The Day Before Christmas...

I know; I'm soooo original. I've come to terms with the fact that my creative writing for the week is going to lack a bit of creativity. It's been a busy day.



Micah, gotta love him, forgot the fish. What do you want from the boy? He's a teenager. He shouldn't have to think about buying fish while having a night out. (Love ya, Mikey;) This required us to find the fish today. That would be Christmas Eve. We know nothing about Montgomery as it is now days. A lot of things have changed since I lived here in high school. The last I remembered, there was a pet store in the mall, but like I said, things have changed. This meant that there was only one option: WalMart.



We were in a hurry. It's never good to be in a hurry when going to WalMart, but it is ludicrous to go into WalMart, in a hurry, on Christmas Eve. After searching for a while, grabbing something Mom needed to hang a wreath, or something equally festive, we realized that this particular WalMart had no fish! I was angry. I was not in the Christmas spirit at all anymore.

I admit it. I was running through a mental list of who to blame. There were a few good options, of which I was one, but we saw another WalMart before I could come to a conclusion. I ran in, quite literally, and found some fish. After realizing that tropical fish would require a heater, which has a price tag 4 times that of the fish, I decided that goldfish are perfectly acceptable pets for a four-month stint. Even getting that far would require some Divine Intervention. I eventually dragged an employee to the tanks to get my new best friends out, and after a matter of only half an hour or so, was able to get through the "express" lane.

DeLaynie hugged the bag, threatening to squish the fish a number of times and to pop the bag the entire time. Neither occurred. She was delighted, accept the couple of times that I took the fish away as a way of protecting them from her over-excitement.

When we arrived at the house, we put our fish, who she named Diego and Swiper (yes, from Dora), into the tank, still bagged, to acclamate. A few hours later, they were freed to swim in the 1 1/2 gallon tank that they now call home, or they would call home if they could say or do anything other than breathe and swim. There they remain, in spite of a few attempts to "rescue" them from their prison of water and plastic by my activist daughter.