Dead Fish

Turns out writing a blog is not so easy. I started #2 here several times, but my daughter, the only one home for now, is very creative. And self-sufficient. She has made herself sandwiches, and salads, and crackers with cheese. She spilled said items all over the living room carpet, and then vacuumed up the crumbs. The noise of the vacuum alerting me each time to another mess. By the time I heard the vacuum rev-up the third time, my stomach twisted & turned & heartburn raced up my esophagus. Where's the purple pill when daughter is growing independent?

I decided I needed something to occupy her time while I blogged. She obviously missed the brothers too much and the 'toon channel wasn't doing it. For months now I've been promising her a pet fish. The time seemed ripe to get promised fish. I have to digress here for a moment. I watched the first episode of 30 Days called "Minimum Wage" several weeks ago. I thought it was very well done, however, I took offense at a brief scene. Morgan and his fiancee, Alex, had a day off work & wanted to find some free stuff to do with his brothers kids. Online, at the library they found a list of free, fun stuff to do with kids. This was all great stuff, until they broke into laughter at visiting an animal shelter to see animals. Um, I take my kids to the pet store, animal shelter, etc. all the time; 1) because it's free and 2) because they like animals. Weeks later this reaction to free things to do bugs me.



Back to daughter. Off to the pet store we went. She ran to the birds first to say "hi" to her friends (like I said, we go there a lot. It's free). Tried to talk me into a bird, but knew better, and was excited to get a fish anyway. Amazingly she picked out the cheapest fish in the store. Baby goldfish, $.011 each... provided you got a PetSmart/big-brother-is-watching-you-membership. Since they were $.012 without the card, I got one. With 5 kids saving three cents on every purchase quickly adds up to hundreds. Seriously. Yeah, math geniuses, I got her three fish... even though she has four brothers. Guess she doesn't miss one of them, not sure which one.

We bought a cheap, round! glass bowl & some goldfish pellets. Daughter skipped out of the store, me holding the fish and walking a little more sedately. The whole way home we talked about names, originally the fish was going to be "bunny", after her favorite stuffed animal, but now there were three. Since I couldn't discern if they were boy fish or girl fish they wound up being a collective called "boys & girls". Fine. Once home I put them, in their baggy still, into the prepared pitcher of room temperature water. I explained to her that they needed to get used to our water temperature so they didn't get too surprised. I spent the next two hours fending her off, finally capitulating even though I wasn't sure exactly how long fish need to acclimate. We transfered the fish, fed them some pellets, I hid the food and I explained fish care. Off to blog I went.

Five minutes into blog #2, yep this very blog, she's standing next to my chair. Guilty look, fingers in mouth, "my fish bowl has dirty water". Up I jump, she helpfully turns off my computer, there goes my first blog #2. I find the fish at the bottom of the bowl hiding from all the soap bubbles at the top of the bowl. She'd tried to give her new pets a bath, complete with soap & a wash cloth to scrub them. I frantically start saving the fish. Giving them clean, after clean water. None of it at room temperature. They seem to live. My heart is pounding. I realize they are fish, and I happily eat fish, but these are also our pets and when I paid for them I took responsibility. I'm responsible for their lives.

This morning the collective was floating at the top of their bowl. Daughter said "we can go to the store and buy new ones". I'm thinking the whole pet experiment failed miserably.