Breakfast in hell, take two.

Exit light
Enter night
Take my hand
Off to Never Never Land

Nine months ago I agreed to attend a very important breakfast function with Satan and today is that day. Only instead of merely attending, he somehow waded into his field here in this city with a flourish and wound up winning some sort of award (again), which will be presented to him this morning. Now, I've never been to a black tie breakfast of this magnitude before and so true to form, I've already eaten breakfast and had my coffee and the boys are grudgingly allowing this whoring out of their princess because Caleb will only be able to flaunt his power in public. I'm somewhat safe.

Somewhat, I said. We've mostly avoided each other this spring save for a handful of decent altercations and I've come to understand who he is and why he does the things he does. However I can only do the figuring-part away from him, because the moment I am within twenty-feet the Cole-similarities take over and I'm quickly under his spell. Too quickly, too under.

I think if Ben could send me with a rope tied around my waist that he could pull on really hard to bring me back he would. Other than that I think he's got a new appreciation for the visual glory of Bridget in a little black dress and six-inch heels at seven in the morning, because unlike just about everyone else, he's never seen this before.

Sorry, I find that amusing. I must be grasping at straws.

Nervous, trembly straws.

The Time Traveler's Wife.

Beautiful Bridget torture.

I wonder if I'll make it through this movie. Hell, I wonder if I'll be allowed to go see it.

(I didn't do so well with Up so I doubt I'll get to go.)

Hmmph.

Let's just say I overslept. Please ignore the pajamas.

Because I put them back on when I came home.

I'm turning the page for something new
I'm finding my way through life in bloom

This morning the Veer Union and Revolution Mother took turns pounding through my head, replacing the pain of last week as I ran through the pollen and the new leaves on the elm trees that line the streets of my city neighborhood. The air is clear and warm, the conditions PERFECT for running and still I had to turn back long before my knee-cracking endorphin marathon, so far out of reach I couldn't even say I got close to it, because the guillotine has come down and cut off the need to overachieve in my daily routine.

Every single plan I had for the weekend was dashed in a welcome bid for some easy times. Concerts were ignored and rescheduled, we didn't go to the fair, we didn't have a picnic or fly remote control things in the park, we didn't get many errands run or get to the butcher or baker. We didn't run or work really hard, though Ben installed the rain barrel and even set up the planter in the top part so I have flowers there now and we rearranged the stone patio and then yesterday we went outside with everyone right after lunch and we sat out there and talked and hung out right through until bedtime.

This morning? No anxiety. None. Not a trace. I slept through the night again. I came to some sort of unspoken perspective. Or maybe it's just that I rested enough to feel better. I laughed. Especially Saturday when I was leaning over to grab the watering can from behind the chair and Ben stuck the hose up my skirt and sprayed it. Half an hour later, still in the wet skirt, I was cornered by him in the garage and we felt like two teenagers taking advantage of five minutes of privacy. I'm always struck by what an incredible kisser he is with me. He used to say he hated kissing girls because they read too much into it but sometimes now I get a forever kiss which is more like exchanging precious breaths until every last one has been traded but it sends a ripple up my spine, activates my goosebumps and makes my head spin.

He likes kissing ME, that's all.

Which is why I kept walking around slowly watering plants and helping with cleaning out the truck in that wet skirt for half the afternoon, only venturing inside out of the sun to change when Henry came home from down the street and asked me if I had an accident. He thought Ben doing that was funny and wanted to see it again. Had I hung around outside I'm sure I would have been soaked, my only saving grace being the plea to not spray me because I'm holding my phone and if you ruin my BlackBerry you're going to be in SO much trouble, Benjamin.

He stopped then, not because of the phone, which he is hellbent on replacing anyway, but because he didn't want to push his luck since I hadn't been feeling well and the goal was to relax Bridget, not wear her out entirely.

Even the children were content to stick around the neighborhood and do next to nothing. The groove of the first truly hot and summery weekend has spilled over into Monday too, bringing a relaxed and vaguely still unfocused attitude that helps deflect the routine and the stresses of every-day life.

I hope it sticks around. It's pretty nice. And I did get worn out eventually. This morning. We were ungodly late getting out of bed this morning, and I loved every second of it.

And it almost makes up for not being at Bonnaroo.

They should change the name of the MuchMore music channel.

Today things are much better. Things were actually much better by last night. And I learn hard lessons once again about the difference between slowing down when I don't feel well or I'm overwhelmed and actually slowing down. I don't, I tend to just keep muddling through until I drop and then I figure after sleeping a little overnight that I should be back to rights and I can pick up the slack.

Not so.

Slowing down is actually stopping moving. Yesterday I wound up lying down with ice and pills and tears and I didn't do a damn thing all day. Okay, a little bit of laundry and I made an easy lunch for the kids and otherwise I lay down with the ice pack and the TV on low and I tried to just rest. I tried to slow down. I watched music videos from artists I don't enjoy and I drifted in and out of a pain-fueled hysteria and it was one of those times when I just gave up.

I'm not sure if it was the tail end of this flu that's been shadowing me since early May or if I just burned the candle at both ends until it ran out of wax but I needed that time and I got it. By five o'clock I could crack a smile and by the time Lochlan walked through the door to check on me all of the tension had evaporated. Ben felt better too. I really think now that a lot of it stemmed from his trip and maybe that's how stress comes out-days later. I think for me stress now exists under a magnifying glass and I can't put it in perspective anymore and I'd like to get back to where I could do that, on my own, without one of my knights stepping in and doing it for me.

In any case I felt well enough to go and run some errands last evening after canceling our larger plans and then I forced myself to go to sleep long before I wanted to and I didn't wake up until eight this morning and there is no pain today in my head for the first time in a week and I feel alert and calm. Which is good because we have a really busy weekend ahead.

Busy meaning fun.

Oh and mainstream popular music? Never again. Ever. Seriously. DO NOT LIKE. Even August wandered through the living room at one point, stopped to watch a few minutes of Lady Gaga, and said What the hell is that? A disco stick, is that what she said? I reminded him that music tastes are subjective and he doubted me. I'm buying him all of her CDs for his birthday now. I won't be listening to them though. And this goes down in history as one of those moments in which they gauge how sick I was by the music I was listening to. It must have been pretty bad.

My prescription is to listen to Tool all day today and call the doctor in the morning. And to learn what I never seem to learn: that it's okay for Bridget to stop moving every once in a while.

I'm not Mary and he's not Scott.

(Tattoos and now-defunct-but-once-much-lauded cover bands aside.)

SCOTT WEILAND'S ESTRANGED WIFE PUBLISHING MEMOIR
• Stone Temple Pilots singer Scott Weiland's estranged wife, Mary, will publish a memoir called Fall To Pieces on October 27th. A press release describes the book as "a visceral rollercoaster ride inside bipolar disorder, rock 'n' roll, celebrity culture, and the competitive world of modeling from a rock star wife and recovering drug addict," adding, "On the surface, Mary Weiland had a fairy-tale life. She was a highly paid fashion model married to successful rock star Scott Weiland, the notorious frontman for Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver. Then came the rampage in a Burbank hotel room and the resulting media frenzy that revealed to the world her bipolar disorder and drug abuse."
• Although Scott’s previously reported memoir has yet to materialize, he told us that the recent disintegration of his marriage was the subject of most of his latest solo album, Happy In Galoshes. "Every time I'd be out of the house and I'd be living in a hotel or renting a house or at a friend's house, that's when I would just basically be living in the studio, and writing a song a day. Sometimes two. There were some periods of time when the pain created most of the prolific stuff that I've ever done, I think."
• Scott Weiland will hit the road for a short run of dates with Stone Temple Pilots this summer, with the band also preparing to make its first studio album in eight years. Weiland also continues to tour behind Happy In Galoshes.

My love of all things Scott Weiland is well documented but those of you emailing me their Gotcha! lists for this month can rest easy. I'm so obviously not bipolar (snort, if only), and Ben is not small enough to be Scott anyway. I mean, have you seen Scott? He's the only person in the world shorter than I am. (And Jake was not Scott either, because as you can plainly see, Scott is still touring. Still breathing even.)

Packs a lot of talent into that head of his though, everyone can happily agree on that one.

Find you in the dark
Read you like a cheap surprise
Without shame
Sell me out, and frame your name

Deftones, headphones, six oh three.

I took you home
Set you on the glass
I pulled off your wings
Then I laughed
I watched a change in you
It's like you never had wings
Now you feel so alive

She came to the door selling invitations to a safe place from which to witness the end of the world, and Ben stood there in the screen porch in nothing but a pair of jeans and his tattoos, glasses on, half-eaten slice of toast in hand and he told her he wasn't interested because he already caught that show, more than once. I watched from behind the door and tried to remain expressionless. She was obviously afraid of his cynicism and so he watched to make sure she made it safely back down the front steps and then he shook his head and came back inside and I'm sure she moved on to our neighbors where odds are she'll get much the same reaction, probably with more clothes and less misanthropy.

Ben said (as if he even cared) that he hoped he was polite enough and then locked the door and took his shirt that I had on and pulled it toward him, bringing me with it into his arms. I got a final bruising airplane-fuel kiss and a long exhausted hug and then we had to retreat to the shower to wash the sweet and dangerous homecoming of the previous night from our flesh.

He's home now and we can resume our collective derangement, like those really creepy couples that terrorize the good people in horror movies? The ones who can finish each other's sentences and he seems to be in charge, since she follows every command he gives her but then all of the sudden she's alone with you and you realize she's the one you should really be afraid of, because she doesn't have any sense at all?

Yeah, that's us. And it makes me laugh.

I look at the cross
Then I look away
Give you the gun
Blow me away
I've watched a change in you

Because the hunkles said, "Enough with the whining, princess".

I might repeat to myself, slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations beautiful from minds profound; if I can remember any of the damn things.
~Dorothy Parker

Both of the children passed their swimming levels tonight and got to walk on water (Jacob would have been so proud. Cole too, without the righteous angle though. Perhaps for the physics involved). No, really. It's a weird thing like a Slip n' Slide tied to each end of the pool and the kids run down the length of it, one at a time. They love it. I might post the video but it's Blackberry quality and probably only the sort of thing a mother and a dozen hunkles would love, so maybe let's just say yay for swimming badges!

That and Ben is at the airport, boarding a plane as we speak! Do I hear a yay for husbands in transit?

Ah.

Yay!

That's music to my broken little ears. Music indeed.

Yay.

(yay!)

Okay, goodnight.

It's raining men again.

It's not Monday anymore, I don't have a headache anymore, and save for a foggyish Himalayan hairball incident at three o'clock this morning, I have slept a little bit. I didn't think I would but I did, and this just reiterates for me how incredibly damaging it is that I don't get more sleep and I will. After tonight, that is, because Ben comes home in around twelve hours and so there's no way in hell I'm going to manage more than four or five hours of sleep tonight tops (shhhh) but it's okay, I'll try to get some at the end of the week and we'll see where we are then.

I had chocolate cake for breakfast which always seems to make me feel better about all kinds of things. I had a run this morning. All the way down the street and then home because yeah...I'm not feeling well enough to pull it off today. Not by a longshot.

In other longshots, last night I watched The Bachelorette on television (which is that big glossy black slab in the living room that the boys play the Xbox on, I think). A long time ago I watched two shows from the first season. There was a man looking for love and at the end he proposed to a woman and they broke up three weeks later. The women on the show all looked the same. Tall and tanned with straightened hair and overly-whitened teeth and false eyelashes and far too much makeup and few, if any of them, exhibited any class whatsoever. They all gushed about their search for their very own fairytale ending and then proceeded to answer questions posed by the Bachelor that they thought perhaps might be the right answer, instead of their own answer.

He seemed to pick the one who appealed to him most and when her composure slipped a little at the end when the contest was over, she seemed human, almost. Two weeks later she resumed her facade and they were over because they didn't have any depth as a couple, they hadn't developed a relationship, you can't do that on television and you won't find your fairytale by giving what you think are the right answers to someone who wants to get to know you.

But the Bachelorette seems different. Maybe it's because it's the first one I have seen with the role-reversals. Maybe it's because the Bachelorette, Jillian, I believe her name is, is scared and cries a lot. Maybe it's because some of the men are adorable and actually are willing to be viewed in an honest light. I remember seeing the promo on TV and thinking, oh look, perfectly coiffed men with their fauxhawks and attitudes hoping to get publicity/laid or whatever and why would someone go through that?

They didn't turn out that way last night, but mostly because ninety-nine percent of the guys that I have ever met don't give answers they think you want, they just say whatever comes to mind and then later on they beat themselves to a pulp internally for possibly fucking up something good.

Maybe I just identified with Jillian because I'm usually the only woman in a room full of men and I'm the center of attention and they compete for my attention while I give out roses disguised as affection and in recognition of points scored. Sometimes someone goes home or maybe it's the group dates. I really don't know for sure. I just know that Monday nights are now going to be a whole lot different, because I'll be watching to see how this one turns out (I do realize that she'll pick the wrong guy, they'll proclaim it to be happily ever after and a month afterward she'll be back on the talk-show circuit telling the world how it just didn't work out.)

Because fairytales aren't real.

Don't you people know that by now? Especially the ones on 'reality' television and in all the stupid bride movies we've all watched. It's not reality any more than I'm a REAL princess. We just believe in what we want to and hope for the best. Jillian's doing it in front of the cameras and I'm doing it in front of my keyboard. Everyone tunes in for a glimpse of a fairytale, because you know that's all there will ever be, that glimpse.

It's an interesting blend of faith, hope and perseverance, isn't it? It's worth tuning in to, just in case I'm wrong. That's why I keep going.

Because I might be wrong.

Charades, while we wait.

And all her friends tell her she's so pretty
But she'd be a whole lot prettier
If she smiled once in a while
Because even her smile looks like a frown
She's seen her share of devils in this angel town

Today's tally so far is three phone calls, two emails including two pictures, one of the wing of the plane and the other an upnose shot from Benjamin, and sixty-eight text messages.

So far. Snort.

He's being really sweet and massively accommodating to my incredible, debilitating fears of abandonment, let me tell you.

I told her I ain't so sure
about this place
It's hard to play a gig in this town
And keep a straight face

In return, I am projecting my bravery onto the meek little girl who would rather scowl from the corner and throw dishes and bricks at all who approach. I'm wearing my courage like a superhero suit, hiding behind it with the sure knowledge that if anyone asked me in just the wrong way I might rip your face right off and eat it. Luckily so far everyone has asked in just the right way and been greeted with Bridget's half-bitten pout and big green quavery eyes obviously attempting to make it sound like everything is just fine. Going through the motions, as Sam instructs and Lochlan insists on. Ben travels. A lot. This is what he does, princess. Fuckfuckfuck.

Everything will be fine, just give me thirty-six more hours, okay?

Everything's gonna be all right

Tough as a wet noodle, I am.

In trying to remain positive about tomorrow evening and beyond I'm noticing I get more and more tense as we get closer to Ben leaving. There's something about him, I don't know but the second he takes one step out of the front door I'm already waiting for him to come home. Even when he goes for the day or for an hour or for a minute I begin to anticipate his return. Trading hearts was never such an obvious choice as it has been with him and I don't regret it, it's just difficult. Difficult to never be independent of my thoughts of him and difficult to deal with short or long term separations, regardless of how necessary they may be.

We locked the weekend down, mindful of the busy week to come. We've spent every waking and sleeping moment together like we can't get enough, as if it couldn't possibly make up for time apart and all it seems to do is make things harder.

He holds my hand as we walk, kisses my forehead every time he turns to me, squeezes me up tight into his arms as I stand in front of him and it's not enough. I want to grab him and pull him down the hill and into the shed and push him inside, barring the door with a heavy board and then I'll run around the shed until I am out of breath, chains in hand, wrapping the tin walls in links of iron that I'll then affix a huge and heavy rusted padlock to and then I'll sink to the grass with a laugh because no one can take him from me then.

I somehow don't think he would mind, sometimes. But maybe sometimes he would and maybe sometimes I have wished that I didn't love him so goddamned much because then I could go about my life selfishly and independent but I can't because I do and he knows and it's alright because sometimes life hands you your other half and says here, try this one on, I think this is it and it is and then you can't see the seams or the beginning or end and you just feel like you're a single entity instead of a million fragments anymore and that's what the hard pill to swallow is. It's supposed to make life easier but it just means the sweet parts give you cavities and the hard parts, well, they give you bruises.

Kung Fu Kisses.

There was nothing in sight, the memories left abandoned
There was nowhere to hide, the ashes fell like snow
And the ground gave in between where we were standing
And your voice was all I heard, and I get what I deserve

The thunder rumbled and the wind blew through the trees last night, lashing rain against the windows with a fury once again, rattling the glass looking for a way in. Inside I was locked in Ben's arms, my arms pinned against his chest, our skin slick in the flickering light. I felt feverish, exhausted and he held me out and then pulled me back when he saw that I had no strength left so he became the strength for both of us. I remember kissing his earlobe and underneath his chin and he sighed harshly against the top of my head and held me that much harder, increasing pressure until I flinched away from him and then he smiled and eased back into the rhythm that I adore, pressed there against his beating heart, not being able to get any closer than I was right at that moment. The next time I didn't flinch at all. The last thing I remember is my heavy eyelids closing as Ben pulled me in against his chest one again, spoons this time. He was so warm. So warm.

We woke up to a freezing cold, cloudy morning, raindrops still making their way down the panes of glass, clearing quickly to sun but remaining cold. He wrapped me in yesterday's flannel shirt, felt my forehead and then headed downstairs to make a fire. He was back up in a flash and went to the shower while I found some pajama pants and buttoned his shirt, rolling the sleeves up over my hands as I headed down to start the coffee and feed the cats and to evaluate if I was actually feeling better. I am, I had sleep last night and yesterday I took so slowly I think I managed to evade the worst of this.

When Ben came out of the shower he laughed to find me still in his shirt with my pants with Pucca all over them, coffee cup in hand. We have extensive plans for more nights of the same, right through the weekend, because after the weekend he heads off for a couple of days of meetings far away from here and we're just going to duck our heads and distract, predict, comply until at least Wednesday. Under the radar we'll fly, you won't even know we're here.

Like the cartoon ninjas on my tv screen.

Silver chairs and spruce tops.

Open fire on the needs designed on my knees for you
Open fire on my knees desires what I need from you

Nevermind me, I threw up all morning and now that I feel better and am on my feet officially, the plan is to continue to listen to Silverchair at top volume while simultaneously practicing Vivaldi's Winter. I'm not sure if I can pull any of it off but I feel like making some noise.

Too much coffee and I can't get the tangle out of this sentence anyway.

Not even fifteen minutes later
I'm still walking down the street,
When I saw a shadow of a man creep out of sight.
Then he walks up from behind
And puts a gun up to my head,
He made it clear he wasn't looking for a fight.
He said "Give me all you've got
I want your money not your life,
But if you try to make a move I won't think twice."

Here's your morning music video. Now, what in the heck was the plan again? Oh yes, eat well, sleep well, run well and STAY BUSY, Bridget.

Pfft. Fine, Henry wants me to make him an explorer/treehouse bag out of his old camouflage shorts that are too small. I also have to mend Ruthie's quilt. And a billion other things I'm about to put off while I wait out some bigger anxiety-causing issues. I'm learning very slowly I can do this and it's not a bad thing. Mostly. Or is it? I don't know for sure.

It's days like this I think I really should be medicated to remove the edge, calm me down, bliss me out just a little bit.

But I can't do that, so onward and upward we go.

There is no fake cheese either so my whole day is screwed. I like fake cheese in my grilled sandwiches, not slices of actual, real cheese. It's just too Heidi. If I do that I may as well add a big glass of goat's milk and then braid my hair to keep it out of my face while I'm sewing.

Well, crap. I just described my actual morning. Now you know how thrilling life can be here at the formerly-Reilly household now ruled by the dark emo one. Which is...me. Hahahaha.

P.S. I'll share this morning's email round robin if you're as morbid as I am. Don't email me if you're not. Describe three ways the person in the list below you will die. Here are mine as imagined by Christian:

#1 Scientists discover lip gloss causes cancer.

#2 Drowning via excessive pomegranate ice tea ingestion, aka teaboarding.

#3 Like that girl in Goldfinger, except instead of paint she'll be covered with tattoos.

Bridget McFly, time traveler.

Something did get in the way.
Something finally did break.
When I tried to find my place in the diary of Jane.
And I've burned every single page,
And I still look the other way.
And I still try to find my place in the diary of Jane.

I think I'll spend the rest of my life bouncing back and forth between present, past and future like a confused astronaut, a person with no permanent place in any dimension, simply a visitor from another time, sent to teach something briefly or to learn something to fold into the next incarnation of Bridget as she wings here way through time and space, never daring to stop long in any one place lest she explode in a shower of tiny white lights and utter elation at being able to light up the universe for the first time ever, visible for miles.

I think I'd rather be a fly on the wall because it drives me crazy when three doors get closed between me and the boys, who have taken their argument down to the den because it means they can shut the den door, shut the hall door and shut the foyer door and I won't hear a thing while they holler at each other all morning. Because Lochlan was supposed to come yesterday and keep me company but he ran into some work delays and never made it and I finally gave up and made dinner and then called him for the ninth time, when he picked up and admitted he didn't want me replacing him with someone else so he tried to wait me out, even though being alone and not being all that impressed with all the storm warnings had set me seriously on point.

He was selfish and I paid the price for it. And that isn't allowed, or so they always like to tell Ben when HE fucks up. Except he doesn't fuck up anymore and he's going to kick Lochlan's ass because Lochlan is supposed to be the perfect one and oh hell I can't wrap my brain him not being that way. It's almost like finding out the stars are artificial or hearts don't beat, they flex. Just shut up, because I don't want to know. I liked it better before.

Just for this there will be no room for him on Bridget's Groovy Space Adventure Bus, departing in t-minus fifteen minutes. No room at all. Lochlan, you can walk. Or you can apologize and follow the caravan. Your choice.

I didn't mean to kill anybody.

Relax, it's just a quote from The Wizard of Oz.

Honestly, you people...

So it's Monday night, a typical Monday in which you've spent the day waiting patiently for it to end, because Mondays just...suck.

And then the evening's entertainment begins scrolling across my blackberry screen:

THIS IS A WARNING THAT SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS ARE IMMINENT OR OCCURRING IN THESE REGIONS. REMEMBER THAT SOME SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS PRODUCE TORNADOES. LISTEN FOR UPDATED WARNINGS.

I am still getting over the nagging psychological effects of fretting over the flood just three short weeks ago. God, could you knock it off just for a little while? Please?

RSVP.

Summer has sent her regrets.

I'm sitting on the floor in the sun porch eating noodles out of a bowl with chopsticks, reading a book and plotting to use the rest of the beads in the bead jar to make some more mandalas for my windows. They're very pretty and they double as Christmas ornaments. There's your Household tips from Bridget for the day.

Now, unrelated:

We went to see Up last night. What I thought was going to be a $50 so-so movie because what if my children have finally outgrown Pixar? became Bridget sobbing quietly in the dark every single time they picked up Ellie's adventure book. Because it was profound and it was sad and it was so incredibly beautiful that you couldn't help but cry through all the hard parts. And fuck, here I am trying to describe it and I'm all teary-eyed agan.

Pft. I'm going back to my book. It was hard to come here and write today knowing yesterday's timeline is just sitting there on top of the pile of wasted words. And so I may write a whole lot of nothing for just a little bit. Just so we're cool. Me and my journal, I mean.

Too much time and then too little.

(Alternately titled Goldilocks and the 3 Husbands because it's funny.)

Someone sent me an email recently asking me what my deal is. That was it. One line. What's your deal?

If that wasn't a rude demand for something for nothing I don't know what is.

And then it occurred to me that I've removed all of the archives that would have led readers back to oh, 2004. Even though nothing much happened until 2006. That was the year I think the world as I know it exploded.

Here's a really truncated look back because I can barely do this but it's been demanded of me and who am I to ignore a direct command, ever? To match, it's staccato, and just as rude. There will be no poetry today.

In April of 2006, I left my husband, Cole. We had been married for 12 years. We had two small kids, Ruth, who was 6 at the time, and Henry, who was 4. Cole was sexually abusive. I was submissive and already incredibly fragile.

I left Cole for Jacob, one of Cole's best friends, one of mine, too. Jacob and I had fought our feelings for years. Maybe I was never one to play very fairly. I tried hard to be a good wife, though. The separation began amicably enough but stopped the night Cole broke into the house when I was there alone and hurt me. He broke a lot of bones, I'm five feet tall and 95 pounds, fighting back was a fool's game. Jacob saved my life that night like he had several times before and Cole went to jail. Two months later Cole suffered a massive heart attack and died. He was 37. We were not yet divorced.

That was when something in my head broke and I was never the same again.

This was also when I learned to stop waiting.

In August, Jacob took me for a hot air balloon ride. He proposed. I said yes. We were married two days later in his church. He was a Unitarian Christian minister. Someone else performed the ceremony. In September we got pregnant and in October we learned that the pregnancy was ectopic. My head got a lot worse after that, but so did Jacob's and we struggled mightily through the next full year trying to stay afloat. He was trying to fix everything and I kept trying to break it, too busy to notice things that were going on around me. Trying to keep normal going when normal had packed up and moved away.

We tried to embark on the romance of the century and you got to go along for that ride and that's one of the reasons I have taken off those entries. It hurts, you will never understand how much it hurts.

In October of 2007, Jacob left me. Left us. Just up and said he was already gone. That he wasn't a good person, that he needed to leave. I broke a little more. The resiliency of this one little human must be positively outstanding. I foundered around numb for a week and then on Jacob's birthday, my friends came and told me that he was dead, having taken his own life the night before, leaving behind some incredibly detailed instructions, provided to ensure that I would understand exactly what had happened to him and to us. Sometimes, to this day, I do understand and sometimes I don't get it at all.

This was when my head went on vacation completely. I did a lot of very self-destructive things and then I went away to a lovely place where they fix heads like mine. I came home weeks later, too soon, incapable of being any better off but loathe to abandon my children the way that Jacob had abandoned us. I continued to be self-destructive for a long time after coming home. Honestly I still am sometimes.

The winter I came home when Ben began to show me who he really was. I liked that person. And Bridget doesn't wait anymore. There is no point.

Honestly, I knew what he felt for me. Those of you who have read here for years have witnessed almost first hand our comment wars online and real-life difficulties we've both written about extensively but we've never had a dealbreaker, he's my boomerang boy. He always came back. Ben has an unconventional job that I don't talk about much and he may or may not be on the road or in the studio for a good three-quarters of most years but if you ask me I will tell you he's a door-to-door tattoo machine salesman. Hell, we have enough tattoos between us to make a stab at the truth with that one. He is none of your business in that respect so don't ask me what our last name is or if he's famous because that is the only time you will ever catch me in a lie anymore. I'm fine with that.

So I stopped playing and started looking at him a lot different in January of 2008 and by April we were married and oh, here she goes just like Elizabeth Taylor but really, Ben and I bicker just enough to pass for normal, married people and so far so good. He went to rehab this past winter and is currently celebrating seventy-nine days sober. He's been through more than I have, but that's for another day, again. I'm just trying to get through this.

When I'm not sharing too much information with the readers who wander in and out and number in the thousands now (thank you for the daily collection of outraged emails) I write short stories and novels too and I look after my friends and my two not-so-little kids (Ruth will be 10 this summer, Henry will be 8 and yes, they were named for candy bars but it could have been worse if I liked Kit-Kats and 3 Musketeers) and I cook dinner for a crowd every night. Friends that I write about include Lochlan, PJ, Christian, August, Joel, Sam, Duncan, Andrew, Daniel, Schuyler, Dalton, Dylan, Corey, Robin, Mark, Caleb and Chris. Some are awesome, some are evil. Who is which depends on the day. Some are very reluctant to be written about. Others, not so much. Some come and go. Others never budge. I am lucky to have them and lucky they love us so much.

I like to snowboard and climb rocks (very low rocks because I'm afraid of heights) and slow-dance and lap-dance and eat cake and cotton candy and draw cartoons and make up words and listen to music and play music on my violin and my piano.

I read music lyrics like other people read the newspaper because I have a degenerative hearing loss that someday not so far off in my future will leave me with only the music in my head and I'll be damned if I'm going to forget the words when the time comes.

That's my deal, in a nutshell. What's yours?

Manufactured by Westeel Stelco.

I'll pick up your hand and slowly blow your little mind
'Cause I made my mind up you're going to be mine
I'll tell you right now
Any trick in the book now, baby, all that I can find

In my grandparent's old house the furnace was on pull-chains and the stove ate big split-wood logs by the hour to cook all-day weekend dinners like pot roast with fresh peas and boiled potatoes. Here things aren't much different except that my twenty-year old furnace swallows natural gas and my oven plugs into the wall. I still cook all-day dinners sometimes.

Today was a cool and breezy day. Managed to get the groceries this morning. Bringing home string-tied celery, baskets of vegetables, paper-wrapped meats and a big jar of honey always makes me feel kitschy, vintage. Fifties, early sixties maybe. Makes me want to put on my apron and hum aloud while I scrub floss away from fresh ears of corn, the radio on the counter belting out Donovan or The Shangri-las. Ben would come in, muck dirt all over my freshly-mopped kitchen floor, one single lock of black hair falling onto his forehead, his clean-shaven, hungry grin huge and wide for me and kiss me with one hand while he changed the radio with the other to the talk-station for the news and weather. The kids would be upstairs, playing quietly in the sun on the upstairs porch floor, Lego bricks spread all over the place in their bid to recreate the diner we like to stop at for milkshakes and french fries on hot summer evenings after a cruise around town to see the magnolia trees in bloom.

But not tonight, because tonight we're having the roast I've had simmering in the oven all day, and even though my grandmother's radio would have been tuned to the hymns, I think she might approve of my efforts to pick and chose what I need and want to keep from the memories I have inside my head. I hope so anyway.

There are more memories to sort through. I just can't quite reach those yet. Some idiot built a wall in front of them and it looks like I'm going to have to tear it down. I'll do that, as soon as I find myself a vintage sledgehammer. Stay tuned.

You don't need to know these things.

Weeping shades of indigo
Shed without a reason

It's Friday. A sunny, cool day, perfect for swinging in the hammock in the front porch with the windows closed, curtains opened to allow the sun to warm the room. I've got my laptop and a big bowl of pistachios, iced tea and plans to drag everyone grocery shopping after dinner this evening so that I can go back to dreaming about being Gilda Texter in Vanishing Point instead of Jennifer Aniston in Rock Star, as well as lying on the grass in the sun at the park and finishing the book, which is so good it's a travesty that I've only been picking it up very late at night if I can't sleep.

Sometimes I am both characters in both films. Yesterday Ben took me up to the lake, the farthest I have been from home on a motorcycle in forever, and he found a quiet network of dirt roads between fields far away from prying eyes, slid me out of my jeans and boots and wrapped me in his leather jacket and then we christened the Harley, because there's no better way to spend a sunny Thursday morning than perched on the back of a parked motorcycle with your husband defiling you to the delight of whatever prairie wildlife, and that one trucker might happen to witness. (I'm sorry, mister, thank you for not stopping). The legend of Tucker Max lives on.

Besides, if I am to drive around the back yard naked on a motorcycle we're going to have to get one that's my size. (First one to make a scooter joke will be punished severely.)

Had my first waxing of the season. Will not be going back anytime soon. It was successful, I believe all my hair was ripped out at soul-level and I'm left with smooth legs for the first part of the summer. I don't grow regular hair, I have a nice white downy baby-duckling coat that probably wouldn't even have to be removed until I'm in very bright light and I emit a fuzzy all-over glow and that just isn't cool to me. In addition to the soul-baring I discovered my skin doesn't like whatever wax was used and I'm also covered in a rash again. Apparently it will go away in a few days. Gee, thanks. Just what I need, to itch my way through another season. (Again, please refrain from jokes, none of you are brave enough to do it.)

And lastly, I have new summer dresses. And they make me feel pretty good. Or maybe that's good and pretty? Whatever. It all works. Though I won't need them if I get a little motorcycle for the yard, now, will I?

I am trying to break your heart.

I'd always thought that if I held you tightly
You'd always love me like you did back then
Then I fell asleep and the city kept blinking
What was I thinking when I let you back in?

This morning is all about loud music, running fast and hard for over an hour, which made me feel somewhat human and less flighty this morning, and a scalding hot shower followed by a hotter cup of coffee. Dark roast, thanks. I have no use for weakling beans.

Post-shower I put on my skinny jeans, black skims and cardigan and my favorite dark grey t-shirt and I came downstairs to pronounce myself human again (out loud) after almost fifteen hours of resembling the little monster who lives in the pantry again.

Yesterday I heard something that made me think and I'm still racing towards it, wedged between Ben's back and the sissy bar, my wrists clenched around his chest for dear life, face smushed against helmet smushed against his leather jacket.

The difference between the way you are and the way everyone else is, Bridget, is that they are content until otherwise stirred to sadness or anxiety and you are the complete opposite of that.

Granted, it was an offhand comment made somewhere mired in a whole big session on What's Wrong with Bridget's Head, Part 78328173457598821-F but it stuck out to me because it explains precisely why I get so frustrated.

(I'm falling. Ohshitohshitohshit hard landing.)

I felt myself sliding down the hill. By four in the afternoon my legs were dangling freely over the edge of the day and I had two tufts of grass clenched tightly in my fists, unwilling to lose any more ground. The guitar cords swelled around me and leached into my brain and I was screaming and it just wound up lost and distorted in the noise and it got so bad I almost let go so that I could put my hands up over my ears but I didn't because if I checked out of the day right then it would have been a longer climb back and I'm worn out. I don't want to make that climb.

So I kept holding on.

Eventually a head appeared over the guardrail, Ben's face smiling down at me. He yelled down that I should grab his hand.

Fuck you, I yelled, It was your driving that flung me off the motorcycle in the first place and put me here. Don't think for a second you can risk my life and then turn around and save it too.

He shrugged and took a bite of his sandwich, chewing thoughtfully and looking up at the sky.

Fine, do it yourself then. And he settled in to watch.

I'll be damned if I'm going to let anyone fling me off any of these cliffs. I can jump off just fine. But I won't because the contentment is worth this stupid climb. So I let go with one hand, swung as hard as I could and grabbed at a patch of vines and grass a little higher up, giving me a better purchase.

He nodded and hollered an encouragement. I missed it when the wind blew softly in my ears.

I forced my arms to pull up my body and dug the toes of my boots in to the soft earth. Another foot. Another dozen inches closer to safety.

A good half hour later, my hand landed an inch from Ben's avengers and he reached down and took my hands and lifted me onto my feet, on the safe-side of the guardrail. He spun me around to brush away errant grass and leaves and then held me out at arm's length, staring at me like he's never seen me before.

Tougher than you look, bumblebee.

I shook my head, because I really don't think I am.

You wouldn't have been able to pull that off a year ago.

Sure I would! The inside of my head screamed at him. I'm a pro.

Outwardly, I just burst into tears, because sometimes not a damned thing inside my head matches what happens outside of it. He knows. And he pulled me in against his chest until I couldn't breathe anymore. Until my legs were no longer rubber and my soul was wedged back in place. My own voice echoed through my head, drowning out the bike rumbling, Ben talking, everything around me. It kept saying You're okay. You're okay. You're okay.

I've never heard that voice before. Not in here, anyway.

Contentment. It might be within my reach after all. I just seem to have incredibly short arms.

Ruffles.

CBC's Falcon cam is back up. It was called to my attention last year simply because the mom falcon is Princess and the dad falcon is Trey. Ruth and Henry have been enjoying watching the progress, since the babies just hatched.

If you'll notice the bucket they're sleeping in, hopefully it will prevent a repeat of last year.

My talents extend far beyond lap dances and now I have proof.

I am a busy girl this morning.

Sent Ben off for his appointments with a smile on his face. Had a long run. Planted the rest of the Clematis and the Osteospermums (terracotta), hosed down the cobblestones and hanging baskets. Cleaned and put away the tools, started laundry, and then, I got to work.

The funniest part of planning an afternoon of baking (banana bread, apple crisp, blueberry-apple muffins and cinnamon bread)? Precisely how many of the guys show up to just 'hang around'.

You would think I never feed them or something.

Breathe on my head and I'll love you for the rest of my days.

Sometimes life is just that simple.

I am the crisis
I am the bitter end
I'm gonna gun this down
I am divided
I am the razor edge
there is no easy now

This morning I woke up in the hammock, in the front porch, Ben holding me against his cool skin and the sound of heavy spring rain flooding my head. Sensory overload of the best kind, and a fitting end to a week that was long, arduous even. He whispered, his lips against the top of my head, a far away sound competing with the glorious rain.

Shhhhhhh. Everything's alright.

It is, oddly. And instead of making wrong choices we seem to be making right ones. Asking for help, time, hugs, clarification, space, less space, patience.

Maybe it's a novelty, maybe it's easier than reading minds and making assumptions and wishing and hoping. Maybe it works because many times over this week we've been surprised to ask for and get what we wanted, or what we needed, rather.

Maybe there is hope in small comforts and big love in broken hearts. Maybe no one cares if I have quiet meltdowns or silent melodramas playing out in my head or in my world. What matters to me is he cares, and that he's here. There's less saying things are better or fine, and more moments that we just know, and we take them. Ones when the house is still quiet and he can move me so I wake up to sounds I usually never hear. Ones where he holds my hand and for the moment I'm not pulling away to run, physically or emotionally. Ones that are steeped in new routines that are too new to remember they are routine, and so we hold them that much harder.

Life is never going to be perfect or much different than it is now. We'll struggle. I know that much now. But oddly, admitting this...it's not a disappointment.

It's a relief.

Life without an OFF button.

I'm officially volunteering to be the world's first brain transplant.

And we are home. Sometimes when you bite off more than you can chew, it helps to remember you can discreetly spit it into your napkin. Apparently Bridget is still not ready for solid food.

Or normal life, it seems, as boundless fear takes over every last good and wonderful thing. As I lay on my back in the twilight sky, the room with the skylights, Ben moving above me, my whole body sliding up with every thrust he made until he remembered to put one hand on top of my head to keep me down and that's when I always cross that line into painful pleasure, pinned to the floor. Instead my head went the other way and just decided to randomly begin to doubt that we could hold each other through the next day alone and I lost it and I was ashamed because this time there was no reasonable explanation for it. My head just went off and did it in spite of protests. In spite of the huge effort Ben had put into making a safe place for us, reassuring me I was so loved by him, holding me tight enough that physically I knew I was okay.

If only he could take my brain and put it in that fierce, loving embrace of his, I would be set for life.

Instead he listened to my shaky request for escape from the escape. Against his own wants, he brought me home a day early. I was not ready, that's all.

I wonder when I will be but no one has that answer. Fuck all of you then.

I can give you this.

He said that one sentence and that was it. And then he gave me his shadowed-face quiet grin that melts all the ice inside me into puddles of mush and he took my hand.

I could just buy it if you want.

I shook my head. Part of the appeal is that we have no responsibilities for this other than to enjoy it and leave it in good order when we go home.

Where did life turn to this? But I didn't say it out loud, I just crossed to the windows and looked out over the rainy ocean. He brought the ocean to me. All I had to do was take my seat and fasten the belt and then take a little ride up over the clouds and abra-cabridget, I am here in this glorious place where the grass on the dunes is so sharp you bleed just looking at it and the ocean churns up homesickness and comfort in one heaping spoonful. Just for you, princess.

Just for me, princess.

I don't deserve to be here.

But I am and I should enjoy it.

I turned around. He was going for a walk. The deal is we have forty-eight hours here. Ben deals in time because time is what we measure life against. Forty-eight is the magic one now, twenty-four to sleep and make love, twenty to write. The other four hours remaining are for searching for shells in the rain.

Sorry the weather isn't better.

The weather is perfect, Benjamin. Just perfect.

Better get started.

Yeah, I know.

I'll go get us some coffee and groceries.

Okay.

And Bridget?

Yes?

I love you.

I turned around to smile at him when I answered him, but he had already left.

Postcards from Haaay-Zeus.

It said only:

Thanks for getting things organized with my place. Now turn off the tunes and go do something, Bridget.

PS The girls here are easy. You could take lessons.

Love,

Dalt.

I wrote back:

Dear Dalton,

You're welcome. Stuff it.

Love, Bridget.

We're rolling down the highway
I'm rolling down my window
Then I stick my hand out and drive with it as it flows
If I started thinking, instead of looking back
You wouldn't see me sinking, before they covered up the tracks

This is what it feels like, coming down
We're all in the movie, can't turn it off or shut it down
This is what it feels like, if that's so
Then where is the director to tell us where the hell to go?

I've got this film in my head
They've scripted all that I've said
Let's make it real before we're dead,
because we're close enough, diamonds in the rough
Today's the day we finally say can't turn this movie off
And if we're not, we might as well just blow this all to hell
It's not a film or a fantasy we're not just make believe

So this is what it feels like, running through my lines
I never need to ad lib; I find it's just a waste of time
This is what it feels like, when the hero dies
On to the next one, funny how time flies

I've got this film in my head
They've scripted all that I've said
Let's make it of real before we're dead,
because we're close enough, diamonds in the rough
Today's the day we finally say can't turn this movie off
And if we're not, we might as well just blow this all to hell
It's not a film or a fantasy we're not just make believe

As long as I play me, and as long as you play you
God I love this scene, I gotta thank the cast and crew
Don't let the credits roll, don't let the credits roll

The Lake.

I woke up this morning in a PJ & B sandwich. Which isn't nearly as weird as it sounds if you knew us. PJ is our champion these days with Lochlan not far behind, since he has now settled back in to life here at a much slower pace.

Today isn't great, however. I feel stretched across my own emotions like a rubber band on a stick, cradling a stone hellbent for wounding. Life is summer in the grass, slingshot in hand, hoping to inflict pain, transferring it on the small insignificants of life in order to make it less for me, selfishly. I feel a bead of sweat rolling down my head and I squint one eye shut, taking aim with the other and I stick my tongue out just a little of one side of my mouth and pull my arm back and let it rip, holding my breath.

Miss.

I roll onto my back in the deep weeds, the sun blinding me, the heat stifling, crickets singing in the still air.

No fireflies in the day, I think to myself. I roll back over and sit up, brushing errant goldenrod out of my hair. I won't tie it back, I won't be a lady, I want to have fun like the boys do. I want to get dirty, bruised and bloody and I want to throw punches that knock people down, like they do and I want to be allowed to follow the path all the way to the creek bridge like they do and stay there until dark, fashioning boats of paper to send around the bend toward the lake. I want to join their sleepovers and have dinner at their houses and have a chance to hold the salamanders they catch and release.

I don't want to be late to every morning game of Kick the Can because my mother made me sit for twenty minutes while she brushes sticks out of my hair from the day before and plaits neat tight braids I will rip the ribbons from the moment I can't see my house anymore.

I don't want to have to go grocery shopping with her instead of staying at the lake with Bailey and her friends because I am the youngest and the smallest kid in the neighborhood and not that good of a swimmer besides.

Lochlan will rescue me if I fall in. At least he said he would (but would they please trust my life to this boy because he hasn't lied to me yet). Cole will be there, too. They're all good swimmers, please mom.

Stay off the tire swing, Bridget.

I will.

Stay with Bailey.

I will, I promise.

Those boys do treat you protectively. Just be careful.

I will.

I smiled and grabbed my backpack. The boys thought I was a pain in the ass. A nuisance. BridgetMOVEsoIcankicktheball. Yeeshyou'resuchababy. Those words smeared together, bouncing off me like rubber balls on pavement, I was so determined to be noticed. So determined to be seen as grown-up and independent. So determined to be one of them.

When I got there, I took a deep breath, spread out a towel closer to the boys than the girls on the grass and took off my shorts and my shirt, leaving just my swimsuit. Bailey laughed while I tried to act natural, teenagelike as I stretched out to catch some sun, just like Bailey, who was thirteen, and all her friends were doing.

Okay, bored.

I turned back over and leaned up on my elbows, watching the swimmers crossing to the tire swing.

Want to swim out?

It was Lochlan, who would turn fourteen that year, smiling at me. I mistook his interest, which was platonic brotherly affection and nothing more. I would never have to do that again.

Sure, I'll go.

I went, with instant regret, as we hit the water and he proceeded to ignore me, swimming quickly across the lake to the swing, to the other boys, gangly in their too-big trunks with their burgeoning muscles, on the cusp of becoming men, hell, on the cusp of becoming high-schoolers. I felt fear mingle with the cold water but dammit, I wanted to be with them, not with the girls. I swam but I couldn't make any progress and Lochlan wasn't really watching anyway so I finally gave up and returned to my towel. Bailey had been watching and she smiled, telling me I was too young to be hanging around with the boys. I sat up and looked at them, they were swinging far out over the water on the tire and doing flips off the branch and shoving each other in. I knew I was too young. I put my shirt back on and walked down to the water's edge. Cole was coming in to the beach, doing an easy crawl. His dark hair and blue eyes reflecting the water, he smiled up at me.

Going home already, Bridget?

Yeah, it's boring here.

In a few years it won't be.

I think I like the beach better.

Why?

You can find shells and sea glass and crabs. It's not just grass like here.

Do you find a lot of glass?

All kinds. I have a bowl full of it at home.

Maybe I can come see it sometime.

My ten-year-old brain didn't miss the brotherly tone in his voice. I turned and went back to my towel and told Bailey I was going home and I gathered up all my stuff and started walking up the road toward home, remarking that I was dumb in the first place to go hang out at the lake when the ocean is that much cooler and not more than a short walk the other way. A horn blared behind me and I nearly jumped out of my skin. I turned to look and it was Cole again, hanging out the window of Caleb's car, Caleb who was sixteen and could drive and didn't want to be fetching children from the lake, only doing so because his parents said he had to.

Want a ride, Bridge?

No, I'm fine.

Get in, we'll take you up the hill.

Okay.

Cole was shirtless, leather cord around his neck, brown Jim Morrison curls on his shoulders, dry shorts on with his clean t-shirt and a towel on the bench seat between the boys. He scooped everything up and threw it behind the seat and jumped out so I could get in and sit between them. He was always nice to me.

What's wrong?

Nothing, I just don't fit in. I don't care what the girls are doing and the boys don't want me around.

That will change.

When?

About four or five years from now. Everything will start to change. You'll see. You'll wish for these days, when things were uncomplicated.

Shallow.

Since some of my readers seem to only be here for my once-yearly shoe post, these boots.

Because every proper princess has a pair of scuffed up, rarely-conditioned baby-pink cowboy boots.

Right?

Are you saying you want less misery and more fashion? From me? Holy, did you ever come to the wrong place.

After the fact.

Dumb outfit.

So cold.

He's not going to be okay.

What day is this?

I think every thought that could be had scrolled through my head like a filmstrip flapping at the end of a reel. So uncomfortable, my back pressed against the cold plaster wall in the hallway, sitting on the warm wood floor, cowboy boots still on from rushing into the house, thin white filet sweater and strappy embroidered dress, hardly warm enough for the spring we're having. Wild waves of hair no longer parted neatly on one side, instead forked all over the place in a zigzag, scraped back behind one ear so I could see. Watch falling off my wrist and I finally pushed it up to my elbow so it wouldn't scratch Ben's face.

My arms wrapped tight around his head, he lay in my arms on the floor sick, tired, desperate. Listening to my heartbeat and only my heartbeat, nothing else. One of those incredibly dark nights in which my body turns inside out and I can feel every last neuron of pain he fires out looking for contact. His hands alternately clutch at my arms and relax against them as he fights to keep afloat because he knows this is hard. He knows deep inside on the skin-side now since he is inside-out as well, that we're not cut out for this kind of pain. That we're not cut out for ultimatums and rock-bottoms and end-of-worlds. He knows sitting here reminds me of the night Jacob left and he knows I have nothing more to give him than this cold and wooden embrace but it's better than the nothing he has for me right this minute and I stay in this position because the only warmth still here is his breath against me, ragged, harsh and shaking.

I don't know what to say or do. I no longer feel like I can call anyone in this night that sometimes goes on longer than regular-night and ask to be saved and to bring him along. We make mistakes. We sit and wait and know that we'll be rescued, and when he caves in to his demons I keep holding on because he's not allowed to go, not allowed to leave, not allowed to give in, I'll be the dead weight, a hundred pounds sewn into the hem of his shirt to make him hang straight, keep him here, keep him moving slowly.

Not gonna happen.

I've watched all the shadows as they have moved across the cream painted walls and through the open door. I've remarked silently on the dim that takes over the house once the moon takes the place of the sun, and when I heard my phone ringing from where I left it with my car keys on the kitchen table as I ran through the house looking for Ben I realize that it's going to ring nonstop for the rest of the night but I can't get it, because I can't let go.

I startle. The phone isn't ringing anymore. My limbs come to life with a sickening tingle as I realize I must have fallen asleep at last. I crawl out from under the sleeping giant and I can't pry his hands off me. I shake him gently and whisper that he needs to come with me and he nods and sleepwalks his way across the hall, dropping his two hundred pounds of surrender down on the sheets. I pull him out of all of his clothes, shedding the freezing thin dress and awkward boots at the same time and stand on the bed, pulling the quilt up over him and then sliding down against him. He resumes his position in my arms, asleep before I can get a kiss, locked around me and I am a part of him and I feel his body start to give, relaxing one cell at a time, until within minutes he is breathing peacefully and I bring my elbows up tighter around his shoulders, pressing him against me. I kiss the top of his head and his hair tickles my cheek.

Mineminemineminemine.

Instinctively he squeezes back. Hard. Somehow letting me know I haven't lost him too.

Morning brings the light back in, and makes everything hurt a little less, and PJ is in the kitchen downstairs, making coffee. Because not answering my phone is permission for PJ to use his key.

Oddly enough, 'learning to use tools' didn't make the cut.

You think you’ve seen it all but you’ll never see
You gotta open up your eyes and come with me
It’s alright.

I finished my list this morning. The apocalypse list I promised to finish in January? Right. Never said I was fast. I finished it mostly somewhere between the screaming cold drive this morning that Ben and I went on, windows open, music blaring, hot coffee and tired smiles and the later failed attempts to wield the power drill at Lochlan's house, hanging curtains and giving up before I started because they turn the chucks too tightly and then when I complain they tell me to go do something else and they lovingly roll their eyes and just for good measure I stamp my feet and growl sweetly just to make them laugh.

Pfft.

Since that was the longest sentence in the universe, I'll add some more. No, I won't be posting the list. For many reasons, not the least being it's on actual paper, a legal pad I stole from Caleb's, written with the now-infamous silver pen I stole from Joel, with his permission. It's going to go in the safety-deposit box because I don't feel like being picked on for the rest of my life for some of things I want to do and I don't want to be judged for others, but I did come to the conclusion that I need to be working towards some of these things instead of waiting for them to come to me. I don't think they have directions, and that dawned on me this morning as Ben tore up the dirt roads between freshly planted fields far outside the city where the sky seems big enough for two and the world a little less hungry for our souls.

Life, for me today, seems to be about learning how to balance the small decisions with the very big ones, learning to keep the hearts juggling in my hands and learning to keep my head firmly screwed on so that I can begin to live again.

Somewhere between the dirt roads and the clean curtains, I will find a space.

I will not back down to anything or anyone
You cannot contend cause in my head I’m number one
It’s a mad, mad world but baby what you wanna do?
You just watch your back, I’ll watch mine too.

Henry Hudsons for zone 3.

This year my garden offerings are going to include mostly perennial flowering shrubs dependent on what comes back this year. So far I have buds on the apple tree, the lilac and the thorny hedges out front that I trimmed and wound up picking splinters out of my fingers for eight months afterward.

This year we'll be gardening bitterly, I believe. Grass seed first. My stone angel statue needs a permanent home as do the wind chimes and the outdoor tiny white lights hopefully go up next weekend when the rest of the storm windows come down. I need a hanging basket for the front and I think I will prevail with some heirloom tomatoes and spices out back but not a whole bunch because I have other things I want to get done this year.

Roses, I'll do roses everywhere to compensate because the big wild ones seem to like us. Possibly because we are bee-people, or maybe just because we are just like they are, beautiful to look at, but dangerous to touch. Bees or roses, take your pick.

And whatever Lochlan had in his system, I think it's out now. Last night he had his annual Drink & Talk (otherwise known as a case of the IloveyouBridgets and filled in all of the blanks for everyone. And he gets his pass and life resumes only because we're family and we don't shut each other out. People are fallible. We're human, and for fuck's sakes, if you haven't been beaten over the head with that knowledge from reading here for the past five years then I don't know why you come.

Forgive. Forget. Move on. That's all there is. Life is for the LIVING and by God, we're trying.

Ad Hominem.

Divide the dream into the flesh
Kaleidoscope and candle eyes
Empty winds scrape on the soul
But never stop to realize

I don't think I protested until things changed in the dark and it became a contest. I don't think I fought back or struggled until I realized I was no longer getting enough air to sufficiently remain lucid, present in the tangle of limbs I was to sort through and straighten out. Hands gripping my ribcage, lifting me, crushing me. Wrists pinned. My mouth was dry, my eyes watered, my breath came in labored gasps but I couldn't speak. I couldn't say anything, couldn't cry out, couldn't stop it. Powerless, left without even that one word that stops every action immediately and without regret. Without that word I had to disengage from my body and wait them out. Without that word I had to go and find a place inside my head that I haven't been to in a very long time and I had to open up the shutters and sweep out the cobwebs and relight the fire in the fireplace. I stayed there so long I lost track of time and suddenly the air came rushing back and I was pulled out of my now-cozy, welcoming place. Shutters smashed and splintered against the clapboard and the fire blew out in the rush and I was back in the dark, in the pain, in the moment I left and I found the word just in the nick of time and I yelled it because I knew if they didn't hear me that one time, they would never hear me again.

This time the word uttered in panic brought regret trailing along by her fingers behind it. This time the word brought strong arms closing around me, then one removed, hand held out to stop the advance of time. Eyes raised in warning, a hush spilling from between rough lips connecting with the flaxen crown kept safely away from precisely where it was placed. Rage lashed out from a darker corner as if some terrible hunger had been awakened and with that same regret, it shrank away to nothing when the first light of the sun reached us, leaving behind the curls and kind eyes and logic I always think I know but don't. I haven't left the safer place, though, not when I can revolve like a little planet in the gravitational ring around the black-haired, vicious and passionate princess-keeper I have now.

Effective.

And safer than I once thought.

Wolves in my dreams.

Raise your hand if you slept through Wolverine last night.

(Sheepishly puts up hand, averts eyes, blushes mildly.)

Bridget!

In my defense, the 30-second guy yelling at the sky while he ate his cereal on Youtube was better.

The movie was awesome, though.

Reviews are subjective. It wasn't for me, I guess.

You're such a girly-girl.

Yeah, I don't know how that happened.

We figured you'd be all Hugh-drooly and happy to lick him with your eyes for two straight hours.

See, on any given night, I would totally have done that and thanked you afterward, but honestly, I was just really freaking tired.

You stayed awake for Crank 2.

Please. That's Jason Statham. There's not a woman on earth who would sleep through one of his movies.

You're impossible.

And rested! Are we going to go back and see Star Trek again this weekend?

Just right: a story without guarantees.

You're here.

I have failed to compare them successfully and now I know why. There is plausible deniability here and I wanted so many things. Love me like Jake did, but keep me safe while you're holding me out to the wolves, like Cole did. Be dark and passionate and quietly crazy like Cole but be goofy and impulsive and immature like Jake was. Don't mince words like Cole did, say what's in your heart, in your head, like Jake did. Don't leave me like Jake did, try to keep me. Like Cole did.

I have it all. When I had nothing left there was nowhere to go but up. Three friends with three incredibly distinct personalities and the one guy everyone thought would be dead first seems to be the only one who remains. The only one who hasn't heard his eulogy or left anyone behind smiles and proclaims to do nothing more than try. The hero. The guy who built his life on empty words and foolish chances still breathes in time with his princess.

I don't care if you like him. You don't know him. He can get away with murder, he won't talk to you, he'll just do his own thing and not say all that much and then suddenly he's wired his face with that famous oh-fuck-look-what-I-did-now grin, the fratboy smile that makes you want to tell him off in a thousand distinct languages until you realize you're smiling too, usually around the same time a pat of butter sails past your left ear and hits the wall and laughter breaks out around the table. Or maybe in the midst of a catastrophe you follow the carnage and find him staring out the window and there's more of a storm in his black eyes than there is in the sky outside and he shakes like a leaf but he won't sit down, he doesn't seek comfort, he just stands and stares and shakes and thinks and eventually he'll ask how I am and put his hand out and play with my fingers as he holds my hand and he'll sing to me until he can no longer speak and then he just sinks to the floor and suddenly I find myself holding him up, a feat like nothing else considering how big he is and he'll take comfort in my bony little embrace because he told me that's the only comfort there is now.

He's taken the hard jobs. He's been the bad guy when no one else has wanted to take the fall, he has stepped up with nothing left to lose and thrown the bolt that lets the bottom fall out of my world. Then he's reached down and at the last minute grabbed my hand and pulled me up. Not all the way, just enough so that I can get a better hold, so that I can go back to holding him.

Because Ben doesn't fix things and he never will and there's no mad rush to make things perfect and as we build the character that our lives rest upon he laughs because nothing else could go wrong that hasn't already and we've covered enough ground for seven lifetimes here and we still haven't really figured out who the hell God is and where he stands in our lives because we can't name where we're standing right now let alone define anything else at this point.

He's been the bad guy so many times over and you don't understand the magnitude of that. When everyone else has chickened out or wandered away in their own despair, Ben has wiped his face on his shirt and cleared his throat and tossed his hat into the ring because someone has to.

There's work to be done and we can't stop now. It's just a risk. People take them all the time. You're worth it, Bridget. Keep going, we can do this.

Indeed, Ben. I think we can.

I'm here.

Tenacious B and the house of destiny.

She said I don't know if I've ever been good enough.

Had we had an inspection before buying this house, I think I still would have wanted it. With it's old furnace, old gas water heater, old appliances, leaky windows, crumbling garage, the ominously-bulging pipe in the basement and questionable roof we might have been steered away.

I think the leaded glass windows and expansive oak floors and the sheer quantity of woodwork, unpainted and glorious would have kept me anyway. Having miles of tiny closetless Victorian rooms and dusty corners under weirdly-placed (and sometimes hidden) windows would have kept me. Three-season porches all over the place would have kept me. Skeleton keys keep me. The huge elm trees shading the property keep me. Rooms inside rooms and a master staircase and that ancient clawfoot tub with the now-thin enamel interior and striking black exterior keep me.

The potential keeps me.

Memories keep me.

This was my first house ever. First one. We got to make the decisions and I bit off so much more than I could chew it's been running down the corners of my mouth and pooling in my apron on my lap for years. We got to pick colors and change things and make it ours. Make it mine. I've spent just about every minute of my life in this house for the past three years and I've grown to like it. It's warm. It's beautiful. When we moved here Ruth was six years old. She hardly remembers anything before this house. Henry was four years old and does not recall a thing. This house freed me from the prison of the previous place, and it's been open doors and sunshine and dusty corners and keeping up with cobwebs and paint chips and wayward branches and shovelling snow ever since.

I never thought in a million years that I would be content here, in a place that snows in May, in a place that sees temperatures of -58 Celsius but the schools don't close. In a place where certain people have stared at me for standing out like a sore thumb with my Scandinavian coloring, a place where people are united by the cold and by the need to help each other when the water comes to lick at our heels and Jack Frost takes over for so long I believe everyone who lives here has two moods, grateful when it's warm and dry and resolute when it isn't.

I have spent my life building character, and this experience has only enriched that endeavour. By far I think it forced me to be a grownup when that seventeen-year-old immature teenage girl would much prefer to run to her room and slam the door, turning the music up so loud she drowns out her own ridiculous emo-misery until she chooses to face the world again. Grown-up Bridget doesn't get that choice, she doesn't have that escape anymore.

Thankfully Bridget the grown-up has an open-mind and does pretty well with adventure. She can make something from nothing and keep comfort and routine when the rug gets yanked out from under her feet. Every year the children get a little bit older and things seem to become just a little bit easier. That's a comfort you can't buy with your paper dollars and your marble-cold good sense. Bridget isn't that pulled together, but she'll tie her windblown-blonde back into a ponytail, pack her carpet bag with all her worldly goods, lick her finger and hold it up to see which way the wind is blowing and head due west anyway.

The circus is closing up and heading to warmer climes. Odds are there will not be another full year here for this little clown and her carny friends. I'm turning this snow globe over and over in my hands and I think I'm either going to pack it carefully in a box with newspapers to protect or perhaps I'll just bring it up over my head and smash it on the goddamned floor.

Oh but don't bowl me over
Just wait a minute,
well it kinda fell apart,
things get so crazy.

Never gives you more than you can handle.

This is my life
It's not what it was before
All these feelings I've shared
And these are my dreams
That I'd never lived before

The pansy blooms are upside-down today, giving up in their search for the sun. The leaves disintegrate, plastering themselves all over the wrought iron fence, the stone path and the metal door that lead into my house. The wind licks my future, tasting it and alternately returning for a greater helping and recoiling in disgust. Today every friend is an enemy and every enemy a comfort. Up is down and in is out. Today I can't get a purchase on learning from the past and finding my place in the present. I'm afraid I'm holding everyone up or perhaps they might be leaving me behind.

A book in the tall grass with a lantern on a hot September night, tire swing bumping gently against the rubber soles of my shoes that are worn smooth and ragged from a summerworth of running to catch up to the boys, catch up to the fun, catch up to the fireflies that make my breath catch in my throat with their simple beauty and then that same breath chokes me because I know that it's September and I know we're leaving soon and I can't have this comfort, I can't keep this place and I can't even do well-enough a job of bringing it back inside my head when I need it now. And I no longer remember what the ocean sounds like because I've never heard it enough and I'm never sure if what is done is done in spite of me or because of me.

I wonder if I'll ever catch up.

It's a rainy day today, pinning ghosts to the crumbling walls and counting pieces of leaves stuck to the stained glass from the outside in. And I'm wondering if I'll ever be okay.

That little clown, look, she's talking to herself.

I was patient. I waited for morning. I'm still not seeing whatever it is that should be there now. I'm not fine. I don't know how people think stringing together my new words out of old words, spending hours and days arranging the ones I want, searching for beauty in a blown-out nuclear winter wouldn't be a tip-off that I've overstretched and pulled something.

I can't juggle men. I can't even lift one, let alone keep them all in the air in this circus sideshow. I can't manage their hearts and their feelings and their expectations and their moods any better than I can manage my own. I have stopped writing about some of them altogether when it gets to be too much and I've stopped talking out loud half the time, instead choosing to sit on benches and on cold floors texting spaceless, thoughtless messages out into the ether waiting for someone to say the magic words that will somehow take all of this away and leave me be.

Lochlan doesn't need to be here. I am perfectly capable of fucking up my own life out of his reach. I was perfectly fine having meltdowns he didn't know about and sometimes, well, holy hell, it's actually pretty fun to make my own decisions.

Ben doesn't need another keeper. He has a dozen already.

Oh but there's Cole's hierarchy and I'll never outrun that. There are the mistakes and missteps I have made in the wake of Jacob's flight that I'll never be forgiven for and there is hell to pay, always, for whichever talent of few I sold my soul to the devil for. Under duress, I might add, for I don't recall willingly giving up a damned thing.

Lochlan's place is right up front. Shotgun, now, I guess. Best view in the house, none of the work.

So as usual, there is no point. I just have to work through it, roll with it and possible punch its lights out. But you know who was really happy to see Lochlan move back? My kids. And for that, maybe this is gold under tarnish after all.

I'll be over here continuing my act. Show's not over yet, folks.

So I spy on her, I lie to her, I make promises I cannot keep
Then I hear her laughter rising, rising from the deep
And I make her prove her love for me, I take all that I can take
And I push her to the limit to see if she will break

Well, there is nothing like an ambush on a Monday afternoon, and please forgive me for leapfrogging over topics, I will catch up eventually but for now I need to put this down somewhere because I've gotten gloriously paper-thin in the span of hours.

Lochlan is moving back. Permanently. As in, he's bought the house down the street and is now pulling a Jacob on me and I went to the bench and I expected Jacob to tell me how I should feel about that but Jacob didn't have any answers for me because he's sometimes all over the place and sometimes he is nowhere at all.

Part of me is really happy. Loch has been gone for over two years. I was sad when he left. Our relationship is different long distance. Everything is harder. His arrivals and departure wreak havoc on my universe, his need to exert control and supervision from afar don't fly when there's a twenty-hour drive between. And he's been miserable because everyone is here, all of his friends. And because his ex-girlfriend is taking Hope and moving back to the west coast so there is nothing left for him in the hot potato save for overpriced rent and great lakes weather.

He's coming home. Well, as relative as home can be, since that's what we call it here now. Only took seven years to make that leap.

Some people will think this is just another ploy by Lochlan to win me back. Others will blame Ben for not being together-enough to give anyone the confidence to be further than arm's length in case I need them. Still more people are going to call us all fucked up and indulging in a free-wheeling sort of commune.

Personally, I was just thrilled that my heart didn't lurch when I found out. When Lochlan looked into my eyes and told me he was coming back and he'd be here all the time instead of months here and weeks there, my heart didn't leap and it didn't flex. I was glad but not in that way. Not in the way like every time Ben ever showed up on my doorstep a year and a half ago. Not the way Ben does now. Just in a content way, and I know it's going to make Lochlan sad when he reads that but it's something that has to be said.