It’s only been about half a year we’ve lived without a dog. A half year out of pretty much my whole life. Yet in that half a year it seems I have forgotten about every … let’s just call it “eccentricity” … that makes a dog a dog.

I wrote something down the other day: “the difference between eccentric and crazy is measured in millimeters.” And it certainly applies here.

How have I forgotten all of these things? That dogs are unique, strange, complicated and totally quirky animals.
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“Keep your desk clean,” read the Post-It Note affixed to my desk. I might have seen it … if not for the pile of crap covering it over like a beaver’s den.

So much for the power of Post-Its.

Call it a new year’s resolution. Call it my desire to get organized, or to bring feng shui into my life. (Feng shui is a 3,000-year-old Chinese term for harnessing extraordinary power by arranging paper clips into geometric patterns on your desk. It could also be the name of a 3,000-year-old Chinese predecessor to IKEA. I don’t know.)

Anyway, it’s a new year and I’ve gone looking for organization. No more scraps of paper and endless to-do lists everywhere. No stacks and piles that make people think I’m building a bomb shelter. No boxes strewn about so that I have a 1-in-5 shot of blowing out my knee every time I head for the bathroom.
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I learned a few things over the Christmas holidays — things like this:

• That teaching a kid how to ride a bike without training wheels is harder than … well … having a kid in the first place. My wife might dispute that — I was on the much easier end of that one, I have been told. But she also wasn’t there the fateful day when I unscrewed the training wheels, took my daughter out and tried to set her loose. “Why are you doing this to me?” she screamed as she careened out of control, barely in my grasp. It was the kind of scream you make when you’ve been tethered to a castrated bull. “Give me back my training wheels!”
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If you’ve ever tried to buy Christmas tree lights the week of Christmas, you know it’s a fool’s errand. The store shelves are bare of white lights. The clerks think you have beanbags for a brain when you ask where they are.

“A little late in the game, aren’t you?” they say before pointing out a strand of cough-syrupy red lights long enough to wrap the Empire State Building. Or a box of twinkling snowflakes that look more like sickly amoeba.
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What do I want for Christmas? Peace on Earth and good will toward men.

Now stop asking!

It’s that time of year when family starts calling. Starts emailing. Starts prodding. Starts employing ESP on us. All in order to spirit away gift ideas, mainly for the resident 5-year-old.
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I guess it’s time.

Who really knows when it’s time? Or why? There’s no magical pop-up turkey timer to tell you. There’s no kit you can buy at the pharmacy — like a pregnancy test! — that will give you a digital thumbs up.

It’s just a gut feeling, I guess. Or when you think enough time has passed. Or you stop feeling guilty for even considering the thought. Like you’re some kind of traitorous, treasonous two-timer. Apologizing to thin air for even considering, much less petting, another dog.
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So much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving. So few words to write it in. Yet, I shall try …

I’m thankful that the turkey defrosted in time — Thank you, thank you, thank you … As the Thanksgiving cook in my family, I spend literally months worrying about this. The nightmares begin in September. I leap out of bed in the middle of the night drenched in sweat screaming, “It’s time to take the turkey out of the freezer! I have to take the turkey out of the freezer!”
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“Field trip chaperone,” read the yellow sticker slapped on my shirt.

It represented power … authority … responsibility … supervisity. (Sure, kindergarten chaperones shouldn’t be making up words, but the little yellow sticker left me drunk with power.)

It was my second run at “the big show” — a kindergarten expedition off the reservation.
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For some wild and unexplainable reason I agreed to go. Even though I pledged I never would. That it wasn’t important to me. That you could drop wild badgers down my shorts and I would still resist.

Then a friend sent an email. It started out, “Alright guys it has been 20 years,” and went on to say he wanted to get “the crew back together.”

The venue? Tampa Prep’s 20th high school reunion for the class of 1991.
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Brian Thompson’s “Life in a Nutshell” column, which runs weekly in the St. Augustine Record, won a first place award in the Florida Press Club’s 2011 Excellence in Journalism Competition for commentary writing in class C, which is daily newspapers with less than 40,000 circulation.

This is the third year in a row the column has won an award in the commentary category, and the fourth Press Club award for it.

The three columns that won were:
• Things you Never … EVER … Do with a Kid in the Room
• Every Moment Now Precious for a Dog with Cancer
• Answering the call of the ice cream truck