Darkoshi

tippy tappy

2023-07-31T20:46:02Z

I am amused at myself for the term I just used when speaking to my dog about me using my laptop:
"doing my little tippy-tappy".

Tippy-tappy also describes the sound of her paws when she walks across wood floors. It's a cute sound except when you keep hearing it when you're trying to fall asleep. But from what I've read, it indicates her nails are too long. It's difficult for me to cut her nails as she squirms so much and pulls her paws away when I try. Also, the last time I did, I cut one nail too far and it started bleeding. That made me feel bad. Before I try again, I plan to buy some styptic powder to stop the bleeding in case it happens again.

To get her quicks to recede to make them less likely to get hurt and bleed, I will need to cut her nails fairly often, little by little (some tips I found are listed below). At her annual vet checkup last week, they trimmed her nails for us, so that's a good start.

Dog Grooming: How To Trim Nails On Difficult Dogs
(Wrap dog in towel like a burrito, but with paws sticking out. So actually, more like an enchilada.)

How To SUCCESSFULLY Recede The Quicks (Watch If You Have Struggled!)
(She says to cut around the quick from the front, top, and sides. That way it will recede.
Make sure the clippers are sharp, not dull, so they can slice thru the nails rather than crush them.)

How often should you do a dog's nails to recede the quicks? | ADVICE FROM A DOG GROOMER
@2:48 photo of nails before & after trim - shows them ground from the top edge not just the bottom.
She grinds them every 2 weeks for normal trimming.
@4:45 even 3 sessions 5 weeks apart made the quicks recede.

..

Note to self: To include an "at symbol" (@) in my posts before another character, and to avoid it being interpreted as a mention and replaced with a user head icon and invalid link, I should use the HTML code: &commat;
"commat" stands for commercial at.

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raring to go

2022-07-04T18:20:39Z

This expression was familiar, but I may not have seen it in writing before today.

Raring: adjective Informal.
very eager or anxious; enthusiastic: raring to go.

I expected it to be spelled "rearing to go", similar to the phrase "to rear up" (like a horse)

In fact, "raring" does derive from the term "rear" as in "rear up":
https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=raring

In fact, both spellings are acceptable:
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/In-a-Word/2020/0723/Are-horses-rearing-to-go-or-raring-to-go

Based on the number of search results listed by Google, the "raring" spelling is more than 5 times as common, however.

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"Salad Days"

2021-09-16T03:38:12Z

The song "Gold" by Spandau Ballet includes this line in its lyrics:
These are my salad days

The term "salad days" was not familiar to me, but there's a whole Wikipedia article about it. It says:

The phrase was coined in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra in 1606. In the speech at the end of Act One in which Cleopatra is regretting her youthful dalliances with Julius Caesar she says:
...My salad days, / When I was green in judgment, cold in blood/To say as I said then!

The phrase became popular only from the middle of the 19th century, coming to mean "a period of youthful inexperience or indiscretion." The metaphor comes from Cleopatra's use of the word 'green' — presumably meaning someone youthful, inexperienced, or immature. Her references to "green" and "cold" both suggest qualities of salads.

I don't know why, but it strikes me as odd, to think of Ancient Egyptians eating salad. But then, Cleopatra cavorted with Ancient Romans. Did Ancient Romans eat salads? Apparently so.

Bon Appetit Wednesday! An Ancient Roman Salad:
Romans loved salads. Columella’s writings suggest the Romans were much like we are today in their search for delicious and inventive salad combinations.[2] A main ingredient in all of these recipes was salt. In fact, the word salad comes from the Latin word sal, meaning salt.

According to the next articles, Ancient Egyptians domesticated lettuce. But they also considered it an aphrodisiac (or they didn't, depending on the article).

Watch out the Egyptian salad. Lettuce in Ancient Egypt: a ‘sexy vegetable’ and its usages

Lettuce and Kings: The Power Struggle Between Horus and Set

Ancient Egyptian Sexuality: Life in Ancient Egypt

... there I am getting dragged down a winding path of topics from where I started.

Going back to the Shakespeare Cleopatra line, it's neat how it is a double (or more) metaphor. Green is a metaphor for youth; coldness (temperature) is a metaphor for coldness (lack of emotion). And then salad, being green and cold, becomes another metaphor for youth and/or coldness.

Update, 2021/09/29:
The ancient Egyptian depictions of lettuce shown on the above link don't look much like modern day lettuce.

But today I came across a lettuce variety which does look somewhat similar to the Egyptian depictions:
Celtuce (also known as "stem lettuce".
Celtuce: A Stocky Stem Lettuce From China (video)

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yuck a yum

2021-02-12T06:39:09Z

This was the first time I've heard this expression (though apparently it is common), and after a brief mental moment of "huh?", it made me smile:
"I'd never yuck your yum".

It was in this Anna Akana video : When you and your friend are dating the same guy (ft. Julie Nolke)

Reading the video comments, some other viewers were likewise quite amused by the phrase, while others said they can't stand it. Which, if your exposure to the phrase was from a grade school teacher, I can understand.

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up and at em!

2020-12-29T20:23:31Z

Suddenly I remembered this expression:
Up and at'em.

Maybe I'm familiar with it from this cartoon:
Atom Ant (Theme song with lyrics)

Wikipedia indicates Atom Ant had only 26 episodes, from 1965 and 1966. If that is true, I must have seen re-runs, the same as The Jetsons and many other shows of my childhood. Or maybe I saw him on "Yogi's Gang" and other such shows.

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