The day the goldfish didn’t die

So our weekend kicked off with the annual school carnival on Friday afternoon. Otherwise known as a giant beating to help the school make money.

I signed up to work the bake sale during the first shift so I told Caroline to meet me at the booth as soon as she got out of school and I also told her that she was UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES to win a hermit crab or a fish. I have no desire to ever own either of those ever again because they never fail to present me with a moral dilemma. Do I let them starve to death or do I feed them since I know Caroline is the Dr. Kevorkian of the sea life world?

The practical side of me says I just let them starve. But that feels so wrong. Of course it may be better than whatever fate met the two crabs that accidentally got set free in our backyard last fall. I’m 58% sure I saw a tiny crab claw hanging out of our dog Bruiser’s mouth one day. And, truth be told, I went ahead and just flushed our betta fish, Ruby Red Shankle, before she was dead but didn’t look like she was long for this world.

The problem is that every now and then Caroline will watch that episode of Phineas and Ferb where Buford loses his pet goldfish, Biff, and she’ll start to cry about how much she misses all the fish she’s killed over the years.

Which is why I said NO GOLDFISH.

But then I arrived at the carnival a few minutes before school dismissed and discovered there were bigger fish to fry. No pun intended. Specifically, the bake sale was sorely lacking in actual baked goods. I’m not sure what went wrong but somewhere someone lost the memo that they needed to send out a form requesting that parents send in baked goods. And so there was a mom frantically cutting the two cakes into slices and declaring the cake walk would be renamed a “Treat Walk”.

What the heck? You think these kids are just going to walk around and around to music for one slice of cake?

Which, actually, is what happened. They were perfectly happy to get two cookies for their cake-walking efforts and fortunately there was some sort of baked goods SOS sent out and moms began to appear out of nowhere with all manner of store bought bakery items.

And just about the time I began to dole out cupcakes for two tickets each, my child appeared in front of me. Holding a goldfish. Or three.

What part of her mother’s fragile psyche does she not understand?

She spent the rest of her time running around with her friends trying to make the largest ball of silly string while her goldfish friends camped out by me at the bake sale. And then when I announced it was time to leave, a miracle happened. Caroline announced she was giving her goldfish to one of her friends. Maybe because she sensed I was tempted to put her and the goldfish up for adoption and figured she might as well save herself.

And so we left the carnival without a fish. Hallelujah and amen.

On Saturday morning we drove across town for a soccer game and then we picked up Chick-Fil-A for lunch. P was astounded that our lunch cost $17.00 which I feel is a direct result of me telling him everything is $15.00. He’s a little out of touch with the current economy with the exception of guns and ammo for which there is no price too high to pay.

We actually got into a conversation about guns and he said that a friend of his always says his greatest fear is that he’ll die and his wife will sell his guns for what he told her he paid for them. Which is how I feel about the throw pillows on my couch. And the couch itself. And my jeans. And basically everything else I’ve ever bought for myself or this house.

Saturday night Caroline was going to spend the night with a friend but came home early as per her custom. Of course she didn’t decide to come home until 11:30. And between those late night shenanigans and a headache that won’t go away, I decided we needed to sleep in on Sunday morning.

Then later that day we went to a hockey game with a group of friends. Because you know what’s soothing for a headache?

Not a hockey game. But we had a good time and I didn’t have to cook dinner because we went to eat afterwards and that felt like a win even though our hockey team lost.

At least I think they did. I wasn’t really paying attention.

And that was our weekend. Here’s hoping things went as swimmingly for the goldfish in his new home that is, thankfully, not mine.