Weeeeeeeeeee.

 Five Mondays and it will be Labour Day. 

Yay! I stopped coughing at last and now only start if I laugh too much which is at least every breakfast, lunch and dinner hour thanks to PJ who is always up for making me howl til the howl turns tea kettle turns wheeze turns cough. 

Lochlan is always pissed at him but then again Lochlan is the one who has had to listen to me cough and cough and cough for almost a month straight and I feel for him so he enjoys the coughing-free moments more often than not these days and isn't excited to return to them. I offered to drown myself in the pool for a while there but he was even more pissed about that so really he just gets older and more worried and I'm glad he wasn't like this when I was in my early twenties or I probably would have murdered him, to be honest. 

We watched the new documentary on Netflix: Skywalkers, A Love Story. Oh my God it was so good and also I am really glad I mostly had a net and was only a story or so high. They have nerves of steel and it was so stressful to watch but afterward I felt as if I can let go of the every day stresses because I'm not depending on a sponsorship for a high risk, illegal activity to pay my damn bills.

I have Caleb for that. 

Anyway, there are popsicles in the freezer and avocados on the counter and the recycling and garbage is done and it's a long weekend and hopefully it won't be as hot as it was yesterday. It was so stupidly warm I swam in the ocean instead of the pool and Lochlan didn't like that either because I am definitely no Olympian. We came in after ninety minutes and watched the Olympics for the rest of the day. I hate the heat and I hate exercise and I'd rather eat burgers and watch someone else balance and do acro or gymnastics than do it myself anymore. 

I think this long weekend will just be more of the same and I'm really excited about it, suddenly.

 

"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?

Sam's lists.

Things I am sick of: "No worries" comments, solar eclipses, gas-powered outdoor landscaping equipment noise, waiting for paint to dry and the infuriating instant-cry that happens when I think about death. 

Things I am grateful for: sunshine and dandelions, pear blossoms (even if they do smell bad), handsewn patchwork, sleepy cats, and Ben's easy hands fixing the coffee grinder which otherwise sounds as loud as one of my nemesis outdoor equipment noises. I believe a bean fell down and got stuck in the sharp parts and it sounds like some kind of electric voodoo blender these days, and so he's having a look. 

This is of  no consequence to me, since I refuse to make fancy coffee and if no one is free these days I'll make instant but a scoop of instant mixed with a scoop of hot chocolate for a de facto mocha which is equal parts awful and delicious. 

So there. 

There's a house near us for sale for four million bucks. It is smaller than most, has two bedrooms and probably will be flattened to make room for a huge mcMansion right to the edges of their property line, which is three cliffs instead of one and not a good plan at ALL. I like the house but I don't want to own it. I am working hard to uncomplicate my life in the extreme and doing really good at it, frankly, including my finances. It was sort of the last hurdle as I do a refresh of sorts. A digital cleanse and organize to follow all of the physical ones that have taken place. 

It's bright enough today to work on the dark green socks I am knitting for Lochlan so off I go to drink some tea and remember that the world is beautiful and all of this is the important parts. The thoughts, dreams, sunny breezes and hot tea. The act of mindful work for a loved one. The gratitude list, playing like a mantra over the squiggly line that makes up my own unalome. The faded patio pillows against the fresh dark green grass and the noises ebbing at last as people hang up their tools, trading them for dinner utensils and quiet pursuits at sunset. 

I'll still burst into tears randomly but maybe I'm grateful for that too.

"Now that the lilacs are in bloom, she has a bowl of lilacs in her room." -T.S. Eliot

We were poking around thrift stores out in the valley on the weekend (Dalton and PJ are always on the hunt for what I lovingly call 'musical electronics' (old amps, guitars, heads, etc.) while Lochlan looks for vintage hand tools and I just look at everything, but I have my sights set on a 'nice' vintage Cowichan sweater for cold nights by the fire when a blanket and five men don't cut it but finding one in reverse colours (dark body, light colorwork) is a unicorn) and I found a copy of a book called Yarn Harlot. 

It seemed vaguely familiar. 

Stephanie's was one of the first blogs I ever read, and probably one of the reasons I started writing about my daily life. Something about a peek into someone else's home/day/routine/mindset is comforting, instructional and entertaining all at once. Sometimes we covet what someone else has. Sometimes we feel better about our own relationships, cleaning routine or feelings after reading about someone else's. It's invasive and voyeuristic and delicious, and I've never been one to demure about any of it, while all the while retaining my privacy to a degree that surpasses any level of reason. 

Anyway, I am one page in and I love it already. It was $4 on a shelf of otherwise terrible knitting pattern books and maybe the reason it called to me was to remind me that I have this outlet and I am not using it to the fullest? Or maybe to remind me of who I used to be? Excited to sit down, tell you everything, delete the worst parts (sometimes the best parts) and then hit publish as if I had completed my magnum opus, every single day. 

Sometimes it's been the only reason I got up in the morning and sometimes I used it to punish myself, the reminder that I haven't done anything to make myself famous or noteworthy, that those who do have a whole team of people lifting them up in the background and I definitely fall squarely into that category, believe it or not. 

I recently picked up my knitting again, probably a year ago now, a way to keep my hands engaged. I'm absolutely compulsive about my hands moving. If they're moving, they may as well be writing, drawing, painting, spinning, knitting, sewing, writing or forming clay. You can't always be touching someone, though that will forever and always be my first choice. 

I am now almost a couple of months out from the very last pill and physically things are starting to calm down. Emotionally I am the Pacific National Exhibition though, all thrills, chills, delight and horror all at once. That will calm down eventually, maybe now even, since the physical issues are ebbing. 

(I am also a couple months out from the heavy-handed and punitive internet embargo that infantilized me right back to the eighties, when the internet wasn't around but the boys' rules were just as miserable.)

So all that is to say thank you for sticking around. Somehow I think it was easier when I had that full-blown psychotic break and went to stay at the hospital with the locks on every door.  It was like speed dating. They pumped you full of drugs, asked a lot of questions, then immediately withdrew the drugs, asked many more questions and then suddenly I was home again. This was a years-long drawn-out ridiculous fugue state where I couldn't be anxious no matter how hard I tired but everything else went to shit. I laughed inappropriately at sad things. I got in fights because I couldn't empathize with the things that were important to others. I gained a lot of weight. I wasn't me anymore. 

I need to be me, or else who am I? 

And spring is a time of renewal and change and reassurance. The lilacs have their tiny buds bursting to come out, the nights are cool but warmer than before and it was light out last even until past seven-thirty, which I exclaimed with great delight in the moment, knitting in hand. I will always have my hands busy. I took my sewing box (it's a Turkish cookie tin) to bed last night and sat up in the middle between Lochlan and Ben with a cat and a flashlight in my lap and pieced together a patchwork cloth that I will then cut into to make a book cover for my paperbacks to live in as I read them (it keeps them nicer in my bag) and to remind me that physical books are as important to care for as my beloved kindle, and I did that until midnight and then I finally turned off my flashlight at midnight and slept until six-thirty. 

So normal. So invasive to tell you this. So looking forward to the lilacs this year.

Stop it.

I am continuing to struggle here and no, I'm not that Princess. And no, there are no good guesses when people think I'm writing under a pseudonym. I only did that professionally. This is just me and so you're reading about a regular princess here. One soaked in brine and regret and sometimes full on sillyness. I had another death to deal with, another realization that life is slipping by. I finished a book, missed a show I would have loved to have seen (Jon Foreman opened for someone here a week ago and I had no idea-this on the eve of the release of his latest solo effort, no less and WHY didn't someone tell me??) and am playing Catch Up and (sometimes to their alarm) am playing Don't Care too. Why? Trying to withdraw from some seriously serious medications have kicked me off the cliff. Doing it while dealing with death? Harder still. Do I want to talk about it? No. Do I need to? 

Maybe. 

I got four weird emails guessing I was the Princess of Wales. HA. Because easy enough to fake and especially since Canada is a country with a King. Right? Right? 

No? I'm sorry but that's dumb and I am me and you all know that. I cringe a bit when someone discovers y little corner of the internet and skips the whole middle part. I might know a lot of musicians, but as I said constantly, I am not famous. Are there Getty images of me? Nope. Are there press photos of me? Not recently. 

Is it cold and raining today? Yes, it is. Henry is home from California. He went with Caleb on a business trip. He had a great time and we're all sick now because he caught a cold on the plane even with a mask. So I am wrapped in a sweater with the heat up and the bag of Jalapeno Cheetos on the table while I knit and Netflix. Ha. Some princess I am.

They brought you up (by holding you down).

 Littlest wild wolf loves the big snowflakes. 

PJ snorts. I am back downstairs for the first time in days. Silk cami, wool sweater falling off my shoulders, worn jeans and thick socks, necklaces twisted at my throat, my hair tucked behind my ears. Guitar pick that I found on the stairs now safely stowed in my back pocket with my phone, seven rings on my fingers, four on one finger. One for each husband with no ire whatsoever on the part of the first/current/final soulmate to this busted heart.

PJ sent me a text that pulled me out of my post-Christmas pre-spring long grief at the hands of the devil and suggested I make an appearance, that the wolves were restless. That a pack is more fearsome than a loner, that elder wolves have no patience and will eat their young without hesitation. That fur is cold and ruffled, unsettled and fierce. That no amount of charm is going to be able to pave over the holes in the road I have travelled as of late. 

And also to not ignore his message or he'd come up and haul me out by my hair. 

(It takes a lot to get PJ to advance to the second level of the house, as his suite is on the main floor and he goes out of his way to avoid surprise interactions with Caleb.)

Give me fifteen minutes. I send the text and turn my phone back face down. Caleb never needs the ego bite of confirmation that he is under their skin, instead better left to his darkness.

I am here now. Watching the huge flakes fall like feathers from the heavy clouds, keeping a cool grey hue over our lives, quieter now than ever. 

Lochlan is outside, shoulders rounded, head down. I can burn holes in his back with my eyes but he doesn't sense my presence. 

How long? I ask PJ. 

Sunrise, PJ says. I'm not shitting you, Bridget.You are our very own Helen of Troy. 

I ignore him and grab Duncan's sweater off the closet chair, heading outside.

Dotaine. 

He ignores me as I hurry to the edge of the world. 

Do-TAINE (Doe-chain. It comes out breathless, strangled). 

He turns, head ducked, now rising to meet my eyes. 

She returns. The prodigal daughter. 

Jesus. Can we stop with the new nicknames? I called you. 

What was I going to do, Neamhchiontach? Answer you?

YES. 

Fuck that. I'm not giving him any grace. 

You mean me. 

That too. 

I stare at him. Huge snowflakes cover our heads. Ice crowns, freeze each other out. Whiteout, snowblind. Ultimatums carved in ice. Love on ice. Regrets after he told me I was exhausting and Caleb could take a shift and finally do some of the heavy lifting. Always the same song with Lochlan. 

Did you say your goodbyes, Bridget?

I did. 

Did he weep for the loss?

Don't, Locket. 

At least tell me he was crushed with the sudden recall of his favourite plaything. 

I say nothing, setting my jaw, turning to look out at the blackened waves. After a beat: He can tell you himself. 

I'm speaking with you. 

I left, so I don't know. 

He must have said something-

Let's go inside.You must be so cold. 

I am fire, Bridget. And I can burn him to the ground. 

You told him to do some of the work. 

It was a bluff. A commentary on his lack of participation. And in return I got a week of threats. 

Saying what?

That you weren't coming back to me. 

And you believed him. 

Always. 

I'm not leaving you, Locket. Stop testing me. 

It's the only thing I know how to do. 

I thought you wanted a break from me. You said-

Stop listening to me, goddamit, Peanut-

I pull his face down to mine for a kiss. I don't want to hear it. I don't want him to feel like this. I don't want to be away from him. 

I'm sorry, Bridget. I let you down. I let the wolves in. I-

I am the wolf and I ate your heart and I should be the one saying I'm sorry. 

Why would you ever think any of this is your fault?

Delusional older men and the women who tolerate them.

The snow has started, Neamhchiontach. Come to bed. 

I shake my head. I'm sitting wrapped in a blanket in the big wing chair by the fireplace. It's warm here. It got a lot colder at night in the past few nights and I wasn't ready for it. I practically tried to crawl underneath Lochlan and put my face in Ben's hair to keep my nose warm the other night and both kind of pushed me off so I thought I would give them both a break last night and stay with Caleb. Caleb who had the candles light, the fire burning bright and the whiskey in two tumblers before I got the request completely out. 

Anytime you need me, I am here. 

I'm just cold. You're burning so I figured you would be warm. Don't be flattered. 

Hard not to be. You're here and I don't have to wait for my dreams to visit me in my sleep when they're right in front of me. 

He's so good at this. I feel my icy heart melting just enough to create a sizzle around the edges and then I slept like the dead for hours. Until I couldn't anymore which is always in the early darkened hours of the day, the inky black silent morning before sunrise. 

Give me another night. You need a full night of rest before I send you back. 

I don't get any rest here.

It's a polite euphemism, he snaps, frustrated by my casual rejection. As always we both benefit from your late night wandering. 

I like to watch the snow. I'll come back when I'm tired. 

You always come back to me. 

I always want to catch you up before I restart and then I fall behind once more.

My ears are ringing today. I think I'm getting a cold. They've been randomly shooting sharp pains through my head. It feels like post-Halloween instead of pre-spring today. Wind and snow/rain on the way. The leaves are grey/tan and glued to the concrete. The trees bend and snap in the chill breeze. The water is that dull ominous grey punctuated with the odd cap of white foam. 

The Bridget? 

She is spring-cleaning. The usual stupid shit I get up to just as tax season rolls around and I am so busy but decide to do things like steam clean all the area rugs and curtains, scrub out drawers and cubbies and closets. Declutter and reorganize. I just delivered eight perfect tent pegs down to the garage to the camping supplies from their inexplicable year-long holding place in the drawer with the frying pans. 

Right. I don't know either but I am hellbent on finding a place for everything and keeping everything in its place. I am procrastinating, but doing it on an HGTV level here, as per usual.

I'm watching Alone this week. The Arctic one. It's so delicious. It's graphic and also somewhat staged. Like one minute the contestants are starving and blacking out and the next? Surprise, a fat perfect bunny in the snare that looks like every other snare in the show. Does everyone do the same type? I saw so many over the years. I would stick a ski pole or a walking stick through all of them because snares had no place in countryside light, and that was killing for sport instead of food, so fuck you. On the show they need to eat and they're doing a mostly poor job of it, though the suspense is good and the surprise is decent, as is the conveyance about how far away from each other they are and how cold and solitary it actually is. 

I'm reading Meghan Quinn's A Not So Meet Cute. Okay, sue me, it's adorable. I love a good long depressing story about grief and ghosts and vague unsettling occurrences the same way I love horror movies but then switch to Hallmark Christmas movies once a year. This is my Fucking Spring Literary Fling then and I love it. Lottie is a fun character. There's little depth and everything will work out. I believe. 

I'm rolling my eyes at the newspaper that has the nerve to try and snark on Lululemon's potential handslap for greenwashing while in the next breath putting up a news article breathlessly marketing their newest sneaker for them. I can't believe Lululemon still hasn't been cancelled as a nod to the shitty racism from its founder and then moreover for the fact that it makes stretchy nylon-polyester...gym wear?

I'm eating granola bars and poutine, the former of which is a daily thing, the latter of which was a first or second and soon-to-be-regret, as there was SO MUCH CHEESE and I don't get along with lactose. At all. 

Ha. 

I knit another inch on a sock for myself between lunch and post lunch. It's so zen, so productive and satisfying. I have an Etsy cart full of knitty things to help me make more things but I'm trying to be a responsible consumer too and only buy what I need currently, and that includes yarn, even as I found a beautiful seed-stitch cowl pattern that looks woven so I want to make it too. On a consumerism level though it will have to wait. Over the winter I even pared down the pantries from twenty years of weird overshop/prepping in order to be more mindful in cooking and eating and am trying to buy a wonderful meal or two at a time to savour. 

Speaking of savour. After Christmas we stopped for dinner at a favourite little spot and I ordered my usual Monte Cristo with ham and fries. There was no ham this time, and then the sandwich itself was on this bizarre commercially-produced french toast-type thick cake bread with no crusts, instead of my old favourite fried scrunched-up crackly sourdough. So yeah, I have to make french toast and then do Monte Cristos at home now. End of an era, but at least it's not like donairs from the east coast where you just simply can't recreate them sufficiently at home. I can do this. Going to make them every week. 

I feel like the sun is trying to peek through the heavy cloud-cover on its way over the horizon while the moon struggles to rise tonight. I feel like it's a weird long weekend but at last it's a completed week, almost and I feel like I might sleep tonight too. If only my ears will stop ringing, that is.

Earl grey donuts and cold blue skies.

I fixed all of my typos from the previous post, including the one where I miswrote Bucharest as Budapest. I've never lived in Budapest but sometimes my brain picks the first syllable and just runs with it and I had no time to edit. Caleb is demanding, cutting and in control when it comes to what I have come to call my 'outside time', that is the time in which I can see what is happening in the world or write here a little bit so that people understand that I am still alive, still happily ensconced in my Collective, frayed and worn as it may be. And Lochlan is world-weary and not interested in butting heads with the devil over something as inconsequential as the internet. 

An essential service, I venture and from his chair at the table PJ snorts a laugh. 

A mindless distraction, Caleb reiterates. 

Okay, Boomer, I mutter to myself. I have things to do online. I want to add to my Netflix queue. I want to start looking at my taxes. I want go back to doing online banking because I like charts on paper and being able to do all of my transactions on a screen without having to talk to someone. The OCD doesn't want to be explained and neither does anything else. 

The doctor is soon, for my checkup for the all of the not-easily-dismissable side effects of all these medications, including my poor busted heart which is going through the wringer with skipped beats and double beats and no beats where there should be beats. It's like a bad song, but as Lochlan whispered to me more than once as of late,

Any song is better than the quiet. 

And I believed him. 

He is human. We screwed up, or rather, he did and I took the brunt of the mistake. 

Once again. 

In any case, I think the doctor will send me back to soberland, back to anxious nail-biter hand-flapper, lip-biter Bridget. My drive to create will come back. My energy and sleep will come back. My vision and semi-regular heartbeat will come back. My stoic, pragmatic and silly husband will be back instead of the spooked rigid boat-steadier/passive guy who seemingly took his place. A stranger. In a strange land.

I told them I was an occasional benzo girl and this wouldn't work. It's been two years and I'm FINALLY vindicated. I can finally fight for my rights. For control. For access.

I understand why he did it. I hope he understands why I can't anymore.

But then again, no.

Daniel and I spent the morning laying in his bed singing our lungs out to the Forbidden Playlist (plot twist: it's Elton John's Greatest Hits) as a litmus test.

Which one? The one where he confirms he's still gay or was it the one where we see how many songs it takes now for Bridget to begin to sing less and cry the words more? Does it matter? I mean, DOES IT?

It doesn't, if you don't mind spoilers. 

He sings a mean Madman Across The Water, though and I sort of always want to throw away everything and everyone else when I am here. Always the safest space, as dangerous as it has been over the years. Over a lifetime. There isn't anyone who can escape those thoughts when it comes to Daniel, though so no one minds, and we all fight for the space beside him. Few are permitted here, however, in Schuyler's inner sanctum, as it were. Three of us, mostly, but mostly me. 

Daniel still has the longer hipster hair. Still the mile-wide grin. A few more greys on his head but all his hair. A few more lines on his face, mostly around his eyes and mouth. His hands are still softer than air, his words chosen carefully so as not to leave dents or scrapes on my fragile heart.

He wouldn't though, so I'm safe. 

He needs to shave. My skin is so sensitive to stubble and his chin has been resting against the top of my head for so long I feel as if I am wearing a cactus hat, and one that's so warm. He loves that my hair is growing again. I've got a chin length bob and my bangs are just below my bottom eyelashes. He said the colour is like a clear icy lake on a winter's day. He marvels at it. There's only a tiny bit of actual-blonde left, a few strawberry pale strands that clash with the colder white. I told him I'm growing it back out to my knees, as I miss my braid. I miss the extra pair of hands that a braid can be when you put things in it, hang things from it, use it as a comfort object, a scarf, a hat, a belt. Plus I really want to see this crazy colour on longer hair, in all its glory. 

They are cheering me on, horrifying as it's going to be. 

I can't wait. 

***

Daniel is tasked with withdrawal from winter into spring. Once Groundhog Day hits I will become super impatient with winter and cold damp and darkness and wet leaves and bullshit and wish ahead, the one thing I'm not supposed to do, which is rush through the seasons with my grass-is-greener approach, slowing only into a languid autumn as it is my absolute favourite, but right now I can feel myself getting so antsy and I don't know if it's the drugs or simply the time of year. I think there's an Olympics this year? No, dammit, it's two years away. Sometimes I miss cable TV but then I poke around and find something to see. We watched Cocaine Bear and HOWLED last night and then I started The Watcher alone and I want to move back to Bucharest if only for the beautiful culture shock that it is. 

Don't worry, if that happens in the latest round of upends I will let you know. Also they might reinstate my internet permanently this week. I will keep you posted. Or rather, I will keep posting if they do. It's been rough.

Snowstorm!

 So we've gotten more snow in the past fifteen hours than we have ever had before. The good news is we're basically shovelled out if you count the number of 4x4s that live in the driveway. And the few who don't have one can certainly take one but why? Nothing is open, the tiny universe here is shut down it seems and that's fine. The house is so bright. The WORLD is so bright outside. It's crazy. The snow stopped an hour ago. Thank God. Hahaha. 

I hurt my shoulder/neck/back whatever that stupid muscle is that runs down the right side of my neck that fucks up every time I try to reach too far or lift too much. I was trying to keep up with PJ and Duncan, who were shovelling the backyard with me. We do the steps, the patio (covered but snow got around the perimeter underneath) and a huge figure eight for the dog to walk and also a path to next door, swinging by the sauna and pool area. The front had Dalton, Ben and Lochan along with Sam and Matt to do the driveway and front walk area. Caleb doesn't participate (heart) and August didn't either (sick) and Henry was working from home so I volunteered because more hands make light work and now my ear has a stabbing pain and if I move the wrong way my whole upper right side seizes with an unholy agony the likes of which I would rather not suffer so I cannot move now. 

Ben will make dinner. Chili and biscuits. 

Lochlan will finish my chores. 

I will sit here hugged by a magic bag until I feel as if I can have sufficient mobility again. I have to remember I'm not twenty anymore. I have to remember it's cold. I have to remember to pace myself. What's the rush? We went and got our groceries yesterday and did everything we needed to do, not to mention it's supposed to be warm and rainy for the remainder of the week so the snow, all this fucking snow isn't even going to stick around long enough for us to sled down the wall into the sea. Well, that sucks. 

No mail delivery. No dog walk up through the hood. No swimming and probably no sauna today either because I can't handle the thought of putting my icy wet boots back on to go outside. 

Plus ice is better than heat for this sort of injury, says everyone. 

But ice is how I got it, so no, thank you.

 

Myrrhhhhhhhhhhh Rum Pum Pum Pum..On my drum..

It's Epiphany and I celebrated (because I'm not Catholic) by dismantling one of the dryers and cleaning it out. Then I did the second one. And the vent going all the way to the outside. Glutton for punishment? No. Frustrated by procrastinators? You bet. It was taking an extra half hour to dry a regular load and who has time for that? I grabbed Youtube, a flashlight and a screwdriver. Then I went back up for batteries for the flashlight, an extension cord for the shop vac, and a cursed whine to someone to find me the box of the nutty-things for doing screws with 3D hexagon heads. Found the case, found the 1/4 inch thingie that I needed, discovered the lantern was out of batteries too so held the flashlight between my teeth, and yelled at the boys to get out of the room so I could do what I wanted to do. 

Glad I did. The blower motor and the hose leading to the wall were CAKED in lint. CAKED. 

So it should be faster by a lot tomorrow. I also even tested it to make sure it still worked. Go me! 

If you don't know, Epiphany isn't also just a Catholic thing. It's the twelfth day of Christmas, and your true love is supposed to bring a dozen drummers drumming to round out the absolute batshit madness of all the other stuff they've brought you on the previous eleven days of Christmas. Some people say it's the day Jesus was baptized. It's also the day Melancholy, Bathmat and Casper the Friendly Ghost bring a bunch of useless items to gift to the baby messiah when a breast pump, Roomba and a wipe-warmer would have been far more practical. Even as a luddite, I can tell you a new broom and hemp fleece wipes, even if room-temperature would have been preferable. The pump stays. It's a necessity. 

(Those are not their names but it's the only way I can remember their actual names which are Melchior, Bathalzar and Caspar. Par Rum Pum Pum Pum!)

Am I drunk? No, Not when fixing heavy machinery. Drunk on capability, perhaps. It's a high I don't often get to indulge.

I lost my internet for Christmas because I refused to join Caleb for a night. I got a whole smooth sympathy plea over way too much champagne over how quiet things have been lately and how lonely and disconnected he feels and how he's missing affection and missing being part of my days (? He's right here) and how it's the only thing he wants in the way of a gift, that he has everything a man could ask for except the only thing he actually wants. I took my glass, picked up the bottle and sloshed my way down the hall away from his wing, with as much false liquid courage I could find but my knees were shaking, my hands were flapping and my eyes were watering to go with my spinning head. I didn't trust myself not to cave, didn't trust him not to hurt me in his lust for control and didn't want to make Lochlan (or Benjamin for that matter) sad that I was missing. 

I locked the bedroom door, poured the rest of the bottle down the bathtub sink and fell asleep face-down, fully-clothed on the bed, waking up with the worst hangover but the doors were open to the balcony for fresh cold air, there was a tray on the table with juice, tea and toast and some banana slices and Lochlan was sitting in the big wing chair in the corner, where Ben usually puts his jeans overnight. 

Morning, Neamhchiontach. 

I rolled over and gave him my most-wistful noncommittal expression. Until I know how he feels I'll stand my ground. 

I see you followed directions and stayed out of trouble for the first time in your life. 

Maybe. He took away my internet though. 

Why trade your soul for connectivity when I've got what you need? 

He smiled his wicked ringmaster-grin, the one that always sent a little chill of a thrill down the back of my neck and I nodded. 

Acoustic, I told him in a whisper. Old-school. Hands-on.

Yeah, whatever. He laughed uproariously. It's a good day to be me.

More tomorrow, I promise.

Lost my internet over Christmas. Whoops. Thank you for all of the emails. I wish each and every one of you a wonderful season of Epiphany and beyond and hope that 2024 treats us all better because 2023 was a slog. 

Today my shirt has a down and out Alien on it. He's holding a coffee cup out and a sign that says I NEED TO GET HOME. Not sure who's shirt this is but if it winds up in my laundry pile I wear it until someone points out the error and asks for it back. We can't be expected to know who owns what funny t-shirt and I have far too many mens XL band shirts that you would think it would be obvious to just go by size. 

Fashion? What's that? Alien shirts and jeans for the win. And socks. Smart wool, homemade wool, I'm not picky as long as they aren't synthetic. 

Christmas was quiet and lovely and completely devoid of spirit. We did our best. We made new traditions. We broke old traditions. We were common sense about it and tomorrow it's over. Then Candlemas comes. But first snow and cold, forecast for next week, which is perfect. Seriously. I hate snow now. I want to live in perpetual autumn, after the heat, after the leaves just begin to turn but before it gets dark so fucking early. I don't want hot or cold, just tepid, medium life. Bring me the fringe, margin seasons or bring me death. 

I wonder if they can find a shirt that says that. 

The internet thing is a long story but Caleb took it away and Lochlan doesn't care all that much and I could ask Google to look things up if I needed answers but otherwise huh, maybe he gave me the luddite Christmas of my dreams or maybe he's still the Diabhalest ever.

Santa's real but his beard is red.

Christmas starts at lunch time today! 

UNGHHHHHHH YES! 

Also happy Solstice or warm tidings on the longest night and shortest day. We got through it. We survived. Now Santa is coming, just in time to celebrate the days getting longer and we're not even going to talk about the decided lack of spirit this year or the fact that my primroses and strawberries are still blooming. I tossed them in the vegetable garden pile and covered them with maple leaves in case we got snow but instead we got warmth and tons of rain. I should have left them all out. I did make an executive decision and take the olive and pepper trees back outside. I don't care if they don't make it, truth be told. We all have to fend for ourselves and I have tiny gnats in the window by the doors. Every day I kill four of them and they just keep coming. 

Like an army. 

Kind of wonder where they're holed up but also I don't want to know. I'm a very fussy cleaner but are the boys? Some of them. None of them will be there at six-fifteen in the morning with a butter knife wrapped around a cloth scraping dust out of the grooves on my big American southwest desk though. You'd think I use no dishes for all the crap that winds up in this groove. 

The last load of laundry is in. We might try and hit the Christmas market downtown before it's gone but that's a maybe. I have three different knitting projects on the go and a bottomless list on Netflix so I've cured my shack-whackiness. I bought no good snacks this year and am subsisting on prescriptions, multivitamins, pistachios and homemade wine. 

Caleb says I'm an abomination. 

Ben says I'm a saint. 

Lochlan says I'm a fever dream. 

Duncan said I was a bitch. 

I was so thrilled at that one I laughed. Better a bitch than a doormat, I told him. We've been spatting all December because he can't cure his shack-whackiness. It's a more primal version. I told him he needs a trip somewhere, maybe but he said he'd rather be home. 

Gosh, we're all getting old. 

There's a bottle of tylenol by the kitchen sink. No point putting it away because someone always needs it and takes it out. I used to replace it a couple times a year. Now I buy a new one every two weeks. I wake up stiff and sore, limbs aching and never in a good way. I have resumed doing yoga with Ben because if I don't I just hurt all day. I spend all my downtime in the hot tub, sauna or pool. Same with most of the others. 

I am back to saying less and meaning more. 

I am trying so desperately to find some spirit. 

What would help? Lochlan asks and I want to give him my list of complaints but he's always been one to say Now tell me what might help make that better? A variation on the question between us right now. 

A smoky jazz club, decorated for Christmas, and an old-fashioned, followed by an Irish coffee. Maybe a pastry or some tapas for lunch.

Go change.

Extra pills, fewer words.

Today's t-shirt makes me laugh. PJ brought it back from LA for me. It's got a cartoon drawing of a UFO on the front and a speech bubble that says GET IN, LOSER. 

I feel like it's meant for me. 

Today's breakfast was a handful of pills and oatmeal, black coffee, a badly bruised banana (fuck you, Superstore for your shitty produce) and a multivitamin. Today's lunch was uh, crackers and dinner was a fried egg sandwich with farm bacon from a place in the valley that cuts their bacon so thick I stopped calling it bacon and started calling it steakon. They know what I mean! 

(GET IN, LOSER.)

It's cheap considering it's practically the whole hind leg of a pig in one package. Like fourteen dollars and it feeds eight people, easily. We also bought pepperoni and some aged cheddar but that won't last long. 

I am sober, if you're wondering. 

People say I sound gagged. Like legally or threatened-of-bodily-harm but honestly since Caleb behaves and I am now boring there isn't much to write about save for Lochlan's blissful contentment. His dreams are coming true. Caleb's not evil, I'm not stubborn. Ben isn't scary anymore and Cole and Jake are dead, 

It's perfect. 

I mean it is. We took the money and ran as far away as we could from the circus and the side show too, the midway is a distant sticky, sweaty memory and the music still winds around and between us but we're still here. I'm still here. He still puts up with me. The ghosts haven't gotten me yet but neither have the aliens. 

I'd rather be a loser than a memory. I said that to Loch from my side of the hot tub earlier and he laughed out loud and said Same.

 

Black Tuesday.

 I did all of my shopping early. I stuck with practical gifts instead of fanciful, instead of homemade and I ordered damn near all of it this week and every single day a blue van pulls up early in the afternoon and a pile is left in the parcel box by the gate. I had to have Lochlan go and remove the lock and we added a camera out there because there are so many couriers and if one locks the box then the others have no safe spot to put the rest but I turned on my camera notifications and once the frost burns off the driveway I can go up and fetch things as they trickle in. I bought tape and cards and paper last year. I will make labels and reuse boxes to ship things in and I already remembered to buy an extra roll of packing tape so while I am not nearly as prepared as I usually am, I am getting there, and that's a good thing, as I feel mired perpetually in the quicksand of pills and sleep and routine and pain and I'm okay though, so that's something. 

I went with Ruth today to finally collect her car, fresh with snow tires and it's one less thing to worry about. Henry is secure in his job. Lochlan has so many irons in the fire it's drowning for a lack of air and I discovered I really freaking love knitting. I have knit off and on since I was a little girl but lately it's all I seem to do in the evenings while we are watching movies. Lochlan smiled so dryly the first few times. He asked me if he should bring the rocker in from the front porch. I smiled and said no. I'm a couch knitter, bracing my needles or my loop against my ribcage and I can't seem to break such a bad habit but I'm also knitting top-down socks today and so maybe once I'm better at them. I'm struggling to be a proficient fine knitter. If I can't be a fast one, that is. 

Ben asked for socks. He asked for a hat and a sweater and fingerless gloves too. I'm going to be so busy. We are actually minding the deep-freeze this week. It seems stupidly cold but it's not. 

I made an executive decision this year though that is a big change from previous seasons. No Christmas decorations up and no lights until December first, giving us time to embrace fall. I'm loving the early dark and the yellow leaves and the change. Rather than rushing headlong from Labour Day through Thanksgiving into Halloween then two months straight of Christmas we're enjoying the post-Halloween extended fall season. It feels less rushed somehow and richer, more meaningful. And hopefully instead of being sick and tired of the trees and lights by boxing day I'm hoping it will help extend the spirit into the first weeks of January. If something isn't working it's always good to try something different, I think.

Many years have gone by now and I still dread today like the rain that never stops, and you wonder if you will get swept to your demise or wind up in a new place altogether. I did anyway, as nothing is ever familiar about the way this feels and I have used this anniversary as my own personal monkey bars, and I climb all over it and run around it and sometimes I duck between the bars and sit inside and hope no one can see me, and sometimes, more rarely and ever wonderful, I can stand at the very top, arms outstretched toward the sun and I can reach for heaven and wave, hoping he sees me. 

Some days I can't even make it to the park, but I am not keeping score. I no longer care what year anniversary this is or exactly how many days he has been gone. I don't weep for the man he would have been on his birthday, the day that follows this day nor do I recognize myself in the mirror. 

Things I want to tell him are always on the tip of my tongue. 

I made potato bread today. I bet you'd love it. 

Do you think the world is actually imploding? 

What do you think of this perfume? 

Your son got his contract extended for a year. He's doing so good. 

Ruth is overwhelmed in her amazing career and is finally going to buy snow tires. 

PJ still calls you a coward in his darkest moments. 

Caleb still wishes he had been there to push you. 

I wish you never left. 

I wish I looked the same for you. 

I can't tell him that Amazon now gives me a running countdown to tell me how many stops away they are, or that butter now costs nine dollars for a cups worth, salted or not. I can't tell him I finally stopped drinking, just when our homemade wine was starting to get good. I can't tell him I gained a little weight or that it's because my heart falls out constantly, rolling around on the floor picking up dust. I could show him the new kittens but I don't think they would be enough to bring him back. I could show him what finally forced Ben into the sweet gentle giant role he should have been all along but I could also show him how long it takes Ben to type a text message, or get a joke now. 

Maybe he does see all of it, and more. Maybe he sees how I struggle to conquer this jungle gym and I fall off it so often, knocking the wind from my lungs on the hard grass, leaving streaks of dirt on the back of my shirt. 

Maybe last year was easier. Maybe next year will be too. Maybe the rain will stop but I doubt that just like I doubt everything. It's the new normal. I live with it, around it and in it. And yet I am never comfortable here. And I never ever stop missing him. 

 

I want to write but my brain is mashed potatoes. For my own safety, probably (gestures helplessly at the calendar) because next week is the bad one and while I've been nicely distracted lately (mostly without internet by design), it's not as if they can just turn off time. 

Well, Maybe Lochlan can and this is how we picked up where we left off? I don't know, exactly. I just know that his aubergine waffleknit shirt is too big on me but also it looks better with my colouring and these jeans are at least twenty years old if not older and the clocks go back this weekend. 

Bringing more darkness, earlier. The rain is set to start this evening and not stop until Advent, or maybe later. The world gets so small it fits in the light thrown by a single candle and when that happens I can't breathe. It's such a quiet panic, however. No drama, just slack-jawed, glassy-eyed, sleep-breath, staring-at-the-wall panic. 

Ben will bite his lip and point it it's probably better to say something. 

I let my eyes move so slowly, trying to balance the tears so they don't spill and I keep my head straight and level until I meet his gaze. 

Jesus, Bridge, you're so creepy. 

But his voice is full of admiration instead of horror and with that I am snapped back to the present. To the warm, well-lit kitchen, lights on, woodstove crackling, arms everywhere in case I need to hug someone or fall. 

It will never not feel so heavy, and I have never felt so weak.

October rust.

How do I fill the time, holed up in the shadows of the ones who have left, only to forget those shadows leaving these huge dark spaces where so much light used to be? 

Learn something new, I tell myself automatically, finding solace in working with my hands, keeping my brain so focused on perfecting the task at hand that it remains present, failing to wander away into the night, mistaking that ever-present darkness for a simple shadow, time after time. 

How do I not stay in the past, refusing to move past the dates seared into my mind? How do I not become hypnotized by the flames, so beautiful even as they burn everything to the ground, leaving nothing but a smoky darkness that looks like shadows but with more destruction, more decay. 

How do I put it down when I can't let go?

***

I wrote that a few days ago and didn't post it. It feels like me. Sounds like me, looks exactly like me, a spitting image carved in granite of Bridget's forever psyche, like a greek tragedy represented in stone. The leaves have turned red, the moon orange and the bats have returned to replace to chickadees now rare in the cold October winds. I wrap my sweater tighter around my bones, sip my coffee and listen carefully as the boys talk in their low voices. Sometimes I zone out. Sometimes I sleep sitting up. Sometimes I strain to hear and still can't and other times I want to break out of this stone and run down the grass, leaping into the saltwater, and healing the scratches and scrapes from the days keeping their hold on me. Sometimes I watch Netflix for days on end, another video up on a second screen, teaching myself continental knitting or so I hope in order to be faster at it, since the English way is slow. I'm pretty certain the Irish way of knitting is to say fuck it and pour whiskey over the whole thing, lighting it on fire, but I want to become a fine knitter as it's a brain-calming activity the likes of which I rarely find and it's an easy creative outlet when I don't want to write or paint. 

The pumpkins and leaves outside are soaked. The grass so green now it looks as if someone turned up the saturation on the world and the army has begun to draw close yet again as the calendar rolls around to the truly sad bad anniversaries we can't seem to forget if we tried.

Decade-old cravings and not being able to help them.

What wouldn't I give right now for a bowl of tumeric coconut curry with pineapple chutney and chunks of chicken with roasted roots? Don't ask me that when I'm hungry, but the only place to get the one I want is downtown and no one will drive there and get me some even though I am on day five of the first cold/flu of the season and somehow only Ruth and I have been struck down by it. Ruth goes like a bat out of hell as it is, working like a maniac and then doing extreme sports and escape rooms and day trips on her days off and sees a lot of people so it makes sense. I live in my ivory tower and am not allowed to go anywhere except the superstore and occasionally the yarn or potter supply shops in Surrey so I don't know how I get sick. 

Oh, yes, Ruth comes by to show me things and then I get sick. Or maybe I had the luck of someone breathing on me in the aisle where I let out a mighty expletive upon discovering that, while they took away all of the Stouffers and Lean Cuisine frozen dinners, cosmic brownies and Little Debbie products, they gave all that space to more Global foods and so I can buy pakoras and masala vada and stuffed naan whenever I want. 

When I swear in the grocery store people look so alarmed. It's nothing, I just get excited about new stuff. Grocery shopping is such a chore. Also we have on average only five varieties of pop-tarts in Canada now and I will never understand why. 

Yes, I do. Everything is disappearing from the shelves because supplies can't afford to parse out their wares across the entire huge vast land that is this country, especially ironic when we all live within a stone's throw or an hour's drive of the border. 

My new passport is here and I am sorely tempted to drive down to Bellingham and go to Trader Joes and Target but I also don't want to shop near people with automatic guns so I might stick with Superstore and uhhh wherever else I can get what I need. I don't want to leave the country anymore. Thanks to Amazon I barely want to leave the house and don't have to. They're driving down my street every day anyway, may as well put that to good use. 

They won't bring me the curry though.

Lift me up to the heavens (I can't hear what they're saying).

Your princess finally got to see Atreyu, seeing Drowning and more importantly, Watch Me Burn live were parts of my brain I didn't realize were puzzle pieces and now that section of this weird science experiment that lives inside my head is complete. Or mostly, anyway. You can still see right through it but I love live shows and I'm happy they opened, as when I originally got the tickets for Maiden it said Raven Age was coming back again and I rolled my eyes. Again? Nepo babies in music are a given but after one tour it's a problem. 

Maiden was nuts. Though Bruce looked older than his years at last, and he has grown his hair back out (I saw him last in 2016) and the bangs were my favourite part of his look and they are gone in favour of a white half-ponytail. He also had a bad cold and hid it amazingly well. I was pleased he didn't call it off but also he still hit all the notes and it was the final Canadian date on their Future/Past tour. 

Also the merch was so much better this time. No more disembowelled moose on t-shirts, instead the actual band designs/album covers on shirts. Cotton shirts, one hundred percent. Love it. 

They trotted out Eddie a couple of times. A big inflatable thing came up for all of five minutes before they stuffed it back in its crate. It looked like a red dragon but it's probably not. I don't know the lore. I didn't even know some of the songs this time, but they did play Fear of the Dark and Wasted Years so it was good. I had a sore throat and crowd-fear so it was a challenging night for sure. 

The beer was cheap and plentiful and the crowds were fun. I do have to give a shout out to the gorgeous girl with the black hair, black tank top and black shorts who I saw crowd-surfing not once but twice. From my ivory tower suite I wanted to be down in the pit beside her but also not, as those days are long over. It's not often you see girls surfing. It's not really a safe thing but she ended each round with a huge smile so watching that was as fun as the show itself. Thank you for the added magic of watching your profound joy.

Bruce swears they'll be back. I hope he's right. They range in age from 65 to 71 and it shows. Will I go in seven years again? I don't know. I felt old.

Pumpkinhead.

My, my, those eyes like fire
I'm a winged insect, you're a funeral pyre
Come now, bite through these wires
I'm a waking hell and the gods grow tired
Reset my patient violence along both lines of a pathway higher
Grow back your sharpest teeth, you know my desire

Is it obvious I show up every couple of weeks? I don't know, you tell me. I thought it seemed obvious. I would be here all day if not for the Rules. Rules that work, I guess. For who and why? 

I don't know. I'm not in charge.

I scrubbed bathrooms today and did some fall garden cleanup and caught up on laundry too to help Dalton and I talked to Ruth for a long time on the phone and also talked to the old man up the street that also walks his ancient dog each morning.

My reward was the dog sleeping blissfully for most of the afternoon and a date with Daniel and Ben for nails and hot chocolate. Daniel gave Ben matte black polish and I got a really nice french manicure that he did when I said it was his choice. Usually he puts on Chanel Vamp if he gets to pick but this is really nice. Chaotic neutral, as it were. Vamp makes me feel as though I should be putting on winged eyeliner and scowling at everyone and I don't scowl much these days. 

The hot chocolate was really good too. I got it at Wal-Mart. It's a big can and it's really cheap and for some reason it's just good and not sickly sweet like the take-out stuff. 

Lochlan says I am depressed and it's probably just the daylight lessening that is doing it. It's a well-documented problem that I have and very little helps. I have given away half my wardrobe. I don't want colour. I never actually sleep. I can watch movies and clean but I don't do a lot else. 

I don't know. Jacob's anniversary is coming. His birthday is coming. Thanksgiving is coming. The dark is coming. 

Oop, the Devil is coming. He's going to be pissed off. He loves the Vamp shade.

Oh Lantern.

So busy today and we went into downtown Vancouver for a change of scenery after lunch but the traffic. The people. The lineups. Crazy. We went and had Japanese food at our third-favourite place. Went for Tiramisu at another and then went to Starbs and had coffee (I didn't, it was four o'clock! I had a frozen mango-dragonfruit lemonade-thingie). We sat in traffic on Hornby for a stupid amount of time next to the ever-empty bike lane and Lochlan asked me if I wanted to bail on traffic and stay at the Fairmont tonight. 

No, I wanted to be home. I had my empty sticky plastic cup and my paper shopping bag from Saint Laurent and my patience flew out the window on the Iron Workers Bridge at some point just before sunset and it's time for this princess to turn back into a pumpkin. Time to fire up the Netflix and knit for a little while as the boys fire up games and books for the evening. 

It was nice though. Reminds me of old times and cements why I like it here so much, tucked out of the way, down the long driveway past the big black ornate iron gates. Back to having the Devil within reach and the army keeping watch, but not letting my guard down. 

My guard is Lochlan and I made a promise.

It always ends the same way.

I know. Ten days without checking in again and the internet moves along at such a frenetic clip my cycle of news for you barely exists for a moment before dropping you into the next tidbit that you seek out online.

What's happening? My grapes aren't quite ready, the red ones anyway. I eat the green ones by the handful, barely avoiding certain death by the giant bald-faced hornets that seem hellbent on making another summer memory for me. Lochlan says I am hilarious and he lives for this. I go into every summer marvelling at the long light, the warmth, the sting of salt on sweat, the gardening possibilities, and then I run screaming from it just as quickly, resenting the oppressive heat, traffic, tourists and the sheer work of gardening involved. The bugs. The endless mowing. The endless cleaning of the pool. The endless ruination of all of my bathing suits so quickly as the chlorine rips them apart and I tend to sleep in the pool. PJ called me a human sous-vide once and I cracked back an insult about fetishes of sealing people in plastic and eating them later and all he did was laugh until he started to wheeze. 

(PJ doesn't like the heat either.)

By the end of summer I am spilling blueberries out of a mug in a race to get them all, the bottoms of my feet are black from the dust, from the sand and the pavement and the dirt and my skin is faint golden, buried under a million freckles that appear seemingly out of nowhere. I am wild-eyed and now offended by the early end to the evenings and the tourists leaving the town high and dry far too early and the Back to School adverts and the Christmas displays in stores. 

He said it's like the five stages of grief but I go into it mourning summer and then finally find acceptance and even enthusiasm. 

Even as he yells at me to go back outside and scrub my toes before I leave little sooty footprints all over the white carpet, something I categorically denied until he pointed out my feet are size six and the next closest is him at eleven so it's pretty obvious it was me. 

I just shake my head and keep eating blackberries. No wasps in these ones. Only spiders. Yum.

I have four suggestions that might make the world a better place. (Vancouver and LA I'm looking at you!)

1. Lower your goddamn expectations. Expect to wait. Expect life to sometimes not be perfect. Expect other people to have problems too. Expect some things to go wrong sometimes. Be patient and prepared and you'll have an easier time. Do it for your own mental health, which, like physical health, should be looked after.

2. Let's eliminate Air BnB's! If you stay in a hotel they have better standards. And if they have cameras you can get a nice payout. Air BnB was supposed to be for when you were away you would rent out your own home and make a few bucks. Now it's stealing from the available housing supply as people buy up stock for short term rentals. Fuck off with that. Shut it all down. Forever. 

3. Cap rent amounts (and maybe sales too) by square footage. The joke of a video about a 200 sq foot room in an SRO here going for $2000 a month wasn't funny, it was devastating. There should be a maximum rental price you can charge if a unit falls under a certain size, or have a graduated scale in increments. Why the hell not? Nothing else is working and prices are through the roof.

4. Let's get Sam Asghari and Meghan Markle together!! Come on, it will be fun.  They can write books on their experiences and fade away together. Even better, someone introduce Britney to Harry and she can have her life and eat it too. What bullshit. I am somewhat heartened though. Up until a couple of days ago I was beginning to think she was dead.

  (Also whoever said to fill a small water bottle with water and freeze it and roll your feet on it is a fucking genius. It's my new favourite thing. I can't get cool. I am cranky.)

Safe Haven and halfway points.

Devilled eggs and sweat. Bad documentaries and worse romance movies. Nicholas Sparks who never fails to sweep my feet out from under me, even though I am so jaded at this point my skin has a green cast and is cool to the touch. 

I love Julianne Hough. I freaking love her. Even if Footloose didn't need to be remade, though her background means she shouldn't have fallen off the bike at all. Safe Haven was a weird one, though I got chills when Josh Duhamel told her she was safe, and gave her all of that white-knight bullshit romance-novel reassurance women fall for so damn easily, without prejudice. Every single fucking time. 

And it's hopeful, optimistic reassurance at best. Because in the end Julianne (Katie/Erin, whatever she wanted to go by) saved herself. As one should. Or something. Not sure if that works for or against Mr. Sparks but it was a twist I didn't see coming. 

Kind of like Cobie as a ghost. No idea. Completely shocked by that one.

Smash Um forget Um cookies.

 It's cool today. Jeans and no shirts for some, simple linen sundresses for others. I'll let you figure out who's wearing what. The pool and the air seem to be the same temperature, the skies are a pale blue that remind me of Jacob's eyes. The clouds persist, but just a little. There's a blanket folded on the back of the swinging bench on the porch and one on my favourite egg-chaise by the pool, just for me, just in case I get cold and want to wrap myself up like a burrito. 

I've been strolling the neighborhood picking blackberries and picking up litter, petting everyone's cats, dogs and children, talking to Ruth on the phone half the time and my dad the other half. My dad has gotten old suddenly. Gone is the stubborn, unfeeling mean giant of a man and in his place is someone shorter, frailer and more understanding, somehow, as if the wind has been taken completely out of his sails. He's almost fun to talk to now, and I almost want to go back on my vow to feel nothing when it comes to my folks, as they never felt anything about me, other than some sort of smug satisfaction that they could just lie about my life instead of being horrified by it. 

But as I said, I have made the choice not to care.

At all. 

Cole's anniversary came and went. The clouds came and went. The rain came in briefly and then went. I watched like seven dozen movies and documentaries and true crime dramas on Netflix and I don't think I liked any of them. I loved the mom in Run Rabbit Run but not the story. I'm watching American Psycho now just to remind myself that Patrick Bateman is a construct of a construct and Caleb took some stupid cues back in the day, though I feel like men like Caleb are more then inspiration for the writers instead of the result, especially since this movie is only twenty years old. 

I haven't 'done' anything. A little gardening. I stalked a very big beetle yesterday. I cleaned out one of the Jeeps since it was downright filthy and I scrubbed the inside of the pantry (shelves too). I hung more lanterns. I cleaned some baseboards and windowsills and I painted an old set of bookends that my grandfather made and I have carted around ever since and they're holding the cookbooks. I found a copy of Kim's Cookbook for Young People, a treasured first cookbook that Bailey and I studied and copied and cooked before I was one of the boys. I bought it and am waiting for it to arrive. I'm going to send it on to her for her birthday. 

 I haven't made much progress in my own reading. I want to do a lot of sewing and painting and reading and resting but the dog is dying and he needs me. I can't leave a room without him anymore and it's breaking my heart. Fifteen years of having an ever-present shadow and when I don't have a shadow anymore I don't know what I will do. This dog is my constant and my comfort, even sleeping up close to my head when the boys moved here and I was left behind and I watched 30 days of night and got weirdly scared.

I needed him and now he needs me so if he needs me to sleep up by his face I will do it. It's the least I can do for him. His spine is sharp and his eyes are cloudy. He has no idea what his name is anymore and he rarely eats. But it's okay. He can live out his days on love.

I didn't mean for this to be sad. I meant to sit down and tell you how reluctant I have become to be reasonable. I'm back to living in my own head and maybe it's the pills, maybe it's the dog, but it just feels like someone dropped a concrete block between me and life and only Lochlan and the children can get around it. 

That's not a bad thing. Just a thing that I see. But my eyes are cloudy too. Cloudy and rainy, more often than not.

Dumb bitch.

Cole (Trey to me and the boys) died seventeen years ago today. 

Huh.

It seems like it was a movie. It seems like another lifetime. Maybe it was just a lifetime movie that I caught at the end on a fuzzy cable channel back in the day when we had channels on the television instead of apps. On the upside, I don't miss anything I want to see now because I can start it when I please.

Seventeen years, and this weekend Henry turns twenty-two. And he's finished university and already working away in his chosen field and his bosses are very proud of him. 

Cole would have been proud of him too. 

Everyone is. 

Would he be proud of me? I don't know. Maybe. Probably not. He always had this disdain for me, as I deferred to Lochlan forever (and will forever) and Cole felt as though I was marked. That he would always be second place. 

So tonight I raise my glass and pour it out in the grass for another year gone by and say things out loud I never would have dared to say with him present. 

Third. You were third place. Ha.

I still say it quietly. He's probably around here somewhere.

The food trucks in my hood tonight are ice cream and shawarmas. Perfect.

It's a beautiful Friday afternoon and I am soaked to the bone with chlorine, save for George, who is wrapped in a fiberglass sleeve. Wet hair plastered to my skull and my bathing suit is almost dry at least thanks to the eight minutes of Vitamin D allowance I was given in order to thrive without burning. 

In between swims I am emailing around, getting things done, tossing around terms like subrogation and probability. My primroses are about to bloom again. My potatoes are growing up everywhere. The cucumbers and pumpkins are flowering and a squirrel stole all of my radishes before they could fully start. The grapes are green pearls in the shade, protected from the heat and Dalton and Duncan are brown already, in high contrast to Lochlan, who is mildly pink, like me, but has hair the color of recently polished copper. 

It's my favourite time of year.

I'll get a fat cheque from the subrogation nonsense. I am trying not to be hasty. I'll get it all organized. I'm thinking of getting Lasik or PRK or at the very least contacts, and I'm thinking that there are enough festivals with food trucks and live music that I could go all summer without having a single sad thought or at least less of them and every year I say that all I'm going to do is lie on my back under the stars and eat Twizzlers and sing at the top of my lungs. Every year I do it maybe four nights tops. This year I am going for a record. 

The songs are whatever is playing on eighties radio. I don't know anything else, lyrically, I mean. 

PJ made me a large ice with water and grapefruit juice. Dinner is FFY (Fend for yourself) since every Friday night Henry goes out with friends and plays pool and drinks diet pepsi because the pub doesn't have diet coke and so we get takeout lunch on Fridays. Today was A&W but I only had a chicken BLT and I am stuffed. I might have a coconut pineapple popsicle later. I might sit outside on the porch and look at my flowers or out back on the patio and look at my sea. 

Maybe I'll do both. 

This weekend we need to do some yard work if it's not too hot and birthday-shop for Henry. Nothing like leaving it til the last minute. We also need to sleep.

A record.

 Unless I am seriously indisposed, AKA injuried/committed/kidnapped, even in my semi-lucid state I have never gone this long between writings. No, I'm not gone. I'm just busy. I go up to Cows for ice cream. Messie Bessie is this year's favourite. The cones aren't stale yet. Hilarious because it's a busy place. It has some weird affiliation with Anne of Green Gables now, not sure if they are just capitalizing on the island's most popular export or what but I found it strange. 

I finished the second season of Yellowjackets and I made two whole cardigans while doing so. Nice ones. For me and for Ruth. Hers is fall-hued, mine is the colours of the sea. As always. 

I let Daniel cut my hair so short everyone has been saluting when I walk past. PJ keeps asking who the little boy is that he keeps seeing. It wasn't even funny the first time. 

I convinced the boys that we no longer needed the half-broken meteorological station anymore, that we can simply look outside and know what's up, like they did in the old days. 

That did it and I bagged up the pieces from the outdoor sensors, ripped the digital readout panel off the wall and breathed a sigh of relief. That thing was an albatross that we stared at too much, gauging the heat by numbers instead of by feel. Using half-functional technology to decide for us if we were hot or if it was hot enough to turn on the fan or the A/C or whatever. 

One of my fondest bucket-list items in life is to become a serial minimalist but convenience holds me back. Also I am a magpie and collect shiny things so it's tough anyway but now I think very hard before I add to my collections or buy on a whim. 

Not like that isn't hard with the economy the piece of shit that it is.

I finished a defacto bucket list because I had never made one. I had a lot of plans floating around my head mentally but nothing concrete. It's good to have one. Though what happens when you complete all the things on the list? Do you make a new list? Kill yourself? Remember the little things? Become a grumpy oldtimer? Someone tell me please, before the list becomes a catalyst. 

I need to buy some shorts. Mine are all worn out. I need to drink less. I want to sit outside in the evening all summer and watch the flames and read my book and watch the waves and eat cheese and grapes and not talk and not worry about heat or Coleiversaries or the fact that Henry turns twenty-two this month or the damage being fixed on the Jeep this week (not my fault, covered by insurance) and I need to sleep better, more often and just do nothing. I need a lot of things. Been saying this for decades.

I'll try and come back sooner. Probably tomorrow. Spent a lot of time away but I'm home now. Also I learned I refuse to drink liquids that come in containers I can't see through. Who knew?