I bet the fish had a bad cough

Today I took the kids to work to visit with the secretaries for a while. They've been bugging me to bring them in. Nora clung to me and buried her face, but after some time she came out of her shell. Milo was happy to walk around and check things out. We have a fishbowl in the main office with a fish, so one of the secretaries said "Let's wake up the fish!" She got a long letter opener and poked what turned out to be the dead fish hanging out at the bottom of the bowl. One of the other secretaries said "That one died too?" A third secretary said "Don't said 'died' or 'dead' in front of the little ones!" The first secretary said, "He's sleeping, let's wake him up!" She poked him and prodded him, dragging the fish to the top of the bowl, at which point it slowly drifted down, down, down to the bottom. Milo and Nora loved this. Then they kept asking, "Can the fish wake up?", and then the secretary would drag it up with her letter opener and we would all watch it swirl back down to the bottom again.

I don't know when the right time to talk about death should be, but I agree it's probably not when we're in the office watching a tiny goldfish drift around in its bowl.

Later, in the afternoon, we hung around outside the house for a while. It was warm. Almost 40 degrees, and sunny. There are still big snowdrifts to crunch around in, but they are steadily melting, and the sidewalks and roads are bare. Dragging the garbage can back in from the street, I had a coughing attack that rendered me unable to breathe. Cough, cough, cough, cough, giant attempt at an inhale that doesn't seem to be working because my lungs are all closed up, cough, cough, cough. Milo and Nora are standing there saying "Don't spit, Mommy! Don't spit in the snow!" because I was spitting and choking and gagging with tears streaming down my face. Nora said "Breathe, Mommy!" as I wheezed through another ill-fated attempt to get some air into my lungs. All this, from a cold? It doesn't seem fair. I blame winter. Even the kids are still coughing.

Now I can hear them snoring over the monitor. One of them, I think Milo, is snoring like a cartoon, with a rumbling inhale and an actual literal whistling exhale, which I thought was only something you saw on Looney Tunes. I bet if I were to go up there right now I'd see a feather above Milo's face, drifting upwards as he whistles out, and floating back down as he snores in.