Panic is canceled! Everything’s as usual. You only get one life — and it might be gone soon. I had an attempt to end our relationships. But you know… 

Some stories are too rare to throw away just because one chapter got messy.

The messy part is that this story is so different. What is natural for one person is out of the standards for another. In four months we haven’t been to a bar even once. No date nights where two people sit at the bar, raising the buzz, flirting, losing control on purpose to then kiss passionately in a taxi, stumble out by the house, and — after a little puking on the street (classic me with alcohol) — keep raising the buzz at home.

None of that!

Everything’s with a clear head — so clear it’s almost uncomfortable. Because it’s unusual, I’ve never had anything like that. Never happened before! This time, no outside substances needed to keep the buzz going!

But we did hit all the local fine dining spots! You know, the ones where you come dressed up, chat with a British accent, and leave big tips. I took care of the dressing up; J handled the right accent and the tips.

February 29 – a glitch in the matrix, a temporal loophole that invites us to pause, question, and perhaps start anew. It feels like borrowed time, an extra day – gifted. For reflection, change, or rebellion? 

Well, I had to run off to Vancouver in a panic — to think, to reassess. It’s scary — where to go next, and how. So many strange things. Is it a red flag, or the beginning of something magical like nothing I’ve ever known before?

In four months, we had only one overnight stay. A strange one, because we slept apart: me in the bedroom, J in the living room, since he couldn’t sleep at all from wild wrist pain. He injured his hand recently but refused an X-ray because… well, he’s my kind of unusual. So he suffered and didn’t sleep a wink all night.

We tried a few times to spend the night at each other’s places, but either ‘parents wouldn’t allow it’, or I’d freak out, or J would get broken down . 

But we visited places where the ashes of his friends were scattered.

We wandered around an abandoned military base.

We danced all night on the waterfront to music and rain.

And all those buts — so many ‘buts’ that make this very unusual union of two very unusual people absolutely magical. The story keeps building. The useless keeps turning great, the ordinary — extraordinary.

At least until the next ovulation or until the next 29th February.  

People bend the rules, not some dates!

And all these superstitions are just useless constructs in our heads! 

February 29 – a leap day to keep our calendar in sync with the Earth’s actual twist around the Sun. Without it summer would end up in December and winter in June. 

Like leap day, some relationships need extra time to realign and stay in sync. Oh… it took us a while to synchronize.