since a chart of the moods in this diary would look something like the drive from the prairies through the rocky mountains (medicine hat, calgary, banff, revelstoke, and then back down), it feels simultaneously stupid but appropriate to write that i am not doing well.

today i heard about this phenomenon in iceland - although i don't know if you can call it a phenomenon, something that just is; today i heard that because of the cold and the dark and the general impossibility of socializing during the deepest depths of winter, there is a cultural phenomenon in iceland, where people take winter-lovers.

like a summer-fling, but backwards. instead of having someone for the season of bikinis and tan lines and sunburns and parks, of aperol spritzers and sunsets and long days, you have someone for the weeks after the time change, when it's possible to go a whole weekend without seeing any sunlight but the silver fog you saw on your way home from the bar, when it's possible to spend two days in a row in bed, thinking, "if someone calls me, i'll get up". this way, there's someone there, in the warm place you retreat to after work, there's someone in the bed that takes so much longer to heat up (much better than too-hot-to-touch summer nights), there's someone to fucking remind you that there are no ghosts in your bathroom, that you do like to do things other than get high, that you do have hobbies, a brain, a sense of humour, but most of all that just because it is so god damn cold and dark does not mean you have to be cold, dark, and alone.

so yeah. winter-lovers. it's not a thing here.