u/Corn_newb70

Does anyone else have a sand boa that's weirdly chill and seems to actually enjoy being handled? My girl Julie is so calm when I get her out for quality time. I'm not totally surprised; she was her breeder's favorite and got handled a lot before I brought her home. But everything I've seen about sand boas makes me think this is highly unusual. I put together a little sandbox for enrichment for her, and the last time I put her in it (she loves it, she seems to really relish having a different texture and weight to dig through), I sat down next to the box to do other stuff and after having some fun in the sand she climbed out into my lap and curled up like a cat. The other day she crawled into my breast pocket and fell asleep. I can pet her like a dog. When she's not basking in the open, she's got her little head poked up out of the dirt, watching me. Anybody have similarly-personable sand boa?

Julie Sandrews has been home for a couple of days and has been defying all my ideas of how sand boas act. The couple times I have needed to handle her (at the expo, checking her over before putting her in her enclosure) she has been soooo chilled out, no signs of stress, just curious tongue flicks and trying to burrow into my shirt.

But the stranger thing is that she has spend half of today on her basking log. She seemed to like the warmth so much that I provided her a piece of slate under her warm spot to get her better belly warmth, and she very quickly made use of the upgrade. She's been splayed out on her rock for most of the afternoon. She did some good burrowing yesterday and this morning, she has 3 to 5 inches of substrate throughout her enclosure and has made several lovely tunnels. But so far she has spent way more time chilling out in the open than seems normal. Even when she burrows she often leaves her head or tail tip above ground.

Enclosure specs: it's a 30 gal bioactive with 70/30 Reptisoil and coco fiber. I have a colony of dairy cows isopods and temperate springtails in there with her. There's a nice big cork bark flat, her basking slate, a clean water dish, a nice climbing branch, and several plants that I'm keeping in little terra cotta pots for now because I'm not sure if she'll try to redecorate if I root them directly in the soil (I think she dug some of the soil out of the largest pot and made herself a little dirt nest inside the philodendron lol). She has low-level linear UVB and a ceramic heat emitter. The basking spot is a consistent 90 F, the warm side in general is about 85, and her cooler, more humid side hovers around 74-76. Humidity is in the 40s on the warm side and 50s on the cool.

So, is there something wrong with her new room, or is she just an outgoing gal? If she was behaving like this at night I wouldn't be as surprised, but she's fully exposed and warming her little cow spots in the middle of the day. I would hope that just means she likes basking a lot and feels secure, but I'm brand new to sand boas so I have no clue what to make of it!

So I fed my subadult noodle Sunday night, and when I went to handle her tonight I noticed that she still had a food bulge. I’ve never seen her retain the bulge past a couple of days, so it immediately concerned me. As I looked her over I also saw that there was a larger than usual lump right before her tail, the way it looks when she’s getting ready to drop a deuce. It looked the same yesterday, leading me to wonder if she might be constipated and backed up.

I put her in a shallow warm water bath to see if I could stimulate a bowel movement, and within a couple minutes two inches of feces and a good amount of urates made a rather explosive appearance. I’m hoping that will allow her to process her food properly.

Was this the issue? Is there still a risk of regurgitation since she was digesting longer than usual?

My boyfriend of 6 months is really great in so many ways. He's considerate, competent, generous, straightforward, steady, goofy, patient, calm during conflict. But something has been bothering me the last few weeks. I've noticed a pattern in the way he talks about and interacts with the world that goes directly against my own ethos. Whenever there's something negative happening in his own life or the world at large that he can't immediately change or impact, he kind of just shrugs and accepts it. It's like he heard that old serenity prayer ("Lord, give me the serenity to accept what I can't change, the courage to change what I can't accept, and the wisdom to know the difference") but ONLY took the accepting-what-he-can't-change part to heart.

An example: he works second shift on a factory floor. He gets saddled with a lot of mandatory overtime, to the point that we can only really see each other once a week, and he's been getting strung along for a promotion for months without actually getting it, even though he's been given the responsibilities of that promotion. He agrees with me that he needs a new job, both for his own wellbeing and the wellbeing of our relationship, but he hasn't even applied for anything else. I know the job market is shit right now, but that's all the more reason to get a move on if you really need a new situation.

When I asked him if it frustrates him that he can only see me once a week, he just said he tends not to get frustrated about things he can't change. What?? In my mind, the only way you get off your ass to change something is if it frustrates you enough, so his way of thinking feels very counterintuitive. It seems like it leads him to accept bad conditions and situations more than the typical person would. He's told me that he grew up learning not to complain about something unless you can immediately do something about it. This makes sense, as his parents are very repressed due to their culture and going through major traumatic events, and they have definitely passed some of that mindset down to him. He's also admitted that he has difficulty feeling his emotions, as emotional expression was often penalized in his childhood.

I'm afraid this may present a major compatibility issue if it's something inherent to him, because I'm the opposite. I'm a very emotional person, often against my will, and I feel injustices or personal difficulties very deeply. I want to change things where I can, even in small or defiant ways. I care strongly about social issues (to be clear, so does he, but he's very jaded about being able to have any impact) and I believe that loudly complaining about things that suck can help raise awareness and change minds. Although it doesn't come naturally to me due to traumatic events in my own childhood, I have been working hard to make goals for the future and improve my life where I can and do hard things for longterm gain.

Understandably, the idea of sharing my life with someone who is nihilistic and passive about the hard things in life worries me a lot, especially since I'm always fighting the pull of passivity and nihilism myself. I don't know if this is the kind of thing I can just have conversations with him about and he'll improve; I'm not sure it's even fair to want him to change (though I don't think this is a personality thing so much as a form of learned helplessness that he'd benefit from shaking off). I've told him therapy would be a good idea, and he agrees, but he hasn't taken the leap. Is this the kind of thing a couple's therapist could help us work through? Is it unfair for me to want him to take charge of his own life more?

All I can think of is a future spent fighting alone for things I care about while he just shrugs and sits in the corner. Even if he takes on tough situations because he wants to help me, I wouldn't feel supported if he's just doing it out of obligation. When the relationship gets hard, if one of us gets a diagnosis or loses a job, if a natural disaster hits, if we lose people we love... is he just going to go limp fish and leave me to recover or rebuilt on my own? Will he put in the effort to build and safeguard a life together?

So, yeah. If anyone has a similar experience or practical advice for how to have these conversations or look at it from a different perspective, I would so appreciate it!