The prescription dog

This news headline caught my eye today: Oregon man’s prescription dog found. It’s a story with a happy ending about a man who suffers from depression and who lost his “anti-depressant canine”. I love the idea of companion dogs (or cats) being assigned to mental health patients, just like I’m a fan of programs like Pups on Parole. The animals get love and attention, and the humans get company, and in some cases, lessons in empathy and compassion.

I’m keeping busy getting prepped for Thanksgiving. For one thing, my email box is full of “Thanksgiving wishes” from all sorts of companies—I particularly enjoy the one from a sushi restaurant, and it caused Flippy and I to think of new types of holiday sushi rolls like turkey and cranberry, stuffing and sweet potato, etc.

I also received one of those “pre-fab” trivia newsletters from a mortgage company, and one of the tidbits of info in it is, “With so many colorful character balloons floating above New York’s streets in Macy’s annual Thanksgiving Day parade, it’s no surprise that the well known department store chain is the second-largest consumer of helium in the world, topped only by the U.S. government.” So there you go… you can now imagine GWB and pals sitting around the Oval Office, huffing helium and talking like Minnie Mouse.

I’ve got a 17 lb. turkey in the fridge thawing, and I may end up cooking it for family dinner on Thursday, although I’m not sure yet. Someone has to cook it, so either I cook it and take it to dinner, or we deliver it to the cook’s house on Wednesday. I don’t mind cooking, but with so many pets, I always worry that my food creations will end up with pet hair in them.

I don’t think it’s ever happened, but I’d feel horrible if someone took a bite of stuffing and found a cat whisker. I need to design some sort of vacuum-chamber for the kitchen, so I can cook while all displaced crumbs and bits of things get sucked out of the air. Someone please invent that for me before Thursday morning.