Now: July 2026

Summer in NYC. It’s hot, the Knicks won the championship(!), the World Cup is underway, I turned 40, and life at the moment is a big question mark. I seem to be at a life transition point with no obvious path. Growing up I don’t think I considered past this moment in time.

We returned from our 🇯🇵 Japan trip in mid-June. It was a bit of a whirlwind vacation, typical highs and lows, but I’m already looking back fondly and forgetting the lows. I engaged in a ~~bit~~ lot of Japanese retail therapy, and have no regrets. I’ve been itching to go back for a decade, and I guess I needed to get it all out of my system. We’re already talking about the next time we go, which I suspect will be a lot more chill. The question is: Hokkaido or Okinawa?

I’ve been considering since the start of this year that I might have to look for auxiliary income after that trip was over, but now on the other side I have very little motivation to do so. I like working on Pika and it feels like momentum. We just shipped The Pika Pulse, I finally finished Tables, and I’m about to get back into Custom Embeds (🤫 if you’re seeing this on Pulse).

But I did make two big life changes this month:

Frozen “lickies” as a dog cheat code

Putting wet dog food in treat containers to be frozen — An almost weekly routine — these go in the freezer

I was creating more frozen dog lickies (as we call them) when it occurred to me this is something I could share with other dog owners as a dog cheat code.

We have a Blue Heeler mix who was a lot as a puppy, and we ended up with a few different trainers. The first one gave us this as homework. She made us buy these West Paw Toppl bowls, fill them with wet food, and freeze them. I put them in the plastic bowls just for the freezer, in case the food wants to seep out the front hole before freezing.

Between these and constant bully sticks, it taught our dog that, if she wanted to chew on something (which puppies are always trying to do), we had things she’s allowed to chew on. We’re still doing this ritual 4 years later and it’s her absolute favorite thing. It takes her some time to finish, is good for her, and it gives her something to focus on, so we like it too. They’re also easy to clean.

We’ve tried adding other food to them, like blueberries and other fruit, but our dog is a protein-first sort of dog, I guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Anyway, I highly recommend this! They don’t take much time to create once a week and throw in the freezer.

Hey Rhodie

It’s the last day of the week dog sitting for a friend. Everything’s copacetic today, excited to go home, but I want to revisit something I wrote on the first night we got here, but didn’t publish:

I’m writing this rant in the middle of my first night here in the Catskills (Kingston), house and dog sitting for a friend. I can’t sleep. When I do sleep, I’m having nightmares. My stomach is full of uncomfortable gas. The Hudson Valley is general beautiful, but the trains at night have always been so obnoxious, and this particular home we’re at has a nice indoors but the yard and driveway are full of mud from recent rain and melted snow—it’s not pleasant.

I’m feeling this way all because the dog we’re watching attacked my dog earlier today. It was quick but scary. I think I had a fight or flight response and my body hasn’t come down yet. This dog is crazy pants, never seen such high energy paired with extreme human possessiveness. My dog doesn’t stand a chance, and now I’m feeling like shit that I brought her to this unsafe location.

Can we last a week?

I didn’t hit publish because, as a not very prolific writer/blogger, I wasn’t ready for my third blog post here to just be an uncomfortable middle of the night rant. But this gives me a chance to revisit it.

Tagged “dog”