she picked him up by his fin??

Reading about Dooce's surprise betta makes me want to weep. There are so many things wrong with the way she is treating him, from the food she's giving him (flakes don't have enough nutrition -- dried blood worms are good, and there are special betta pellets that don't build up because the anorectic little dudes only eat one or two a day) to the container he's living in (too small! too small! Sebastian and Thelma [the snail] share a large tank, one that is somewhere between two and five gallons; also, she's provided no gravel or plants or anything for him to hide in) to the awful picking him up by his dorsal fin to move him from one container to the next. Probably she is using water that they haven't even bother to de-chlorinate. I won't be surprised if he dies within a month if this keeps up. I am horrified, and I'm no fish saint -- it's been a year and two months since I tragically killed Laertes in an accident too horrible to talk about, something I can only live with because my first fish, Finnegan, lived to a fine old age.

My lord. The woman practically lives online, and yet she can't even do the most basic research? I spent several days reading about bettas before I decided to get one, and I was a flaky fifteen-year-old at the time. Sure, he's an accidental fish, but that is no excuse -- the first site that google spits out covers every single thing she is doing wrong and then some.

I used to be regularly amused by Heather Armstrong and anthropologically and psychologically interested in examining the fun Freudian subtexts of her posts, but more and more I come away disgusted, questioning her popularity, her fanbase, and the character of the woman herself. I wonder if she realizes how awful she seems in a lot of these recent posts. I can't imagine she does because why post them? But at the same time I can't fathom such a serious lack of self-awareness.

Sometimes I would like to email her and try to kindly (as kindly as I could manage, which would probably sound more curt than courteous) inform her of how shallow and entitled she comes across (see: New York Post) or how appallingly ignorant she is being -- but I don't feel like courting the possibility of ending up on one of her email posts.

*edit* Okay, so I joined the ranks of the other fish owners who are probably recoiling in shock from that post and sent her a quick email with just a few links to betta care websites and a sentence of goodwill towards Lou. I now wash my hands of the issue. You can lead a horse to water, etc.

...

Additionally, I am wild with the stress of packing and the horror of snow. We leave on Sunday. I hope.

12: measuring obsession

I want to count how many times I day I hug, poke, and kiss my cats in order to have an accurate gauge of how physically obsessed I am by them, but every time I start to count I become too self-conscious. The instant I begin my tally I wonder if I am holding back on kissing my white cat's baby-mouse ears just to make the number seem a little less insane. And then there's the problem of definitions. If I pick up the baby, spin her in a circle, and then kiss her nose three times, does that count as one act of affection or five? I'd get my younger brother to keep count if he could do it without actually spending all day in my presence. I need a mechanical ticker that would keep track for me. I suspect that this would be really useful information to have.

2: stray dogs

I had just begun to write a self-indulgent post about how bleak it is to be back in the small town midwest after months of traveling Europe alone when, halfway through a sentence, my aunt called me to the front yard. She had found a stray dog, a young pup, part pit bull from the looks of him. He was chasing a car up our street, but came when she called out to him. My family has a long history of helping strays. We feel it is our karmic duty: when I was twelve-years-old, my dog Abbey jumped the fence of my aunt's yard and was killed by a car, and ever since then we have no choice but to take care of every stray or lost animal that comes our way. If someone had snagged Abbey before she made it to the busiest street in town, she might still be alive, and I think of her whenever another dog shows up on our stoop. We have to help them!

I always name the dogs Charlie regardless of gender.

This Charlie was well fed and cared for. He had a collar but no tags. After checking with all of the neighbours, we were preparing to keep him for a night or a few days when a car drove by. Happy ending -- they were looking for the pup.

....

Not all of my posts will be as dull and ineloquent as this one.