Snow Mermaids With Gender Issues

I finally had enough of trying, over the phone, to teach my ex how to attach a photo of himself to an email to send his new "girlfriend" in Moscow that he met through E personals. As punishment, he emailed me to say he won't deliver any mail that comes for me. Well I'm thrilled at this news. Any sentence that begins with "I won't be coming by..." is welcome, where he is concerned. Trouble is, I was expecting a GST cheque - a cheque for low income people to repay a minuscule portion of the overtaxing we suffer here in B.C. Canada. I had to make sure it didn't end up in his hands. The good news is, he doesn't have home mail delivery there, he has to pick it up at the village post office. So. I phoned the p.o., and asked them to hold my cheque in the back room. "Why, exactly?" the postal worker asked suspiciously.

Doesn't that seem nosey? It's my mail, after all. Anyway I got her to agree to it.

This afternoon I took the bus up Island Highway to the little backwards village where "ex" resides. It's a strange feeling to sneak into a town that size. The post office is about five minutes away from the haunted house where he lives, behind a wild, tangled, brambly hedge. It's probably a 95% chance that he might see me. That would be bad. He would surely try to lure me into the house, order me to set up this email for him, demand that I stay for dinner, refuse to take me home until he was good and ready, terrorise me until I ran out into the snow and down to the highway where I would realise there were no more buses, and I would be forced to walk the several hours journey home in the dark. Needless to say, I kept an ear open for the sound of his (mufflerless) car.

I produced my picture I.D. for the (very irritable) postal worker who gave me my precious cheque. Then I hurried up the highway to the little wooden bus stop, to wait for the bus that would take me safely home. Along the way I took photograghs. U.B. is a very picturesque town. It's spread along the sleepy Old Island Highway, and up a little ways into the low lying hills. On the opposite side of the highway is Baynes Sound. The ocean is so calm, you could be forgiven for thinking it was a lake. There are Islands out there, so near you can see their waterfront farms. I took photographs of the pretty little U.B. church with it's grounds blanketed in snow. I took photographs of the ocean. Someone had built a snow mermaid, so I took a half dozen shots of her.

When I reached the little bus stop, I joined a punky looking teenage girl who talked to me about hookers fighting in the streets of the neighbouring town, and how her 'boy' (meaning boyfriend - not her child) lives there so she has no choice but to go there occasionally, and how the Island has changed for the worse since the coming of Wallmart one year ago. It was interesting, she was nice, her bus came and she jumped up and down and yelled until it stopped, and then she was gone.

My own bus came a few minutes later. When I got to the small city/large town where I live, I went directly to the instabank. I had two cheques to cash - the GST, and another cheque that I'd found in my own mailbox here at my apartment this morning, from Yessy; an online store where I sell my photograph prints. I placed each cheque into a seperate envelope, and deposited them into my savings account where I am amassing money to buy a better camera.

Something went wrong with the instant teller. It wouldn't return my bank card. I began to think I'd absently taken it out already and put it away, so I looked feverishly through my purse and my pockets. It was then that I noticed there is an actual bank attached to the little instabank. I had always thought it was a store. I went inside. When I told the woman behind the counter that the instant teller had stolen my card, she refused to believe me, and actually put up an argument. "It would have beeped!" she insisted. "It would have beeped quite loudly!" Luckily another teller took pity on me, opened up the instabank with her key, and viola! She found my card! I thanked her profusely and rushed away, only to realise I'd left my bank card on the counter. "That card will be the death of her!" I heard the original, argumentative teller say to the nicer one. I didn't mind, it was sortof true.

*A strange little footnote to this tale: when I loaded my photographs into my computer, I noticed that the snow mermaid has a very large penis. I hadn't seen it before, although it's quite obvious. I must have looked strange to be taking so many photographs of it. ha.