You went to Canada for Garth. Your digital courtship brief, but consuming. After hours of searching underground blogs for the perfect venue for your first in-person meet, you found, and now sit in, the hippest bar in all of Canada, while pretending it’s the Ace Hotel. You’re on a love seat in an empty corner, enjoying your trademark root beer float. Just the thought of Garth sets the butterflies in your stomach aflutter. As you sip your delicious frozen subtlety you wonder what will happen when he does walk through that door, where will you go, what will you end up doing?

Hey Mama, I know a pack of starving zombies is rapidly approaching our house, but I’d like to try putting my socks on by myself today.

I can see what you’re thinking: Why the socks, why today? I believe it was Dr. Maria Montessori who said, “It is necessary that the child teach himself, and then—”

Big reaction! Do you need the Calm Down Corner? Some belly breaths?

Those dishes in the sink will not get done, so you may as well stop asking about them. And if you dare raise the subject again I will continue to reply using passive constructions, as the dishes exist in a realm that has nothing to do with me, though relatively speaking they are beneath me. That should explain damn-near everything, but given your countenance, I feel obliged to elaborate.

We meet in dank basements under the light of exposed bulbs that glow so weakly, they remind us of beacons in a fog. We meet in quiet parks, where the only others present are women pushing baby carriages. If a real baby occupies the carriage, the woman probably isn’t a law enforcement officer. We meet in the storage rooms of grimy restaurants, where outdated calendars hang between shelves stacked with cans of dehydrated bacon bits. We meet anywhere we won’t be watched.

Above all, be sure that your second home is located in a picturesque, isolated spot, preferably one you have seen only fleetingly in a realtor’s brochure. Mountain precipices and small spits of sand which shift with prevailing tides are generally ideal. For those on a fixed income, any location surrounded by quicksand can be made to serve quite nicely. One knows one has probably chosen the appropriate location when one is unable to find it again.