porcelain heaven
not a SXSW band
it’s where our fish lives
First of all, can I state how tired I am of antibiotics? First the dog has to take them because his ears are festering holes of slime and decay. Then I have to take them and they give me a foul, white furry tongue, for which I have to take OTHER medicine to fix (FYI: oral thrush blows). THEN the wee one is on them for an ear infection (but with much less festering than the dog’s, thankfully). NOW, NOW the EFFING FISH are on antibiotics because of fin rot, which means they look like little Pirates of the Caribbean skeleton fish swimming around.
Our house has become the Lair of the Antibiotic Beast. We cannot be rid of it. Maybe there is a sacrificial Druid ceremony I can look up that will cure us of the curse of the weird and funky germs that plague us.
Anyway, the blue fish has succumbed to either the antibiotics, or the fin rot, or possibly being nibbled on by frogs when he was just kind of chillin’ on the floor of the aquarium figuring out whether to live or not. He’s officially dead, though. And this is now officially a Teaching Moment.
The wee one isn’t really attached to the fish. He likes them and all, he’s just not all that into them (there’s a joke here somewhere, but I’m too lazy to figure out). So when I pointed out the upside down, partially eaten carcass of the Fancy Blue Guppy, he wasn’t that disturbed. Until the D-E-A-D word was uttered. Then I had his attention.
For some reason the wee one has been asking a lot of questions about death and dying and heaven and things like that. I think it has something to do with the Jesus talk at preschool, either that or it’s a Star Wars thing. I’m not sure. I’ve been doing my best to give him honest answers. But saying things like, "Some people believe we go to Heaven when we die, and others believe we are turned into another person or animal, and still others believe our spirits can stay on earth," etc. isn’t really helping. For now I’m sticking with the heaven thing.
As I, uh, fished out the dead fish the wee one asked if the fish was going to Fish Heaven and whether or not Fish Heaven is in Texas. I told him, in fact, fish heaven IS in Texas, and the express train to get there is directly through our toilet – convenient, eh?
There was some confusion from my explanation, though, and now the wee one thinks the toilet is Fish Heaven. I can’t wait for that to come up at preschool.
"Anybody know what heaven is?"
"It’s our potty and it’s in Texas!"
That should go over extremely well.
We’re still working through a lot of dead fish and religion-based questions, but there isn’t a lot of grief, so that’s good. I think. And I also think we can stop the fish antibiotics now.
Thank-you Fish Jesus for the mercy you bestow.