Whose job is this

My husband, when I was married, liked to fish.  He’d go off with Warren, who was married to my high school friend Judy.  They came home with strings of blue gills and small mouth bass.  I wouldn’t clean them, but I was happy to cook up a fried potato and fish night for the four of us, after Jim and Warren had a freezer full.  I recall the two of them bursting into our apartment one night to show off their take to the pinochle club.

They fished often at the Holden Arboretum.  Judy and I went occasionally, and played with Beth along the many lake shores.  That’s where Beth learned she couldn’t walk on water.  She had no realization the surface would not be solid and walked straight in. 

The guys only kept fish six inches long or better.  The rest went back in.  However, they had a “secret pond” somewhere on the grounds and used the little fish to stock it.  I do wonder how that came out.

Shelly was two, going on three when we bought the house in Mentor.  The Arboretum was even closer, just down the road in Kirtland and Jim fished often in the evenings and weekends.

He had a lot of fishing equipment in the front closet, and, to my complete dismay, kept live bait in our refrigerator. Little wiggly things in flimsy Styrofoam containers lived in a condiment shelf in the door of the refrigerator.

One night I accidently flipped a container into the open vegetable drawer and before I could retrieve it the lid flew off and little wiggly things invaded the salad.

“Shelly,” I said sweetly and calmly to my toddler.  “Come here.”  She did.  “Please pick up those pretty little wormies and put them back in the container.”

Shelly looked over the crisper edge.  “Pick them up yourself.” 

Two, going on three