Author: Graeme McMillan

“Giving Medication To Your Dog at 6am While Your Wife Sleeps” could be the name of a terrible self-help book, I suspect, as well as a description of what I’ve been up to (and up for) for the last couple of mornings. Such an activity is a lesson in restraint and patience, as you first have to prepare the medication — grind it up into powder, then essentially hide it in what you hope will be a delicious foodstuff that he will eat — and then try to get him to eat it. Which, at 6am, is harder than you might think.

In many ways, that’s understandable; imagine someone woke you up at 6am and tried to feed you, after all. Your first impulse might also be “What? What’s that? Maybe I’ll try a little b — no, no, no. I’m not hungry. Let me run to the other side of the bed. No, wait, let me try again. Hmm. Maybe. What if I just take it in my mouth and spit it out? No, that’s no good. Don’t want it. Wait wait wait. Maybe I do. Nope. Actually, maybe.”

He does, in fact, eventually realize that this isn’t a dream and he is getting a delicious treat while it’s pitch black outside, and I eventually get to go to work for the day, safe in the knowledge that the first of his three medication deliveries for the day has been successfully delivered.

Hrm. High points are actually harder to identify than low points, to be honest: I liked some work I did, and I made more money with it than the year before, which was nice enough. Launching the Wait, What Patreon and people being excited and generous was a thrill, especially hitting the $500 mark right at the very end of the year. Other than that, uh… making it through, I guess…?

In terms of low points, Kate’s brother died in a hit-and-run early in the year, which colored a lot of what followed in big ways and small. I was a lot more hermit-like than I would’ve wanted to have been, for reasons that didn’t really consist of more than “I wasn’t up to being social,” which is shitty. A couple of big work things fell through for reasons that left me feeling very down on particular people that really depressed me (or, in one case, left me feeling very angry, but powerless to do anything about it). Friends had bad times that I couldn’t help with.

It wasn’t a banner year, by any means. I wasn’t being sarcastic or funny when I said I’d be glad to see the back of 2014 on the podcast. It was a fucker of a year, all told.

postcardsfromspace:

Moody and I marathoned it a few years ago. I love it fiercely, and one of my life goals is to organize a Village flash mob.

I knew you’d like it. Now I’m all curious if you’ve seen “If…” and “O Lucky Man,” which always go along with “The Prisoner” in my head (Especially “If…”)

As bad as this question is, it’s worse that I didn’t have to think about the answer: F New, M Uncanny (Assuming it’s the classic Claremont run), K Astonishing.

The difference between owning a pet and having a kid — well, one of the differences, I mean, of course; there’s also the fact that if you let kids out the back to pee then people look at you funny — is that, when your dog has dental surgery that lasts for hours and leaves him without the same number of teeth he started with, you can’t really let him know what’s going on. Kids, at least, you can say “Hey, take better care of your teeth, you don’t even want to know how much that cost” and they’ll have some idea what you’re talking about.

I kid, obviously, but the sheer amount of worrying Kate and I did yesterday for Gus as he was in surgery pretty much made yesterday a bust as far as work was concerned — we both did the bare minimum to get by, but our hearts weren’t in it. He’s fine, now (Well, as fine as you can be when you’re missing teeth and on crazy pain medication and antibiotics and you’re a dog), so today, we’ll just spend our time catching up on the important stuff and quasi-worrying about our little guy.

2015, you’re looking nuts already.