Meet My Goldfish, Burkina Faso

I visited my mama last night, and we had dinner together. As soon as I saw her I gave her the most satisfying hug. It was most satisfying because I haven't seen her for two weeks, and also because I was wearing a marvelously puffy jacket that turns even the most birdlike of physiques (she's itty bitty) into quite meaty, huggable frames. We talked for about three hours about various things, and I helped her move furniture. She has this strange complex where every room in her house has to a) be a different color from other rooms and b) change colors at least once every 2-3 years. She keeps a running tally of who likes what color (rooms that people like get to stay that color for longer, dependent upon how many votes said room receives) so that she knows which room is up for a change. But now it's out of control. Duh duh DUH. And she is currently babysitting a goldfish named Burkina Faso.

We name our animals weird names. In my family, pets have been christened the following:

Allowishes (misspelling of Aloysius?): Tuxedo cat of my childhood.
Beeper: Somebody should have told me that gerbils don't beep.
Icarus: My parents' old black cat, my favorite. He died a year ago.
Ichigo: My parents' orange cat, means 'strawberry' in Japanese.
Sowen: My parents' black cat, adopted one Halloween. My dad calls him Sobee Wan Kenobi.
Tohru: Lovely's python.
D'artagnan: Natty and Pepper's (pseudonyms for my middle younger sister and her man) slinky black cat. Also one of the Three Musketeers.
Jesper: My cat.
Anouk: The bunny I gave up for adoption last June.
Eidelvise: Kind of a grand name, for a gerbil.

Sleet and snow is in the forecast for tomorrow morning, which means that my walk to work will be Not Fun, or that there WON'T be a walk to work. We'll just have to see! And tomorrow evening, I have an appointment to have the bottom 3 or 4 inches of my hair, which currently fades from its natural blonde color into very dark brown, cut off. I've always loved having long hair, and I'm a little bit apprehensive about having my hair fall to JUST past my shoulder blades, but hair has an important inherent quality... IT GROWS! So yay for hair that grows.

Dance meeting tonight, the very first, with registration fee ($40, sigh). Looking forward to it, but I created an expense-tracking spreadsheet not too long ago, and was a bit chagrined at the money I've spent in the last two months on frivolities. Dance will not be a frivolity. I hope it provides me enough stress (and stress relief) to feel satisfied with *things* again. I feel a very, VERY strong metaphysical need right now to excel at something - not only to excel in my mind, but to excel in the minds of others. I need stress to be happy, and because my work comes easily to me and I'm not being graded/critiqued/analyzed like I was in grad school, my life feels very... Unexcellent. Even if it's just an illusion.