This is the number of years that Pete and I have been together. I stopped counting at 29 years – it was then quite a shock yesterday when he said no, we had not been together 29 years but rather 38 years. This is 12 years from 50 years. 50-year anniversaries – you see the photos in the newspapers, the gray haired woman and the doddering bald guy. This could end up being us.

Right now, Pete seems a lot healthier than me. He’s been going gung-ho on several house projects, and right now he is building a set of shelves in the porch area off the living room. Me, today I shop vacuumed the upstairs, getting several centuries of dust into the can. This took me two hours.

What we are doing here, some would call it sweat equity. Pete also made a strawberry pie for dinner and after, we’ll go riding.

Let’s see, together we have lived in 10 residences, mostly together. We’ve lived here at this residence for twenty years. We’ve owned four houses. We have co-owned five dogs, five horses, eight chickens, and seven goats, one of whom gave birth to three goats that we gave away.

We have co-owned 10 vehicles, or thereabouts. Seems to me like the odds have been in our favor. The odds are good but the good are odd.

Pete is now a full professor. I am executive director of the Bright Lights Book Project. We still have just one income, but fortunately Pete is a very good financial manager.

38 years. It only seems this long when I begin to bring the stories back to mind. Most of them center around places we lived and the animals that we shared space with. There was the cabin I was living in, in Fairbanks. Pete lived there when, that first winter, I went to New Zealand. I returned and we picked up where we left off. Pete has always been a very social guy, and he became friends with all our Cloudberry Land neighbors. He also had gotten a tomato garden going on the flat porch roof.

Our dog Bootleg who was a puppy when I left for New Zealand. She was full grown and on the small side when I got back. I remember taking her to meet Compositionist Donald Murray and his calling her an old wolf. She hung out with him in his work area, a room that was surrounded on three sides by glass. He really liked her. And I remember after we had her euthanized, we were driving home, and we saw a license plate that read “Old Wolf.”

Next: 186. 7/8/24: Up and Down

We went outside and got over educated – he returned to Fairbanks for a visit and took Bootleg with us. She remembered where she was. When our friend Sean saw the doddering old dog he said, “that’s classic!”

We got married and returned to Cloudberry Lane to tie the knot.

I could go on and on. In summation, a lot happened in 38 years.