Day 12, July 10th, Living in Girdwood, AK

Tess and the Garage:
Tess loves the garage. As a matter of fact, she may love the garage more than I do. I’d say she spends a good hour a day just walking around on all the different levels of it smelling stuff. Sometimes she runs laps around the truck or up and down the stairs, but mostly she just hangs out in there. At times it feels a bit like she’s a teenager hanging out in her room. If I pop my head in there to check on her she kind of gives me this look like “What? What are you doing here? I’m not doing anything wrong. I’m just hanging out!!! Jeeze Mom. Can’t a kid have a little privacy?!?!” As long as I don’t find her in there doing drugs and having sex with the dog next door it seems innocent enough to me.

Our Salvaged Adventure for the Day:
This Friday I had planned on working until about 1pm and then taking off early for a camping adventure of some sort. Unfortunately, at about 11am, I started feeling really woozy and dizzy. I don’t know if it was something about the way my computer screen was set up, the after effects of drinking crappy Mike’s Hard Lemonade (although I only had one!), or just something that my body was going through, but my head was spinning and I felt like I was going to vomit. So, I pushed the departure time back and just went horizontal on the futon, hoping that the feeling would subside. Tess, always the trusty hound, curled up right next to me and kept me company.

At around 3pm, when I still wasn’t feeling quite right, I decided to postpone the camping trip until tomorrow, cancel OFFF for the day, and keep resting on the couch. By about 5pm, I was feeling a *little* better, but still a pretty off. And, by 6pm, I was a little depressed about the “wasted” day and Tess was ready to explode because she hadn’t pooped yet and she was refusing to go anywhere near the house.

So, I decided that I would take her down to the train tracks for a very easily little stroll in an attempt to get her to DILIH. We got to the train tracks, Tess completed Operation DILIH, and we started to head back to the truck when I remembered the strawberry patch that we had passed earlier in the week. Sure enough, when we strolled over to it, it had clearly been picked through, but there were still plenty of wild strawberries left to enjoy. So, I pulled out a plastic bag and started picking. Tess wasn’t all that helpful, because she tends to step on the berries, but she did have her bear bell on, and that might have helped ward off some bears. It is fairly reasonable to be wary of bears while you are bent over picking through one of their food sources, so I started whistling as well. I did get a couple of mosquito bites while we were picking strawberries, but I didn’t care. I was too giddy about finding this free bounty on the side of the road. I love Alaska!

Tess and I stopped off at the mercantile on the way home and picked up some pancake mix and syrup to go along with our pound of wild berries. Guess who is having strawberry pancakes in the morning?! And all because Tess had to poop!

Man I love my dog! Good girl Tess. Good Girl!