I wrote this while we were away in anticipation of today.

    Dear Cole,

    Had we remained together, today would have been the twentieth anniversary of a love that took root early in high school and grew steadily through the next two decades before we caught on that it was rotting and diseased and doomed to die. Twenty years is a long time to spend with someone, when no one gives anything a fighting chance anymore but we did, you and I, we fought for each other and for us that we realized we were still fighting long after it became abundantly clear that what we were fighting for was long gone.

    I betrayed you. Magnificently. Perfectly. Exactly how it should have been done after so many years of being your doormat girl, your disposable spouse and your poisonous playtoy. I learned things I should never know at your hands, and did things I will never speak of, not even to my new husband, who would never dare tread in the dark places that you found comfort in. You threw me away and in the end I slapped you in the face and walked away first and I'm so proud of myself for that, and I know you were proud too.

    I know that you were relieved.

    I realize you were messed up. That you had problems no one could fix, not even me or you. I know life was hard for you and your genius laced with madness took you down long before your body had the final word. And I hope you're in a place now that brings little of that intense pain that you lived with and that your mind is at rest now because I don't think it ever once was when you were alive.

    And the little nuclear family you created out of us is thriving at last. Despite your last-minute attempts to dismantle it. On our former anniversary and out of the blue. Thank you for making May 17 a day to remember that I survived you trying to kill me, and the day that Jacob thwarted your final fucked-up plans to get me back for winning our stupid, juvenile hurtfest and not a day to remember that we still loved each other once upon a time even as we caressed our murderous dreams.

    I'm not going to mark this day next year or ever again after today. I'm letting it go like I let you go because I want life to be good. I want life to be fun and beautiful and predictable and sweet. I want it to be full of love and respect and caring and patience. I don't want any sick games or any twisted definitions, all of it is now laid out in plainspeak on a clean sheet of brightly-lit white paper for us to check off on our way to happily ever after.

    And you know what? That is something you'll never have. But besides Ruth and Henry and a healthy respect for your rage there is something else you left me with that's been swimming around in my psyche for a year now that I didn't know was there at first and then when I noticed it and tried to catch it it would slip through my hands over and over again, like a jellyfish. My hands got stung and pain laced through my fingers every time I touched it but I knew if I didn't grasp it soon it would fade away and disappear. You knew it was there and you forced me to find it.

    It was my strength. Strength built from learning how to withstand you, to live with and love you and to stay with you even when I should have left. I knew I stuck around for something, and I finally caught it.

    Thank you for giving me strength.

    I have strength. You have nothing.

    Happy anniversary, baby. And peace, I hope you've got some peace in death.

    Not yours anymore,

    B.

Bridget's army.

Jacob got his proverbial tranquilizer gun and I've been shot in the ass with a dart and I've slept. Oh have I slept. And he has too, thanks to a network that stretches far beyond my wildest dreams. I really had no idea how strong and how many people deep it was until Tuesday when Bridget exploded and a few hours passed with what appeared to be several key scenes from The Exorcist being reenacted.

I won't go into much detail, suffice it to say it began with sliding down that wall and ended two hours later with Claus (housecall Claus!) charging into the bathroom with a needle full of sleep and the last thing I remember is Jacob was still holding me, whispering something but I never heard him, I was still screaming when the lights went out for this princess.

I was up briefly last night. Snuggling with the kids, getting reassurance that Jacob does not want a raincheck on this life after all. I ate and went back to sleep while people came and went and now Erin is here to help and keep the kids busy for a few days because Jacob is so tired and because we need help but we're stubborn. All this help means I stay home, you know. Embrace it, fragile miss B.

I met Dr. Important Joel, who aside from rhyming with Cole, is going to work with Claus to get a better handle on medicated-girl. I'm singing Nirvana songs and hearing talk of polar bears, or polar girls, or maybe it was something similar but today I'm not fighting anything anymore. I'm just going to go back to sleep.

When I get up Jacob promised he would play Dust in the Wind, so I can practice the violin solo. It's a much better song than Lithium. I just deleted that one anyway.

And hey, a year ago today Cole tried to kill me. Fucking fitting, isn't it?

The freefall.

I walked up to the gate, showed them my lifer bracelet (unlimited rides, you know) and was summarily locked into my seat. The man took my green flip-flops and put them in a pile by the entrance and I let my bare toes relish the light summer breeze. I failed to notice the mechanism had begun to move and I was going up slowly. I ascended without caring, too busy finding shapes in the clouds, chasing the high that had long since deserted me in favor of luckier prospects or perhaps brightest shores. A jolt and a metallic clang disrupted that daydream and when it was gone...

...it was gone forever.

And then all my hair stood on end as the switch was thrown and the platform I was strapped to took 3 seconds to drop three hundred feet. I threw up. I wished I could die. I pushed Jacob out of my way and recoiled in a massive attempt to disappear to prevent any more of that kind of hideous, destructive fear.

    Here it comes and there it goes
    Another day of getting up to fight
    In a world called catastrophe, my native tongue is blasphemy
    So it's the one I'll write
    And baby can you hear it?
    Don't it make you want to wake up and open your eyes?


I woke up this morning screaming and drenched in sweat, every nerve ending in my entire body on edge, every joint and muscle tense and we didn't get very far before it was clear that this wasn't even my normal. While Jacob was calling for help before he felt the gravity coming I was pulling things off shelves in the bathroom looking for razor blades that would never be found in my house anyway. Jacob uses an electric razor and I use wax because of this. I had an epiphany-knives-and went tearing down the stairs toward the kitchen just as Jacob realized that's where I was headed. He grabbed me just inside the kitchen door, pulling my shoulders to him so hard my head snapped back and banged on the door.

Leave it.

I can't do this.

I know you feel that way but you can. We made it, you just need to get better. Baby. please.

It's too hard. I'm so scared, Jake, I don't want to feel like this.

I know, baby, so am I. We can do this. The kids are depending on you, they need you. Bridget, I need you. I want you here, with me. I've never wanted anything different.

They'll be fine. Everyone will be fine. Better even.

None of us will be better without you. We'll die without you.
We won't bother with creative therapies anymore. This time they'll opt for the hospital. Told you I wasn't dumb.

The worst thing is he didn't trust his instincts, even when I warned him that I knew he wasn't listening to himself. His infallible intuition, his perfect logic that has a hand up from higher places that can be uncanny in its perfection. He failed to believe himself when too late he realized I lied.

I have no intentions of keeping any promises I made to be here forever. What's sick is how much comfort I got from knowing that and I know it's wrong and I want it to stop.

Jacob kissed the top of my head and took me into his arms and he backed into a corner and slid down the wall until he was sitting on the floor, holding both of us. Me and him, because he needs comfort too and he's terrified and was shaking like a leaf and I'm sorry honey. He left me there while he went and got the kids off to school and then he got them out the door with the neighbors and he started making those goddamed phonecalls because he knows people and now they're all going to work together to save my life once more.

I may be gone for a while. I really have no idea what they have planned but I don't care as long as it works this time. It has to work. I just have to go and get better and hope he will someday forgive me.

Not well at all.

I can feel my eyeballs move when I look up to see if he is looking at me while I write about him. Not like I care, if he wants to watch he can. He's fascinated by my words, by how it comes out here, how things I have said to him in person, replete with the tears and batty eyelashes and biting the lip that can tear his heart from his chest but then he reads it here and it's a cold, flat diatribe that holds none of the same depth. A scary cold.

He is confused by that. Hey, we all are, you aren't special.

Well, you are, but maybe not when it comes to having all the answers, just most of them. I need those last final ones. I needed to know how it all turns out because when I go to sleep at night my hope starts to slide away and when I wake up it's such a fight every day to clamber back over to it and drag it closer only to repeat my actions. I'm exhausted. It wasn't there today anyways.

Bridget isn't well and she can only account for why about half the time. It's an easy pill to swallow when things are at rock bottom and we are struggling just to hold on to each other and everything else suddenly is deemed unimportant. What's so fucking hard is when things start going good, routine settles in, daily life blooms around us and yet nothing is different. He still doesn't know who he'll wake up with. He doesn't like this one facet, this bland anger with no cause, this uncaring, unemotional void that leaves me just...living but for nothing. And all day long I can not react or smile or cry even, there's just nothing but the anger, and a constant stream of chatter that runs through my skull telling me I shouldn't be here, I am not worth anything and no one would be the worse for wear if I vanished. That scares me too because it won't shut off.

Times like these I wish for medication. Really strong medication and a room with nothing sharp and nothing I can use for anything, a room with nothing to do and maybe even no one to talk to so that I don't make them feel bad because I don't feel like talking. I just feel like pouring myself into a corner right now and hanging on for dear life so that I might someday be allowed to enjoy it. I'm not dumb enough but I'm dumb enough and that's the promise I can give. Bridget's been suicidal for a long time but no one knows she still is. He doesn't really know. He doesn't get it.

If you ever wanted a realistic portrait of mental illness in this day and age maybe I would be it. A perfect study of debilitating chemical nonsense existing in a space where a Stepford wife would be expected. Just enough ability to get through the goddamned day, just enough conviction to push away those who tell me I can't do it while I prove that I can, and so they back off and take away their butterfly net they ran in with to catch me, and then I have to go looking for them with bloody hands and tears in my eyes asking for help because I might have really fucked up bad this time and I don't know why I keep fucking up but it just KEEPS HAPPENING.

He doesn't understand. And as much as he can be here just when I need him the most why do I feel he's always slightly out of reach? He isn't out of reach, he's taken care of me, he's taken care of everything, he's cleared off his timetable in one generous wide gesture to help me and he can't help me. Maybe that's the frustrating part, he can only do so much, and I can only do so much and it's going to ruin everything. I'm going to ruin everything. I didn't want to end up this way, playing a waiting game. And none of it feels like it used to. All of this used to be wrapped in fear. It was justified, ignored. I was on my own so much I didn't have a chance to notice that it would follow me even when things were good. Fear kept me going because I'm stubborn and somehow it always seemed like it was going to come down to Cole or me. And I 'm here but so is the fear again. And the pain and the hopeless nothingness.

We're not going to make it. And I wanted this so, so badly. I love Jacob like no one could have ever measured and I didn't want to ruin him. He's so sweet and kind and beautiful. He deserves so much better than this.

Frailty of a different sort.

Rainy Mondays are good days for the princess and her penchant for epic nonsensical ramblings in entries dipped in wax.

Rainy Mondays are good days for early-morning marriage therapy appointments and bright red raincoats and hot coffee.

And they are even good days for burying sparrows that fail to survive neighborhood cats and somehow make their way, gravely wounded, into the hearts of your family against hope of a happy ending.

(nometaphorsIseenometaphorshere)

I made it seem as though Jacob was so cool and collected when he returned on Friday. Back just when I was on the verge of a historic low with his impeccable timing and jaw-dropping gestures?

Huh?

Giant black holes left on purpose to suck all the details inside where they would go undetected for a million lifetimes. Or something. Some things are too damn private. Should I emasculate him as I have a few times over by telling you he got down on his knees and begged me to let him be a part of whatever it is that I seem to need? To not shut him out and turn him down and tune him out?

Or maybe you'd like to hear how he took one hand and cradled my head and the other hand wrapped right around my throat when he kissed me because that's how I like it. Right up just like that until I am on ballerina-toes and breathless.

No one wants to hear that, that's fucked up, Bridget.

But it isn't. Because he is Jacob.

Friday night when I went to bed I left my hair up in the braid that had spent the day unbraiding itself. You do that when it's long, it saves a lot of tangles. Jacob tucked his face into the spot right under my hairline, pressing his nose and his lips against the nape of my neck and locked his arms around me in spoons and he fell asleep so fast and so hard it was almost an audible hammer drop. He didn't stir for close to ten hours and when he woke up Saturday morning we had an uneasy time sorting out how he could come back without talking to me first, knowing I needed him but knowing I was tired of being weak and that I would never ask. So he did it on a whim and it was the right thing but what if it hadn't been?

He's talking a mile a goddamned minute and untangling the ribbon from my hair and I have shivers going up and down my spine and am growing angrier by the minute.

I didn't care, I'm no longer dealing in what-ifs. Life from now on is going to be black and white and as clear as glass. It has to be, we've lived too long perched on indecision like sparrows on the clothesline. Waiting. Waiting forever. For what?

Jacob was so passionate in his arguments. I could tell he had spent days talking it out loud to himself. I'm his wife, I don't answer to anyone but myself any longer. He isn't heavy-handed like Cole was, I have freedoms I have never known. Things you fail to notice when you grow up from 15 to 35 with the same dominance leaves you...child-like. Prone to following orders and not even knowing you have a mind of your own. I discovered I had an opinion, I have a fucking opinion and I started throwing it out like confetti.

I leveled power just because I could.

That isn't right, like so much else.

I never wanted to be without Jacob, I simply wanted to see what it felt like with no one around-Cole OR Jacob, just to see. And now I never want to see it again. I was done with that plan the moment he turned around at the gate and watched us walk down the terminal and I had turned back to look at him and our eyes met. We smiled but it wasn't a comforting smile, it was a grimace of pain on his face. Pain and regret. Mine was a mask of fear and doubt. And once apart we swapped emotions and carried baggage of a different sort to the collective homes we've spent so much time in without each other.

I managed to swallow both and figured it out and just when I did, he came back.

With new wedding rings. Smaller rings because my God, I can't seem to keep any weight on.

And new pride in me. The price of which is less confidence in himself, which isn't right. Give your angel wings, permission to fly and when she soars you watch her fly away and you realize you're alone.

Jacob says sometimes he's afraid he is here to help me tie my wings on and when I am confident enough I'll fly away and not come back and he'll know his purpose then and he's going to evade it until the day he dies.

Therapy this morning was all about trading places with trust. That time gave me the backbone I was seeking and that time made my husband weep with sorrow.

I do better when he's not here and we both are aware of it. Coping mechanisms honed through years of abandonment. And I don't want it. I prefer to lean on him, to give up that strength and breathe instead of holding my breath and never relaxing and just getting through the days as if life is one monumental chore or insurmountable task I simply have to survive.

Now, you tell me, where in the fuck are the happy mediums? Where's the peace already?

Never content to just be, we need to be better. Life is one ironic fuckup.

Every day as I work my way around the house on various chores and errands I find pens and pencils that someone has left. The mug on the desk where they belong is empty and so I bring them back and they migrate away again. If I'm distracted I use them to pin up my hair and mostly by the end of the day I'm walking around with six of them sticking out all over the place from a bun that's messy but still better than loose and in the way. Jacob will be on the phone and he'll reach over and pull one out, pulling the cap off with his teeth to write something down. Then he grins at me as if it's the silliest thing in the world to have those stuck there.

Sometimes he says that they grow out of my brain, that writers grow pens like artists visualize finished works. I tell him it's the opposite, that artists make lists of drawings they want to make or write their plans out instead of making a quick sketch and that writers see their stories in their heads and simply have to translate those images into words and it's so easy to do it in reverse everyone should be a writer. He laughs some more.

His writing is never his spoken word. He writes out all these reserved, sometimes stunted notes and then when he delivers the sermon or speech or talk it just rolls so lyrically and enigmatically from within, he has developed a manner of going back to rewrite things after giving them in front of me. Whether I am listening or not. He'll just walk around the house gesturing madly and talking and after a while you realize he's in the backyard sermonizing the city wildlife.

And burying dead birds. And most certainly lying when he comes back in and you ask if he's been crying and he says no.

    Love liked me long ago
    It had a way of making everyone the same
    But now the angels must laugh and sigh
    To hear me pleading with you
    Needing this you this way
    Oh why don't you want to be happy with me?

    I'm afraid if you don't come around soon
    I'll turn sadder than you ever were
    And you'll learn loneliness is worse

    You've got to try to stay mine all the way
The trading of roles is unwelcome. What happened to sharing, instead of everything resting with either Jacob or myself? What happened to getting better? What happened to finding the poetry in life but not as our coup de grace?

I believe all of it has been buried with that poor little sparrow.

What didn't get buried was the determination of one fair princess and the hope and faith of one of God's angels.

We will not fail.

I said it on the front steps as Jacob put the key in the lock and he stopped and turned around and nodded while the rain poured down over us, still too shaken to give me one of his characteristic verbal comforts that used to roll like marbles off his tongue. Once inside we threw our coats off and our arms around each other. It was a kiss-bombing mission. Kisses raining everywhere like bombs over an enemy city. Staving off life's onslaught with love, the only thing that's going to get us through this -faith, hope, experience and logic be-fucking-damned. Only then did physical comfort permit his spoken confirmation.

We will not fail, princess.

Mother's Day.

As my kids get older I'm constantly overwhelmed by their grasp of time, their mastery of new or unusual situations. They do self-checks, and let us know if they are too cold or too hot, hungry or full, too tired or still full of energy to keep going, and ready for a cuddle or full-up.

Once those basic needs are fulfilled they are off and running in the adventures, smiling from ear to ear and wearing themselves to smithereens while being kind to each other. They have been my littlest troopers in a long year that saw more unwritten tears cried over them than any other tears I have shed, more heartache suffered for anticipatory difficulties that sometimes never even came to pass, but I worried anyway.

In advance, just in case. As mothers do.

They watch the calendar now. They can tell time and mark days right alongside me and this morning when I came out of the bedroom in my robe, with plans to let Jacob sleep in for a few precious minutes before church because he is exhausted from worry and travel and Bridget, the kids came and put their arms around me even before they fought for the first turn to the bathroom for that all-urgent emergency first-morning pee, and they told me Happy Mother's Day!
And then while they were busy high-fiving each other for having remembered without a prompt for the first time ever, I stole the bathroom for myself.

Happy Mother's Day to all moms out there, reading or in spirit. Have a wonderful day.

He's home!

Prepare your smiling muscles.

Sam was a madman when I arrived at the church office this morning. He was still laboring over announcements, the sanctuary hadn't been cleaned yet and he said there was such a long list of preparations he doubted everything would be finished in time for services Sunday.

Thankfully crisis management in an office setting is something I used to be very good at. I had a look at the list and crossed off everything I could look after. I forwarded the church phone to the answering service to take the pressure off and then got busy booking the cleaning service Jacob used to use occasionally when he ran out of hours and I called the leader of the women's group to see if they could downsize lunch to a tea. I told Sam to go lock himself in his office and finish preparing his notes and he looked at me with such gratitude I'm hoping maybe someday he might approve of me, at least in theory. It could happen.

The fourth thing on my list this morning was to pick up his guest speaker at the airport at 10:30, Alex M. I popped in and clarified the name with Sam so I could make a sign. Sam said Milne distractedly and so I closed the door and went back to the desk. My sign said Alex Milne and when I went to the airport I stood in arrivals holding the sign and reading a book to multitask. Everyone who comes down the stairs would have to pass me so I didn't have to study faces. When fifteen minutes had passed and the passengers had thinned out considerably, all of the baggage was gone and still no Mr. Milne I decided to have him paged before calling Sam to confirm the flight number.

Paging Mr. Milne to arrival gate C, Alex Milne please, your party is waiting at gate C.

I was at such a good point in my reading that I opened the book again while I waited to see if Mr. Milne would make an appearance or if I was going to stress Sam further by having to tell him his guest hadn't arrived. I was three sentences in when I heard a familiar voice.

Hallo, piglet with her nose in a book.
And there he was.

Jacob, grinning from ear to ear.
Oh for the love of-

Because of course, Alan Alexander Milne is the author of the Winnie the Pooh books. And it never even crossed my mind that they might be playing a trick on me. I didn't connect the name at all.

I jumped into his arms. He felt for my hearing aids and then whisper-asked if I really thought he would not be here for Mother's Day? He frowned and told me he's going to have to step things up in the romance department because I should have come to expect his sweeping gestures and he's obviously not doing his job right. I just laughed and ignored all that because who cares?

Myjacobishomeandnothingelsematters.

In the truck on the way home I started to call Sam to tell him I was on the way back but Jacob had already called him while he waited out the passengers at the airport. Sam didn't need me anymore, since I had gotten everything under control and he would see us Sunday morning in church and he was happy to help.

Piglet, I'm afraid I've spent an awful lot of money lately.

The truck?

It's coming on the train midnextweek.

That's wonderful. Why are you back so soon? I thought I was going to have to get through five more days without you. I'm so happy you're here.
Look, everyone was calling me around the clock just to let me know how well you were doing, and how great you've been to them and it seemed easier to come back than to keep being woken up by the phone ringing. I wanted to be here with you. I love you.When you said we made a mistake, I knew I had to come, and so after we got off the phone I called the airport and booked the first flight I could get. It wasn't cheap on short notice.

That's okay. We can eat beans.

He laughed so loud my ears rang and his dimples spilled right out the truck window and all over the highway.

Hell, yes we can. We can eat beans, princess.
He smiled and wove his fingers into my hair.

My God, you look so beautiful. We're never doing that again.

No, we definitely aren't. I nodded and then I fell apart.

So, so happy he is home.

Up with the chickadees and a coveted phone call.

PJ stayed in the guestroom downstairs last night. I couldn't rouse him and certainly can't carry him and so I just let him sleep and seeing as how he's in his thirties I didn't call his mother, I'm sure she realized he would just sleep and sleep. Right now he's drinking coffee in the kitchen like a real man and only wincing while he blows on it to cool it way down and I was grateful knowing he was here last night. Jacob was grateful PJ lived through his extraction because we've been hearing about it for months. They don't give each other an inch because they love each other like brothers.

Plus Padraig being here enables me to go for my run now, and then I can come home, then he'll head home and I can grab a quick shower and take the kids to school before heading to the church for nine. It's almost across from the school so the day will go fairly smoothly, I hope. Mother's Day holds a long Sunday for our church, with a brunch picnic. It's an all-day event.

I packed my tote with a new book in case there is downtime, and a pear in case I get hungry, plus my sweater because the basement is usually cold. I hope today will be busy and crazy and full because my ache for Jacob has become a pervasive pang of misery and anguish and Tuesday inches closer at the speed of a tectonic plate.

Optimists? I have no idea how you keep it up.

TGIF. And four more sleeps.

Jinkies.

In regards to the bee situation from earlier this week, and how spooky it was, would you like to hear something even spookier?

I picked up PJ and we manhandled him out to the truck and I brought him here so he could rest, since he lives with his mom and his mom runs a home daycare so it's not a great place to find quiet at this time of day. I left him snoozing in the guest room with icepacks and painkillers and came out to make dinner for the kids and I and instead of Green Day I decided to listen to the rest of Sam's Iron & Wine CD since it goes back to him in the morning.

I have played it two times when I clued in to a phrase, let alone the rest of the song, which gives me chills. It's called Passing Afternoon.

    There are times that walk from you like some passing afternoon
    Summer warmed the open window of her honeymoon
    And she chose a yard to burn but the ground remembers her
    Wooden spoons, her children stir her Bougainvillea blooms

    There are things that drift away like our endless, numbered days
    Autumn blew the quilt right off the perfect bed she made
    And she's chosen to believe in the hymns her mother sings
    Sunday pulls its children from their piles of fallen leaves

    There are sailing ships that pass all our bodies in the grass
    Springtime calls her children 'till she let's them go at last
    And she's chosen where to be, though she's lost her wedding ring
    Somewhere near her misplaced jar of Bougainvillea seeds

    There are things we can't recall, blind as night that finds us all
    Winter tucks her children in, her fragile china dolls
    But my hands remember hers, rolling 'round the shaded ferns
    Naked arms, her secrets still like songs I'd never learned

    There are names across the sea, only now I do believe
    Sometimes, with the windows closed, she'll sit and think of me
    But she'll mend his tattered clothes and they'll kiss as if they know
    A baby sleeps in all our bones, so scared to be alone

I do believe God is in, and he's taking notes.

Green days.

 If you go down in the streets today,
    baby, you better open your eyes.
    Folk down there really don't care,
    really don't care which way the pressure lies,
    so I've decided what I'm gonna do now.

    So I'm packing my bags for the Misty Mountains
    where the spirits go now,
    over the hills where the spirits fly.
    I really don't know.
I have some quiet time before this afternoon, which is going to be a delicate balance of timing, between taking Ruth back to school after lunch and then taking Henry with me to run errands while PJ undergoes removal of his wisdom teeth. He's done a lot for me, so I'm going to pick him up when he's finished and he can come back here and sack out and then I'll make him some homemade chicken soup with rice for dinner and to take home.

These boys are big babies. When I had my wisdom teeth out I was 23 and I left the dentist chair and headed straight to the mall for a Chinese food lunch and an afternoon of shopping. PJ will sleep for four hours and then whine for eleven.

It's okay though, he's my friend and this is one of his weaknesses. Lord knows, he is here through most of mine. I'm going to torture him with Jeff Buckley on 45 rpm and just about every other cover of Led Zeppelin I can dig up, including Coalesce. Haha.

We have to be back here by 3:30 for Ruth, and then tomorrow is even crazier. It's helping, but to some extent I got very good at going through the motions in pain so the ache from missing Jacob hasn't lessened or been taken away, it's just here in the background mimicking grief. And I'm freaked out by that.

And Led Zeppelin reminds me of Cole, and that's not helping. Maybe I'll pull out the Green Day CD because that reminds me of nothing, no one, zip. I think Green Day is the one band in the world that evokes nothing more in me than the occasional tap of my hand on some surface. Weird.

Simple words, soaking wet.

I've been writing here for just under three years now, and have a years worth of archives available. The rest was removed. Everything from before I left Cole was taken off, though several months are still available on the internet archives, but believe me it's not exciting, mostly a sham. A pretty picture painted over an eyesore. Hence it's immediate removal the day I took Jacob up on his offer and I made a promise to write for myself. Whatever I wanted to say, whatever I thought about, whatever I felt like I needed to get out.

Honesty is a hard road. Even with wax to make it shine. It was easier to write about shoveling snow or that fall that tore my rotator cuff shortly after we moved into this house that wasn't a fall at all. It was easier to lie and say life was perfect than to admit that it was so far from perfect I was living a nightmare of violent rages followed by the sweetest, gentlest charm and regret. Oh how I loved Cole.

But he's dead.

And there are still stories I keep from you and I can't figure out why. Sometimes to spare your hurt or your sympathy, sometimes to spare me your derision. Above all, I want to be liked just like everyone else does but at the same time I know people have come to expect the open book and then when they get it they lash out or hand out judgment and I'm left wondering again, if I write for myself or if maybe I write for you.

I guess time will tell. So if you find yourself responding strongly to a post or deciding the two minutes you spend here each day with me leaves you ashamed, then note that you've been warned.

And with that, I'll get to today's entry, in which my jealous lover steals my husband's wedding ring. Or rather, Jacob gave it willingly. What a fool.

My head is full this morning with the lilting, wonderfully quiet and melodic sounds of Iron & Wine. I asked Sam if he would leave me one of his CDs for today and I will bring it to the church tomorrow and he left me with Our Endless Numbered Days and a big smile. If we can find a common ground through music then that would be terrific. We've been a little slow to warm up to each other, one of the reasons I sprang a last-minute dinner invitation on them with the plea included that having a group over for a quick barbecue will help ease the difficult after-dinner hours for me. He and his wife Lisabeth came in and kissed my cheeks and hugged the kids and rolled up their sleeves to start pulling a meal together. Then the crotch-rocket gang arrived, because the warm weather means it's motorcycle season. More on that another day. Everyone was gone by 8:30 and my kitchen was spotless.

The most popular story of the night would have been the previously unspoken issue of where my wedding ring was. I lost my ring on the last Friday we were at the cottage. Which is one of the reasons no one believed me that everything was okay when I came back alone, and not wearing my ring.

I had said fuck it that day and went for a swim out to see the rickety boat and I think the water was twelve degrees. I swam out until I got the scary feelings of being out far enough to wonder what might be underneath me and then I turned to come back to shallower water instead of continuing and when my toes touched sand and rock again I took off, swimming parallel to the shore instead of coming out of the water. Jacob came down to the shore and waved. I waved back and kept going. I figured he wanted to argue just a little more, since we had argued that morning. Then he waved with both arms so I stopped to tread water and try to see what he wanted, expecting him to pantomime eating or something. I didn't bring my hearing aids so him yelling would be wasted effort.

Instead he came into the water. With his jeans and shirt and shoes still on. Fully dressed. He walked out until he reached me, up to his shoulders in the water and he locked his fingers into mine and smiled with his worried smile. He told me my lips were blue and we should go in. I brought our hands up together to touch my lips and...

My wedding ring was gone. I take the pearl off every night and when I do anything but stand still but I never take off the band. Ever. Not for surgery, not for gardening, and certainly not for swimming. But even with all the tape wrapped around it to keep it from slipping off, it was an accident waiting to happen, because I still refused to leave it with the jeweler to have it made smaller and so I guess this was a lesson for me.

I flipped the fuck out. Jacob watched me freak out without letting go and when I stopped babbling and blubbering and I quieted down to ragged breathing he winked at me and kissed my forehead and then he took off his ring and he threw it.

He threw it.

As far as he could.

Which was actually a lot further than I expected but we lost sight of it halfway out.

And then he turned and put his arms around me and by this time his lips were blue too and he was shaking ever so slightly and a wave broke over us and he sputtered and he yelled over the pounding surf.

Bridget, let it go! I don't need a ring to tell me we're married! You're my flesh and blood now! That's all that matters!

What followed was the sweetest, coldest kiss in our entire history.

He led me out of the water and we went back into the cottage to find some warmth and the kids looked at Jacob really funny because his clothes were stuck to him and he said that I looked like I was having such a nice swim he decided to have one too, and then our eyes met over the children's heads and he grinned until his dimples pulled his smile as wide as it could go and I was instantly warm.

So so warm.

When he gets back we'll have the rings replaced. They were insured, it will just take time, like everything else. Which I have all kinds of. I have nothing but time.

And I still don't know why he was originally trying to get my attention but I don't think it matters anymore.

Stay high (not that kind).

    autophobia (psychology): Abnormal fear of one's self or of being alone.


I miss Jacob. I miss his arms. I miss his hands. I miss him singing so loudly. He sings loud. I miss his bottomless dimples and his almost-wavy blonde hair, I miss the beginnings of the fifth beard this year. I miss his confidence. I miss his dry no-nonsense deductions. I miss his eloquence in prayer. If he isn't around, I don't pray. Not because I'm being rebellious but because I want it to sound good and it never does. Jacob says I can empty out the verbal equivalent of my mental junk drawer into God's hands and He will sort through it and besides, He knows what I need before I think of turning to Him.

Again, kind of like someone else I know.

Who hopefully is on his way back as we speak. Hopefully to fill me back up again because I'm running on empty. Not happy or sad, only wistful, watchful and worn.

I invited everyone for dinner tonight because I needed noise. There's four motorcycles and three cars in my driveway and Lisabeth is making potato salad and I snuck upstairs to get a hairpin for Ruth to pin back her hair for dinner and I'm that good with multitasking (says she who cannot walk while breathing) that you get a post. Hurrah.

Hide and go sleep.

Come and get your sweet Bridgetine fix, so says Padraig the wonder hobbit.

    I don't mind where you come from
    As long as you come to me
    I don't like illusions I can't see
    them clearly

    I don't care no I wouldn't dare
    To fix the twist in you
    You've shown me eventually
    What you'll do

    I don't mind
    I don't care
    As long as you're here

    Go ahead tell me you'll leave again
    You'll just come back running
    Holding your scarred heart in hand
    It's all the same
    And I'll take you for who you are
    If you take me for everything
    Do it all over again
    It's all the same

The cottage is beautiful. It really is.

It was within sight of Cole's burial location. So that the kids can look out and know their father is there. And around the point is the most peaceful, beautiful sand beach. The cottage itself was warm and tight and cozy but airy too. Ripply-glass windows and new screens, the board floors were white and cool and clean, and he bought wrought-iron bedframes and vintage quilts for the beds, and over each bed was painted the owner's single initial. He stocked it with blue robin's egg pottery dishes and pure white towels. In the evenings we'd light some candles and he'd start a fire in the woodstove and the kids would fall asleep before they had time to close their eyes. And we would cuddle together and talk and look out at the blinking of the buoys that mark the entrance to the bay and the odd boat that would glide silently past.

It even came with a matching sailboat. a gorgeous little wooden number that I wouldn't trust past the end of my nose, but she's anchored there anyway, a good challenging swim out for me. Her name is Baby Blue Eyes and she looks as if she might have once been a barn.

I got a slight sunburn, pink around the edges again from the sun. Jacob was instantly pink. We never locked the door there, we never stopped a conversation in the middle in favor of sleep or love. We made love all night every night and tried to cram in our sleep in the early mornings. I woke up to the most beautiful sunrises I have ever seen. I lived in the screen porch. I traced the holes on the tin cupboard doors and I found all kinds of nooks and crannies where wonderful things were stored, like little pieces of seaglass and candles that smelled like lilacs. Sand dollars found on the beach outside the front door.

Our time there unforgettable and regrettable too. I'd like to go back, today even. Now.

Yes. This is a breather for me. I'll be doing everything myself, including self-comfort. I miss my Jacob.

He called this morning to wake me up, telling me about the farm and how beautiful it was and he wished we were there. He asked how Henry's sore throat is and how I was doing. He said he could tell by my voice that I wasn't breathing deeply and then he counted and asked me to take a very deep breath.

I cried.

His voice sounded choked. He was trying not to cry, still. We don't want this distance as much as we need it. There's no clarity in suffocation, no peace in turmoil. No end in sight to some of the difficulties we face and so we force a new start. It's something I was advised to do when I left Cole, everyone told me I went from a snail's pace to flat out run and I didn't stop and take time for Bridget. So busy making sure everyone was okay with everything. Too busy to look in the mirror, or I would have seen the scenery rushing vertically past me as I fell down the rabbit hole. I bet I would have screamed.

I'm doing everything wrong. I had no time alone just to think and to be with me. I don't even know who I am, I'm never alone, I've never made my own decisions, I've chased love and affection around since I was fourteen. I'm pretty sure maturity-wise, I stopped right there. It's no wonder men love me, I make them feel like they're a thousand feet tall and impervious to damage. They can feel strong and be in charge and I'll do anything they want, willingly. The price for this is my own identity. I wanted to be Jacob's girl so bad that I failed to notice that his girl wasn't whole anymore. And now I go looking for parts of myself and am terrified that they aren't there. Where the hell am I?

I asked him to hurry home and he said he would do his very best. He asked me what I slept in and I replied his shirt that he left hanging on the hook on the back of the door because it smelled like him and that when he came home I might give it back but not until then. He stopped talking and waited, and I could hear him struggling. He asked if Ruth had her book out to read and if I could wait and let him help her finish it. Then he stopped again.

Jake?

I'm here baby.

What are we doing?

We're getting the truck, sweetheart. And maybe saving a few bucks by doing it the hard way.

Is that it?

That's it. I love you.

I love you too. So much.

I know. It gets me through the night.

You sound like a country singer.

I could have been, I bet.

No, I like you this way. You're my Jacob.

I am that, princess.

Once again we're not acknowledging what's going on. We're just doing what feels necessary. So that we remember what it feels like to want to be together after a year of breathing each other's airspace. After a year long touchfest and hundreds of nights of finally being together we somehow lost direction and got stuck making up for lost time. Everything else pales, oxygen, bloodflow and emotions take a backseat to one overwhelming desire.

He will be back in a week and we'll have tasted it and remembered why we're here in the first place.

Backwards into a wall of fire, as the song goes.

I have so far spent the majority of my time alone fighting to figure out how I felt. I didn't open the curtains, we didn't go outside Monday, I called the kids in sick for school and then I unplugged the house phone. I put my cellphone to voice mail pickup and then I could just call Jacob back when he called me. Yesterday was better. I opened up the whole house, the weird thing with the bee made me feel good, and the rest of the day got even better when Duncan and PJ arrived with steaks and corn and offered to make dinner if they could make it on the barbecue and then later on I lay in the hammock on the front porch after the kids were in bed and I doodled in my sketchbook and everything I did was a cartoon and it made me laugh. I may frame a series of them for the cottage kitchen. They would look great there.

I hope we can go back to the cottage in a few months. Maybe fly up in July. August will be wacky here, Jacob will be gearing up to teach and university starts September 7th but he begins several weeks before that. And Sam has asked him to be a guest speaker for several dates through the fall. Ruth turns eight, Henry will turn six and we'll have our first wedding anniversary and Jacob has hinted that the hot air balloon ride might become an annual celebration, which sort of made me shit my pants. I hate heights!

In any event, I love the cottage. I love the location that he picked. He could have found something bigger or newer or easier (the well is on the verge of some disaster, I know it) or in a less windy place but it had to be where it is. So we could have Cole too.

And I really wasn't planning to share that until it came out when my fingers hit the keyboard. Or this either.

One of the very best things about the cottage, and the porch in particular, was Bridget's chair. A beautiful old wooden rocking chair painted a soft sage green in the porch with apple blossoms painted on the arms and on the top of the backrest, framing a letter B.

Cole made that chair and painted it too. It used to be in my kitchen here at the house but it got broken the night that Cole hurt me, not in the actual attack but afterwards, when Jacob went after Cole and they fell into it. I asked Jacob just to take it away and I never asked about it after that, I just assumed it was taken to the landfill in one of his many loads as we've renovated. It was in pieces. He sent it to his dad, who made new crossbars and repaired it to perfection, and then his mom repainted it exactly as it was before. I rocked both the kids in that chair and I missed it. And now when I sit in it I can see the exact place where Cole rests. And Jacob didn't get mad or upset or feel strange, he encouraged me to sit when I need to, to take the time to remember good times and allow myself to miss Cole if I want.

Jacob isn't a saint. It's very easy to be generous when you know someone isn't coming back. And his impatience with me isn't about Cole's memories as much as it is his desperation at wanting me to feel happy and not feel afraid. He just wants to take away my pain. How can you fault him for that? I can't. He is human. I'm human. We're a mess but sometimes we're so well adjusted it's incredible.

I just know that I have a place now. A place that's all mine, that I can think about and go to and have, and even when I can't be there, just knowing it's waiting gives me such a measure of calm. Someday we'll go there and never come back and that is a promise I have wished for my entire life. We just have the next fifteen years or so to get through first and then we can go.

We can do that. That, well, that's child's play.

And rest assured, my dance card appears to be filled until at least Monday, as therapy, yoga, massages, my runs and then some favors cashed in as PJ needs a driver for his wisdom-teeth extractions tomorrow and Sam has asked if I can work at the church on Friday since Mother's Day services are Sunday and he needs some extra hands. No worries, I'm still going to the brunch on Sunday, if it is as sweet as it was last year it will be fun, the argument concerning Jacob missing Mother's Day was a short one. Jacob told me every day is Mother's day in our house and we will do something special on the third Sunday in May instead and avoid the crowds. Which is mostly how I wanted to approach the day as it was. I don't need a fuss just because the calendar says a fuss needs to be made. Which is how the unbirthday came about but that whole unbirthday concept has now been summarily unpacked, disassembled and reduced to a distant memory since Jacob decided that Bridget's birthday was about to become the Most Hardcore Romantic Birthday Celebration Ever Celebrated In The History Of Bridgetdom. Geez. Maybe I should have pouted just a little more, he would have arranged some sort of hat trick, if you want to count the epic Valentine's week I already had this year.

I know, shut up, Bridget.

Did I mention we argue a lot? Does that help? Would you hate me less?

You know you love me. Or maybe it's one of those unhealthy dirty wonderful addictions like caffeine, nicotine, or Benzedrine. Who knows, really? I'm just happy you're here. It makes me feel a little less like Bridget talks to herself so she must be crazy. And anything that makes me feel better gets two thumbs up. And no, that wasn't perverted.

But I could make it perverted. I can make anything perverted.

When the quiet blankets the din.

So home definitely is where the heart is.

The kids are asleep, pets are sacked out around the house, even the fish have settled toward the bottom in a group as if they are waiting for Tunick to come and take their photograph. The house is quiet again.

I talked to Jacob and just about everyone else. I see how it is now, most of Bridget's army has deserted in favor of a newer, more majestic general: Jacob. Somehow he managed to coordinate a schedule full of favors cast and favors netted so that I would be busy enough without becoming exhausted, people will be around and I will be around people just enough over the next week to make the time go fast, to keep my head occupied while my heart keeps aching for him. It's the best thing they could have done. Now I have a lot to look forward to, I'll be out and about a bit, we'll have a little company and there's even some work involved, thanks to Sam.

Then I hang up and the calls slow to a trickle and they end with Jacob's deep, soft voice reassuring me of his love, and of faith in everything turning out okay. His soothing low baritone that makes all my senses wriggle with a little thrill, his volume that ratchets back to nothing when he's on the verge of tears.

Hell, we don't even need to discuss anything other than our progress back toward each other, a steady, perilous and determined journey in a straight line with blinders on.

Every time he calls he tells me the only thing he wants is us in his arms. Me and the kids, as if we are appendages that have been sewn on to him and then painfully ripped away. We feel the same way about him, even the kids were in tears when they said goodnight to him and asked how many sleeps were left. He told them and then stopped and I finally took the phone back and told him just to hurry. That it was a mistake and it's not right.

Even though it is and I've discovered a lot and I've got the time and space to figure out who the fuck Bridget is and what she wants. Dead dangerous angels and distractions aside, every other last drop of water under the Bridget notwithstanding, one thing is clear.

I really really love him.

This is so hard.

Goodnight.

Good for something.

Overnight somewhere in the dark my Kevlar dissolved into wet cardboard. And yet I didn't pick up the phone, not until I had taken the kids to school and then I only made one call, and that was to make an appointment to cut my hair. It's always so brassy and fried after a trip to the shore. It was perpetual golden straw when we lived back home.

I can't sustain myself for another week in this frame of mind. I have to fight my way through it and I'm still not good at the whole left-field lobs that smack right into me. No, I don't spring back when pressed on. I haven't for a long time.

Loch called late last night. He wanted to know what was really going on. As usual he's taken sides and believes that Jacob made a huge mistake leaving me for this long. He remembers well the business trip last year and that was what, three nights? Loch thinks if Jacob isn't going to be here then he should fly in and be here and I told him if he shows up on my doorstep any time between now and the 16th of May I will hurt him, that I need this time, that this is about me and not about my marriage and that everything is alright. He didn't believe me but I don't feel like reassuring anyone but Bridget today, and maybe the kids if they need it and so Loch is on his own, just like the rest of us. It's a leap of faith for Jacob to do what I've asked of him and there's no one better equipped to survive on faith alone.

The three of us are having a good time. We made dinner together last night and then watched a movie in our jammies, eating ice cream and reading spooky stories in my big bed before I took them to theirs. We slept with the windows open upstairs. I could hear the windchimes tinkling softly in the porch. The weather has turned beautiful here, at last.

And this morning the strangest thing happened.

I put my hearing aids in. It's quiet in the mornings here alone and I can ease back into using them. I get very tired and very frustrated wearing them but I'm trying. Okay, sometimes I try and sometimes I say fuck it.

But anyhow, I was upstairs this morning cleaning the windows and I realized there was a bee inside. He probably got trapped when I put the screens in. I'm deathly afraid of bees. Like fraidy-cat scared-silly afraid. Terrified of fuzzy buzzy critters. Wasps are worse but I knew this bee would be mad if he had been trapped in the house since Sunday evening. But I took a deep breath and went and put on rubber gloves, got a newspaper to roll up and came back to the room and closed the door so he couldn't escape. I took a deep breath and watched the bee climb up the glass on the window, as if he had no idea he was about to be beaten senseless. And the room was so cold, I had goosebumps.

If a bee ever made it inside in the past, Cole would trap it between a glass and a piece of cardboard and gently take it outside and then he would let it crawl up his hand out of the glass and sit with it for a while. He liked bees. He loved animals, and insects and spiders even. He said they looked innocent, all cute and colorful but they could sting, and hurt you and even kill you.

Huh. Sound like anyone we know?

He would give the bees names and they would always buzz around him, he never got stung. He was never scared. I figured if he could spend that much time befriending the damn things, then surely I could squash this one and prevent one of the kids from possibly being stung.

So I took another breath and stepped closer and I hauled off and whacked the paper at the bee. And I missed. The bee took off to the right and made a loop around the room. And then he came straight at my head and I freaked out. Well, I didn't freak out, I figured I was going to be stung so I closed my eyes and my mouth up tight and waited. After a few seconds I realized I couldn't feel anything so I opened my eyes and looked around. I ran my fingers gingerly through my hair. If you've ever had long hair and you're afraid of bees there's a good chance it stems from being a child and getting a bee caught in your hair and maybe that's why you're afraid of them to this day, don't you think?

I looked at the window, no bee. I listened carefully for the little motor sounds, nothing. And then I looked at the floor. There was my fuzzy nemesis, dead as a doornail on the floor at my feet.

Oog. I poked it a few times with the paper and then screamed just because as I scooped it onto the edge of the newspaper. I brought it downstairs and outside, all the way to the garage and then I shook the paper over the fence.

And then I realized Cole had killed the bee. It was the one fear he never teased me about. He respected it because of the incident when I was a kid and so he always dealt with bees, and he dealt with this one too. He's watching over me.

Therapy tomorrow. Thank goodness. Boy do I have a lot to talk about. My angels have switched sides.

Bridget-places.

 The sweetest flower that blows, I give you as we part. For you it is a rose - for me it is my heart. -Frederick Peterson

That would be the best message ever to find on the card of some red beauties just delivered into my arms, wouldn't you agree? I should open the curtains in order to get a nicer view, maybe. Jacob makes it very hard for me to wallow, I'll have you know.

Champagne puddles, musical trucks and five thousand miles.

I made no plans to write today but here I am, exhausted and not thinking rationally so in advance I'll apologize for being sick with a cold now from the airplane and not painting as pretty a picture as I would have liked to. But! The big but here is that I am so goddamned strong, you'll all be proud. Or totally confused. Hopefully proud at how tough little Bridget is holding up right now. Tiny fists pumping the air, I will cheer myself the hell on because I'm Kevlar, baby. Five feet tall and bulletproof. Waterproof, fireproof and indestructible.

Shhh, let's just go with it for now, while it works. Please?

The unbirthday was a resounding failure. Instead I was ambushed with Romance.

I know, surprise, surprise. Keep in mind he promised to do nothing, and instead he did everything. I was floored. I thought we had done it all. Full-spectrum romance of Jacob's caliber comes in so many hues and shades we'll never exhaust these rainbows, of that I am finally sure.

Jacob snagged his sister to come and stay with the kids under the guise of taking me out for dinner, in town in a cozy high-end restaurant. He was funny, we ordered Bellinis and cajun chicken dishes and made idle chit chat and I was so happy to have a special dinner for my birthday after expecting a non-fuss.

After dinner he took my hand and led me down along the waterfront. Okay, a walk, it's twilight, it's a beautiful rainy evening. He led me straight to the nicest hotel/spa in town and I'm thinking, oh, a manicure! Because my hands are wrecked and miserable from the winter and how lovely maybe ...and why are we checking in?

Okay, this might explain the travel case he had slung over his shoulder on our walk that I assumed contained some surprise, but I wasn't sure what. I've learned not to guess when it comes to Jacob. Brilliantly oblivious, even.

Our room was beautiful. He had me close my eyes and sit down for a few minutes. I heard water. He came back in five minutes and led me into the bathroom where he had drawn a bath for us, replete with rose petals in the water and candles he had smuggled in. He got in first and then I did and he washed my back and snuggled with me. When the water finally cooled we reluctantly got out. He wrapped me in one of those giant white fluffy robes just in time for us to hear a knock on our door. Strawberries and champagne. So decadent. We fed each other and then he toasted me, a happy birthday, of which many have passed mostly with little to no fanfare, and things would be different from now on.

It was very good champagne.

Are you sick yet?

Next would be the porn part. Please use your imagination, I'm too tired to go through it. But I do have some lovely almost-bruises from being repeatedly pulled to the edge of the bed by my ankles and Jacob is now plotting to raise our bed higher because he really liked being able to stand. He is incorrigible, and I love it.

Snort.

After round three (or maybe it was four?) he went and fetched something from his coat pocket and brought it over. A tiny box tied with a ribbon. He said that he's been looking for this for a while, since when he met me I wore a floating heart pendant that Cole had later replaced with a diamond heart and I spoke a few times of missing the floating heart, which had gotten lost on a camping trip. He even made sure the chain was shorter so as to not interfere with my diamond sliding pendant. It's beautiful.

I'm a little fuzzy on details after this point. Possibly we finished the champagne in and around the remainder of the entire night wide awake with our senses on fire. He took me to places I've never seen before, and I cannot wait to go back. Storybook lovemaking with no difficult moments.

It was a first for us.

The early morning brought a blisteringly hot shower and room-service breakfast in which we fought over the croissants and enjoyed coffee and a morning view of the sunrise over the water. We were checked out by nine and back at the cottage by ten only to find the kids had enjoyed a fun sleepover of their own, not missing us as much as I would have expected. Jacob had planned this night months ago and they knew of it and kept some complex secrets. They did very well. Henry and Ruth had presents for me to open. And then it took just about every reserve I have left to make it through the last twenty-four hours, they have been so difficult in comparison to Saturday night's ease and decadence.

Jacob didn't come back with us on the plane.

Right now as I write there are five thousand miles in between us.

He went to Newfoundland because his dad finished the truck. Do you remember Jacob's ancient Suburban? He had it shipped home to Newfie to store in the barn when we bought the Ram and instead his father rebuilt it and had it repainted and it's finally ready for Jacob to drive again. And so he is going to spend a few days with his folks and then drive the Subruban home, halfway across the country. One of those moments where you take the leap and hope everything turns out okay. We're getting very good at this.

Let's just do it. We'll be okay and when I come back we'll be better, princess.

Yes, there would have been easier ways to do it, but as soon as he gets back we're shipping the Ram to his parents as a gift. They haven't had a new vehicle in decades and so Jacob is going to surprise them. And not only do we save the extra few thousand dollars it would have taken to ship the Suburban out on top of all that, it's a break for Jacob and I. A little space where before there existed no breathing room at all.

Only barely agreed upon, honestly. This is the last thing I wanted.

So here's my peptalk:

Jacob and I have a long and lovely history of suffocating each other with our intensity, right? And the goosebumps just rose up on my arms but a week or so is a good reminder of who we are as individuals, we need to bring ourselves, our true character, our unique personalities to this marriage instead of our collective history. We're trying to stay on firm ground so that we make it. Honestly no one wanted a time-out, we prefer the endless inability to inhale deeply enough to expand our ribs, the shallow breathless existence that left us lightheaded and slightly spinny.

Who wouldn't?

We left each other on very good and difficult terms at the airport, both of us headed for different gates for different flights. Jacob wasn't afraid to fly alone, he has faith in his independence, it puts him in a good frame with which to think and function. I wasn't afraid to fly alone with the kids because we had no choice and I always do better without options. It was long, openly melancholy afternoon as we wound our way back to the flat city covered with dust, and I flew into Christian's arms for the sake of familiar ground after calling him to see if he could come and get us. Over and over I wondered how I find myself in this position, returning to a city I've never been on good terms with and yet feeling as if it is a relief to be 'home' if this is what home is, to the kids. It never will be for me. My heart is scattered across the country like broken glass.

No one believed me that Jacob and I parted on good terms, few of my friends believing he is even planning to come back. I'm sure all of them have now called him looking for reassurance, which he will offer freely. He'll be back on the 15th and they'll trust him when they see him. Christian and PJ have offered to pitch in with a little babysitting so that I can attend my sessions and they both offered to come and stay if it would help, but I think I am going to just take the time to breathe and not be crowded with well-meant affection. Expanding my ribs to see if I can find levelheadedness once again. I never had a hell of lot of common sense to begin with but what I had was just about water-tight. I've sprung holes I have to patch. I have work to do. I have a girl to heal. I have to re-establish Bridget the waterproof princess.

I can do it. I want Jacob to return to the Bridget he loves, and not the brittle one. Life should resume without the halo of frailty, without the incredible instability we're honed to a fine point. It has to. It's time.

I miss him so much it hurts. I'm not even sure I can do this. There's an overwhelming urge to call him and ask him to just fly home as quick as he possibly can. Because I have his heart here, on a chain around my neck for safekeeping and I'd like the rest of him back so I can cradle him in my arms and not feel like this.

I'm going to shut the hell up now.

Thank you for the sweet emails wishing me a good trip and a happy unbirthday. We did have a really wonderful time. I'll tell you more about it tomorrow.

Still with the Piglet nonsense and another entry for you to tear apart.

Wow, some of you aren't having a good start to the week either. And as much as I really appreciate honesty and as open a dialogue as I can maintain with everyone who emails, and I try to respond quickly, I don't feel like you're reading the words. You're picking and choosing how you're going to feel and then you skim. Skimming won't work here. So instead of seventeen emails telling me my posting wasn't up to your standards or I sound totally out of it please go back and read the parts where I tell you I haven't slept in four days, I just flew 4000 miles with two small kids and I've caught a cold, without even pointing out how I feel about Jacob not being here.

So, yeah, maybe I am out of it.

Maybe you are too. We're all rusty from a spring weekend in which we had expectations. I had one of the best and one of the most difficult weekends of my entire life and I can't do it justice today because of everything else. I have never been felled by so much pure-hearted love in all my days. I've had romance. Never on this scale. Never the desperate movie kind and Jacob keeps on breaking all the rules and I hope he keeps it up forever. I can't convey what it feels like to me to hear the things he whispers, to kiss him, to put my nose in the wonderful place where I can feel him breath on my face, to see the way his face lights up when I smile. The thorough, slightly harsh, wonderfully energetic and loving way he ruins my reputation as a lady, the things he says, out loud and out of the bluest blue that make my knees knock together.

I told you before, there's no new-love starry-eyed newlywed phase in progress here, it's simply what life with Jacob is like. It's what we do to each other. He called me an hour ago and said not being able to hold my hand or see my eyes was killing him.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder, Jake.

If my heart grew any fonder it would explode, princess.

No, I want you back in one piece.

Then I need to get on a plane. Because I miss you guys so much it's like physical pain that won't stop.

Then pretend you're on an exotic getaway.

That never felt any different, you know.

Then how did you stand it?

I wrote you letters.

What?

I wrote to you. I told you everything I did, and everything I felt. Then I would burn them and start over.

You are an endless surprise, preacher boy.

So are you, piglet. I never expected to feel this way about anyone save for God.

So I'm in good company?

The very best. Are you okay?

No, I wish you were here.

Not what I asked.

I'm okay.

Do you promise me you're really okay?

Yes. I promise. Just hurry home.

I will. Sleep well, beautiful. I'm on my way back to you.
Nope, I give up, I think. I can't make you see how this feels. I'll never be able to.

Prince of tides.

    Good morning.
    Don't cop out.

This will be your last post until Tuesday.

I will miss you, more than you know. But right now I have to be home. Home on my turf, Bridget's territory, resplendent with histories and dead husbands buried in my ocean backyard and the sun glinting on the waves. While I have the strength to have a goddamned opinion. When I come back I might be less strung out. Hopefully not this angry. Buzzy-bumblebee angry.

Here's hoping.

My waves. My ocean. That one you all love but it belongs to the saltwater princess. Me. I've got your bitter right here.

After I wrote last night I went and pulled out that stupid sweater and I put it on and then I went to sleep. With the sweater. With Cole. And as fucked up as that might sound it's a pretty accurate picture of how unbelievably fucked up I feel.

    Are you crazy to want this
    Even for a while?
    We're making this shit up
    The reasons for being are easy to pay
    You can't remember the others
    They just kind of went away

And I didn't ask Jacob if we could go home for a break. I told him I was going and I told him I was taking the kids and that I didn't want to be here anymore and I asked him if he would come too, formally, as if I was looking for distance from us and I put us back into separate places in my head because otherwise I get swallowed alive.

He asked if I wanted him there. I do, and I told him we could go to the cottage he bought for me for Christmas and maybe it'll give us a chance to talk quietly while the kids look for shells in that bitch of a wind that never ceases but takes your pain with it and maybe we can come to some sort of a truce while we're there. Without counselors and without God looking over my goddamned shoulder and without Jacob being right all the time and friends with opinions and bills and phonecalls and laundry and all this goddamned nonsense. And I'm doing it on my terms, because the hearing aids aren't coming either.

I know, it's all going to be waiting when we come back.

Maybe I just won't come back.

    we're done lying for a living
    the strange days have come and you're gone
    either dead or dying
    either dead or trying to go
In my perfect world, I have a watch with no hands. Time doesn't move. The sun gives me no indications, the moon lights up on command and I have every precious moment that I might need or want. The seasons would be invited, daylight could be stored, and warmth could be conjured whilst cold is soundly rejected and Bridget could sit in her favorite spot at the edge of her world, and maybe, just maybe...

Not fall off.

One of those times when the lyrics fit you like a fucking glove.

    Just hear me out
    If it's not perfect I'll perfect it till my heart explodes
    I highly doubt
    I can make it through another of your episodes
    Lashing out
    One of the petty moves you pull before you lose control
    You wear me out
    But it's all right now

He's singing it with a bitter tongue while he restrings his guitar and I find myself afraid to go in the room in case he's in a bad mood. For Christ's sake it's Jake.

Whoever said Bridget could be fixed with time and love had no idea what we're up against.

Oh, right. That was Jake, too.

Raise your hand if you know I'm really getting kind of worried about how this trip is going to go.

One more sleep.

I refuse to dignify most of these emails. No, I'm not posting any pictures of naked me, forget it! My parents read here (I know, OH MY GOD). Sure I can write about sex but photographs are a whole different level of privacy to me. Maybe not to you, but to me. The day the minister's wife puts up her own naked pictures is the day the neighborhood revolts or worse, tilts and all the people slide out of their homes and off the edge of the horizon.

And, no I did not just admit the existence of said pictures. But this would be a great segue into a story about the year everyone decided they take Cole's life drawing course because he had a live! nude! model! Which, naturally was...me.

Pictures and drawings. Paintings too. Pick a medium, I think I have a work here in it.

Hmmm. Let's stop here and move along, shall we?

We're packed for the coast. It's the first time Jacob asked me to help him pack instead of him doing everything because I couldn't seem to move. Last time we went home I was put where ever I needed to be, clutching the box with Cole's ashes and feeling so so brittle. I didn't look up or around, I just went in a straight line. I drank too much. I fought with my family. I fought with Jacob. And I cried at the edge of the ocean.

Well, okay, I always do that now. She and I are too far apart, too often and it's so hard.

This time might be happier. No, it will be happier. Jake is taking me to meet the cottage he has transformed into my hideaway. He's taking us away so we don't have to be here during a difficult week. He's giving us all a break. Despite the risk of taking me anywhere, without medication, without Claus and Robert (whom I don't like, so I don't talk about him), without our circus safety net.

I packed my favorite sweater. Jacob frowned when he saw it, but it's a part of me. And maybe it's a 'thing' and I shouldn't be attached to things, but sometimes comfort is found in odd places. It's a sweater that used to be Cole's. A big nubby grey wool hoodie with braided ties and wooden buttons. It comes down to my knees. When I'm at the beach and it's cold it's what I wear. Jacob sees it as a attempt to hold on to something that's gone but it isn't like that. It's my sweater, it's been mine since I took it out of Cole's room when he was 18 and he said I could have it. I don't see Cole in it. I see Bridget, who is warm, and nothing more.

We're bickering, of course, over so many little things like that. We do this, before we travel, before big things. Jacob's anxiety is starting to cloud his demeanor, the fear of flying thing astounds me, coming from him. I can't fix it, and to see him with a ripple where his fabric is usually pulled strong and tight has always bothered me. He can't hypnotize himself. He can't talk himself out of this fear the way he can talk anyone else out of anything. And once we're in the air he will be fine.

My unbirthday is this week too. And I won't be here and I'm happy for that.

I just can't wait to see the cottage. Do I sound excited? No, Jacob told me I sound cautious. I know. I can't seem to exhale. The sun can't seem to come out and we can't seem to find our way past the bitter this morning. I should have run while it was early but instead we tried to take the extra hour to hold each other, awake but not awake, the beautiful in-between. No bitterness there but it crept in later.

I'm freezing. Pants might help that. Jacob's dress shirt from last night and a huge pair of wool socks and it's ten o'clock in the morning. Jacob ran the kids over to school while I started in on the laundry. I need some of it so I can finish packing the kids' bags but while it thumps through that temperamental dryer I find myself uncharacteristically impatient for something to keep my head busy.

Jacob and Sam are off doing some work this morning. Duncan is coming later as the official housesitter and yes, oh my God, if you are lucky, you'll even get an entry tomorrow because I'll be rattling around like a loose bolt waiting to go to the airport. I knew we should have booked an early morning flight because the waits are driving me nuts.

And maybe tomorrow I'll have something to say.

No, I'm serious, there are no naked pictures. No one believes me.

Because I am, as usual, completely untrustworthy.

Snort.

And again for the latecomers.

Bridget isn't on the web, guys. People regularly send me email with links to Flickr pictures labelled Bridget and Jake wondering if it's us (it isn't, most likely) or ask if I have Myspace or Facebook or other things I know little about. I did spend a couple of months flirting with Myspace but ultimately Loch took it down for me, I don't feel like I need more than this. Though if Blogger gets dodgy again, then I might reconsider a move to Wordpress or something.

But this website is definitely not me. I hope it's a line of cruise ships or fishing tackle supply and not some girl with the same nickname because well, just wow. But I have no right to be offended or upset because I didn't go and buy the domain.

But just so you know, saltwaterprincess.com isn't Bridget.

It's probably someone looking for payback in which case you'll soon see naked pictures of me there. Plus I'm offended by 'saltwater' being two words for some odd reason.

Oh, I'm kidding. No one's blackmailing me.

Of course, the day is young.

And notice I failed to deny the existence of naked pictures.

Oh dear lord.

(I'm still kidding, by the way. You have no faith in me at all, do you, internet?)

Performance tranquility.

There's something really romantic and positively magical about running uphill in the pouring rain while your husband stands at the top and yells at you repeatedly to get your shoulders down, already. Christ.

Jacob is a perfectionist in the few sports he does enjoy. He's really loving running again. I'm less of a technical, more of a cathartic runner. Sometimes I care nothing for form, keeping track or training, I just run until I've left my worries behind. This is why I run each day, because I can't get away from them.

Halfway up the hill I dropped my hands to my knees and stopped dead and yelled for him to fuck off. And he laughed and told me to hurry up. What a sweetheart.

I keep telling him I'm going to take him out and lose him one of these days and he tells me I have to be able to pass him in order to do that. We trash-talk to each other so much when we run you'd think we were bitter rivals instead of husband and wife.

Then we come home and share a hot shower and forget we were ever exasperated. Because...eh, hot showers when you've come home soaked to the bone and freezing cold are the best things ever.

Today's blessing is a well-anchored towel rack. But I'm not telling you why.

Snort.

Drive-thru girl.

In an effort not to be outdone by Loch, I present to you Duncan, your friendly neighborhood Irish Beat Poet. At first I laughed, but it's really freaking cool:

    Down dusty roads choked with cars
    a ribbon edged in black
    traces the path your life has taken
    like the map of your soul's travels

    This path is marked with milestones
    names and symbols you come
    to recognize easily
    before you are old enough to read

    Which hunger are you filling, drive-thru girl?

    Sometimes there's a passenger
    slouched in the backseat
    His name is deadly homesickness
    and you wish he would go

    Sometimes he likes to go away
    while you take your repast.
    food your mouth knows, your brain remembers
    You feel less alone.

    Littered beside the dusty road
    like abandoned boxes
    like empty houses
    the drive-thrus tempt your hunger

    Which hunger are you filling, drive-thru girl?

    Sliding glass smeared with fingerprints
    dirty dollar bills exchanged
    a crumpled bag is handed out
    and you are on your way

    The window a link to your past
    the road ahead a map of your future
    your blood sugar a reluctant hostage
    in your quest for miles before dark.

    And once you have left
    and eaten your fare
    your belly is quiet, your thoughts are spare
    and you know, in five hundred miles you'll do it again.

    What hunger was that that you were filling again, drive-thru girl?

Woozles.

What's with the Piglet nickname again?

I like it, it suits you.

Gee, thanks alot.

Well, not only is Piglet Pooh's best friend and constant companion, but we have to work together to capture all of your woozles and heffalumps.

Oh, I see. Pooh?

Yes, Piglet?

Nothing, I just wanted to be sure of you.

Man, you know more of these quotes than I do, princess.

Oh, thank heavens. I thought you forgot my real name.

It isn't princ-

Oh, yes it is.

Okay, Bridget the Saltwater Piglet.

Take that back!

No way, baby girl. I am the giver of nicknames.

Um.....

Yes?

You'll pay for this, Jacob.

Can't come up with anything?

Nope. I got nothing.

Record smashed.

Jacob was home in time to offer to take us out for dinner with his characteristic wry smile at our argument. We had sort of made up on the phone but when he came home things were still a bit tense. Over dinner we worked out our remaining issues on the subject that caused our turmoil and then came home to get the kids in bed and warm up to each other. We called it a night at 9:30 and went to bed hand in hand.

And I swear I don't pick fights for this reason, but I would, in a heartbeat. Epic make-up sex.

Last night in his hurry to touch, Jacob managed to rip five buttons off my shirt, one off my skirt and two off his Levi 501s. I'm not sure how he managed that feat considering how tough those buttons are but he did it. It was a new record for us.

We didn't care much about the buttons. He gathered me up into his arms and into his lap and then turned me inside out and pushed me so far into the bed I had to talk him into slowing down. He's proving me wrong on so many levels it's positively joyful.

Afterwards I was lying across the foot of the bed watching him pick buttons up off the floor by candlelight, and I told him I loved him.

He laughed and stopped his button-hunt and sat down beside me on the edge of the bed, and he ran his hand down my back and rubbed the back of my thigh and said,

You drive me right up the wall, piglet, and I love you so very, very much.

Rebobinage.

Why are you here reading about me? It's a beautiful spring day and we should all be outside. I'm headed there now with a fresh cup of coffee and I'm going to try to reel in my crazy head and salvage the day. Because what's worse than going to bed angry is waking up still angry and then going off to spend the day angry and Bridget at home wishing she could learn to shut her mouth but it's hard when her feet are in it and everything spills out. I'm learning there's a fine, most unwelcome line between being able to share your darkest fears with your best friend and not alienating your husband in the process. Especially when they are one in the same.

Friday love letters.

Here, a post stolen directly from Jacob's newest journal, a pretty coffee-brown moleskin number I bought for him and in return he had to let me post entry number one, written three days ago, in which he explains the upcoming trip.

Sorry, I have nothing to add to this, walking with knees this weak is so much harder than I once hoped it might be.

    Tuesday, April 24, 2007

    I expected in my lifetime to find someone I would be comfortable with. I would love a girl and in return she would love me too. I would always have a date to the movies. I would have a permanent dinner and travel partner. I would end each night lying beside someone who knew me well and someone I cared for greatly. Bridget is none of those things. She took my definition of marriage, of love itself and turned it inside out. She's the walking epitome of what it means to be in love. She falls asleep on my shoulder at the movies, every time. It's as if the dark room and the loud music signifies a rest for her little head. It's hard to get her to eat, she'd rather sit and watch me and talk. We haven't traveled much. I hope I can change that. Mostly at night I fall asleep not just beside Bridget but holding her so close in my arms that we breathe in unison. I become a cage around her, a human shield to keep her safe so that she can sleep, defender of her life against her nightmares and terrors. It isn't the comfort of being beside someone. It's the outpouring of emotions from within that have humbled me. I never expected to find such depth and breadth in love. I never expected to want to spend every moment-waking or asleep-with another person. She's like fire contained within her skin. She embodies every aspect of life in her beauty, in her lust for what she loves, her honest love for me, it defies measurement-it could bring down a mountain, a kingdom even. When I wake up in the morning I feel her skin in my hands, when I open my eyes I look into hers and my throat catches and I can do nothing except pause and let love overwhelm me. I say my thanks to God for her very presence in my life but this is more than I could have hoped for. I tell her I love her but it's never enough. "I love you." is not descriptive or encompassing enough for what I feel for my wife. She is the world-she is my world. When she chose me I expected to find a balance, to have a partner but coming up for air is a task I'd rather not undertake at this time. It's too beautiful being here with her, consumed by these feelings. I am a lucky man. If Bridget woke up tomorrow, changed her mind, crushed my heart and took me for everything I had to give her I would still love her forever. My heart is at her mercy, as is my soul. I'm taking her home next week. She needs a break, needs to get away and breathe some sea breezes and let the salt soak into her skin and claim her invisible crown that waits for her afloat in the waves, weaving seaweed through her hair and trying to hide the scales of her mermaid fin. When she has all that she can hold I'll bring her back and we'll continue on. She's doing very well and it's a good time for good things. Someday I'll learn how to hold the ocean in my hands and give it to her on my knees but until that day comes I must be content to take her to the very edge and see that smile that I only see when she's up to her knees in the saltwater and she turns to thank me without saying a word. She can't because it won't come out. I try to say it for her and then I can't speak. We smile at each other in silence because life is perfect now with my princess.
Two peas, one pod. One very sentimental pod.

And Jacob, honey, one more thing. Paragraphs, they are your friends.

(Edit: Since re-reading it a hundred times I've come to the conclusion that this was an extra-special entry heavy on the sweet because he knew I would share it. He's wicked that way, and I am a little slow on the draw. Not like I care much, the part about him learning to hold the ocean in his hands to give to me on his knees? That kind of thing is what makes him tick. Hopefully he'll figure out how to pull it off.)

More, because it's here.

I don't talk about therapy much anymore, do I? It's too hard. It's an increasingly productive rhythm now. I'm a very good patient when I try. When I don't try I'm a holy terror but I've been trying and it shows.

But I still don't think I'll talk about it for a bit. It seems to work better when I don't. My apologies, for those who come to pick my carcass.

Instead I'm going to bore you and feed the sweet people, the ones who care about me. You know who you are.

Jacob asked me to sing Landslide while he played it late last night after everyone left. Never mind that some nights the guitar comes to bed with him because he likes to lie down and play it with his back against the headboard and fiddle with new tunings and new songs.

Landslide.

I love that song. I used to think it was about an adult who suddenly realized she was an adult. Making her life her own.

    I took my love and I took it down
    Climbed a mountain and turned around
    And I saw my reflection in the snow-covered hills
    Until the landslide brought it down
    Oh, mirror in the sky -What is love?
    Can the child within my heart rise above?
    Can I sail through the changing ocean tides
    Can I handle the seasons of my life?
    Well I've been afraid of changing
    because I've built my life around you
    But time makes you bolder, even children get older
    And I'm getting older too
    So, take my love take it down
    Climb a mountain and turn around
    and if you see my reflection in the snow-covered hills
    well the landslide will bring it down
    The landslide will bring it down

And woog. Another epiphany, just like that.

Hi. I'm Bridget. Nice to meet me, slowpoke.

Rainstorming.

Let's begin with a wax and end with an epiphany, shall we?

Lying in the hammock reading existentialist prose this morning in the vague darkness of a rainy day, drinking strong tea, a firm shadow on the floor beneath me where previously one would glimpse only a fleeting wisp of movement and light. Birdy Nam Nam reverberates from the stereo, packing sound into every nook and cranny in the whole house and spilling out around the edges, under windowsills and through rippled glass only to be cut off by the roar of the rain.

And so there are no lyrics today, but the next lapdance will be Escape. I never heard a song more in need of Stoli and a strobe light. At least that's what Jacob had to say about it.

A new chapter has begun in this novel.

Redefined lives, new boundaries and fresh hopes. New routines, renewed faith and an ache of experiences passed like tests in grade school.

I keep telling myself this over and over again. I keep breaking out into spontaneous smiles. I haven't done it in such a long time that Jacob has spent much of recent history on his knees praying his thanks,

One life lived and one more to go, on the cusp I tingle with anticipation, expectations I won't make in favor of just...seeing what happens. Just like the sunrise disintegrates into day only to be reborn in fire and fury at twilight. The stars push their way to the forefront of the sky's stage to silence us with awe.

I am a star, and I will light the way to the moon, my angel boy. To the moon.

I've got an Air Canada itinerary in my hands. But it isn't for the moon. It's for the coast. If the moon had a coast, I would be there, believe me. I'll talk about the trip shortly, but not today. Today I got a very short and distant email from Ben thanking me for not castrating him with my words here. I have no use for that. No, honestly had I written that entry the day after he cut me loose it might have been vastly different. You can tell when I'm not rational through what I write, and you can tell when the edge has been taken off what I'm saying. We seem to have returned to our adult ways, adult reactions and adult expectations. People come and go. Sometimes friendships are irreparably broken, like marriages, like homes, and like hearts.

It's life. It happens. Bridget's learning to roll with it, instead of being steamrolled by it.

There's nothing left to steamroll, maybe. No, probably not. The good news is I am good. Hearing aids, check. Medication-free, check. Rested, check. No longer grieving, check. No longer scared, check. No longer afraid to say things are good for fear of jinxing myself or appearing to pretend.

Bridget's not pretending nothing anymore.

She's also lost her ability to form sentences this morning. Blame it on an epic back massage in the big hammock. Blame it on naming tropical fish after impressionist painters and late night dim sum for eight. Blame it on bad weather clearing up a dusty fleeting city-spring and a very lovely dead tree in the backyard that I'm loathe to see cut down because it likes me. Or rather, I like it. It's dark and ugly in a sea of fresh green life. I named it Bridget's emo tree.

Snort.

No mind, Jacob promised I could have my giant angel statue where the tree used to be. The one Cole wouldn't go for.

Poetic justice, baby. Cole didn't want any life-sized angels in my sightlines. And now that's all I see.

And I ran today.

It was a short run, but a good one nonetheless.

Can't you tell?

Olive blush.

I'm sure it was well-meant.

On the other hand, I still think it was a bit rude.

Jacob took me to the Olive Garden for lunch today and just as we sat down a woman breezed to our table and picked up a lock of my hair and put her hand on Jacob's head, running her fingers through his hair (which made him cringe and made me laugh and cringe too) and began to loudly ask if our hair colors were natural (they are) and if I had extensions (I don't) and how bloody glorious our hair was and how lucky we were because people wished for hair like ours. Were we Scandinavian? (no, Irish) Did we know we would be great in TV commercials? (um, what?) She wouldn't let us answer a single question.

Lovely. Very complimentary. Nice even, that she commented instead of just staring.

But right in the middle of a private moment to cause a scene in front of a restaurant full of people at three hundred decibels? Unusual, to say the least.

Jacob politely thanked her and wished her a good lunch and she finally, mercilessly left us and we both struggled not to do the eye-rolling thing and be gracious, because the whole white-blonde straight shiny flippy wavy hair is a golden gift people wish for, and they were still staring. I could feel it.

Then Jacob grinned wickedly at me, winked and spoke very loudly.

Do you think we should have told her that we're both blonde all over?

And once again I spent an entire meal trying, and failing, to eat without laughing, choking and generally making a bigger spectacle of us than we already were. Next time I'm just going to save myself the effort and crawl under the table to hide.

And yeah, now everybody knows! May as well put it on the internet as well.

Dear God. I needed to be cheered up but seriously.