Every morning another chapter where the hero shifts from one foot to the other

• The sound of the dishwasher just doing its methodical job early in the morning is miraculous and soothing.
• There is a worried pup curled at my feet, and across the room a cat, oblivious, threatens to knock a picture off the wall in his campaign for second breakfast.*
• The NPR people are my constant companions, an intelligent background murmur.
• Murmur, what a word, huh?
• Upstairs, three sleeping humans.

*I keep a supply of rubber bands to shoot, not at Theo, but adjacent to him, when he is gently terrorizing this way. I love this cat, but a person's gotta get some work done some time.

It doesn't scare him. It diverts his attention in the direction of the rubber bands. It is extremely satisfying on my end.

Joy

I like this show (even though I don't particularly like the people on the first episode), and I am smitten with Marie Kondo herself. I fear, though, that none of my underwear will spark joy and I'll be left underwear-less.

It's all about the peaceful music.

.

French fry vending machine

I didn't know.


There are also live bait vending machines, hot pizza vending machines in Italy, marijuana vending machines. There is one vending machine for every 23 people in Japan. 

Someone needs to edit this in Wikipedia. I'm too tired to do it.

Sail through this to that

Usually when that man's voice comes on the radio or a podcast, I turn it off or engage the fast forward option immediately. Sometimes, though, he catches me unaware. The stupidest man in the world is literally the President of the United States of America.

I wish I could figure out a way to be Canadian. Unfortunately, everyone I love is (currently) in this ridiculous country.

Mid-way through the week, here are some highlights:

• Coffee with Melissa. We did spend a lot of time talking about age, old people, death, etc but still!
• Dinner with Jason and Colleen. We cooked them this and this and they came out officially not as good as The Honey Paw but not half bad. 
• I was extremely productive on Monday, less so yesterday. I kind of can't believe yesterday was only Tuesday. Anyway, I did barrel through a printing job, but spent the rest of the day on my mise-en-place for a not-very complicated meal.
• Besides 10 Things That Scare Me, another new podcast I'm enjoying is Nocturne. Mark and I listened to several episodes of these while we cooked yesterday.
• Support the Girls was a funny, sweet movie that kind of magically appears to just drift along an ordinary day while doing a lot under the surface. I need to write a haiku review!

First Reformed

Ethan Hawke, restrained.
"Someone has to do something!"
Hope versus despair.

Mitochondria hummed

Lovely things that happened today:

• I stumbled across this podcast, 10 Things That Scare Me, via Brooke Gladstone's episode (she's a host of On The Media, one of my favorites). First of all, this was absolutely wonderful, and I identify so hard with many of her fears, especially her number one fear. Other guests include Samin Nosrat, Blair Braverman, and more of my favorites (and for some reason, Anthony Scaramucci?). Each episode is only about six minutes long.
• Goat milk in my coffee.
• I did some errands and ran into several people I like a lot and had nice chats with them.
• I saw two corgis and two dogs in skirts at PetSmart. Then my cashier had a terrible black eye, gone all green and purple, and she cheerfully told me about how she'd ridden the family's ATV into a hot tub.
• I'm on day five of basically no sugar, and I'm probably jinxing my plan to detoxify myself (specifically of sugar) (just for a couple of weeks) by mentioning it here, but I don't feel as crappy as I did last time I did this.
• My cashier at Trader Joe's told me her 12 year old black lab is the best person she knows.

This would be my dream job if they allowed dogs and either Mark or I had a Coast Guard commercial boat operator's license.

Stay gold, Ponyboy

Pray tell me sir, whose dog are you?

How did I miss this brief, wonderful New Yorker piece on the Great Dane who lives in a tiny NYC apartment?

Photo by Amit Elkayam

Also, in my newsletter roundup, I missed a vitally important one, Top Dogs of the Year, an easy one to forget as it comes out just once a year, and is, as you might guess, a list of the very best good dogs of the previous year, with links, photos, videos, etc.

In other dog-related news, Gus is making it his personal mission to pee on every curbside Christmas tree in town before the trash collectors take them away. His tally this morning was eight trees peed upon.