The Mourner's Songbook and my grateful ears.

(Weird. I just put in my Google Authenticate number to log in to write and had a symbol at the end of the numbers by mistake and it let me in anyways. Should I be worried? Does Google know it's actually me in the same way it knows to say sorry when I tell it to stop being so fucking slow turning off the lights as I yell to it to do so? 

Probably. We aren't private. We don't get to have these perks and still retain our relative anonymity. Life doesn't work that way any more.)

Don't talk to me about tariffs, the super bowl or the weather. All three things are pissing me off and I'm trying to avoid it all. It's so dumb. It's like the whole universe has become People Magazine circa 1982 and we're breathlessly immersed in one-dimensional pop culture while all the while looking over our shoulder to see if the sky is falling. In the eighties I was terrified of the ozone layer, quicksand, lightning strikes, my own jealousy over the large and seemingly perfect backyards of children in television commercials in which they played with their RC cars and GI Joe vehicles, and the Chernenko/Gorbatchev threat from the East in the form of a cold war that seemed to be at our doorstep, or so the newsman liked to make it seem.

Fun times. It feels just like that in the air, right now. Like when you smell the chill that means fall is coming. Like rotten leaves, bone-chilling wind and helplessness. 

(I was terrified of far more than that, but for the sake of this entry we'll keep things light because it's a happy time or something.)

I finished Echo by Thomas Olde Heuvelt. I hated it. Well, I love-hated it. The scary parts were so scary, and the campy parts OH so campy. The pacing was all over the place but it's a masterpiece somehow and I will chaulk up my issues to the fact that it was translated into English and maybe that's the reason it was such a hard read. 

I'm thoroughly entrenched in Season two of Yellowstone and I hate every last character. Wes Bentley's habitual expression (is it Wes Bentley?) is killing me and at one point Kevin Costner's character was half into his girlfriend's pants and made a crack about being sixty-three and I was like...wait, what? And then I remembered that's how old Caleb is and I guess I get it now but also not. Thank God my cowboys are all ex-hockey players and I'm still marvelling every single scene at how Cole Hauser is a completely different animal from twenty years ago. And then last night one shot with one song made me think of Sons of Anarchy and I discovered one of the actors in that show is the creator of this show and it makes sense. 

My pop culture is a complete circle, apparently. And since people have asked, sure, I love Taylor Swift. Like LOVE her. I love the sad songs. The slow ones. She is a necessity for young women. When I was that age I had Jewel. I wore out multiple walkmans and Jewel's album on cassette (Pieces of You) became a part of me. Part escapism, part romance, heartbreak, loneliness, comfort, you name it, it was in that album. 

I just found out she's coming to Vancouver (well, Richmond, I think) to play at a casino in March. At least I think it's March. No one will want to take me so I probably won't go. I don't drive at night and I don't even like to go out alone unless I'm going to visit Ruth, so I will miss it but play the album all the way through to feel twenty-something again. I'm old enough now that it depends heavily on the venue, the time of year and how many fans are in the house before I can commit to shows. I've seen so many.

But speaking of amazing pop culture, Dobber Beverly (the drummer for Oceans of Slumber, who were here last year but I didn't get to see them and I still have regrets) just released a solo album and I think I may have died and this is what heaven actually sounds like. It's a rich, gorgeous tapestry of talent that is unparalleled in this modern time, and perhaps he's a time traveller. It's a respite from every last breath and I can't get enough of it. Headphones on all day. Don't bug me. I'm busy listening as hard as I can.

Bridget is afraid of her shadow so that means six more lifetimes of misery (or something).

I somehow skipped right over Robbie Burns Day and Groundhog day too. I no longer know what day it is, other than later than before, as it's light out when I get up and I love that. 

It's also light out until after I start supper and we all know I love that too, even though we're in a deep-freeze fugue state over here as of late. I don't know who's medicating me now but I love it. The walking twilight sleep (team Jacob, sorry, that's my own joke but it stays). I can't remember the other guy's name any more but it's not important. 

I took my earrings off and left them in the dish by the sink. Anything touching my ears gives me anxiety. I should learn.

I put on my heaviest winter coat and went down the highway to the grocery store, fully a quarter of the drive in four high. It's crappy out lately but I don't have to go anywhere for the next forty-eight hours and just get through the cold snap and then we're in the clear. 

I'm watching Yellowstone. I don't know if you remember but twenty years ago when 2 Fast 2 Furious came out and I spoke of my love/hate relationship with Cole Hauser and imagine my surprise when he's on this show and everyone's like Dammmmmmmnnnnnn he's so hot and I'm like, oh please, that's one of my fake movie boyfriends from a hundred years ago. So we're watching the new show and all I can think is what's happened to him? Why does he look so different? That can't be the same guy and then I realized it's been twenty years and we've both grown old. 

It figures. 

The show is good though. Very soapy. It's giving Try Hard. It's giving Dallas. Kevin Costner is almost eighty I think? Why does he never change? He was that old in Dances With Wolves and I still don't like him. I do love the character of Beth. You know she hurts a hell of a lot and she's taking everyone down with her. I wish I had seen this show twenty years ago. Things would be vastly different.

The bluest Monday (Awesome. Wow.)

It's eight in the morning and everyone has scattered already to the four corners. Duncan made a take out coffee run for at least ten of us. No one slept. Maybe it was something in the water. Or something in the air. Either way the third Monday in January is called the worst day of the year for mental health by a travel company who was trying to drum up business fifteen or so years ago. Before that we called it late January in fucking Canada and it was just as hard but now it can be hard with a side of guilt for not looking after your self and mental health by booking an expensive shitty tropical trip somewhere lame. 

If you love that kind of thing, enjoy. I am famous for not sitting still ever, so the thought of lying on a chair drinking overpriced methanol in the blazing destructive sunshine would be a form of torture to me. Built Different, as my shirt says today, but it's baby pink and the words are bubble-font with flowers and sparkles. 

The coffee is delicious (still black, though for my next trick I'm going to try the espresso over orange juice that I saw in a travel vlog where a British couple went to Chengdu to see the pandas and seemed so terribly unprepared but insanely flexible and wholesome at the same time. I actually worry about them but also travel vlogs while knitting are great since you can only watch Hamilton five or six times in a week before you begin to quote it nonstop and drive your loved ones mad. 

Of course if they can do it, I can do it so it's been added to my bucket list. Pandas in Chengdu. Not sure if it will happen because right now I'm OBSESSED with Chongqing videos and yet I know if I go there I will be lost forever because I'm so bad with directions I get lost trying to find my way out of bathrooms at movie theatres and on ferries and it would just be awful but at the same time the culture shock would be incredible. 

Also I'm currrently on a kick to make some dystopian fingerless gloves for all of us because they look so cool and are so practical so I have lots of work to do and will need lots of content to watch. I'm a Netflix whore forever but I stacked up Don't Move and Alice, Darling on the weekend already so two is lots. Don't Move had Finn Whitrock (he was amazing in American Horror Story) who was so good as a good bad guy, and the premise was terrifying. But also it was a bit convenient and the boat part was neat. But I prefer flat out slasher films and European spy movies to just straight up backwoods thrillers. This didn't have enough chase because duh, she was paralyzed. 

Alice, Darling was so well-acted I paused mid-movie to see if Anna Kendrick had won any awards for it but also it was weird in that her boyfriend's level of control was described very ambiguously and I was left thinking they played it a tiny bit safe but had they let the boyfriend slip any further the movie would have been a modern day Sleeping With the Enemy, which, well, nothing can touch. 

I had two packages of instant Cream of Wheat sprinkled with brown sugar with my coffee so my insides are warm too. It's not at all due to my Joe Fresh leggings because they are t-shirt weight or due to my WEST COAST sweatshirt from a pop-up shop at a farmer's market in a little town out in the valley. It's the coffee and the fuel and it's as close as I can get to grits here so good enough. 

Caleb laughed when I made my bowl and when I offered him one he hesitated just long enough so tomorrow I'm sure he'll join me and we'll finish the box and then I need to work on the last two boxes of instant oatmeal. Otherwise they will sit in the pantry until next winter because I only eat them when it's super cold out and it's -4 right now, -6 with the rare winds that keep blowing through. I kind of love it, since no one has to go out and it's cozy inside.  

I'm going to get all of my chores done fast so I can watch the American things happening below us. Best horror movie ever, frankly. I wish it didn't have so many sequels.

The Orchard Puppy Squad, established 2025.

It's going to rain. The air is so heavy I could take huge bites out of it on my way up from the beach this morning. Hot chocolate by the bonfire this morning for breakfast and we had some sea lions vying for our attention like big stupid dogs and it makes me laugh. Lochlan has a granola bar in his pocket for me and Caleb suggests I pick out names for the lions and we can begin a database. I don't know how I'll be able to tell them apart but I have names ready. 

Strawberry, Vanilla, Peach and Plum, I proclaim them, and Vanilla roars his approval before slipping off the rock back into the sea. Peach flaps his tail. He is white with huge grey splotches on his sides. Hard to forget. Strawberry and Plum continue their efforts to sleep and PJ laughs at my names. 

You hangry Peej?

No, just amused, Bee. 

Lochlan smirks so briefly all I see is the flash of a single dimple and then it's gone again. 

What if more come? 

Banana, Fig, Cosmic crisp and Grape, then. I can go all day. 

One specific kind of apple?

The BEST apple, Locket. 

This makes Ben laugh and then everyone is smiling. 

It's cold. 

Yeah, let's go up.

Fire men.

 Seems smart to make the title a wild double entendre, because that's the kind of day I'm having. You know when you crash into bed long after midnight but then somehow pull off a solid seven hour stretch of very high quality sleep because you're that tired? That's me today and I'm glad because it's been a weird week so far and it's hopefully going to get less weird but somehow I doubt it. 

Los Angeles is burning, emergency room doctors are angels in disguise and trucks suck but so do cars and suddenly everything is a fridge bought after 2015, stupidly poor quality until you get the right mix of parts replaced and then it's okay. So wish me luck? I guess, and yes I know I glossed over the big one here but I keep telling Caleb he should be happy he got out at the top of the market in Malibu because I think that house is gone now. Then I got mired in watching the Getty villa burning and thought it was the Hearst mansion but it isn't and I'm not good with sprawling geography so there you go. 

That wasn't the big one. We're all good. Again, love on your local Emergency room. They're out here doing the lord's work and getting abused for it.

 

Bye 2024 (*kicks entire year into the trash can*)

Okay, so. 

It wasn't a great time. 

The year began with a gradual decline and then a full-on death march. Grief followed, and then apathy followed grief, as always, like a small puppy looking for a pat on the head. 

(Except the puppy is gone now and I swear to God it hurt worse than when the Preacher flew to heaven and I think it was purely because of the time involved. Had I had sixteen whole years with Jake I swear I wouldn't be here right now but for my kids, who got me through the year in an incredible way but it still hurts and also I am ashamed because I'm supposed to be their cheerleader and it is far too soon for them to be mine.)

Apathy was followed by dread, which hung around and is still hanging around. And I am going to move and leave no forwarding address for it, no thanks. 

There are also many other things that I am attempting to deal with, that I can barely deal with and my Afib is just bouncing along like a white girl trying to dance to a beat and I need to breathe and I can't seem to. 

I promised myself a year of writing again after a year of a hundred false starts so here we are. Life begins for us again on Monday, including Henry, who was called back to work for a short contract that will hopefully be extended and his life will even out a little from half a year of uncertainty and much patience and worry on his part. 

My nose is running. 

Lochlan said I snored so loud last night he left for a while. Ha. 

The one thing I enjoyed most about the holiday was giving myself permission to not work myself to pieces, and just to let things slide a bit, or a lot, actually. We did have company and then some, and it was a wee bit crazy at a few points in December but then we returned to our insular cocoon. We did nothing but we also did a huge declutter and took old paint to be recycled and donated a huge load of furniture, clothes and books. We rearranged and reevaluated and I felt so good after that I'm considering it a high point. Especially when I saw so many things being kept for the wrong reasons finally leave the house. 

It's a wide open house. Sometimes things pile up. 

We're starting in an okay spot. Need my front brakes done and so I booked them because I don't want to do them in the winter when it's cold and wet outside. I need a beach day but that will come later on. I have tons of groceries. I did the budget and changed the cat bowls and washed the trays. I made a plan for my knitting for the rest of the winter and I didn't even pull out any of the baking I did for Christmas so that will be nice through the colder wet months where we may actually see snow. 

I have a few stragglers who read who haven't left yet and I want to promise you I'll give you things to read in 2025. 2024 just hit like a truck and I had no words to describe it. Drama still persists around here but in an exhausted way. Like PJ said yesterday: Christmas is a minefield and it brings up feelings and leftover dynamics you thought you were done with, in a colourful holiday that is so dressed up as a happy time, it almost makes it all worse. 

He was much more poetic in his description but I have had no coffee yet so can't even paraphrase. It's supposed to rain heavily today and my plan is to wind some yarn to make myself a meadow sunset wrap (high on my making bucket list this year) and maybe finish up my two sewing projects and then I'm giving away my 1962 Soviet sewing machine because I still hate sewing in the end and 2025 is going to be the year of not putting up with anything at all that is bullshit, including my own attitude.

 

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.