Come on over

Rabbit rabbit!

It's June!

To the gods, we look like dogs

Long time, no blog. I've been printing t-shirts and writing things and painting and building a fence and being extremely ill for a little over 24 hours. It was weird to suddenly feel that sick and require Pedialyte and saltines. You know how when you haven't vomited in a while you forget how horrible it is?*

The fence is nearly complete, with just the gate left to build. I conveniently fell ill in the midst of the hole digging, so I was able to wake from a feverish sleep and look out the window and see several more fence panels than there'd been before I took to my bed.

Fence inspectors

Isaac is home for the summer, which is wonderful, but I must mention that I'm typing this blorg post at 5:00 in the morning because he went out to play basketball around 9pm and when I woke up around 3:00 he wasn't home yet and I knew he hadn't brought his phone, and I was thinking anxious thoughts including trying to remember exactly what he was wearing in case I had to describe his outfit to the police later. When he finally came home at 4:30, the sunrise soon began to bother me so I got up.

I need to tell you, I've seen so many amazing birds over the last week or two, including red-winged blackbirds and bobolinks (I stopped a birder to ask what these were — "Those little black birds with yellow heads swooping around that field?" He was like a Lemony Snicket character, with his binoculars and his smug certainty, but I was glad to have an answer). Mark bought me a hummingbird feeder, and I was worried because never in my life have I seen a hummingbird anywhere near our yard, but guess what?? Not only did we immediately spot them on the feeder, but I also saw several in our neighbor's flowering tree and then maybe a dozen in our other neighbor's flowering shrub!

Before I forget, I've been meaning to recommend Nick Cave's newsletter (that's the musician Nick Cave, not the visual/performance artist). It's pretty wonderful.



*Initially I thought it was food poisoning, which would've been a real bummer since Mark and Matt ate the same thing I did that day, falafel from our favorite falafel place, and not only was I bereft at the thought of getting food poisoning from the best falafel place, I was also imagining the fence project grinding to a halt as all three of us succumbed to vomitousness. I guess it was rotavirus?

Rabbit rabbit!

Kettle corn edition.

Wake me up when the primary's over

...and I'll leap up, ready to put a bumper sticker on my car and whatever else is necessary. I sure do wish it could be a woman or a person of color or a woman of color, though.

I started the day enormously annoyed by Joe Biden (and I'm still annoyed), BUT

I mean.

However, on the other hand, Elizabeth Warren lost her last dog to lymphoma (and she now has another golden retriever).

Dogs allowed on the couch? She's got my vote!

Cory Booker doesn't have a dog of his own (though he's vowed to get one if elected), but he is famous for being an animal rights advocate and a vegan.

This freezing dog was not the only dog he rescued when he was mayor of Newark.

Pete Buttigieg actually kind of sweeps this category if I'm honest: he's got TWO dogs (the correct number of dogs), and one of them looks like this:

Seriously.

Beto's got two dogs as well, one of which is a very sad black lab.

Why is his dog so sad? And where is his other dog??

Andrew Yang has a dog and it looks like this:

Bernie Sanders: no dog. 
Kamala Harris: no dog, but she (or her social media intern?) tweets frequently about dogs.
Kirsten Gilibrand has a doodle of some kind.
John Hickenlooper (whoever he is) has a rescue dog.
Eric Swalwell (?) has a dog he got on Craigslist.
Tim Ryan (I think this is another white guy) has two rescue dogs.
Jay Inslee (Jesus there are a lot of candidates) has "granddogs."
Amy Klobuchar: no dog.
Julian Castro: no dog.
Tulsi Gabbard: no dog.
Seth Moulton: I do not know who he is and he does not have a dog.
John Delaney: ditto.
Wayne Messam: nope.
Marianne Williamson: I can't find any evidence that she has a dog, but she has said, "The ego is like a scavenger dog, always on the lookout for evidence of someone's guilt," whatever that means.

Listen, whatever you see and love — that's where you are

I've mentioned him before, but here's my monthly reminder that Gideon, the kid who pets dogs, is the best thing on Twitter. 

Here is a cheering story about him by Blair Braverman!

(I mean, this kid): "Fifth grade is a big year, and Gideon has big plans—to pet more dogs. 'There’s still tons more dogs left in Cedar Falls,' he says. 'I’d say maybe 50. I get to look out the window and say, Do I have that dog? That dog looks awesome.'”

CHEESE

Edited to add:

On April Fools Day, all the posts on his Twitter were Gideon's brother (who looks like Gideon with short hair) petting cats. I mean.

You have become a ghost

The cold that had been lurking around for the last week or so, hanging out at the back of my skull, moved forward this weekend into my face. I spent the whole weekend sneezing, blowing my nose, and dripping snot hither and yon. And sleeping, or lounging miserably, feeling sorry for myself.

While in my sickbed, I 

• Listened to every episode of this podcast about the MLM/cult NXIVM
• Listened to every episode of this podcast about Elizabeth Holmes and her fraudulent company, Theranos
• Watched a documentary about Gypsy Rose Blanchard, who conspired to kill her abusive Munchausen-by-Proxy mother
• Ate a bowl of delicious soup made by Mark