[rulesforthedance]

Intro post: just the important stuff: these are my pets.

Thimbleberry. Mali uromastyx, patternless morph. Hatched 2023. Purchased by me from breeder in 2024. Gender is a mystery until adulthood at around age 3.

Yeti. Bedraggled mop. Born 2018, adopted by my partner before we met. Goes on runs with me.

And the Beloved Dead:

These are some friends I miss and might talk about sometimes. I don't have any bearded dragons right now, but I've had them most of my life and am honestly forever a bearded dragon guy at heart.

[rulesforthedance]

Weddings things: Both our moms cried audibly through the whole ceremony. N and I only got a tiny bit choked up. We both got our periods the night before the wedding and I pooped six times between waking up and the start of the ceremony. N looked spectacularly beautiful. All the millennial women across three very different friend groups (N's lawyer friends, my derby friends, friends I've known since first grade) all activated like sleeper agents when Goodbye Earl came on. My Americorps housemate's two-year-old son lost his baby mind when Wannabe by the Spice Girls came on, and started dancing ecstatically in the center of an impromptu clapping circle of adults that formed around him. We and four of the lawyer friends sat on a dive bar patio for a bit afterwards, so we got home at midnight and I am very sleepy today. I had zero drinks and am somehow hung over anyway and N had four drinks and is not. I'm very excited for the photos. I love my wife and also our friends and family very much.

[snototter]

A pair of marbled salamanders (Ambystoma opacum) in North Florida, USA

by Alex Roukis

[herpsandbirds]

Spotted Sandpiper (Actitis macularius)

Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 10th, 2026

[herpsandbirds]

A handsome little fella and his lady. I threw a blep photo in there too.

[rulesforthedance]

I lied, I just carried this thang into the Cool Room and it is at least 40 pounds

[rulesforthedance]

N is working on this insane flower arrangement that weighs like 20 pounds

[rulesforthedance]

Regarding me dolefully because I took away his new stuffed marmot squeaky toy because he eviscerated it on the living room floor and was eating the polyfill

[rulesforthedance]

I am marrying this person tomorrow. btw

[rulesforthedance]

Most of the time, Thimbleberry just grudgingly tolerates human interaction, but once in a while, it seems like he actually wants it

[rulesforthedance]

One thing I will say for accidentally losing [redacted] pounds as a result of #mynausea is that my chest is small enough again that sports bras make me look almost flat like they did in my 20s. Which I like.

[onenicebugperday]

Yellow leatherleaf slug, Vaginulus taunaisii, Veronicellidae

Photographed in Brazil by rogerriodias

[hotvampireadjacent]

[rulesforthedance]

I am falling back into some old neurotic behaviors that I won't describe bc you don't need to hear about all that. But Thimble loves to sit on his soft capybara.

And pose photogenically among his fake succulents

[sashayed]

but ykw at least i'm not on mount everest. at least i'm not paying tens of thousands of dollars to slowly suffocate in a 300-person line at the gates of hell. never in my life will i have to be steered in a hypoxic stupor through the maze of poop and corpses atop mount everest. on this earth a lot of horrible things can happen to you without your permission but there are a few that you have to opt into. you can just say no thanks! and be guaranteed never to have to be on mount everest. much to be grateful for actually

[sashayed]

still not on mount everest this morning 😌 alhamdulillah

[do-not-u-dare]

“On social media you only see people’s highs and not their lows so you get the impression that everybody else only experiences highs which can lower your self esteem” idk what social media you’re on but it isn’t like that for me

[rulesforthedance]

Did something stupid to my foot on my six-hour dumbass mountain hike and foot still feels stupid 8 days later. It hurts in the plantar fasciitis place, but my physical therapist says it is "not plantar fasciitis" and "ok to run on if running doesn't make it feel worse" and I am clinging white-knuckled to those two assertions because I have a 12-hour race in 19 days.