At Least He Won't Put It On The Walls

Jamie's pre-school offers a scholarship program. It's not a tough scholarship to obtain. He doesn't have to maintain a perfect grade point average. He doesn't even have to display exceptional mastery of bathroom skills. We just have to demonstrate that we are relatively poor. Finally something we can achieve!

In exchange for this scholarship, our family is required to perform 10 hours of volunteer service.

Yeah, I'm chuckling at the "our family" thing too.

Most of the time I've performed these volunteer hours at Jamie's pre-school by cutting out art projects, helping to assemble the newsletter, stuffing envelopes, and selling hoagies. But at the end of last year they asked if a parent of a child returning in the Fall would be willing to take home Rainbow, the class fish, for the summer.

Rainbow is a five year old Veil Tail Betta with red fins and a blue/green iridescent body. Five is considered a senior citizen as far as most fish of my experience are concerned, so I was a bit nervous that I might be the class parent to deliver the bad news that Rainbow had gone to the big toilet in the sky to meet his maker. But on the contrary, Rainbow thrived while he was here. I was told he barely ate, and really preferred to eat only every other day. He developed a voracious appetite living here, because every evening like clockwork he would rise to the top of his bowl and demand food.

But on Monday Jamie started school so we packed Rainbow up in his best Tupperware traveling case and delivered him back to his home. Now I've had fish before, and while they're not exactly affectionate, they generally display personality traits and quirks just like any other creature. And you get accustomed to those quirks.

Strangely enough I found myself........missing....a....fish.

Jamie has christened our new addition to the family "Hot Tamale."

Am I completely out of my mind for signing on for cleaning up yet ANOTHER creature's poop?