{"id":15016,"date":"2018-03-19T09:04:00","date_gmt":"2018-03-19T13:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/hameblog\/2018\/03\/19\/birthdays-and-carnage\/"},"modified":"2025-09-12T07:50:33","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T10:50:33","slug":"birthdays-and-carnage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/2018\/03\/19\/birthdays-and-carnage\/","title":{"rendered":"Birthdays and Carnage"},"content":{"rendered":"

My Dad\u2019s 83rd birthday was this weekend, which in itself is quite an achievement, I figure.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

I was stuck about what to draw for his card \u2014 surely not another flat cartoon of him in his wheelchair \u2014 so I stopped for a moment and thought about some happy memory I could portray.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\"Dad\u2019s<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

This, of course, was also the occasion for my next cakewreck \u2014 this time a chocolate cake with cocoa-avocado frosting (better than it sounds) and a peanut butter caramel drizzle (which didn\u2019t thicken and just soaked in, but at least tasted good).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

What we didn\u2019t eat at dinner Saturday evening, I brought to the home yesterday, and we shared it with the staff. Everyone seemed to like it \u2014 so there\u2019s another bit of food activism: \u201cVegan food isn\u2019t lifeless, and is more than tofu.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

My Comics Club friend Tyler<\/a> perfected the image with a few subtle finishing touches:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\"cakewreck<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

In related news, I\u2019ve found a place that sells supplements for dogs (Vecado<\/a>) and provides recipes for making your own dog food. (The commercial bags of kibble are way too expensive \u2014 like two to three times the price of regular food).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve 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\u2019t eat them).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

So I hope to finally transition Doug to being a plant-based doggo. Despite bone-headed comment sections (\u201cDogs are carnivores! How do I know this? Because I\u2019m insisting on the internet!\u201d), 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\u2019ll also not be subjected to the same needless Standard American Diet diseases humans get \u2014 which are, apparently, what kills most dogs, too.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve felt out of integrity about the food issue since we got Doug. Technically, I wouldn\u2019t buy animal-derived food when I could help it, but that\u2019s just abdicating responsibility.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Fingers crossed I can find a solution that isn\u2019t too expensive, too much work, and that Doug will enjoy. Given how much he always wants our food, I figure he won\u2019t miss the kibble.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Hopefully I can get this implemented before Craig gets home so there\u2019s a routine and he won\u2019t have to figure out what to do with this stuff.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 like the front page.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My Dad\u2019s 83rd birthday was this weekend, which in itself is quite an achievement, I figure. I was stuck about what to draw for his card \u2014 surely not another flat cartoon of him in his wheelchair \u2014 so I stopped for a moment and thought about some happy memory I could portray. I immediately […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15016\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}