number 4 maybe

(In Portugal) So M, the Canadian, decides he will walk with me, a couple days after the bathroom incident. I've been having trouble with my feet (and I'm cranky all day-he does eventually tell me he prefers to walk alone)...I will figure out at about day 7 or 8 that in addition to walking on cobblestone and in ditches, it's that the orthodics don't fit my boots, but that's not today.

A few hours into the walking, it's a Saturday, lots of people harvesting grapes, tractors everywhere, etc, we stop so I can re-tape my feet. This black puppy comes running over from a nearby house and starts jumping up on where we are sitting, on us, and rolling in the tape I'm trying to put on my foot. It's woman eventually calls it home, but when she disappears, and we are about to start walking again, it returns with a friend, a tiny dog. They start walking with us. M gets ahead of me and the dogs stay with me, running along at my feet and looking up at me all cheerful. We go through forest, into another village, and I try to stop and yell at them to go home. They don't listen to me. We continue on for a couple more miles. They look thirsty, seem to be getting tired. I stop and try to yell at them again. No luck. We carry on. Cross a highway. Enter a vineyard with tractor traffic. I begin to worry about how they are going to get home. I fantasize about how I can get them home. I haven't a clue of the name of the place where I picked them up, plus I can't speak Portuguese much. I imagine having to call a taxi and load them in and paying the man in hopes he returns them. I imagine, I'll have to go along and not have enough money to get myself back and will have to walk this whole distance again. I see M in the distance. Laughing. Filming the whole thing. He shows it to me later. I look mean, and the dogs are nipping at my feet, happily. (I know I was thinking, "If I don't pay attention to them, if I act like I don't want them around, maybe they will leave." But it's no good. They like me, and they are out for an adventure.) M finally screams at them enough that they turn around and trot off in the opposite direction. I keep looking back to see if they are following, hoping they don't get hit by a car. They were freakin' adorable. And I love that they showed up on the day of my worst mood. M threatened to write stories about both the dog and the bathroom.

Off to find some jokes now. Crap. Haven't found any that I think are particularly funny. Maybe it's in the delivery. Maybe I'll have to go with my doctor's joke.

Three more hours and I still need to write the other thing.