There’s this author, and he’s no literary genius or anything, but back when I was blowing through one supermarket paperback in a night I got to know this character called Alex Delaware, a child psychologist in Los Angeles. My favorite parts of the stories have always been his descriptions of driving through and around L.A., and his koi pond. I don’t know when exactly I became so fascinated with Koi but I hadn’t ever actually seen one until my parents repurposed a stainless steel milk tank from the old dairy and filled it with fish. I’d been reading about Alex Delaware’s koi for all these years, so I sort of expected my mom’s fish to jump out of the water for food, and hang around the edge of the pond when we walked up. Her fish are shy though, and they don’t come around for just anyone.

I even have the koi pond app for my phone.

Today we went to a restaurant with an indoor pond and the fish were incredible, swarming to the edge, begging for food. I tried to get a shot of their weird little mouths, but they didn’t stay still long enough.

And then we came home to discover that there are goldfish hatchlings in our own pond! It’s fish bonus day.