The Hills are Alive, but the Fish is Dead

In reply to my request for interesting blogging topics, Blackcrag said:

All you really have to do is wait... at least one of your kids is bound to give you a topic sooner or later. If not them, then your pets, and if not them, then your husband. Your family is too wacky to leave you bereft of material for long. But if you want an assignment, I'll give you a photo essay: I need a fix of some western mountains, and if I can't be there in person then I'll come begging at your door for some kind of substitute. So, get thy camera, and on a sunny day go take picture of mountains! And tell us any stories you have involving mountains.

Well, Black -- although it's snowy and beautiful in Seattle today and I could probably snap an amazing photo if I were willing to get in the car and drive a few miles, I'm feeling lazy today. (Fine! I hate driving in this stuff, all right?!).

So how about a photo of my favorite mountains on earth, the Bavarian Alps? This one was taken on the road from my favorite town on earth, Ruhpolding, to Salzburg, by way of Ramsau, which is also pictured.




And you must know my family well, Black, because you were absolutely correct that someone would do something wacky!

Poor Tom. Poor, poor D.B. Sweeney lookalike Tom! (Thanks, BlogAntagonist; we used to often hear that he's a Tom Cruise lookalike too...)

Last night Tom changed the water in my new little fish tank and then went on to change the water in his own big 50 gallon tank, which contained some small schooling fish that he'd adopted (read: purchased) the previous day. To change the water in his tank, Tom uses something like an underwater vacuum apparatus.

(You see where this is going, don't you?)

Now, in order for this story to have its full emotional effect you have to fully appreciate my husband's very soft, very squishy heart. Tom literally couldn't hurt a fly. He is an absolute softy when it comes to animals and kids (and just about everything else for that matter!), to the point that he will politely usher the scariest of spiders gently and sweetly out the door and why he is, come to think of it, anything but a strict disciplinarian.

(You know how there's always one nice parent? Yeah, that'd be Tom...)

So when Tom came upstairs and uttered my name with that long drawn out "Caaaaaarol??" (posed as a question to elicit immediate sympathy), I knew something was wrong -- and I knew he felt horribly guilty about whatever it was, because after knowing each other for 31 (gulp!) years and being married for almost 25, even the slightest "tone of voice" elicits huge amounts of information. Yup, it was guilt all right.

"I think I just flushed a fish down the toilet!" Tom exclaimed. "I was just spacing out and not paying attention and I think I vacuumed the poor thing up and flushed it down the toilet! I think good ol' Walter took one for the team." Naming his fish on the spot was, of course, a ploy to make me feel just as badly as he did, because he knows that once it has a name I'll attempt to mommy it.

We discussed the size of minnow brains in an attempt to convince ourselves that Walter never knew what hit him, but we still felt bad for poor Walter. At that exact moment he was probably... well, we decided to watch French Kiss instead of worry too much about poor Walter's minute-to-minute demise.

But when Tom's first utterance this morning was, "I feel badly about Walter," I knew this would bother him for a while.

So our family, which increased by five(ish) last weekend is down by one today because poor, poor Walter gave one (LIFE!) for the team.