I would have called this Winning Wednesday but now it's Thursday.

Time has become like the proverbial quicksand we were taught to fear and survive, as I scoop minutes and hours into my hands, clutching them against my chest only to have them pour out through and between my fingers like water. It speeds along and I constantly find myself remarking that it's already whatever date and then I light my advent candles and wait for them to burn down to the right numbers so I can look like I have my shit together. 

Ha. If that was all it took I'd be the Queen of Fucking Togetherness.

Maybe I am though. I have finished all of the shopping and wrapping that I can do. Whatever is left on the list is up to the boys. I baked banana breads and chocolate thumbprint cookies. I bought a metric ton of ingredients, including the turkeys this week. I got the stockings done and everything is wrapped and bagged by recipient, I ordered gift baskets and Christmas centerpieces. I subsidized UPS for whatever reason and then one very important package got separated from the rest and got stuck in a snowstorm in Quebec. I got all my stuck mail finally from Canada Post yesterday. I engineered drop off of local gifts that need to go out and I organized the times and dates for big Christmas Dinner and Departure Tourtiere. We will have guests for four days. I washed all the sheets and towels and cleaned and put out bowls of wrapped Christmas candies and chocolates. The lights are lit outside around the clock now until New Years Day.

 Maybe I feel a little less anxious now. All of our extended family have their packages. Everyone is off starting tomorrow night at dinner (INCLUDING SAMUEL) and it's time to celebrate Christmas. Finally.

Struggle Monday.

The anxiety is through the roof today and I'm not sure why. It's a Monday. It's pouring rain. I think I'm ready for Christmas but I could use a few extra small things. I had a whole host of unexpected bills which are leaving me nonplussed as I've kept a very strict budget this year in favour of leaving Caleb a little more removed from my life and it's been going well. 

Just like old times for me and Loch when I would wear three pairs of socks to bed and make canned beans and weiners for dinner and just 'forget' to put the ketchup on the table because I was trying to ration it and condiments are not food. 

No, absolutely not like that at all but those are the sorts of lessons I learned right before my brain finished forming and I was doing household budgets as a teenager and so those are the things that stick and everything else is just fluff. It still feels decadent to buy marshmallow fluff or heck, even relish so I guess that's a good thing. 

We have a heavy rainfall warning and I declined to go food shopping today since I wasn't feeling well this morning. Once I did feel a little better, I swept, mopped and vaccuumed (It's been over two decades and I still can't spell it) and did a few loads of laundry but that was it so now tomorrow I'm going to have to take some of the boys with me to get turkeys. 

I hope there's some left. I've left some things until the last minute but at the same time have I? I'm sure I have time. If not that's okay too. We are nothing if not flexible, whether it comes to condiments or dates on a calendar. 

Let's look on the bright side here. Do a list, Bridget, find the light. 

The days will begin to get longer starting on Sunday. 

We don't live in the Prairies anymore. 

Christmas is a lovely time and this year we're hosting dinner on actual Christmas day which means instead of relaxing I get to cook but it keeps me busy and the day will fly by. We're going to do a whole extra turkey this year because surprisingly, but not surprisingly at all, Ruth's husband can outeat every one of the boys here and it's hilarious and we almost ran out of turkey last year and I loved every second of it. 

Everyone is healthy and coping pretty well. 

(The dread though. It sucks oh my hell whyyyyyyyyy) 

I think I'm going to put a fire on in the fireplace and watch a movie and knit. Maybe open the prosecco early. Maybe not. Maybe get more sleep. Maybe do a whole extra page in my gratitude journal. Maybe look back at two years ago things were changing so fast I couldn't keep up and now that everything's changed I still can't catch my breath. 

Maybe later I'll ask Ben if he wants to go and scream into the void with me (off the cliff). Sometimes that works pretty well. Actually yeah, I'm looking forward to that too.

Thirty-five years on.

 I didn't forget. I never do. In fact, I woke up with the usual sadness, the low-key dread of memories that dates and times remember and won't let me forget, but frankly I wouldn't dare. 

I can't believe it's been thirty-five years tonight since my university in Nova Scotia decided to continue with the schedules and hurriedly put security teams and gates in place and checked our identification and our bags and pockets as we entered the theatre to write our freshman winter exams.

It was a mostly-female university, now peppered with a few males, as they couldn't discriminate, but it was heavy on equality and heavier still on feminism and women's rights and on that night we all cried as we wrote, knowing that only hours earlier in Montreal at a similar university fourteen women had been shot simply for being women.

 Did it force a nationwide reckoning, as one publication proclaimed today?

Did it? Of course it didn't. Will it ever? No. I don't think. We'll still fight tooth and nail for everything, whether it's equal pay or a shred of safety in a familiar space but nothing ever changes. 

It's Taylor Swift weekend too here in Vancouver and women everywhere are celebrating their own voices and finding camaraderie in the shared experience of being a women. I feel like men don't manage heartbreak in the same way and when men sing about it it's a difference you can feel. Maybe I can't put it into words but today I remember the names of the women who didn't get to finish their programs and watch their children grow up and dance to Taylor's music and it makes me weep.They should be here, living and loving life and it's amazing to me that we have all learned, much like in all school shootings before and since, how to live in and around the horror of those who hate.

All caps for Christmas.

 It's December third! The day each year when I give myself permission to go whole-hog on the Christmas season. The baking is underway. I made decadent dark chocolate cookies and have plans to do brownies and banana bread as well. I can only do a about a day or two a week of baking because if it gets too chaotic then none of the baked treats actually make it to the holidays thanks to a house full of predictable men with big appetites, and crafty, clever men who will distract me with charm and affection while the rest carry off entire trays of still-warm cookies and cakes. 

It's maddening and frustrating and I love it. I make decoy treats that they can decimate and then I don't mind so much and can run off with a a huge box to load into one of the freezers in the garage. The locked one no one is allowed into because I don't like surprises. After six or seven locks were cut off in honour of being fair they have relented and let me have a whole freezer to be organized with and the other one is the free for all with frozen waffles and air fryer stuff and a few sacrificial treats, in with the buckets of ice cream. 

We'll never eat right, though I have transitioned over from so many treats to more fruit and ingredients and if you're really hungry a half a bagel with a slice of cheese or a sprinkle of cinnamon sugar is a good alternative to seven chocolate chip cookies. 

Right, Benjamin? RIGHT? 

I have Ali & Theo singing around the clock, doing their greatest Christmas songs like Where Are You Christmas? and Let It Fall, as the world is sleeping on this duo. And Eisley's Christmas songs because they're just freaking MAGICAL.

 I have all of the decorations and outside lights up and done (Thanks to Lochlan and Duncan and Sam and Matt, who breezed in and without asking or directing on my part, emptied the bins that were neatly stacked in the front hall, just in time for Advent to begin and Sam will be too busy to do anything now until Jesus is born and after that he will rest until Easter and do it all again but the countdown will only be like a long weekend instead of four straight weeks and it's easier somehow) and the tree will go up early next week, I hope. 

I'm not doing it. 

I played the boys Paris Paloma's Labour song once and that's all it took to get a huge amount of preemptive help. I've also started to let go of some things that I just did and don't do any more and I feel like some of the work is lifting and I have more time to watch Netflix and knit and sew (holiday romance, true crime and documentaries, if you will, at present. I finished my list of horror movies left over from Halloween that were on my list (NO GOOD ONES JESUS) and so far A California Christmas is still winning, because it had a SEQUEL, City Lights. I also watched Christmas in Rome, Hot Frosty and A Crown for Christmas and Hot Frosty was hilarious but obviously written by someone who hated sci-fi but saw Fifth Element, and A Crown was weird because Danica McKellar is MY AGE and they positioned her as a burdened thirty-year-old and I couldn't help but think that the whole movie was written for Jennifer Connelly and Paul Bettany but someone didn't land the budget and so they went this way instead. 

I'm not even going to talk about the BUY NOW Documentary because it was so bad and once again the onus lands on me to use shitty paper straws and not buy from Shein but ignores the companies and countries using plastic and shipping our 'recycling' to places out of sight. 

Wait, what? 

I'm doing everything I can. I want Amazon to have a 'deliver everything at once' so when I order eight things (saving gas, time and the carbon footprints of multiple stores) they don't bring them in fifteen separate trips. Goddamn. Last night they delivered a single box the size of my Jeep. Inside it was a sole button battery for a ornament that lights up. I tried four different stores and couldn't find that one size so I ordered it. FUCKING SUE ME. I was so mad that it's come to this, but I did spend the past six years with a dark ornament so it's not like I need instant gratification, I just decided this year I would fix the darn thing. But ARGHHHHHHHH.

I have more thoughts if you're interested but the boys aren't which is why I put them here.

The princess dipped in coloured wax.

I just found out this morning that Tony Scherman passed away from cancer last year. We bought a painting on the weekend and I was telling someone about how it was the second time I have walked around a corner and been struck breathless by an artwork on a wall. The only time previous to this past weekend was in 2018 when we went to the Murakami show and I found Poseidon. 

I wrote about it then. 

I feel as if based on his methods and subject matter I could most likely pick out one of his works in the wild without prompting and I'm grateful I was able to see one in person because seeing a photo of them online doesn't do them justice for their light and texture and emotion. I shouldn't have to even say that when it comes to seeing a piece in person versus looking at a photo but also I feel like I do have to say it. 

I navigated all of my anniversaries and I can still smile. I have hauled out the totes of decorations and lights and have thought about decorating but haven't. I haven't shopped.  I haven't baked, Christmas is a month from today and yeah. Time to get to work.

HBD, JT.

Fifty-four. 

Happy birthday, Preacher. 

PJ and Lochlan pour their drinks off the cliff and turn to go back inside. Who drinks these days? We need the few wits we have left. I wish for theirs while I gulp my own, wind howling so loud now all I hear are my drowned sobs, choked back before they can be detected, and the strains of Dire Straits' Sultans of Swing, a song I don't think I know a single word to, and I'm okay with that. The music has been playing softly over the speakers-in the kitchen and patio and the rest of the house is Choose Your Own Adventure, due to screens or books or rest. 

I finish my drink in four gulps (Lochlan always overpours me on November days) and fire the cut crystal glass off the cliff. I'll either cut myself on it in the spring or find the most beautiful pieces of sea glass, worn smooth from former sharp edges. 

Ha, like me. 

I can feel the fire from my throat travelling down into my stomach. My ears are red from the cold. Dire Straits have been replaced by Robert Plant and I sing under my breath. 

Shall I rest for a while at the side?

God. Every song is an IED blowing up years of my life faster than I can make it to safety but I run anyway. I get halfway back to the house and Ben scoops me up and carries me the rest of the way like a little kid. I'd laugh but I don't have any feelings left any more that I can trust.

Bullshit.

Pigalet-

I hold up one shaky finger. A warning. Don't-

I just wanted to see how you-

How I'm doing? How do I look like I'm doing. I'm the only person in the world who can still move while being completely paralyzed-

Bridge-

Please. Just don't. Don't show your face. Don't have that accent. Don't come back around like you miss me when you really...just.. don't. 

But I do. 

Then you shouldn't have jumped. 

Maybe I didn't. Maybe it was metaphorical. 

Then my whole life is a joke. 

It's not, and that's not funny. 

Right. I didn't get it either. But if it was metaphorical then everyone's head is going to roll, starting with mine. 

I never liked those out-loud intrusive thoughts of yours. 

I never liked the ghost of Jacobs Past showing up to fuck up what should be such a venerable, sombre week in the first place. It never rained right through November until you ruined your life, and mine, and all of theirs, too. I turn and stare at the house. I can see Lochlan behind the glass of the patio doors staring at me. I wish he could see Jake. I wish he could save me now. 

I stepped aside-

Right off a ledge. 

Does it matter anymore?

I turn back to stare at Jacob and the wind whips around me, stinging my eyes. Yeah. Yeah it matters. It will ALWAYS matter because I'm the one who has to deal with it and I still can't figure out how.

Nuts.

I think I have the week by the teeth. A good grip, as it were as long as nobody asks me how I'm feeling or what's up or even what's for dinner. 

We stopped at a Dairy Queen for dinner on the way home and I had an ice cream sundae. Not for dessert but just for dinner itself. It seemed like a good idea at the time and I maintain that sometimes we don't need a whole dinner but we definitely need a treat and after a week of rain and bullshit and tears and bullshit and another incoming storm the ice cream won. Easily. 

It's late and so I will be back tomorrow. I promise.

The least favourite countdown.

Is it wrong to sometimes want to disappear and sleep or just travel invisibily for days or maybe weeks on end and then somehow figure out how to crawl out of my own head and rejoin society? Did I want to do that? Should I bother? Or maybe just pick and choose my timeline so I don't have to have mental lists and mental hurdles and mental...moments. I would like to be ignorant, oblivious and dismissive. I would like to dissolve into a pool of coffee and glitter. I want to shake things up but also I want to keep the status quo just fine. I want to appreciate the finer things and the fun moments and the excitement and joy of life but at the same time I want to skip fast-forward through the hard parts. 

Thursday is Halloween. Next Thursday will be Jacob's birthday. I only showed up here because some people asked. 

Maybe it'll all be okay this time. Sometimes it is. Sometimes if I have something difficult to do I promise myself a little reward on the other side like a big Cobb cinnamon bun or a drive to a pumpkin patch or a new pair of jeans from Old Navy. I rarely fulfill the reward part but it helps for some reason. Maybe it will help this time too.

 

 

 

I watched Lonely Planet so you don't have to.

(Disclaimer: This is a big spoiler. Also the only role I've ever liked Laura Dern in was as the lawyer in A Marriage Story so that may cloud this a little or maybe a bunch.)

Okay so. 

I've been a fan of the books forever. I virtually travelled for YEARS thanks to the library before I could travel in real life and the Lonely Planet books were always very informative, fascinating, unpretentious guides to places I could only dream of. I heard they were making a movie loosely-based on the phenomenon a bit ago. Then I forgot about it. 

Then it debuted on Netflix and I thought I gotta see this. 

Ninety-six minutes later, and I can't remember why I thought I had to see this. 

Honestly, with the premise, it had the potential to land somewhere between The English Patient and Eat Pray Love and instead it wound up a hallmark Christmas trope. Struggling boy meets girl. Girl pays attention to him so therefore he loves her. Everyone is hypocritical and magic fixes it all and poof, ends with a kiss. 

Oh my God. Of course. 

Christ on a pancake. Zero character development. Laura Dern breezily pointing out Liam (The Lesser Hemsworth as we call him, even though he's a good actor) has a girlfriend who maybe is becoming full of herself because some people don't handle fame well and huh, sometimes it happens. Laura doesn't think Liam's girlfriend has her shit together and oh well, maybe she should swoop in and steal Liam because he is put out, ignored and unable to commit to following the girlfriend around like a puppy. Why should he? He has his own subplot! The girlfriend is PISSED about it though and sneers at him through the entire movie.

Meanwhile, Laura doesn't have her shit together either and CLEARLY handles success poorly and keeps ducking into closets whining about trying to 'work' and sneaking around being super anti-social until she senses a dick in her vicinity. Then she acts all weird and coy. It works and she gets laid.

And POOF! All brain cells vanish, she has her bag stolen, has a meltdown like a four-year-old, leaving North Africa and Liam too. Because ShE iS a WrItEr. And didn't back up her work. In spite of planning to travel a very long distance, bringing her laptop and being on the cusp of finishing her Best. Book. Ever.

Riiiiiight. This is a bestselling author. What a liar.

But back to poor Liam. Aw. He just had someone actually paying attention to him. Or to his dick, I mean. And now she's gone. Everyone's gone. Girlfriend's gone. He kept some of his morals though. Just enough to keep him from becoming successful as a cutthroat venture capitalist or something. 

Sigh.

I will say the blink-or-you-miss-them location shots of Morocco (FFS Netflix!) and some of the music was pretty neat. Some of it was also pretty bad (end credits) and they travelled for no reason at all, frankly, heading down avenues in the story that didn't need to be there while they bonded without actually bonding. Also I fear there were some important people who were far deeper than our main characters relegated to nothing at all. The brothers who had to fix the car and brought them home for dinner? The woman who ran the whole retreat in the first place? Why such build up and then nothing? Oh wait. It was to set up the story and then to indicate Bonding with a capital B.

But then sexy times ensued! We JUST met. No condoms. No testing. Whatever happens in Africa stays in Africa, I guess. Laura Dern's heavy breathing was loud enough to kill any STDs, perhaps. Liam was not breathing at all which is why he is the lesser Hemsworth to me. He might be dead and that's why he acts so straight-laced in EVERYTHING. Like The Hunger Games.

(Come on, Gale. I believed in you) 

In any case, the neat-as-a-bow ending and ridiculously untenable relationship blooming and hideously-bratty-but-also-not girlfriend left me wondering why they left out all the good parts and left in all the dodgy moments. It's like they let AI make a movie (I despise it when people reference AI but really it was THAT bad) and this movie is what was spit out. 

I'm giving it a solid 2/10 but only for the option to play a drinking game while watching it-take a drink every time there is a tagine pot in the frame.

You'll be shitfaced in seconds. You're going to love this movie.