fish for the turtles to chase around 'because it is cruel'.

Yes, it is definately cruel for the fish, and yes, it probably is a little cruel encouraging them to chase moving targets, and as a relatively strict vegetarian I never thought I would see this day. But these turtles, I swear, are making me do evil things....next I'll be robbing a bank so that I can buy them some massive, deluxe tank with underwater televisions and discoballs. All they have to do is look at me with their little face and do that funny wiggly swim thing, and I'll be off seeking the latest gadget to enrich their lives. Damn you Clive, you are ruining my ability to spoil them!

Anyway, since the vitamin A fad, I have moved on to pastures new....that's right...METABOLIC BONE DISEASE!!! Edgar and Luigi, have suffered numerous prods at their shells this week because my latest panick is that their shells are a little on the soft side. The Cure? UVB lighting....which technically I should have had all along, but Mr Yeti did not consider this when buying the turtles the first time, so I'm blaming him.

Now that balance has finally returned to the turtle world, I can finally focus all of my attention on to the fact that Janet might actually be a lymphoma...