A Permanent Fishture?

Tomorrow will mark two weeks since I bought my cubicle buddy, Inari.  It’s a huge milestone for us.  If my little betta dies after tomorrow, I don’t get my money back.  I think it would be really beneficial if more relationships came with a 14 day guarantee.  It helps you know when to start putting forth the real effort.

Of course, true to my nature, I’ve been head over heels for Inari since the moment I brought him home.  I loved him dearly over that first weekend while he was living in our bathroom so the cat wouldn’t knock him over.  (That plan worked fabulously.  He was only knocked over twice and never so badly his Tupperware lid flew off.)

Since then Inari and I have spent eight and a half days together at the office.  We have breakfast together in the morning, then a snack in the afternoon.  We both enjoy listening to music as I work (he seems to prefer Carbon Leaf over the folkier females like Jenny Lewis and Cat Power), and we’re both definitely bored by those presentations I’ve been reviewing.  He’s very responsive to my presence, dancing about and doing something that resembles sticking out his tongue whenever I return to my desk.  

Everyone who sits around me already used to me talking to myself, but now I’m also talking to the fish in fishy-wishy baby talk.  “Do you want some bwood worms??  Yummy yummy bwood worms!! Who’s a big fishy? Yes, you are!  Eat up those bwood worms!”

To celebrate our two-week-end-of-money-back-guarantee-iversary, I purchased an adorable teal-trimmed one-gallon tank for Inari to move into tomorrow.  This is definitely a show of faith.  “Look little fishy, I just spend forty bucks on a new tank, gravel, and fancy food for you.  You can’t die now!” 

He’ll probably be belly up when I come in on Tuesday..

I know I’m not alone in this feeling, but it seems odd to me.  I’m not terribly interested in having kids anytime soon (you have no idea what an understatement that is), but I have this overwhelming need to nurture.  Freshman year of college I had a fish tank.  Sophomore year I convinced my roommates to let me get a hedgehog.  Junior and senior year I had a rabbit.  When I graduated I got Geoffrey. 

And apparently that still wasn’t enough.  I needed the fish at my office so I could keep on taking care of something as close to 24/7 as possible. 

If this does turn into maternal instincts, someone will have to restrain me when the kid goes to kindergarten.  I don’t want to be that mom, but if my inability to look away from my darling-schnooky-fishy-wums is any indication, it’s not looking good.

UPDATE:  He's making bubbles!  I read somewhere that means he's happy.  I'm so glad I make him happy!  Of course, does this mean when I move him tomorrow I'll make him unhappy?  And if I don't make him unhappy, will I still have something agonize and obsess over??