Ed, the green-eyed monster

I think it’s safe to say that Adoring and Wonderful Husband and I are veritably content with the state of our existence. Each and every year since we’ve met, pretty awesome events have filled our calendar. Life-altering things. Things that are nothing to sneeze at. Par exemple: Year One – Buy a house together just twelve months after He of Yee-Inspired Stomach Flips (what he was known as before becoming Adoring and Wonderful Husband) first held the door open for me on my first day back as a summer student at the east-end auto claims centre in Regina. Year Three - Marriage at a big red barn on the prairies in front of 125 or so family and friends who were promptly served following the nuptials slab after slab of deep fried steak worthy of being featured on the Food Network. Year Four – Harrowing move across the country with nothing to cling to but a couple grand in student loans, a bunch of wire hangers in the trunk, and the hope (the hope!) that Adoring and Wonderful Husband wouldn’t file for divorce as soon as we were in our new jurisdiction. Year Seven – A babe. And not just any babe, but The Babe. The Babe to end all babes in fact. So, are we good? No, we’re better than that: We’re freaking fantastic.

But that doesn’t stop the pangs of jealousy that kick us in the gut every once in a while, doubling us over like a you-know-what who's just been sucker punched in a back alley somewhere. Take the evening preceding this morning, for example, when Adoring and Wonderful Husband and I were reading the blog of a friend’s sister and learned that Friend X is apparently preparing for an imminent move to New Zealand. New Zealand, you say?

Cue. Latent. Hostility. Here.

“So, Friend X is moving to New Zealand?” I asked, the end of my question intoned at a slightly higher frequency than it would have been if I had asked instead about, say, whether or not hemorrhoids were itchy, or if they just hurt (because how am I supposed to know if I ever get them?)

“I guess so,” Adoring and Wonderful Husband replied, dully, with the same cadence that he might use if he were to state blankly that the weekend fliers were on the front step, did I want them?

“Hmm,” I said.

“Hmm,” he responded.

“That’s cool,” I offered.

“Yeah.”

And that was all the time we devoted to that topic. That’s cool. Which it is, but would be so much more so if WE were the ones moving to New Zealand instead. Just like as cool as it would have been if WE were the ones to buy low and sell high in Calgary this past spring, making 100-grand plus profit. Maybe even as cool as if WE were the ones to take classes in how to dive in the waters of a tropical paradise as opposed to studying up on The Essentials of Risk Management or Public Policy and the Third Sector. Cool? Cool indeed. That is, if the colour of cool is green, and it lives in your closet, and is named Ed.