August is trading off Kelly Clarkson and Avril Lavigne playlists this morning when I come downstairs and I know damn well he has a little Christina Perri mixed in there. Just what we need, a slide back into the Jar of Hearts season that almost saw the implosion of this whole Collective.
Avril is listenable and catchy and I think I know most of the words and I'm doing great today, thank you for asking. Sam poured us each an orange juice and we went for a walk to see the beginnings of the garden, see the beans popping up through the soil and the poppies almost opening already and the lilac scenting the whole point with their sweet smell of memories long past. Lilacs remind me of Ben though, and he is sitting in the shade on the patio with a coffee and Duncan and they are having a lovely talk.
I handed Sam my glass and bent to weed some interlopers out of the burgeoning lavender plants and then he handed it back carefully and waited for my report.
I am breathing again. A tenuous week, to be sure but we navigated it, no one fell overboard and kind, windy seas loom ahead.
Ruth has covid. So does her husband. It's a good time to have it now that the wedding, honeymoon and everything else is behind them right now and they are doing okay. I was over this morning fully masked to drop off test boxes, croissants, and juice and a few bags of fruits and veggies and soups for them.
(This is one of the reasons Caleb came back. The kids are on the other side of it though now and begin the long road of regaining their energies.)
My iPhone stopped charging again. When I wake up it's on sixty percent and after trying a week of different things she's getting a battery replacement today at Apple. I never know what to do. Should I delete the nudes first? Remove all of Ben's in progress songs? Delete all the secrets of everyone I know? Haha, of course not. By the time things get to me they aren't secrets as I am the last to overhear, as it were.
Unfortunately.
(Fun being deaf and all but I still adore the shit out of my phone and so I need it fixed. I have 276GB of music on it.)
I really just want to take the world, lick my finger and blur off the parts I have no interest in and sit and watch the radishes grow. Sam doesn't believe in escapism. I remind him the only one here who does is gone and he frowns. No one likes it when I talk about Jacob. They'd rather pretend he never existed which is escapism, IS IT NOT?
Of course not, because it's majority rules and Bridget isn't a queen, just a princess. She gets no say.
We survived and I didn't have an overwhelming amount of panic or fear, even with Caleb coming back. Even with Lochlan breathing on the top of my head perpetually. He is sleeping in, exhausted. I think he keeps watch all night so Sam has promised to be my forbidden sidekick today. Maybe he'll let me take some nudes for the Apple geniuses later. Maybe if I ask real nicely.
But probably not, and that's how things are shaping up today.
I can hear August belting out Already Gone as we return to the patio. Ben is just listening.
Should have put him to work.
He's offered. I remind him.
I want you to know that it doesn't matter-
Wow. Those NOTES. I hate to interrupt but I want to put the glasses inside and get busy with my plans for the day, which don't include casual archaeology on my brain, uncovering years of regrets and misfiled memories. My thief is a dreamboat, not a crack administrator and so some things are inevitably going to be in the wrong spot. I need to make kiln cookies and test tiles for glaze so that I have a reference catalog. I need to beg for my email back, as I still don't have access. It's been six months. Do they care? No. Why would they care. It's just a 'blog'. It's just the record of my entire life as a mother and as a wife to four different men in the span of twenty years which sounds really fucking stupid.
Those of us who read it and the one who wrote it, know differently. Don't we?
Ohhh noooo. Almost made it. Here's Jar of Hearts now.