*This month’s blog entry
comes from Smugglers’ Inn’s seating hostess and recent University of
Minnesota J-school grad, Catherine “Cat” Pike.
To winter, whose name is
Sebastian:
How do I know your name is
Sebastian? Because everyday that I
wake up and look around, I see that you’ve left something else for me to pick
up. We hadn’t heard too much of
you these last three years, Sebastian—not that anyone was concerned. Maybe it was too much to expect you to fade away entirely, but now you’re back in my life and worse than ever. I expected you to split before
Valentine’s Day, if only to avoid buying me a present. Well, February 14 came and went and I
didn’t get crap. It was nine below
and snowing this Valentine’s Day at the airport. I don’t know why Minnesotans measure temperatures at the
airport, unless it’s entertaining to watch the reactions of people who’ve
disembarked from planes originating in cities in Florida and Texas step from baggage claim into a breeze that freezes their eyelids open. You’re so cruel; I can’t believe I ever liked you. It was only because you showed up right
as I was discovering snowboarding. I confused the endorphin high I'd earned from conquering my fear of the half-pipe with falling in love.
Looking back, I must have
been mad. What else could explain
how I, practically a college graduate, moved in with you three weeks after
buying my first pair of mittens?
Alarm bells should have gone off when you couldn’t cover your half of
the damage deposit. You told me
that that you were waiting on a $5,500 check for having worked that fall on
domestic caviar farm. Shoot me,
but when you talked about how you raised sturgeon from tiny minnows into giant
adults with individual names and personalities, I believed you. How you must have laughed telling your
friends about the idiot meal ticket you’d lucked upon. Wait! I forgot; you don’t have friends.
Why am I going on? Sebastian or winter or whatever you’re
calling yourself these days, you should never have come back. Remember how I put your crap out in the
yard and then it immediately rained?
I don’t believe that was an accident. I think God saw it there and said, “Hey, this is that D-bag, Sebastain's, crap. I recognize it
from all the horrible charcoal drawings.
Didn’t he cheat on that nice girl who still talks to me whenever she’s
sad and alone? What was her
name? Cat! Yes, Sebastian cheated on Cat. With her best friend’s little sister, no
less. My self! Is that the entire
Twilight collection in paperback?
I’m gonna dump, like, two Sea World aquariums on that.”
You have 72 hours, Sebastian. If, by March, I cannot tell that the
lawn is made of grass (albeit grass littered with fast food containers and
dissolving piles of dog poo), I’m playing the god card. I’m not really ready for the Rapture,
but if it takes the end of life as we know it to be able to go outside without
a parka and a snow shovel, so be it.
