Our dog Barnaby is having a tough year. First, our puppy Taffy showed up; he clearly has mixed feelings about her (though he’s warming up). Then he had his Torn Piece of Leg surgery, which had a long recovery. This week, he had an injury that wasn’t very serious, but icky, so I won’t say more. The main challenge? Getting him to take his pills. Barnaby has become extraordinarily wily about eating around a piece of steak or spoonful of peanut butter so that the food disappears, but the pill remains. It’s hard because we can’t explain to him, “This will make you feel better.” It pains me to see how baffled he is by why we keep imposing all this unpleasantness on him. Today, we got a pill dispenser; we’ll see if that helps.
Onward,
5 Things Making Me Happy
We’re about to enter the season of gift-giving, and I loved this fun gift-giving game from the Strategist. Think Secret Santa mixed with White Elephant—but more fun than either. A terrific way to prompt your imagination for possible gifts.
Lori Gottlieb and I are having a great time working on our new advice podcast, Since You Asked. One recent episode was particularly fun because we were joined by husband-and-wife team Mandy Patinkin and Kathryn Grody. I restrained myself from repeating that famous line from the brilliant movie, The Princess Bride: “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” In the episode, Mandy and Kathryn both had some very surprising advice to suggest.
I’m interested in the presentation of information, so I’m a huge fan of Charles-Joseph Minard’s renowned map of Napoleon’s disastrous Russian campaign of 1812-13. The closer you look, the more information you realize is presented—about the size of Napoleon’s forces, geography, rivers, temperature, time, and more—in an elegant, easily graspable way. If you want to learn more about the map, I highly recommend Edward Tufte’s brilliant, beautiful, and horribly named book, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information.
However, one absolutely key factor is not depicted on Minard’s map. As the article “Napoleon Wasn’t Defeated by the Russians” points out, more recent research indicates that the Grande Armée lost a huge number of its troops due to…lice. The lice carried typhus, which was responsible for 80,000 deaths within just the first month of the campaign. Thanks to Simon Haisell, who pointed out this fact in a recent Footnotes and Tangents newsletter as part of the slow read of War and Peace.
Speaking of the visual display of quantitative information, I love color, and one of the most satisfying ways to grasp color is to hold the iconic box of 64 Crayola crayons. This infographic shows the evolution of Crayola crayon colors from 1903-2010. (Ask me about my unpublished hooky project, My Color Pilgrimage. I’m determined to do something with it in 2026.)
’Tis the Season to Set Boundaries
This year, say NO to festive overload. Join Clementine’s Christmas Confessional — a fun, anonymous way to tell Santa what you’re done with. We’ll share the top 12 NO’s and send you a small gift to help you keep your boundaries.
This week on Happier with Gretchen Rubin
PODCAST EPISODE: 561
Need Some Fresh Ideas for Gift-Giving? Here Are Many Great Suggestions
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