Colin passed us both in the kitchen this morning, on his way out the back door. He had wet hair, no shoes and was carrying a clear, plastic cup with something in it. We watched him grab a shovel out of the shed and start working at something in a corner of the yard, his back to us.
“What’s he doing?”
“Probably collecting something for his tanks. Rocks? I don’t know.” Mike went back to his computer.
Colin returned the shovel back to the shed and came back in.
“One of my fish died.”
“Oh honey. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, I could see it had dropsy last night. I knew it probably wouldn’t live.”
Dropsy, he explained, makes a fish’s scales stick out like a pine cone, instead of lay flat. It’s also an indicator of liver failure.
“I guess I never thought about fish having livers,” I said.
“I knew fish have eyebrows, but not livers,” Mike said.*
I didn’t know about the eyebrow thing, either. Clearly I haven’t been keeping up.
Woke him by barging into his room first thing in the morning to make sure he wasn’t dead after his alarm had been blaring for ten solid minutes
Today Jack texted me from school:
