In somewhat loving memory of the fish

It was sometime around Easter when it dawned on me that April was right around the corner and I knew deep in my soul what was looming on the horizon.

So it was with fear and trembling that I opened Caroline’s school bag during the first week of April. Sure enough, there it was.

The note announcing it was time to make the shoebox Fiesta floats for the Fiesta float parade at preschool.

Joy.

The note gives parents the option of just sending a shoebox to school and letting the teachers make a float for your child.

Right.

I wonder if they offer some kind of complimentary therapy session for that poor kid? Hey kid, your mama doesn’t love you enough to spend hours slaving away with a hot glue gun and some glitter mixed with sand to create the perfect beach scene for Ariel the Little Mermaid.

It’s not like we have lives of our own. Lives that don’t normally involve using a hot glue gun.

The note also included a little reminder that this is a preschool project and your child should be involved in the process. Which is so nice.

In theory.

So I involved Caroline by asking what kind of float she wanted to do this year (y’all may remember that last year we did the Wizard of Oz float) and she answered without any hesitation, “Barbie Island Princess”, which worked out since we actually own Barbie Island Princess, her monkey and two little Island girls that came with an elephant named Sagi who raised Barbie Island Princess from an infant when she was shipwrecked on a desert island and before she was rescued by Prince Antonio.

What has happened to my life?

Anyway, I managed to put the project in the back of my mind for the next few weeks because I am nothing if not a procrastinator, but I finally realized the due date was quickly approaching so I headed to Michael’s to pick up float making supplies.

I loaded my basket with silk flowers in various colors, some greenery, glue sticks for my hot glue gun, and some bright Fiesta ribbon. While standing in line at the checkout, the woman in front of me looked at my basket and asked if I was making something for Fiesta. She was very perceptive.

I replied that my daughter had to make a shoebox float for school so I was buying materials. And she looked at me as if I had just announced that I was about to help my child cheat on the SAT’s and said, “My kids had to do those when they were little. I just had them put a few stickers on a shoebox and called it a day.”

Well good for you, lady.

Clearly you are very healthy and have your priorities in order. I happen to suffer from chronic OCD and the need to do simple craft projects in excess. It’s who I am.

My reasoning is that there will come a day when Caroline will come home from school and need help making a project for the Science Fair.

And she’ll be out of luck.

In fact, just the mention of Science Fair is enough to make me want to homeschool so that I can avoid all science-related homework. I know enough to teach Caroline that the Earth is flat and if she doesn’t listen to her parents throughout her teen years there is a good chance she will fall off into the abyss. That’s all the science she needs to know.

On a side note, when I was in tenth grade we were required to participate in the Science Fair even though it was clear that some people, who don’t need to be mentioned, were having enough problems just memorizing the periodic table of elements without having to come up with some sort of hypothesis and solution.

(By the way, thank God I spent all that time memorizing the periodic table because it has been ever so useful throughout my adult life)

I finally came up with an experiment that involved buying six goldfish with the goal of keeping three of them in total darkness and three of them in normal conditions and seeing which ones lived the longest. They all died within the week because I’m pretty sure I forgot to feed them on a daily basis due to the fact that I was very busy deciding what to wear to Junior/Senior Prom. Thus, my Science Fair exhibit consisted of six empty fish bowls and a piece of posterboard that said, “I Murdered Six Goldfish Due to Negligence”.

And then PETA came and hauled my Science teacher off to animal cruelty prison because he was an accessory to goldfish murder.

Not really but that would have been an awesome end to that story.

The real story is that I got a C – on my project which was basically a sympathy grade because I was scientifically impaired.

Anyway, the point is I am much better with Barbie Island Princess Floats and hot-gluing silk flowers.

Which is quite the marketable skill.

Caroline and I spent a Tuesday afternoon pulling flowers off stems and deciding where to glue them on the shoebox. The biggest challenge was figuring out how to secure Barbie Island Princess to the float without hot-gluing her bottom directly on the float because that seemed cruel. However, in the end, I had to hot glue her bottom directly to the float.

What do you expect? I hot glue bottoms and murder innocent goldfish.

Here’s the finished project.

And here’s Caroline in the parade.

I don’t need to tell y’all that this turned out so much better than my tenth grade Science Fair project.

At least so I thought.

Until I saw a little girl with a float that consisted of an electric horse that actually moved pulling a wagon made completely of popsicle sticks painted hot pink with Western Barbie riding in the back.

I bet her mama made a D on her Science Fair project.