steve

The morning did not start well. When you've rolled out of bed around 10 am for 4 of the past 5 days, 6:30 is way fucking early. I didn't recognize myself when I went to the bathroom to brush my teeth, due to, 6 of one/half dozen the other, either my disarray or my inability to focus my eyeballs.

But I finished my bits of packing, including getting all of my christmas presents into my two wee bags. Shelley and Steve gave me all sorts of lovely and delicious things made in Halifax, including a top which is a brighter colour than I normally wear, but makes my tits look almost shockingly large. And then these slippers, which I fucking love. Maybe I'll wear them with the merino socks my uncle gave me. Apparently, word on the cold feet has gotten out.

My cab was supposed to come at 7:20 or 7:25. I booked it yesterday, talking to a slow-talking and kinda confused sounding man. It worried me. My choice for the Share-A-Cab was to get there for 7 am - 1 hour early - or 8 am - 10 minutes late. I generally don't like to cut it too close, but the difference between 7 and 8 feels like more than an hour.

At 7:24 my nerves had nerved up and I thought "Okay, they've got till 7:40 and then I'm calling." At 7:37, I thought fuck it and dialed them. The slow-talking man came on the line.

"Hi, I'm Megan Butcher. I booked a cab to show up at Number Number This Street at 7:20 this morning."

"Oh. Huh. What's your name?"

"Megan. Butcher."

He's flipping madly through what sound like scraps of paper.

"Oh. Huh. When did you make the reservation?"

"Yesterday. With you." I was not my nicest self.

"Well. Well! It's just gone! I don't have your name anywhere. Huh!"

Silence.

I break.

"Oooohkay. My flight is at 8:50. Can you get me a cab?"

"Oh. Huh. Well. Unh, I can maaaaybe get someone to you by 8:20 or 8:30."

It takes around a half hour to get to the airport.

"No. Thank you. I will call someone else."

The first cab company I picked at random from the yellow pages had someone already in the North End and at the house in 5 minutes. I got to the airport with time to spare, but paid more than twice the price for the privilege. On the way there, I was thankful that I am now in a financial situation where that is an inconvenience and not an impossibility.

While I was waiting for the first cab, I flipped through the cookbook I gave Shelley: a copy of my go-to cookbook, The Vegetarian Express Lane Cookbook. It is getting damn hard to come by these days, and that is a damn shame for lazy cooks everywhere. 10 items or less! A limited but tasty palette of herbs and spices! Crazy that's it's out of print. After she opened it, I used bingo dabbers to mark the recipes I particularly liked. Last night, I made the White Beans and Sage, and we ate it at the beautiful table that Steve made, with a nice Pinot Grigio and candlelight. Like a date without the incipient heartbreak.

Steve's present wasn't necessarily the most thoughtful gift I've ever given him, insofar as it was originally a present for someone else. But these mittens are the most beautiful things I have ever knit, so I hope that fact and warm fingers makes up for the lack of thoughtfulness. I also gave him a scarf to match, though it came with the needles still in. The bazillion episodes we watched of The I.T. Crowd ("Hello? Hel-LO! Hel-lo, Computor!") helped me get through nearly another ball-unit of yarn. There's gonna have to be a lot more TV before the S's get here in a couple of weeks if'n I'm gonna get it finished.

If I'd been smart, I wouldn't have written much over the past few days, cause now I got these pictures, but I'm all storied out. Enh, it's late, so no story, just two of my favourite creatures on a spit of land at Cow Bay.

For the first couple of days after Eric arrived in the 'fax, he and I had a running conversation about which one of us was on vacation and which one was on holiday. It went a little something like this:

"Nice to be on vacation, eh?"
"Or holiday."
"True." I paused to absorb the possible thesauratic implications of this. "Wait. Holiday?"
"Yeah. We're on different kinds of trips."
"Ah. Gotcha."

But you know, I didn't gotcha. I mulled it over. The next day:

"So okay. Which one of us is on holiday and which one of us is on vacation, then?"
"Well, you can't have a working holiday, but you can have a working vacation. You did the pride booth and you're doing a reading. So you're on vacation and I'm on holiday, because I'm not doing anything at all like work."

Right.

Conversations like that are one of the many reasons I feel unbelievably lucky to have found Eric.

Another couple days later, about 10 hours into our 36 Hours of Food Poisoning No Fun, I wandered into our bedroom from the living room, where I had been alternately reading the shittiest mystery ever, passing out, worrying that I might puke again, and feeling very very sorry for myself. Exhausted from the 15 foot trip, I sat heavily on the side of the bed. He woke up.

"Hi baby. How are you."
He blinked an owly gravol blink at me. It wasn't a real question anyway.
"So. Is this a holiday or a vacation?"
That got me a smile.
"This is a vacation from our holiday."

Neither of us had ever had food poisoning before. And even now, we're not sure. We spent a lot of time walking around out in the sun without hats and not drinking very much water. Because we're, you know, bright like that.

The trip actually ended up being quite a few firsts, the big ones being our first long trip together and the first sick together. Considering the fact that I miss him terribly after spending 6 nights and days with him in a fairly small room, I think we did alright.

The start of our Romantic Food Poisoning was Wednesday. Wednesday night was going to be a really fun night for Eric, Shelley, Steve, Aurèle and A's brother Phil. We were gonna see rock and roll on the high seas. Or, more precisely, the Maynards on the tall ship Silva.

Early in the evening, Shelley made us a delicious dinner of tofu and greens and rice, and then Eric and I wandered downtown for drinks with A. and P. We ended up at the Split Crow for power hour - a buck a beer from 9 to 10.

(This picture is the closest I will ever get to looking like a beer commercial girl. That is A. to my left, looking blurrily bemused.)

Ah! I can hear you saying, Megan! Sweetie! When you drink too much buck-a-beer beer, you don't get *food* poisoning.

But my response is ready: I was about to go on a boat and take gravol. So I drank only about a third of a glass to be polite, and then sat there, waiting to get anxious about being late for the ship.

We weren't late. In fact, we spent quite a bit of time waiting on the pier, where to pass the time I took a few picture of the stomach ache that was starting to get quite poky.

Apparently, the show was quite good. Nausea felled me early on and I missed it all. I did spend about 10 minutes of one band above deck, but I was shaking so badly that Steve lent me his hoodie to put on top of the sexy little t-shirt, 2 sweaters, jacket number I was already sporting, and A. gave me a fistful of ice. I stared stupidly at my fingers gripping it as my arm went numb. "It always makes me feel better," A. said, shrugging. The fact that it didn't totally give me the creeps meant that it felt pretty good.

Then I ran downstairs because I thought I was going to throw up. Eric came down not long after and stroked my hair and showed me the pictures he was taking of the actual party. I could hear the bands really well, so it was almost like being on deck. Shelley and Steve kept coming down for very nice visits too, taking care of me and keeping me company, even though the gravol had taken away most of my sentences. Though I do believe it is one of the few times in my life I have muttered "Yes, I would like to put my head in your lap," without the slightest whiff of salaciousness.

I worried for quite a while that I was wrecking people's fun, because E. and S. and S. kept having to come downstairs to visit me. But then, even in the haze, I realized that if I had said no I can't go, none of us likely would have been anywhere near the music. So this, really, was a happy medium.

That everyone was so nice to me is one of the many reasons I feel unbelievably lucky to have found my friends.

Okay, so a lot more went on in Halifax than sickness and sentiment. But it's late and I'm still a little dragged out from being sick. Tomorrow, more.

I'm back at home now. Shelley and Steve are in Montreal. Next week they will be in Halifax. Permanently. Or pretty permanently.

A couple years ago, they moved from the middle of Centretown to Hintonburg.

"Will you still come visit me as much?" Shelley asked.

"Well, I'm sure I'll still see you as much, but I don't know about at your house. It's over the bridge."

I have a thing about bridges. They make what's on the other side seem that much further away.

We did see each other just as much, but I was right. I did not see them at their house nearly as much. Just too far.

Now, now I am kicking myself because there are a lot of bridges between Ottawa and Halifax and it seems very far away.