… and maybe, just a little bit of … pixie dust.

What was I thinking, really, running off to Dublin and letting myself … well, letting myself fall into I don’t know what, exactly, with strange men who talk a good game but might, in the end, really just be a lot of sweet talk, and why should I even dream they’d be more than that, in the space of a week and the distance of heartbeats times the depth of an ocean …

No. I don’t care if that made any sense. The point is, it’s all well and good to go off and have adventures, and then leave things where you find them and return to a life in the order you left it. It’s maybe even okay to come home with a slight change in perspective to go with your memories of fun and adventure.

But any kind of falling into any sort of anything is just a bad, bad plan.

When I took my solo trip to Newfoundland, there was the drunk lawyer on Water Street, who was just cute enough and so besotted I allowed him to kiss me, there on the street, in an alcove in front of the bank that I realized later probably had security cameras, but whatever. And there was also the man in the pub, who pulled me into his arms and danced me round the room and then into his lap for kissing. Silliness and fun that stopped where it started because where it started was public and I wouldn’t be pushed any farther and couldn’t be convinced to go home with them.

I’m just not keen to play that way, anymore. Waaaaaaaaaayyy too many hazards, and I’m quite happy on my own, thank you very much.

I don’t know where the cracks in my armour came from. I should have noticed they were there the very first night when his hand on my knee gave me butterflies. But I didn’t clue in, not till a few nights later, in yet another pub, when another lad made a play and asked if he could kiss me, and I let him, and all I could think was you are not the man I want. I let him walk me part way back to the hotel (not all the way, I didn’t want him to know where it was) and we stopped and I danced in a soap bubble fountain, all the while thinking of my own sweet man and how much I was wishing it was him I was with.

Except, he’s not my own sweet man and he can’t be. And now I need to get my head back in order and remember the way things work and stop dreaming the life we might share. (There’s a cute little house, and a tea shop, and chickens and bees, because we all know I need chickens, and bees, and there’s me working on the side as a birth companion, herbalist, and nutrition consultant for new mothers, and he is painting, and making jewellery, and organizing events at the tea shop, and don’t even think about asking me about the christmas wedding or the sweet little baby toddling ’round the tea shop.)

Nooooooo. This has got to stop.

Because everyone knows dreaming is a whole lot more dangerous than kissing strangers.