In Idaho

This past weekend, my main squeeze, Sammy dog and I went to Idaho. We were right on the Priest River, and spent three full days truckin dirty, patio-living, river kids style.  The days were hot, and the river was perfect. Sammy dog even attempted an ill-fated swim off the dock.

Sammy dog is not what you would call a natural swimmer. I assume she’d have enough survival instinct to do a doggie-paddle and keep her head above water, but she sinks like a rock. I had just paddled away from the dock on a standup paddle board (#11, look at me doing shit!) , and my main squeeze had paddled out in a kayak when he heard a splash. He looked over his shoulder to see that Sammy had launched herself off the edge of the dock to join us on the river, and must have instantly remembered that she can’t swim. I imagine it went something like this. She turned around and was clinging to the dock for her dear puppy dog life. My man turned around and scooped her up and tossed her into the front of his kayak. From there, Sammy sat like a proud bowman watching our adventure out on the river.

Idaho wasn’t all sun-soaked fun. It turns out, I have a terrible reaction to bug bites. And, because we were living on the porch on the river, the land was lousy with bugs. Flying bugs, crawling bugs, jumping bugs, noisy bugs. Every single damn one bit me. Just me. There were four people out on the patio, all four of us spent the same amount of time outside, eating dinner, drinking, and playing Presidents and Assholes. The next morning, one person had five bites. Five. I got up to forty-five and stopped counting. And they had tiny little mosquito bites. I had these monstrous welts that were warm to the touch, swollen, and terrible to look at. Two days later, and I still look like I have a club foot and leprosy. I sent a picture text to mama B to get her opinion, and her helpful advice was to “wear pants in public for weeks.”

I was curious as to why I might be so afflicted with bites well others were fine, so I looked it up. This article suggested that the amount of carbon dioxide in breath, warmer body temperature, and odorants based on blood type led people to be bitten more than others. So then I looked up why one would have a higher level of carbon dioxide in their breath, and I went down the dark internet rabbit hole of searching, and landed on respiratory failure. I’m going to chose to believe that this does not apply to me.

Instead, let’s just go with the tired, cheesy line my man gave me, “it’s just because you’re so sweet.”