Things My Dog Loves (That Most Humans Don't)

I could've written some ironic, cynical commentary on the holiday known as Valentine's Day, but instead, something possessed me to write about my dog, Raisintoast (Raisin for short). Maybe it's because dogs have a lot to teach us about love. They lay their heads in your lap no matter who you voted for in the last election, or whether you like cheese in your grits or not. They see past the dividers and recognize the love-needing human in all of us.

As much as I admire a dog's capacity to love, there are some things they love that I just can't imagine loving myself. This especially applies to Raisin. I'll never understand why Raisin loves the following:

1. Eating socks, gloves, and charcoal out of the fireplace. He likes his food smoked, apparently.
2. Chewing on a beef bone that he found on the roadside, dropped, and found again in the snow several months later.
3. Trying to bury said bone in the carpet by scratching and scratching and scratching and scratching, no matter how many times I remind him that this is physically impossible.
4. Swallowing ice cubes whole.
5. Eating roadkill whole (I don't let him do this, he just always manages to get it when I'm not looking).
6. Humping blankets, sofa cushions, dog beds, chair legs, my brother's leg, and the air. Despite having been neutered.
7. Knocking newspapers out of people's hands (actually, this sounds kinda fun).
8. Barking at no one except my friend Gray.
9. Biting a branch off a Christmas tree.
10. Stealing potholders.
11. Dropping neat little piles of dog food on my pillow, and sometimes on my face.
12. Shamelessly displaying his "nether regions" for all to admire. If he were a person, he'd probably be arrested for doing so.
13. Licking himself. All of himself.
14. Stuffing his face with big mouthfuls of snow.
15. Sleeping in positions that would probably break a person's neck.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to run down a busy street and slap the newspapers out of people's hands.

Raisin with "Ashley" the hippo.

It's Easy to Assume...

I wanted to start posting every Friday, but last weekend, I just couldn't think of anything to write about. It's weird. I always have something to say about something, but this time I didn't feel compelled to write any of it down. I just wanted to exist for a while without commentary. I did, however, make a doodle inspired by last week's post:

The call me Flame Nose!

Speaking of last week's post, there is one thing I wanted to add to it. On my list of things to do in your 20s, 30s, or life in general, I forgot to include another tip that came from the Relevant magazine article I mentioned: have real opinions based on facts and not just something you "heard somewhere." It's sort of a paraphrased version, but I thought it was an excellent point. Then I got to thinking about how much work it takes to actually be well-informed. No information source can be trusted at first glance, especially on the Internet, where the bull-to-fact ratio is more disproportionate than ever. You have to fact-check, and then fact-check the fact-checkers (say that five times fast). You need to do a ton of research to have a well-informed opinion about almost everything, which may be partially to blame for all the uninformed opinions buzzing about the comments sections. It's so much easier to assume than to figure something out for real.

And then I thought of something else: many of us seem afraid of uncertainty. We'd rather just assume and take a side on an issue without really thinking it through, or avoid discussing it altogether, because we're afraid of saying "I don't know" or "I'm not sure." You see it all the time, in debates and in public speaking: the speaker is asked a difficult question, and instead of admitting that they're not sure about the answer, they dance around the question by giving a confused, wishy-washy response instead. To me, it's a far greater sign of courage to admit uncertainty than to pretend you know the answer, but I shouldn't be the one talking here. When someone at work asks me if I know how to do something that I don't, it's sometimes tempting to pretend that I know what I'm doing, because I'm afraid of looking like an idiot if I don't.

Ultimately, all this thinking forced me to confront the staggering amount of effort needed to obtain almost everything you need to be a happy, functioning adult. Even being happy often requires actively ignoring the negative while seeking the positive things in life, and don't let a greeting card tell you that's easy, because it's not. It makes me wonder where in the world we got that phrase, "good things come to those who wait," when good things don't "come" at all. They have to be found.