foosh update

[dragonlady7]

Brr. I'm so cold, and don't know why. It's a good 64ish inside, the thermometer tells me, but I can't stop shivering. Have ensconced myself in Juanita and an afghan and am still v. cold.
Also: whole grain bread with extra weird seeds stuck to it makes an extremely substantial lunch when you take two thick slices of it and put peanut butter between them. I have one bite left sitting on the counter for me to finish in a moment when I have room.
Though it does nothing to alleviate cold. My hands are so cold! If I had the time I would take a hot shower and then hide under the blankets, but I don't.

Was sitting in the living room (warmest room, also where the afghans are) and watching the fooshes. They always dance when I walk by, but I wasn't nearby at all, and they were dancing anyway. They're very active now that they have this much space and can see one another. I don't know how they could make the adjustment from sitting in little bowls all day to swimming nonstop, but they have done so very well. They sleep sometimes, hanging in the middle of the water or sort of resting on the bottoms of their passageway/hidey-holes, but mostly when I see them they're fluttering around looking at each other and occasionally freaking out and darting around. Al's color is back to gorgeous, and Gibson is, I think, larger than he was.

I bought them Special Foosh Treat Flakes, thinking that perhaps it was something they could all eat. Al only eats the grody pellets he started on. Gibson can't chew those, so he eats freeze-dried brine shrimp. Shirley prefers the shrimp, so she eats that as well. And Al just gets so mad when we feed the other fish, but he spits the shrimp out.
Well, I have successfully, in these new flakes, discovered something all three of them have the same reaction to. Unfortunately, the reaction's to spit it out.
Oh well. I tried.

Comments

[spacellama.livejournal.com]

How do you know when a fish is mad?

I have hairy little chihuahua on my feet. There's a story (myth? fact?) that lapdogs were used as hot-water-bottles in ancient cultures. And to draw fleas away from the people. Either way: useful.

You can always come visit me ... and then flee back to a world that ain't 100 degrees F.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

Is it warm where you are? Doubtless warmer than here, but it hasn't been bad lately. The transitional seasons are the worst. The heat in our house is... confused now, because I've turned it off during some of the warmer days, and now it doesn't know whether it's on or off. Ugh. So it's ... warmish out, and... coldish in, and the two are more similar than is comfortable for lying around in pyjamas.

But is it really 100 F there? Good heavens.

Oh, we know when Al is mad. He's a very emotive fish. He gets all pissy and attacks the walls.

I know in Egypt sometimes they'd coat a slave in asses' milk and make him stand in the corner to attract the fleas. Though that just seems to me like he'd encourage the fleas to multiply, thereby worsening the very problem he was meant to alleviate, but maybe they didn't think that hard about it.
You'd think the same goes for lapdogs. Poor little Scout; when she was up this summer, she became a flea palace. The cats aren't big enough to sustain a real good flea population, but the dog, even as little as she was then, was. I hope the fleas don't come back this summer. (Scout, by now, is a 38-pound full-grown puppy who thinks she's a lapdog and still loves launching herself into the aforementioned laps at full velocity, which is... unfortunate. But adorable.)

(However. Me, I got no fleas in my house, and can't even pet my pets. At least they're emotive and pointlessly aggressive.)

[lorelei-sakti.livejournal.com]

Hi! In case you're wondering why I'm friending you, here goes. I was just looking up people who were interested in Naoise. (There are only 2 of them.) Deirdre and Naoise is my favorite Irish legend. I don't know many Irish legends because I am also interested in Greek and Hindu, but I have always been fascinated by Celtic magic and myth. It's so romantic.

Then I read in your bio that you actually moved to Buffalo, and I'm thinking "who wants to move here? Everybody born here wants to leave." So my curiosity was peaked by that as well.

Well, you can read my profile and if you want to friend me, go right ahead. Bu if not, that's okay too.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

well well, hello hello. Yes, I love Dierdriu and Naoise, and I think they're way cooler than Diarmait and Grainne, and leagues beyond the Frenchified nonsense of Launcelot and Guinivere. What versions of the legend have you read? I confess I love Lady Gregory's translation despite its Victorianism, but Kinsella's entire Tain is just so earthy it's its own brand of irresistible.
[er, oh, on reread of your comment that was a totally overboard response. sorry, i've read a lot of the irish myths stuff and totally geek out about it! If you're up to it I fully recommend Lady Gregory's Cuchulainn of Muirthemne and Gods and Fighting Men, is what I was trying to get at. And if you like fart and boob jokes as told by medievals and translated by a poet, Thomas Kinsella's translation of the medieval Irish Tain bo Culiagne, including the tale of Deirdriu and Naoise, is totally the bomb. Is that a better answer? Am exceedingly lit-geeky about this stuff.]

So are you a Buffalo native, or are you just here for school? (you sound like a native. only natives are so down on the place.) Are you at UB or Buff State or someplace else? And more importantly, are you a South Buffalonian or the regular flavor? I'm learning that it seems to matter. I don't really know much about Buffalo except for North Buffalo and environs, but it's an adorable little city.
I am living with a Buffalo native, which is why the 'dream' bit is still there-- we lived down in Westchester Co. for a while and hated it, and the longer we were there the more Boy kept talking about how much he missed Buffalo, and the more frequently we'd come up and visit. (Mm, 400 miles for chicka wings.)

I am always looking for new friends, and especially ones that know something about the area, so I'm perfectly happy to add you back. :)

[lorelei-sakti.livejournal.com]

Thanks for adding me! And thanks for all the reads. I have a book called "Women in Celtic Myth." It has a story about Maeve and Findabair, and it makes you feel so sorry for Findabair. One of these days I'll get around to looking up W.B. Yeats' play Deirdre and see if it's good. I like his poem "The Stolen Child." It's one of my favorites.

I'm a native; live in Cheektowaga. Not too familiar with the west side or south side of Buffalo; never had much reason to go there. I go to UB, the north campus. I like it here in Buffalo. Elmwood and Delaware are great places to hang out. But I long for the country sometimes.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

Hm. I have passionate but mixed feelings about the popularity among New Agey types of Celtic stuff. On the one hand, 1) some of it is quite lovely, 2) it attracts more people to seriously study and appreciate the stuff (the professor who taught me Middle Welsh was initially attracted by a horribly bastardized and romantic translation of an old Welsh poem, in a disreputable anthology; she later went on to publish possibly the best and most faithful translation of that poem that's been published), and 3) what's the harm? But on the other hand, a lot of it is maddening and misses the point of the original. But you get that in any translations of anything old, and the worst of it in Celtic stuff because the area is so politicized and so much of it has been viewed through the lens of later happenings. Yeats is an early offender; he couldn't read or write Irish to save himself and many of his plays were exhaustively rewritten by his patroness Lady Gregory before they were published. (His poems, however, are lovely, and at least faithful in spirit.)
I am a bit maddened by the whole Oh The Celts Are So Spiritual stereotype; that one does serve to devalue their more serious contributions to the world, and on a very personal level it often gets me taken less seriously because I have an Irish name, a Creative Writing degree, blond hair, and tend to be a bit away with the fairies, and that means nobody takes me at all seriously. And I have a personal grudge against Lucky the Leprechaun and someday he will meet the bumper of my car at high velocity. So there you have my Angry Young Celt rant. :D Wasn't that fun?

Findabair has many, many trials and tribulations so I can only guess as to which story made that anthology. Maeve and Ailill offer her in marriage to about seventy or eighty dudes simultaneously; they even send her off (with a decoy Ailill, not even the real one) to face Cuchulainn and offer herself in marriage. He cuts off all her hair and 'sticks a pillar up the skirt of her dress' [oh we wonder what that's supposed to mean] and leaves her stuck up on this pillar for everyone to see when they come back. Because, of course, it isn't an offer.
And there are fights within Maeve's camp about who's going to marry her.
In the end she kills herself in shame when she finds out how many men she's been promised to.
(My favorite part is how Maeve repeatedly lists things she'll give a warrior if he fights for her, usually including her daughter and a ton of gold, and at the end throws in "and my own friendly thighs on top of that"-- in one story, the warrior cries out, "No need! You have been generous enough!" That's Kinsella's beautifully earthy and faithful translation. That and the Fergus erection jokes alone are worth it even without the beautiful and dark poetry bits.)

The West Side of Buffalo's fairly small. I like driving around the Upper West to look at the pretty houses. Bidwell and Chapin parkways are the Old Money houses and they're absolutely gorgeous. Someday I will be a zillionaire and have a 1910s mansion with a turret. The Lower West Side is fun for Ricans and good only-slightly-divey bars. And if you go any farther west, it's Ft. Erie and that's its own special brand of fun. (Tiki bars and titty bars! Can you go wrong?)

I grew up in 'the country' on 50 acres of abandoned dairy farm with three ravines with streams in them, and we kept horses, chickens, rabbits, hamsters, cats, dogs, and many children. This year I'm attempting to plant a garden on my tiny little plot in Tonawanda and am longing, longing I tell you, for the wide open spaces. :)