"You don't face your fears, you ride 'em"

Hi. We had houseguests. Talky ones. I was given no chance to break away nor could I rest and so I am STILL coughing. Like forcefully. Constantly. I drink hot tea all day. I try and rest now as we are a few days out from it all. We got the house pulled back together, rode out the heat wave (finally ebbing) and cleaned up. We ran errands and scrubbed everything for a fresh start for the rest of the summer (seriously, six Mondays and it's pretty much over) and this week I will be taking it extremely easy and resting and eating popsicles and doing crafts while floating in the pool.

Because I need to. I also successfully talked the whole point into taking me to see Twisters this afternoon and hoo boy, I'm so glad we went. I was a superfan of Twister, it came out when I was twenty-five. This one was really good too. I loved it. I won't spoil anything but I was super surprised one of the final songs on the soundtrack was not Dolly Parton but Miranda Lambert. That shocked me. I may go see it again tomorrow. It was really really good. 

The plants are all doing crazy good things. All of the trees have new growth. All of the flowers are blooming and the roses are just budding one after another. All of the days meld together into one and we are all worn out and cranky from being overly warm in spite of AC, in spite of water to swim in, in spite of the fact that we are all together. Ben has been spending early evenings with me in the hammock and then sometimes on the patio with tea and hand holding and listening to the song sparrows and the singular American Goldfinch that keeps visiting. 

Soon the days will get shorter and I will lament wasting summer so I'm glad we got the summer theatre blockbuster out of the way today so it's not going to be a total waste but I really go into with a lot of expectations and plans and come out saddened and disappointed at how little of those plans get carried out. Maybe it's life. We are getting older. No one sleeps. The weight of the world gets tiresome to carry but then there are such bright spots. I need to find more bright spots that can be colourful polkadots to obliterate the dark parts. I need to get rid of this fucking cough because my whole chest hurts like a mofo all the time now. 

Weeeee.

I finally got to see the Rolling Stones! All the boys went to see them in the 80s for the Steel Wheels tour in Toronto. I was to young to join them. It took me over three decades to catch up to that promise and I got to go! It was hot. It was PACKED. The band was a machine. Keith's guitar kept getting away from him, and I questioned if he was playing all the time. He stuck his tongue out a lot. Mick was flawless. Chanel Haynes was a powerhouse and stole our hearts. Ghost Hounds (the opener) were absolutely delicious and tight and really really too good to be opener-material, I think. 

So of course, guess what happens next?

Sometime after lunch on Saturday I had a breakdown of sorts. Nothing fit, nothing was fun, nothing was nice, I wanted to swim somewhere shady and quiet, my armpits are swollen, my throat hurts, I hate air conditioning but I hate the heat so much more and I didn't want to eat that, didn't want to do anything, hated life and really couldn't get a grip at all. By nightfall I was inconsolable.

It was a harbinger of a severe flu because when I woke up on Sunday things were that much worse. I couldn't swallow, couldn't talk without coughing (not a nice polite cough but a weird barky-loud dry but soon to be productive cough that made people visibly withdraw), my eyes were burning and my armpits and the rest of my lymph nodes blew up. My skin was burning, my head felt like a balloon and my nose ran, nonstop. 

I had to go to bed. I've done that only a handful of times in my life. 

Monday was the same. 

Tuesday? Same but worse. I couldn't lift my head up but oh no we're going to vomit. I had a sip of water and an aspirin and nope, it's coming back. I lay on the floor in the bathroom for HOURS. I called for help but no one was checking their phones. Ha. They thought I was sleeping, maybe they thought I was faking (for the record, I don't fake. I'm the polar opposite. I'm fine, I can do everything. Don't worry about me) until I crawled downstairs to check my vitals because if any number was off, I was taking myself to the ER. Henry decided that if I said I should go then we were going, but I said no. 

No fever. My skin is BURNING. I'm so hot I want to die. 

No blood pressure changes. 

Huh. Okay, no, we're staying put. It'll be fine. 

And slowly, it was. I had three chores to do today and I struggled but I got them done. My nose is no longer running. My head no longer feels like a balloon and all my nodes are back to size. My throat is the straggler. I was up all night coughing and had a death rattle that sounded like I swallowed plastic wrap but otherwise I feel like I'm turning a corner here. 

Yay! 

I tested for Covid. Negative. I tested again. Negative. Those swabs are painful to shove up my nose. PJ bought me Cup-of-soup (I love Cup-of-Soup when I'm sick). Lochlan admitted that on Monday he thought I might die so he stayed awake all night. 

No one else got sick in the house. 

Thank God.  

I'm going to blame the seats at the stadium and the size of the crowd. I am five feet tall and half the weight of the boys and the chair was tight with zero shoulder room. It was almost painful. Like being on a Cessna 152-painful. Squeezed. So yeah. Too close, too tight, too hot, too many people. I can't believe I stayed awake the whole night and will never forget this show if only for the fact that I don't think I would have gotten sick had I stayed home, but I wouldn't have stayed home if you paid me. I will pause and probably mask before the next concert because fuck this.

Happy Canada Day!

 We went to a nearby small town, fuelled on coffee and pop tarts and took in the live entertainment, face-painting, bouncy-castle, open-air market and food-truck goodness of it until I couldn't stay in the sun any more and now we are home and I'm just happy I grabbed comfy trainers on the way out the door early this morning because it was supposed to be a coffee run and ended up being a whole celebration instead. I did choose to grab a red sweater this morning and I never wear it any more but I chose it specifically for Canada Day hoping something like this would go down. 

We are all hurting today thanks to some well-meaning ice cream runs that were so good- instead of dinner yesterday and I love ice cream and I still firmly believe some days that I can maintain the diet of my twelve-year old self but then am amazed and horrified to be reminded that I cannot, as my body no longer wants those things so often. My brain still does and usually wins and then the clapback of low energy and cravings for fresh boiled vegetables overwhelms me before I have time to exhale. 

It's fine. I'll figure it out someday. I am glad I passed on the Krispy Kreme display or however it is that you spell it. Someone's always doing a box of doughnuts fundraiser. I will always grab three or four boxes to bring home. Today I did not. Good thing, that. 

In any event, I'm going to spend the rest of the week in the pool and all of next weekend at the bottom of the pool. The hot weather is incoming. The leftover PTSD from heat domes is incoming. Summer is incoming and we are slowly waking up to the idea that the next ten weeks will be super warm and then it's over again. 

Neato. 

Also the first fireworks season without a little dog to cuddle and comfort is far more difficult than I expected as I lay in bed last night with all the windows open and the ceiling fan twirling blissfully above me, listening to fireworks up the road and realizing I don't have to panic and medicate the dog and hold him in my arms all night. I still miss him every waking second. This is somehow worse than Jake, and I don't understand it.

Sitting in the passenger side of Lochlan's truck as we make our way East, I am struck by a barn in a field way back from the road. It's grey, weathered, abandoned but not, as witnessed by the single glass light over the wide double doors. The light is lit, it is golden hour and it looks like the saddest, most homesick and yet peaceful place I have ever seen. It reminds me of sleeping in the hay bed in the house by the river, counting the swallows queuing up on the power lines between the house just below my window and the hay loft window on the barn across the yard. 

I used to hate those swallows and their golden-hour sounds. I felt so alone, dumped at the farm for the summer to do hard labour and be emotionally abused and ridiculed and sunburnt from such a young age I still dread the onset of summer, deep down, and yet now I wish I could have had Adult-Bridget there to appreciate the peacefulness of the nights. The simpleness of a plank-salmon supper on cedar boards, my grandfather manning the barbecue for the volunteer fire department and the church ladies (including my grandmother) making salads and squares and doing all of the cleanup while the men talked crops and industry.

 The wood mill up on the other side of the river dominated the whole village, and the talk never stopped. I was woken up every morning by the chainsaw sounds, as they worked somewhere off up in the hills, and the rushing river that was too violent to cross or swim in. Instead we would drive to the lake for an hour in the afternoons, and I would soothe sunburn and then wade out and Bailey and I would pick the leeches off our legs and eat freezies while sitting on the picnic table, still in the godforsaken sun. Bailey tanned beautifully, a brown summer child while I remained a sore red-faced baby, loathe to let the rough cotton sets my grandmother sewed for us to wear touch my skin because everything hurt. She was too tough to care about my feelings, no doubt lost in her own regrets, stuck in that town her whole life.

But also maybe not. What a beautiful barn at twilight.

He deleted my Pinterest, too. HAHAHA. It's fine, I hardly used it anyway.

Tried a few new restaurants this week. Ate a salted pretzel with mustard while sitting on a bench at the mall. Went for a non-walk around the block to get the mail and didn't order a single thing online for once. Yes, I have an Amazon cart loaded, yes it can wait. 

I got a little further in Yarn Harlot and snorted way the fuck out loud when she described starting a difficult colourwork pattern and wondering if all of the partying she did in the eighties actually did do some damage. It's better or maybe I am less bristly at the chaos of the beginning of the book. Like, endear me to you first and then show me your flaws. If you show me the bad things first I don't want to know you. 

I am busy helping Ruth with appointments this week. She has a dentist consult and some small-business marketing things and would like company in her travels so I reworked my schedule a little to go. I like to support my kids. Henry and I often go for the long drive to get take out together and have deep conversations at dinner when everyone else is busy or scattered. 

I am still grieving though. I thought it might be easier, as a seasoned professional and all but I feel detached from life again and unbothered by that feeling altogether. I know I've lost interest in things and I feel forced and bitterly angry most of the time. Lochlan is frustrated. PJ? Resigned. August is not much help at all and I don't expect anyone to fix anything anymore. I just drift on the wind. It will fade, eventually but I expected it to be weeks, not months (not decades either but we won't talk about that) and yet I'm here in the quicksand looking at all my own constructs. 

Therefore the writing didn't bounce back like I thought it would. I haven't touched the computer except to put on a movie when it's one no one else wants to see. I watched Encanto and by the end of the it the boys were gathered around me. It's a keeper. What about Bruno? Is something we're asking each other daily, still. We watched Godzilla X Kong. We watched Godzilla Minus One. We watched Guardians of the Galaxy 3 and I cried. I was upset. I was so angry. I don't care if it's a message about animal testing, it was an entire hour in the middle of pure torture watching animals get hurt and even if they're not real it was too fucking much and I will be forever mad. I watched Season 10 of Alone and am savouring the last couple of episodes because I don't know who wins yet and I have favourites (MIKEY). I started the Bon Jovi documentary on Disney +. 

I rewatched Sleeping with the Enemy and can still recite all of the dialogue in the whole thing (I've time to change). That movie has aged beautifully, the only dissenting factor being Patrick Bergin's stupid mustache and I noticed for the first time that Laura's mom is supposed to be CROCHETING in the scene where he comes to visit and he picks up her hook when she drops it and for some reason they spend way too long showing her weirdly pretending to knit with this hook when she is completely blind and not even holding it right. But I don't mind, it's still in my top five. 

I did end up planting some tomatoes, radishes and irises after all. I hope they survive the coming rain. Not going to lie I like it better here when it's pouring but my fruit trees would like a little break and so would the roof shingles where moss is beginning to grow. I know I'll be wishing for this when it's hot out so maybe I will make some tea and appreciate it a little more first. I'm adaptable. I feel like a walking war crime of some kind these days but I know I'll find more words in here somewhere, somehow.

Busy B.

Okay so I disappeared again but I'm here, I'm just trying to do a life reset, as it's a new season of life for me and since I had a birthday I get to change things up as I see fit. I've been doing more hardscaping and landscaping and less gardening. We opted out of a full veggie garden this year in favour of spoiling the fruit trees and the lilacs and maybe the roses too. The veggie garden out on the end of the point behind the little boathouse has been levelled and we took all of the spare patio stones and rocks out there and made a new Victorian patio like the one we had in the Prairies and I love it. Lochlan built a big bench for extra seating and an arbour over the top and Ben likes to sit out there on nice evenings and play his guitar. It's closer to the sea, further from the house but somehow removed from the noise of the house, pool, life, neighbors, traffic, planes. I don't know. It's literally forty feet away from the pool but somehow it's become a designated quiet spot. Like a library or a hospital ICU. No loud voices allowed. 

Yes, he could have gone to the little grotto out front but we redid that too as a larger perennial space and made it so it's more secure-a higher wooden fence now surrounds the whole property so if you are a bear or a person with ill intent you have your work cut out for you. Motion lights and cameras too. Caleb isn't happy with the bears even though I swore up and down that their intent wasn't malicious, just curious. 

He didn't believe me, and no, I did not build the fence. But maybe I do appreciate it just enough that I do feel safer. I feel like Ben will be safer and August too. August never tells anyone when he's coming or going. The rest of us always check in with someone. This way everyone is accounted for and no one can be eaten by a bear. This morning I did see one malicious squirrel though. A large brown one who has been planting peach pits all over the property and we have little trees popping up here and there. It would be funny save for the fact that in the Prairies in the castle we had to pull the soffits down because a squirrel family made a nest and made a mess and it was expensive to fix and then I felt bad because it gets so cold there in the winters. But what do I do? Allow holes in my house? Crank the heat and hope the furnace doesn't break? Ha. No. Bye squirrel. Go build a home in the garage or the treehouse, or at the neighbors. 

So I did not welcome this little brown squirrel. 

I also learned that if I stay up late watching movies and shows or knitting I actually sleep better. I've learned I can skip my chores and they are only 15% worse the next schedule. I've learned that we don't need military precision for meals and I don't need to be treated like a child. I've got my ability to feel back, as witnessed this morning while I was reading my weekly chapter of Yarn Harlot (I'm a very slow reader okay? This book is only read while I wait for the washer to stop so I average 10 minutes a week if that on it) and the chapter on being a doula and knitting the tiny sock had me crushed to a pulp before the last paragraph. 

I did some exploring and broke my phone, which let to a quick panic to replace it on the fly because the battery life went from alright and kinda sucky to Hope You Get Home as the GPS was necessary and so I have an new phone and no good cases again. I had just amassed a perfect collection and declared my iphone 12 my ride or die until a folding phone comes out from Apple. Lochlan laughed and probably cursed my phone and it promptly decided it was done holding charges. And bless their hearts at Apple, we walked in, they saw this tiny little woman with white hair and began to inquire kindly what I use my phone for and I laughed and said everything and listed what I needed them to bring out for me to buy and they did. 

I found a few different routes which quell the strange confusion around some busier areas and I feel more capable with navigation of some spots I have had trouble with for the better part of the fourteen years I have been here. 

Things I have been wanting to do I am doing, and no one is telling me no and no one is trying to stop me and I'm shoving that in their faces with as much grace and gratitude as I can.

Wildcard.

Thank Schuyler this time for usurping the power-hungry one and out-cooling everyone else, pointing out how juvenile it is to deny a grown woman internet at will, for any and all perceived or imagined or even concrete-proofed slights. 

Schuyler is such a king. If only he could shoot his cuffs like Caleb I would be such a goner. Actually never mind, I am a goner most of the time. 

I had a birthday and declined all activities. It was one of those things. Maybe one of these years. I still miss the life I thought I had and it went by so fast and I was so busy and now the life is new and the years are different and the light is different and I don't know if I took a wrong turn somewhere back along the path and am close by but not quite or if this is where I'm supposed to be but it feels strange and different and new somehow. 

Schuyler said I felt different. Like the joy has been sucked out of the room again. He said some normalcy will help and then he found out I had no outlets suddenly save for him and that's when he swept house, pretty much. Everyone got a lecture with their piece of cake. 

Bridget, of course, has had cake for breakfast every damn day this week. It was delicious.

I just wanted to be yours.

Acceptance and affection are my currencies. I don't do any exchange, it's all at par and it's freaking expensive for you. Worse for me still as I can't put a price on the absolute value. It wanes like the sunbeams across the wooden floor, unpredictable new cats lounging in the warmth left behind. 

It's sweet, for sure but difficult too. Like that first time you make a calculated decision to change something because he likes it better and you want to please him. It makes him happy and the thrill you feel down between your shoulder blades when he smiles at you with unchecked delight is the reward for selling yourself out. That's a long race to the bottom and it's a race you should never put yourself in. You're not qualified, you haven't trained, and yet you know in the moment you're going to spend the remainder of your life chasing the high of that thrill like the best drug you never wanted but were given anyway. 

Oh, but his face when he smiles.  

***

The reason the pills went away wasn't because I was a zombie, even though I was. They would have left me locked in that cage forever. It was safer. It was easier. It was convenient and peaceful and stupid, that Bridget being a yes-man when she's been an obstinate nine-year old for her entire existence, all fifty-some odd years of it now. 

They went away for other reasons and I'll never let them do that again. 

Even if it means the smile fades like those sunbeams.

It won't. 

What if we just wait and see, Lochlan?

It won't. I told you and I mean it.

Chipmunks in the willows.

This little corner of the internet turned twenty on Friday. I would have posted but I keep opening my yapping trap and losing my internet privileges. The blog might be an adult now, but I don't think I ever will be, at least not to Caleb, who controls the flow of information out of the Collective most days, or to Lochlan, who can't be bothered to die on that hill, frankly and I don't blame either one of them. It's a blog, not a big deal really. A place where I overshare and foist my tiny frustrated opinions on everyone and you just take it. You read it and then you probably shake your head and get on with your day. 

Yes, imagine me in real life. This is why the boys need naps. 

Eighteen years ago I started writing my tiny, stupid opinions on things and telling you about my tiny stupid life from a tiny, stupid brick apartment building, in a crumbling-paint lead-lined fifth-floor walkup a park away from the main thoroughfare through the city. 

I took that all down. Then it became After Jake. 

Then it really became After Jake because he died and it took me (it's taking me, I mean) the better part of sixteen years to come to terms with the weight of that and how to walk and drag it along with me without becoming out of breath. 

That was three addresses ago that I started it. I just remember people kept hitting our car in the parking lot and that's how I met my neighbours, all decent people who would pitch in and help me with the kids on fire-alarm days, anyway. Then we bought the castle, and Trey (Cole) lost his shit and then he lost me and then he lost his life and I started writing like a joyful little maniac, thinking I had all the time in the world, never once turning around to see the freight train coming at me. Of course I never heard it either. I'm functionally deaf and the biggest faker you will ever meet, pretending all the time.

But there is never enough time. Twenty years goes by in the blink of an eye and I am trying and failing to ease myself back into the every day here but it's tough going because I had the wind knocked out of my sails and I don't fight with Caleb much anymore, I just let him shoulder the guilt as I turn away, tucking my shoulders in, putting my head down and going and finding something (or someone) else to do. 

I never said I was an angel. That was Lochlan's nickname for me. One of thousands. He still looks at me with rose-coloured pupils and for that I am eternally grateful. They all do. The zookeepers with their little monkey. The wolves with their feral forest girl. I never said I gave up any bad habits I just took a break from writing about them because with the inclusion of possibly two years of the worst medication I have ever been on, you would have thought it was a major Red Flag. Like last time. I get stoned and everyone shrieks that I am being taken advantage of so it's better not to say anything at all. 

It isn't them. It never was. It's me. All the time. I take the blame. I am the blame here, every day of my life. Brick by brick, letter by letter, pill by pill. 

Happy birthday, blog.

***

I am 1/4 into Yarn Harlot and it's...well? Upsetting. I have trouble reading about people who are wilfully irresponsible. Ironic, isn't it? I guess I hate reading about people who shove their kids aside and maniacally laugh about psychological issues. I have all sorts of those and I still gave my kids my all. I always will. I'm going to stick with it and then maybe burn it in the bonfire later this week. It's a weird navel-gaze, anyway. Maybe it will get better?

***

I finished Gypsy on Netflix. Thank God I watch these things on one and half speed, sometimes two, so as not to waste my own time. Everyone says the actors sound like chipmunks when I do that, but I'm just gleefully content not to have wasted over ten hours. I LOVE LOVE Naomi Watts. I want her to play me in the movie of my life but this was a terrible thing. She was bad, it was bad. Billy Crudup was amazing. It should have been a two hour movie with a murder. Then it would have been okay. Maybe. Maybe I shouldn't have watched it after Penguin Bloom, which was a full-on masterpiece. Doing the lord's work here, as always. 

***

Jacob would have loved the way Caleb uses the internet as a reward-based system to keep me in line. He would have laughed in that hoarse, incredulous Newfie twang that rang through the halls when something was that Oh-My-Fucking-God. He and Caleb would have probably killed each other by now if Jacob had been stronger. But he wasn't and so there's that. And I'm sorry this has been eighteen years of strife and misery but like I said, at least it's going along at a rapid clip. Just read it all in a chipmunk voice. It's what I hear when I picture you reading it out loud.

Radium paint and Closed for Lunch.

I'm having fun today with the Geiger counter (long story which I WILL TELL if you really want) and measuring everything from the WWI antiques with radium accents (to glow in the dark, like me now, I bet), drunk on exhaustion from staying up past midnight because Coachella. 

Coachella was amazing. But only from 10:45 to midnight and only on the Sahara stage. Then we switched to the mainstage and Lana Del Rey was singing, looking pissed off as ever. Is it shyness? Is she a snob? Lizzie never tells. Her voice is solid like a freight train, so that's that. Of course, it's easy to be steady on your notes if you don't move when you sing. 

That's never happened at an Ateez show. They ate. They danced. They had a blast and so did the audience. So did all of us tuning in from home. Even the boys, who got all excited when Bouncy and Crazy Form were performed. It was awesome. Turning all my metalheads into kpop stans because it's HAPPY. It's FUN. 

Don't get me wrong, metal is fun as fuck but this is a weird eternal-spring/first-love sort of happy feeling and what kind of music does that these days?

So I slept until nine this morning and then we did an inventory of groceries and supplies and made the Big List (this is done weekly to make sure we don't miss anything when we go out. The grocery and hardware stores and shopping in general is way down the highway. Gas is $2.20 a litre and rising and time is money, friend) and then I set to work figuring out if the Geiger counter actually works or if it's a novelty or a false sense of security, or worse, if it works perfectly and we are being irradiated incessantly out of our minds on a daily basis. 

We tried to go antiquing but in British Columbia nothing is actually old because *gestures* reasons and so we came home and for a Saturday everyone has scattered to the wind (like nuclear fallout) and that rarely happens.

Yeah, so we're watching Fallout. How about you?