When I make life decisions, I want certainty. I want to know I’m making the one and only right choice.
I’m learning that life often doesn’t give us that, especially for the bigger decisions. You know you don’t have enough information to make a good choice — let alone the right one — and you have to decide anyway.
This blows.
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The vet diagnosed her with kidney failure after a routine blood test, a little more than two weeks ago. Transitioning her to a prescription food has proven to be challenging.
When we brought her home as a puppy, it took me a few weeks to learn her rhythms, but ever since then she has been self-regulating on diet. A machine. I put down a bowl of kibble once a day, she ate as much as she wanted, I picked it up and sealed a lid on it and put it away for the next day. She didn’t gain weight, she didn’t lose weight. She walked more than three miles a day, occasionally did zoomies and was altogether relatively low maintenance and a little tank.
The vet prescribed canned kidney diet food for her, and I fumbled the transition. You’re supposed to transition a dog gradually to a new diet, but – and I am confused exactly how I decided on this – she gobbled up the food and loved it for the first two or three meals we gave her and so I just started giving her 100% that diet. And then she started turning her nose up at it and ate less and less until she stopped eating entirely for a day and a half, and I rushed her to the vet Friday afternoon and the vet said just make sure she eats. The vet said she herself has an elderly dog with heart problems who is difficult to feed and she will feed that dog any damn thing including takeout burritos. You need to get the dog eating.
So I switched her to chicken breast and rice and then I gave her too much last night and she turned her nose up at her usual treats and was wobbly and unhappy this morning. So I gave her only a moderate amount of chicken and rice this morning and she ate that and then I gave her a little bit more this afternoon and she ate that and she seems peppier and more cheerful so we will count that as a win.
We are also dealing with two elderly cats, one of which is obese, and the other one is a fussy eater.
We should’ve gotten goldfish. When they get sick, you don’t even know it because who the hell can tell when a goldfish is sick. And then they die, and you flush them down the toilet and you don’t care. Whereas these animals are breaking our hearts.
Unpopular opinion: “1776” is a timeless classic that Americans will watch in a hundred years. “Hamilton” is very much of its time; viewership will decline and in a generation it will be nearly forgotten.
That is not necessarily a criticism of “Hamilton.” It is OK for things to be of their time.
Nor do I intend to cast aspersions on Lin-Manuel Miranda. He is extremely talented, with an original voice, still young and hopefully we’ll have many years for him to produce a masterpiece – assuming he doesn’t get killed in a duel.
Another unpopular opinion: the theatrical cut of “1776” was better than the director’s cut. William Daniels running down the stairs as the overture plays is visually more interesting than the mural. And maybe Jack Warner did cut “Cool Cool Considerate Men” to placate Nixon (or so the internet says) — it was also the right creative call. It’s not a strong scene and “Molasses to Rum to Slaves” has more bite.
Overheard: “Today we celebrate the PDFing of “Declaration FINAL v3 USE THIS ONE - SIGNED.docx””
I loved “Song Song Blue," a 2025 movie starring Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson as a Neil Diamond tribute act from Milwaukee around 1990, based on a real-life couple.
This is not a sentence expected I would ever write.
The music is great — as the characters point out, everybody loves Neil Diamond. And the movie wisely does not patronize the characters, or ridicule them, or treat them as camp. It respects the characters and loves them. Jackman is great, but that’s no suprise. I’ve seen him in a few movies and I just expect him to be great. Hudson was a pleasant surprise — “Almost Famous,” released in 2000, is one of my favorite movies, and she is fantastic in that, but I don’t think I’ve seen her in anything since. In “Almost Famous,” she was a precocious teenager and in “Song Song Blue” she’s a middle-aged single mother, world-weary but still upbeat.
The first half of the movie is happy and light as a cloud. Midway through we hit pause and as we stood up to get a snack, I said, “Nothing bad better happen to these people!" Two minutes after we returned to the movie, something terrible does happen and then another near the end. I highly recommend “Song Sung Blue” — but keep a box of Kleenex close.
I realized recently that I enjoy running errands. Buying gas, going to the store, picking up groceries. I would’ve made a great 1950s housewife
I thought I looked badass walking the dog this morning, but then I got in the car, glanced at myself in the rearview mirror and saw the front brim of my hat was pushed up the entire time. So instead of looking badass, I looked like a simple country cousin from the Beverly Hillbillies.
Also, I was wearing black socks with shorts.
