May 2, 2007 | Mama Smith

reader discretion is advised

If you’re a fish lover, you may not want to read this. If you want to continue thinking of me as a semi-decent person, you may also not want to read this. Let me preface this by saying, I did eat a goldfish in college as part of skit night, so you could say I’m not much of an animal person. There’s my justification for the following.

Tomorrow morning we’ll be heading down to Charlottesville to visit my mom who just had shoulder surgery. In the process of packing and preparing the house for our 6 day absense, I set about cleaning the fish bowl to hand off to our neighbor. She would be acting caretaker of Mr. Fish while we were away.

Somewhere in between trying to chase Mr. Fish out of the bowl with a measuring cup (they were out of fish nets at Wal-mart at the time), scrubbing out the rank bowl and sifting the slimy rocks, I realized that it was time for Mr. Fish to go. Brighton had ignored him for over a week, while I continued to feed him and clean the bowl that gets foul a mere 3 days after it’s last scrub down. It seemed a heck of a lot easier to flush him than finish getting his bowl ready, usher him over to the neighbors and continue the process when we returned next week.

Sorry Mr. Fish. At least you weren’t blended up in a blender for me to consume in front of a room full of laughing, insensitive college students. At least I respectfully bid you adieu and thanked you for your time with us as I watched you swirl out of our lives.

Sad to say, I don’t think any of us will miss him. First lesson learned in our pet adventure…borrow instead of own. As I packed the bowl, rocks and fish food away I realized I would be holding off off on any more pets until Brighton and Levi can do ALL the work.

With our travels I’ll be out of blogging commission until we return next Tuesday. Sorry to all you faithful daily readers. I’ve done a sad job lately. But I can now say, without my fingers crossed, that Levi is consistantly giving us 4+ hour chunks of sleep at night, so I believe we’re on the road to recovery instead of continuing to sink into a sleep deficit. Hopefully as I return to a more lively state, my desire to write will follow suit.

Until next week…