unfortunately, because she is also a ~100yr old green sea turtle, i legally cannot touch her. she’s a protected species, and a fairly prominent individual at that, and im not one of the aquarists who dives into that tank NOR am i a vet, so i’m not among the handful of people who are ALLOWED to give her scratchies. she knows all of the divers personally, and knows that i am not one of them. she doesn’t care. she wants attention and because she’s the specialest princess in the entire universe she will do anything in her power to get it.

she also throws a big ol tantrum when i end up not petting her. she’ll stick up her head to snort water at me, slap at the platform and ladder with her fins, and then swim under the dive platform and bump her shell against the bottom — she’s a 500lb turtle, which is a lot of weight for her to be throwing around. i usually have to move pretty quick to get off the platform and onto solid ground cuz there have been times where i’ve genuinely felt like i was about to lose my balance and REALLY didn’t want to end up falling into the tank.

during the pandemic, we invented something we call "astronaut time."

when it's astronaut time, it's like we are two astronauts wearing the big helmets, moving around the station on totally separate tasks. one of us is outside the space station and one of us is inside the space station. our radios do not work and we have no way of communicating with each other. we might see each other through the lil porthole windows, but we ignore each other because we both have different things to do.

"astronaut time" is how we get total privacy when we live in the same apartment. I will pretend you don't exist. You will pretend I don't exist. we have a nonverbal, zero-contact signal for when astronaut time is over (usually "I'll draw a smiley-face on the whiteboard in the kitchen when I'm done"). No talking, stay out of each other's line of sight, we are actively avoiding each other, unless you are currently experiencing a medical emergency goodbye.

it has been. a godsend. imagine living with your partner and being able to close every single tab in your brain related to social interaction. no fear of being interrupted by a "hey, quick question--" or "sorry to bother you, but do you know where the scissors are?" or "did you want something to eat, too?" Once or twice a month, we look at each other lovingly, hold hands, and say "baby I think I need some astronaut time tonight," and the other person goes "okay cool. bye! have a nice night!" and nobody's feelings are hurt and we both go and have a lovely evening completely by ourselves.

She didn’t run for election; she was appointed, without her knowledge, while she was living and working in a completely different part of the country. She just received a call one day telling her to come back to her childhood home, because she was in charge now.

So she did; and when she arrived, she discovered widespread sexual abuse of children. She browbeat 50 uncooperative local leaders into accepting her decision to annul all the marriages. She then fired four of them when they continued to allow children to be married off in their areas. She still faces widespread opposition from parents who consider it their right to sexually abuse their daughters if they want to; but Kachindamoto very evidently does not give a fuck, and is continuing to use political and legal means to protect children in the region.