Current music:

Electric Avenue - Eddy Grant

The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers
I'm seeing someone, and it's gotten pretty serious pretty fast. My first thought was, "I've gotta get into therapy, before I fuck this up!"

I'm cautious, but happy. She's smart, pretty, outgoing, snugly, and cheerful to the bone; a Tigger to my Charlie Brown.

She's a doctor; well-developed compassion paired with clinical pragmatism.

She once messaged me from the O.R.: "I'm so in love with you! Perhaps my happiness is inappropriate; I'm doing an organ harvest right now. It's a fascinating procedure! Can't wait to tell you about it."

A keeper, for sure.

Her cheerful agreeableness is juxtaposed with my neurotic angst. I worry it'll cause friction, but she seems to like my faults. I think I spew uneasy disquietude; she thinks I'm complicated and frank. Maybe we go together like sugar and salt? Anyhow, between us both there seems to be enough willingness, joie de vivre, intelligence, patience, and love to go around.

---

Half-way through our first date I had decided it wasn't going to work out. "Smile and make conversation, grab the check, get on with life." I had a list of little reasons: she was too stable and "good" (drugs: never; running: daily), a church-goer (Unitarian), wanted kids, not my type. I've always seen myself with a driven, conflicted woman with caustic attitude. Dorothy Parker meets Jennifer Jason Leigh, with a splash of Tina Fey?

Also she seemed to be probing me, and I judged by her body language that I wasn't satisfying enough check-boxes.

But there was never an awkward silence. That's key, I think. After enough wine we both relaxed. She offered me a ride home. "A drunk-driving-doctor - that's a good one."

"I'm not drunk!"

"OK then. Well, if we die..." and I slid my arms around her waist and kissed her. She said, "...squish!"

Seven weeks later we went to Maui together. Rented a Mustang convertible (named "Rose") and a condo on the beach. We swam in the ocean every day; she taught me how to say "humuhumunukunukuapua'a" ("triggerfish with snout like a pig").

Life is good.