My Dad’s 83rd birthday was this weekend, which in itself is quite an achievement, I figure.
I was stuck about what to draw for his card — surely not another flat cartoon of him in his wheelchair — so I stopped for a moment and thought about some happy memory I could portray.
I immediately flashed back to a lake somewhere in Ontario, where Dad was pointing out fossils in the rocks. No matter the subject, when I was a kid I could ask him any question about the world and he always had the answer. I thought he was brilliant.
This, of course, was also the occasion for my next cakewreck — this time a chocolate cake with cocoa-avocado frosting (better than it sounds) and a peanut butter caramel drizzle (which didn’t thicken and just soaked in, but at least tasted good).
What we didn’t eat at dinner Saturday evening, I brought to the home yesterday, and we shared it with the staff. Everyone seemed to like it — so there’s another bit of food activism: “Vegan food isn’t lifeless, and is more than tofu.”
My Comics Club friend Tyler perfected the image with a few subtle finishing touches:
In related news, I’ve found a place that sells supplements for dogs (Vecado) and provides recipes for making your own dog food. (The commercial bags of kibble are way too expensive — like two to three times the price of regular food).
I’ve also got a dehydrator and am trying to work out how best to make sweet potato chews (I mummified the life out of the last batch; Doug wouldn’t eat them).
So I hope to finally transition Doug to being a plant-based doggo. Despite bone-headed comment sections (“Dogs are carnivores! How do I know this? Because I’m insisting on the internet!”), dogs have been omnivores eating our scraps for about 30,000 years, and it seems Doug can get everything he needs with real food and the right supplements. He’ll also not be subjected to the same needless Standard American Diet diseases humans get — which are, apparently, what kills most dogs, too.
I’ve felt out of integrity about the food issue since we got Doug. Technically, I wouldn’t buy animal-derived food when I could help it, but that’s just abdicating responsibility.
Fingers crossed I can find a solution that isn’t too expensive, too much work, and that Doug will enjoy. Given how much he always wants our food, I figure he won’t miss the kibble.
Hopefully I can get this implemented before Craig gets home so there’s a routine and he won’t have to figure out what to do with this stuff.
And, finally, I reworked my website last night, since switching to Apple stuff meant I lost access to the Windows program I used before to create my site. Hopefully everything still works, and naturally I want to redo bits — like the front page.