Pickles & Dimes

We went camping at our favorite campground, Baylor. There were 16 of us there, plus six dogs, but the campground sites are h-u-g-e, so each dog got their own tree and no one got tangled in a messy knot of dog cable. There was even room for the carnivorous mosquitoes, despite me spraying myself repeatedly with bug spray containing 29% DEET, and before I finally went to bed super early one night just to avoid the jerks, one of them bit me in the side, leaving a ginormous bite that would balloon up to the size of Brock Lesnar because it was in the precise spot as my shorts waistband. (Four days later, it’s still huge.)

Besides the bugs, it was a marvelous weekend. Shorty was wonderful; he hardly barked unless another dog startled him awake with their own barking, or when he saw some horses for the first time during the parade. (You could tell his frantic barking meant, “WTF are these things?!? Dear god we’re all going to die!”) But he met all kinds of strangers and never barked once, leading one of our friends to say, “He’s matured.” A little girl from another campsite came over to pet him and half-squatted down, leading Shorty to try to climb into her half-lap. (That dog is the definition of a lap dog, I swear. You bend over to pick something off the ground and he’s trying to crawl into your lap.)

The kids were beside themselves: they had glow sticks, water guns, giant balloons and a 3-in-1 toy that served as a flashlight, glow stick and whistle (we didn’t tell them about the whistle part).

I’m pretty sure this was the tree hideout of the bird that crapped on my hand as I was eating my delicious dinner of tacos. He kept up the crap catapulting until we moved the picnic tables, but not before he delivered three or four more direct hits, hitting a plate of tortilla chips and a container of lettuce. Stupid sniper bird! His aim was deadly.

When we got home, we discovered someone left us a stowaway: Dolly Woodboy! Argh. Jason had me put him in the garage on our bikes and I’ll tell you what: the next six times I went into the garage that night I responded the same way: “GAAAAAAH!”

Then Jason wanted to put Dolly in Shorty’s kennel with him, but HAHAHHAHA. No way, Jose. Shorty barked his head off until we apologized and backed out of his room sheepishly. So while his barking at strangers has improved dramatically, his barking at creepy dolls is still at an all-time high. Which is good, because my nightmare is that that stupid doll will break out of the garage and try to kill us in our sleep.