Out of the mouth of the babe

Some people call it a seesaw, some call it a teeter-totter. Britt splits the difference and calls it a "see-sotter."

The mockingbird that hangs around our front yard is a "birdpecker."

Whenever Mikey or I head toward the potty, she'll call after us, "Have a good accinent!"

My sewing machine is a "smoke machine."

Britt can hear kids playing in the yard behind ours and she's desperate to go play with them. Yesterday she came in and told me, "I can't get on the fence. I need a idea... Like this (holding up the ladder on a Matchbox fire truck). A ladder!"

She tells me I'm "prettiful."

She says she's a bird, so she can't use the regular bathtub anymore; she needs a birdbath to take her bath in.

We pass the neighborhood park going to and from school, and Britt gets very upset if she sees anyone else there. She'll roll down the window and yell at them, "Hey, you're in my park! Get outta my park, now! Get out!"

Also, she yells at other cars on the road. "Get out of the way!" "Hey, watch it, ya big skunk!"

When she does something she thinks is helpful, she'll say, "I'm a good job!"

She sure is.

Something fishy

When I first got my aquarium over seven years ago, I had nothing else to do. The kids had moved out, I wasn't working, and it was just me and Kitty hanging out together all day, so I had plenty of time to take care of my fishies.

Things are different now. I have Britt, and she's a full-time job.

I don't have the time or the energy or the interest to keep up with the aquarium anymore, so I've been letting time do its thing. I haven't bought any new fish in years and the old ones have died off one by one. My last rainbowfish died a couple of months ago, the last of the original batch from when I first set up the tank, so I guess she was pretty elderly. I was down to just one cherry barb and, when that one finally kicked it, I was going to shut the whole thing down and be done with it.

And then Mikey decided that fish were just the most fascinating thing on earth, so he and Britt went to the fish store and came home with a whole tankful of rainbowfish, gouramis, neon tetras, guppies, plecostomuses (plecostomi?), more cherry barbs and a few other kinds.

Now he hangs out at various aquarium shops around town and he'll call and ask, "Can I have a German blue ram?" or "Can I have some discus?" and I have to tell him why they don't fit in with our current setup. Also, he and Britt have been studying pictures of fish on the internet. So now he wants a saltwater tank and a cichlid tank, plus a tall corner tank in the living room for some angelfish. He wants me to set up our old 10-gallon tank again so we can move the guppies and neons to it and make room for more fish in the 55-gallon tank.

Oh, and the best part? I get to do all the water changes and assorted maintenance because I'm "the one who knows how."

He has totally lost his mind. And he's driving me out of mine.