Date: October 25, 2007
Time: 10:19pm
Fact: My husband, Adam Walker Cleaveland, in listing off the litany of chores he no longer wanted to perform mentioned taking care of the dog; after which he said (and I quote), “I’ll clean up her messes inside, I don’t mind, I just don’t want to take care of her anymore.”

Leaving aside his loss of love for the dog, for which you may feel free to berate him, there is a cheerful atmosphere in the house tonight as I relish all the future dog pee in the house I will no longer have to clean up.

Should he go back on his word, which he is desperately trying to do at this very moment, we shall all know the date and time of this proclamation and hold him to it. Life just got a little bit better.

Oddly enough that didn’t happen.

Instead, Adam came home with our first pet: a beta fish we affectionately named Dawg. He is cuteness personified in a fish. Not to disrespect the beta, but we would much rather have a flesh and blood pet than a scales in water pet, but given our current living situation, this is the best we can do. And we love him.

He seems a little lonely, but beta fish can’t live with other fish or they kill them, so he entertains himself much like a lazy dog might, floating around, sleeping, jumping when you nudge his living space, eating, more sleeping, you get the idea.

Dawg (pronounced Dog) may seem like a strange name for a fish, but we have our reasons, which I will now explain. First, we like simple, obvious names. I have a teddy bear whom we refer to simply as Bear. Second, Dog means Fish in Hebrew (spelled differently of course, you know, in Hebrew).

Ergo, we have a fish named Dawg (the spelling being my own invention to add some character to the story).