Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Teach him to fish and he will eat for the rest of his life. Give him a fish tank, and someday he will have to clean up a frickin’ mess.

Per tradition, when my wife is out of town, I work on some project around the house. I like it that way. It gives me an opportunity to tackle a project that must span several days without having to clean up my mess in between. I did that this past Christmas when I renovated the rec room. My wife headed to Newfoundland a couple of weeks ahead of me this summer so I figured I’d install some shelves and cupboards in a couple of storage rooms we have in the basement. I decided that I would empty the two rooms into the rec room since I had the freedom of leaving it in a mess for up to two weeks while I finished my chores. At least that was my plan. My fish-fuckin-tank had other ideas.

I slaved all weekend building shelves in my cold room. (We call it the cold room because it is an uninsulated room off the basement that we use as a pantry.) I thought that the job would take a day, but instead it took me the whole weekend. This put the kibosh on my plans to spend some time in the office catching up on a report I had due to my boss. “That’s ok”, I said to myself, “Cause I can go in early on Monday morning.”

So, I get up with the birds on Monday morning and get ready to start my day early. I decided to go downstairs and check how well my newly painted concrete floor was drying and I noticed that the 30 gallon fish tank we have was half empty, or half full, depending on how optimistic you are. Once I realized why it was half full, I considered it half freakin’ empty right friggin’ quick. The gol’ danged pump developed a leak and was trickling the water out of the tank for God knows how long. On closer inspection, I could see that the table top was swollen with water and the fish tank had sunk into the saturated fake wood. The DVDs I had in the drawer were sitting in an inch of water. The laminate flooring I installed a few months ago was soaking wet with all the seams saturated and swollen. The new rug we put down was dripping wet. Luckily, I’m a handiman narcissist and felt the urge to bask in my accomplishments. Otherwise, I would have come home Monday evening to a 30-gallon spill.

Needless to say, I didn’t get into work early, or even on time. I turned off and removed the pump, got several 5-gallon buckets and pumped most of the water out of the tank (I was afraid it would cause the stand to collapse), mopped and toweled up as much water as I could, rolled back the carpet, and ever so gently transferred the fish to one of the buckets.

So, instead of bright and early, I was late and sweaty. Instead of leisurely working around my self-made mess, I was tripping over it, panic-stricken.

The early bird gets the worm. Idle hands are the devil’s tools. Hard work is its own reward. Yeah, right. No good deed goes unpunished. A fool and his money are soon parted. Ignorance is bliss. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Fish tanks are a pain in the arse.