Pox girl and the Phobic

Okay, he's truly, clinically phobic about germs, the new boyfriend. Nobody is perfect, right?
I tell myself I don't need to take this on. I really don't. Not my problem.

But he's phoned twice trying to make it up. The second call, I'm virally teary, offended and depressed and ask in a somewhat hysterical, quavering voice, what other phobias might be looming - homophobia? racism? Because those are real deal breakers I tell him. He assures me he is not a Nazi or harboring either of those peculiarities.

He asks if he can see me after I go to the doctor tomorrow. "After all," he argues, "I'm not going to get over the phobia sitting here alone." And he's proud that he's already made it past the discovery of a tattoo on my upper left arm - tattoos apparently being related to the germ-thing. He's thinking maybe he can conquer fear of germs and viruses next. "That's what you need alrighty, a tattooed, virus-ridden girlfriend for therapeutic purposes." He agrees enthusiastically. As if he can tell that I see his point and seem to be moving him out of potential ex-new-boyfriend to probationary-new-boyfriend status.

What can I tell you? What passes for my love life is, at least, not boring. And did anyone see "Aviator?" Because Howard Hughes was a pretty interesting guy before he went completely off his rocker. Okay. Never mind. Fire at will.

Peter Cottontail is dead

It is a typical January day. Steady heavy snowfall has dropped a white cover over the world outside my window, the temperature is heading for minus one Celsius, and the weather sadists predict that it will taper off sometime tomorrow morning, after which the wind will increase to 70K per hour. The temperature will still be a minus.

It is In between Saturday, the day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. April 7th, in case you aren't catching my drift. The time of year I expect to see small purple and yellow flowers emerging from the earth. The season in which I send my winter coat to the dry cleaners and start trying to remember where I put my sandals. When the dead straw covering the ground turns a miraculous green.

No. Apparently not.

And even though I have lived in this provincial outpost of hell for twenty-one years, my poor rigid brain cannot seem to accept the idea that Spring, in the Canadian maritimes, is more of a concept than an event.

I take it personally.

It is on my list of questions for the Supreme Being. It is on my list of Critical Design Flaws. Not to mention the fact that I'd like to inquire as to whether the Supreme Being thinks this is funny or simply dislikes an entire block of the north Atlantic and everyone who sails on her.

This paranoia is, of course, ego-maniacal self-pity of the grandest magnitude, when you consider real natural disasters. I mean tsunamis. I mean earthquakes and Hurricane Katrina. And the unnatural natural disasters spawned by our love of comfort and fossil fuel. I tell myself that, but I continue to sulk.

I sulk and I read "In a Sunburned Country" for the second time. I long to be in Australia - a place where plants and rocks are a strange and beautiful blue-grey. Where it is late summer.
Or in Cuba or Brazil - wearing a red dress to set off my gorgeous sunburn, drinking tequila or rum and gazing at flowers. Hell. I would settle for Vancouver where it's just as grey but the precipitation is not solid and the temperature is...seasonally appropriate.

Here, Spring may not come at all. One day in late May or Early June, it will become summer. It will shock our cold whithered systems into stupidy. It will be humid. Or not. Sometimes summer is also a concept - at least until September, when it becomes glorious, hot and sunny - just at the time I'm thinking I should find my winter coat. July could be lovely...warm and sun-drenched or, then-again, foggy and rain-soaked every single day for the entire month.

Fortunately for me, I have a book and enough cheap red wine to blur my eyesight if that's the only escape. And I can cheer myself with the fact that I haven't been waiting all winter to ride a motorcycle. Now those guys are suffering.

Tickets to anywhere else gratefully accepted. But be patient. Because if the ticket is for outside Canada, thanks to the new US border-crossing regulations, our passport offices are 127,000 passport applications behind - and my passport has expired.