Am I Damaged? Yes.

After a sleepless night folded in the arms of the Devil (shhhh, Halloween is coming), I checked my phone around five-something, actually seeking the rate change from Bank of Canada (I'm a day early, and thought it was Wednesday) only to discover that Robert Redford has died. 

He was 89. A magnificently prolific life, a study in perfect direction (I discovered to my delight as a teenager that he was not only an incredible actor but turned out to be an Academy-award winning Director as well. On his first try, no less. Ordinary People ruined me in a way I can't describe. It's like it was a harbinger of a life I didn't know I was about to confront firsthand.), a huge hand up for the environment and for culture in general.

And he and Jake shared that ridiculously-handsome tousled blonde goodness. I compared them relentlessly, though Jacob was over thirty years younger, he matched Redford for some sort of uncanny comparison no one could get past, once they put their finger on what it was that made Jake look so familiar. 

I watched every movie Redford was in. I walked around quoting lines from Three Days of the Condor and Barefoot in the Park. I ate up every second of Brubaker (weirdly, my absolute favourite movie that he starred in) and Indecent Proposal which is pretty much what Caleb patterned his whole existence on and I fell for it because I was curious and because I have issues and because they broke me young and they broke me early. 

I didn't really love Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid but the boys did so there's that. It was fun and different. Ditto The Sting but that's okay too. All the President's Men is a masterpiece and so was The Last Castle. So many films and I've seen them all. Such a huge loss for the entertainment world and for my little world as well. It gets smaller all the time but I do know I'm in awe of someone who can leave a scar on history in such a way as Redford has managed to. That's phenomenal and the world is a little dimmer today for such a bright star that has gone out. 

***

Did I need to address being with Caleb? I don't think so. Sometimes I wander the halls in the dark. Hell, sometimes I end up PJ in his wing. Sometimes Duncan. Jesus, not like any of this is new. Just because I don't write every day lately doesn't mean anything has ever actually changed.

I'm aware of your disappointment. I just don't care. 

 

 

Grocery-store Caviar.

Eating standing up in the kitchen over the island with a teaspoon of what turned out to be super decent caviar (sturgeon, don't eat the salmon) on double-toasted grain bread triangles with a bare swipe of sour cream, one drop of lemon juice and a single ring of green onion. I will eat five or eight of these before Caleb cuts me off, if for nothing than simple manners and not being a little pig about an expensive dish. It's akin to sitting down at a seafood place and eating all of the oysters that come out instead of sharing them with the whole table and only having two or three. I don't like oysters though so that's easy. 

What would you like for dessert tonight? His eyes twinkle. The blue is black today. Fall is coming. The monsters come out at Halloween and boy, don't I know it. 

An espresso martini or three. I laugh. I'm not going to get any of those. Dry champagne it is. Maybe a scoop of sherbet in one of the good ice cream bowls. I've broken so many over the years so maybe in a plastic bowl though we don't have any. We got rid of most of the plastic we used ages ago. Now it's glass, wood or ceramic. So breakable. 

Like me, I think as I drop a triangle face-down on the counter. 

 Oops. I scoop it up and use the side of my finger to collect all the tiny little eggs without crushing them to return them to the bread. The sour cream is gone. The onion ring persists and Caleb rolls his eyes as he turns to get the bottle to refill our flutes before I start cutting myself off. Sometimes you need a silly champagne night. We tend to be a little hedonistic this week as the nights get sooner, cooler and longer and Burning Man rages south of the border, which again we did not go to and I'm glad. 

So why not accept a dinner date from the devil even if I think I'm never going to be invited to sit down this evening unless I break protocol and just do it without waiting. 

I haul the stool over close to the plate and climb up onto it. He laughs. 

Feral girl summer. 

You betcha. I wink and answer quietly. When was she not feral? How wild did they want to pretend I wasn't? Does that even make sense gramatically or am I delusional still? She'll ALWAYS be that dirty little princess running down the path to the ballfield in her costume gown, caviar or not. Some apples don't fall far from the tree, even if they're grown on fumes and expensive treats alike. 

The sunset is at eight thirty. A swim and a bonfire tonight?

Swim yes, fire no. Maybe a sauna and then swim in the ocean? 

Nightswimming with the sea lions seems like a real rager of a plan, Neamhchiontach. 

So does inviting your ex-girlfriend to have dinner under the nose of her husband. 

So you're salty enough that we can skip the rest of this. He holds up the black tin. A laugh escapes him but it's softened to a ghost chuckle. Just happy to be here, as always. We're not fighting. We're not physically fighting. We're not lobbing threats or promises today, we're just enjoying an early dinner for two on a random cloudy Thursday evening by the sea. 

What about after the swim? Would you like to watch a film?

Can I bring my friends? 

Sure. He knows he stepped just a little too far and was just a little too nice and we had a little too good of a day date to push his luck but Caleb will always tell you the only way to get what you want is to ask for it (or take it) if need be.

 On Saturday then we'll see if we can find some of those martinis you're so fond of. 

Oh, I can't on Saturday. The party, remember? (Ruth and Lochlan have a joint birthday party every year). 

Ah yes. Save it for another time then. And he shoves the last triangle into his mouth without offering it to me first, probably in order for me not to eat everything before he gets anything at all, while I pour the remainder of the champagne into my glass for it to act as anaesthetic against life itself. 

One Monday left after today.

It's always been a countdown to empty beaches in the fall, even long after I sort of have my own beach these days though it's Pacific, and as I've always said, not even remotely the same. Lochlan will tell you I'm never happy. Caleb will tell me anything I want to hear, like he'll buy me any beach I want, as if that's a thing that can be done, and Ben will just tell me to breathe. 

A fighter, a yes man and a puppy dog. What more could a girl ask for then that? 

 I'm so freaking tired. Two nights of no sleep but I got to see Mammoth live before the rest of the country and most of the world, technically. Got all of the t-shirts and a cool pilot hoodie. Got to rock my face off for his super short set and then Ben asked me if I was excited to see Tremonti live because we went to Creed's tour on the weekend and I forgot he was back in the band. Ditto Scott Philips so now I have also seen exactly half of Alter Bridge which is a bucket list but frankly I'll take Mammoth any day over most other bands because every single song one on every single album is good. So good. 

I also drank house wine until it was coming out my eyes at the stadium and I don't call it a mistake, just an expensive choice but sometimes you have to just go with it. It was packed and it was a good witnessing crowd, if you know what I mean. We counted religious tatttoos for a while and had a big public debate on whether or not my angel wing tattoos were religious or just cool. I vote cool but also religious. Jacob would have really loved this show, though it was my sixth time seeing Big Wreck and something was off about the whole set. I think Ian Thornley does better in a much smaller venue. I am ashamed that the crowd didn't really know That Song. It's a classic. His sound was a bad mix too but he's so talented does it matter? Another show in the books. Next up is the Who. Why am I going? Why not.

It's cold today and about to rain and I love it. I love the cold breezy nights. I love the fact that all of the loud kids around town are going to be locked in their classrooms in two weeks flat and I love love the end of summer, did I mention that already?

The airshows are done, the fairs are dwindling out and the farmer's markets are packed with root vegetables and end of growing season potatoes. Our tomatoes are an endless gift here in the yard and I've been working diligently at overhauling the perennials that stopped growing or don't work where they are and finding or propagating replacements. I rooted a whole bunch of hydrangea, since the boys seem to love them and I ripped out all of the columbine and the ummmm potentilla? Fuschia? Whatever failed to grow the past two years but had a prime location right on the main path. 

 We have nothing planned for this weekend. I think I'll spend it in the kayak. 

Four Mondays 'til September.

 The perpetual popsicle box is still the most popular thing in the freezer and today I learned that I can still knead pizza dough (looking forwards towards dinnertime) with the big Kitchenaid mixer after cutting my finger quite badly trying to use a recently sharpened paring knife to separate frozen slices of Russian pumpernickel bread for my breakfast, with apple jelly, butter and a new takeout coffee because it's Friday and someone went into town and got us all some. 

I would never volunteer. I can't manage three trays of hot coffees but that's just me and I have more coffeeshop experience than all of them combined. 

Anyway, so pizzas for dinner. I'm a purist and I like to wear myself to smithereens but now finger so no. I need to change the bandaids because to my surprise and delight the fat brown squirrel that showed up to help himself to everything in my garden, from the suet feeders to the end of the cherry harvest to all of my bean plants left me a gift. 

An acorn that has become an oak tree. A Bur Oak. Do you know how hard it is to grow a tree from an acorn? I do and I only found this because he tucked it in between the hydrangeas that I propogated earlier this summer and I was weeding and tried to pull it out. It now has it's own little pot on the step and in a few years I will find a permanent spot for it but only once it's big enough to survive. 

I watered everything (again by hand, not machine. Forest fires and water restrictions keep me doing as little as possible, just to keep my perennials alive but like I said there are ten days left in the dog days of summer and so everything looks yellow and crispy and then everything will bulk up again and become lush in the fall.

We're watching Andor (the new season) and I started The Last Showgirl last night with Dunk but we turned it off a half-hour in due to the time. I don't sleep so I'm always low-energy. I want to sleep all day in the breeze but I can't and then at four I crash and then at midnight I'm wide awake and prowling the house again. Is it ever going to change?  I doubt it. 

I'm reading Braiding Sweetgrass. I'm eating avocados and zucchini and strawberries until I fear I might become a plant, only to be dropped into the earth in someone's yard to grow into a mighty tree to stand through strife and drought and natural and political disasters until someone woefully decides I need to go in favour of a glass and steel highrise. 

I think I'd rather be a seedling in a pot never to grow or advance from the place I'm in right this very minute. It seems safer this way. 

 

The dog days of summer.

She's a woman so fine, I may never try to find her
For the good memories of what we had before
They should never be changed, for they're all that I'll take with me
Now I've gambled and lost my summer wages

This is not my favourite part of summer. This is my coffee, tea, shaved ice and popsicle part of summer. The part of headaches and sunscreen rashes and short one-sentence responses. The waiting-it-out, sticky-thighed, want to shave my head part of summer. The part where I try to get anything done involving movement before ten in the morning. The part where my hair and skin dry out so much from the endless floating in the pool trying to sleep. 

 I sit on the porch most of the time simply because the north side of the house is shady and cool. The trees are my best friend and the ocean fades from attention until fall. When I have had enough I jump into the sea but it's not as cold as the Atlantic nor is there ever sufficient wind for me. I grew up on an unforgiving coast, an unforgiving girl and summers hold so much emotional weight you don't even know the half of it. 

Every dirt road, every faded curtain flapping against a broken sunroom window, every greasy knuckle on a midway ride. Every loaded glance from a stranger, every sugary strand of cotton candy, every lost-earring, torn-wallet, sweaty-jeaned, worn flannel moment of summer is to be endured and not forgotten. 

Every strum on a warped and ancient acoustic guitar (the Martin). Every sigh as the fan breeze touches flesh, every kiss deferring anything more as it's just too warm. Every wish becomes polar, every sunbeam cursed in favour of one from the moon. 

I lift the hem of my dress up over my knees and attention shifts. I run my hand over the back of my neck and everything's different and yet everything is the same. 

The cats languish just out of the light that plays on the floor, little wisps of fluff and whiskers rising up in a cloud as they settle for their long litha naps. 

I had some work done on my Jeep last week. Henry's birthday is coming. It looks like it will fall on the hottest day of the year but I have had twenty-three summers already to figure out how to make a big chocolate cake that won't melt and how to host his entire universe for his favourite dinner without perishing in the punishing heat and by the end of next week my youngest child will be twenty-four years old and just about the same age I was when I started thinking about becoming a mom. Maybe. Some day. And I'm here on the other side of it now and Henry and Ruth are my absolute pride and joy and the heat doesn't matter. Time passing is a marvel. Another summer and everyone is good. The bills are paid. There is food in the fridge and I still ration the air conditioning like someone who has been meaningfully, sustainingly poor, and maybe the boys laugh while I cry but I doubt those things about me will ever change and I don't think they should. 

I tied a peach-coloured ribbon on the grill of the big fan in the front porch. There's a ceiling fan there but it makes noise that drives me crazy so I brought out a big copper table fan and set it on the floor. The ribbon blows out straight and makes me think of The Great Brain and Catcher in the Rye. Or maybe On the Banks of Plum Creek and anything and everything by Kurt Vonnegut, which would take me the better part of thirty more years to enjoy, if honesty is what you like. 

Seven more Mondays until September. I wonder if I'll make it or if I'll melt instead. I wonder if this headache will ever leave me, like the people leave the beaches when fall routine calls them all away and it's all mine again. 

I wonder if anyone else ever read and still reads all over vastly different age demographics. Sometimes I pick up Matthew and the Midnight Tow Truck and sit and read it. It's not a long read but it was Henry's favourite back when he depended on me for everything. I always tried to make their lives magical and I hope they feel like I succeeded but I don't dare ask. I'm still making up for the parts that decidedly were not magical and that's the curse and the blessing of being a mom, I suppose. 

 Lochlan is asleep in a chair across from me. Feet flat on the floor, sleeves rolled up, head thrown back, red hair cascading in curls off his shoulders, he doesn't seem to mind the heat or the cold. He is level and strong and doesn't find wealth any different from poverty, truth be told. He doesn't mark the passage of time and he's never had a problem with the way Kurt Vonnegut writes and he doesn't care if there's other people at the beach or fan noise or a melted birthday cake or a weird look from a stranger and that's why he will never truly understand my relationship with summer and I suppose I will never understand his either. We've had forty-seven entire summers together give or take and it still feels new. 

Heralding the arrival of a stranger.

Neamchiontach. 

I hear his voice and look over to see Caleb standing in the screen door. I've been out here on the porch for hours listening to the sparrows sing their morning song from the safety of the trees and I've been watching a fat brown squirrel absolutely decimate the suet cake I hung up for the tiny birds. I decided to make one chockful of big seeds to help them have lots of energy and sustenance in the heat but all that did was bring the larger birds and the fat rodents. I know they're here, I know the boys want crow friends so badly but I only want the tiny little birds. The chickadees. The goldfinches and sparrows. The thrushes and the juncos. 

My coffee is barely warm now but the birds are so loud I don't want to go inside so perfect timing.

He holds up the coffee pot. We went back to a regular coffee maker a while ago and it's what works. I nod and he comes out. He waited for permission. Another first in a long line of firsts with my Diabhal, because he is not accustomed to not being in charge for this incredible length of time. 

It's been forever. 

It remains a constant.

I really like this. 

Please, I nod and he comes out on the porch. Bare feet. Linen pants and a waffle shirt. Unshaven but rested. Permanently on vacation. Liquidated save for a few things. We're out of the real estate business. We're out of the Gods and Monsters business. We're out of the drama. We are exhausted. We are old. I don't even know what we are, I just know that if I go to his suite he no longer locks me in and no longer makes me cry. 

He takes my cup and turns away to pour. Safety first. Ha. What a stark difference from probably my entire life. He turns back and places the cup gently on the table. 

Thank you. 

Would you like breakfast?

No, thank you. I'm fine for now. 

He takes that as hope, as when I skip breakfast we have a snacky brunch consisting of bread, cheese, olives and more coffee. It's lovely. 

I'll leave you to your book then. 

I laugh. I don't have a book. I'm communing with nature. 

Always communing with something. And with a laugh he disappears back inside. A chickadee comes and lands on the railing and he laughs too but in birdsong. I wish I could laugh in birdsong. That would be neat.

 I found a baby bird in the roses this morning, stiff and cold and I buried him in the woods. I cried for just a minute but frankly this is life. There were no injuries that I could see, and if some tiny soul has to die on my watch then in my garden would be the absolute best place for it. Everything is in bloom, it is cool and quiet, lush and green and no one is allowed to disturb the peace that exists there. The whole front of the property is a neutral zone. No arguments allowed, no raised voices. No construction and no bad energy. It's a need, not a want but no one disrespects that edict and for that I am forever grateful and contented there. 

I was picking up pieces from the windchime. It was a twenty-five year old set of mini chimes that I bought in the prairies and it never made any noise but all of the strings were rotten and many of the chimes had fallen in the wind last night. That's the only reason I was in the roses, otherwise I never would have known. 

In any case, the bird is free now for real, his little feathered soul protected by some words I said and I wiped my face on my hand and went back inside for toast and coffee. I have marmalade and fresh grounds and good rustic homemade bread and so it was lovely to spend an hour enjoying my food. I am left to my own devices to savour the second half of my coffee after spending the first half with the boys. They drink their coffees in one go, or at least in less than the time it takes me. They don't like lukewarm coffee. I can easily finish a cup I forgot about when I find it hours later and so I take my time now. 

It's the calm before the storm. No air conditioning yet but we are ready. I hope there are no heat domes and no bullshit and just a cool relaxing summer. No deaths would be nice too.

A crown of thorns.

Crone. 

It's a weird word, a single harsh sound with some sort of baggage attached. You think wizened old witch, bitter shrew who lives in the trees and doesn't want to be bothered and-

Wait, that actually sounds perfect. 

It's the triple goddess, the final life boss, the aspiration of a women who has cheated death and lives to tell the tale. 

Maiden, Mother, Crone. 

Before menses, then the fertility years and then the end of those years, counted off in three hundred and sixty five days without bleeding. 

And here we are, May 22, 2025. I began bleeding at the age of nine, and so we have a perfect forty-five year circle here and we're done. No more babies (there were not going to be any more babies anyway, I've written that story to death), no more expectations of those sorts, no more stupid hormones, no more surprise mood swings or accidents, in which someone would helpfully wrap their flannel around me and hang out in a t-shirt until we could leave and I always looked as if I loved grunge fashion and I was always overheated, flush and tripping on long trailing cuffs. From the first midway night when I thought I was dying and Lochlan explained what was happening, using a Judy Blume book that he read out loud every night for a week when we were together until a week or so ago when my doctor unhelpfully suggested I try synthetic hormones. The first domestic chore I ever learned was how to get blood out of a Levi's button down. I'm still really good at getting blood out of clothes. It's a useful talent, okay?

No, thank you to the hormones. I much prefer to ride out the swings, the hot flashes and freeze outs, the inability to sleep at all anymore, past three or four hours, tops. Rides are better than watching from the sidelines, as always. I prefer to figure out the food cravings and the anxiety and the sheer anger. I prefer to slow down and heal instead of pushing through the leg pain and phantom cramps and wild headaches. 

And the freeing, delicious, extravagant lack of care about anything that doesn't interest me. 

Pffft. 

Especially when it comes to being weird, as I said already. I spent an awful lot of years trying to fit in, trying to be who Cole wanted me to be, trying to blend into the woodwork in the best way possible and be supermom and a fashion icon and a smart cookie. Who isn't trying to be every woman all the time? 

Exactly. Now? The uniform is patchwork overalls or a mended dress and a homeknit sweater. Sometimes also handmade socks and clogs. My hair hasn't been cut in months but it's growing into the cutest mini shag/bob thing. Makeup? I don't know what that is. Nail Polish? I threw it all away though we keep a dark blue for Benjamin because he looks better with his nails done than I ever did. 

More dresses, less pants. Big bags because I like to have all my stuff handy. Painting a mural on the fence because it's MY FUCKING HOUSE. Cake for breakfast? Of course, but then again I always did that. Champagne on a Thursday at four in the afternoon because it's a party and I had to google rituals to celebrate this very solemn, very important milestone in my life. No one talks about this. I live in a house full of men and I think that was part of the issue, the person who taught me to be a lady was a boy.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still a routine-based girl. I still brush my teeth before bed, pay all the bills on time and have a calendar entry to reload the toilet paper on the shelf in each bathroom because no one else can ever remember. I still make sure all the beds and towels get changed weekly and I keep on top of everything to make sure everything is up to date and all our work is done. But it's whimsical and magical and a little bit off somehow. The way I always wanted it to be but I no longer have to fight for it because I have arrived.

Am I smart? No. I'm logical. I'm practical and I'm empathetic to a fault. I'm weird. And I've hit the third level so now I AM the final boss. Congratulations to me. I did it. I survived. 

Five hundred and twenty-four periods. Ish. That's almost thirty-six hundred days of bleeding and she still walks and talks and breathes and hasn't killed anyone (on purpose). 

Go me. 

Cheers.

(And a huge thank you to my boys for never making it seem like it was a defect or a weakness, even when I yelled at them to go get chocolate and stop breathing so loud, but especially to Lochlan for being a really good big sister about all of it when Bailey had already flown the coop).

Happy Mother's Day

My beautiful children both greeted me with hugs and celebratory exclamations and cards and more hugs and extra hugs from newer honorary children in the form of their significant others and then we made casual dinner plans for later and they took off to spend the meantime on their Sundays as always because it's sunny and everyone is free so please, go and enjoy the day. Dinner will be fun. 

(It was, and now it's very late and I think it's been close to eighteen or twenty years since I've opened a tab at night to write. I actually sat down to work on PJ's sweater (he requested a knit! FINALLY!) and watch La Dolce Villa on Netflix because the Oklahoma Bombing documentary was too harsh for me today and I need a good horror or a Christmas hallmark and it started and I was like is that Scott Foley? You know, from Felicity that was actually on television last time I wrote at nighttime, around twenty years ago and I'm thinking he's old now, playing the dad of a grown daughter who is in Italy and about to buy a villa and then I was like oh, right. 

He's my age. 

Did I mention three days ago I went to Shopper's Drug Mart to pick up some things that never seem to be at the grocery store and the clerk helpfully gave me the discount. You know, the 10% off senior's discount?)

Um. 

CHRIST.

Jacob is laughing somewhere right now, up in the clouds, while I lament the continued unstoppable trainwreck of time itself and Scott Foley should be frozen in time somewhere and my children should not be adults showing up to tell me of their travel plans and their First Home Savings accounts and their pets  that they raise and care for and their cars and their opinions on politics and why is Caleb so FUCKING difficult, though I must point out here that Ruth is a bull in a china shop when it comes to Caleb, able to put him in his place with an eyebrow raise. She is a barracuda and he is her prey and she is out to protect her mother at all costs and luckily she will never know the real prices that have been paid because I've always protected her from that.

And Henry doesn't want to deal at all. Henry just keeps Caleb at arms length or beyond, instead leaning in towards Lochlan as his anchor father and he is professionally polite but warm and logical and also can be as cold as ice sometimes. I'm sure Jake sees this too and is proud of Henry. Henry is as tall as Jake now and has the beard and the long hair and the doesn't-give-a-fuck outward attitude that makes me warm and fuzzy inside. 

Dinner was big, in any case and afterward, maybe after at least several glasses of wine, Caleb practically knocks me over with an aggressive forehead kiss and a proclamation that my children are incredible humans because of me, and that I did a wonderful job in spite of the challenges, in spite of everything, in spite of him. 

I know. I say it softly. I am two very large glasses of wine into the night and oddly feel as if I want to cry. Which is a daily thing, and not a big deal anymore but I also don't want to give him that window into how fragile I feel suddenly again after not feeling anything at all for so long when it comes to him.

Why didn't you go? I ask him and suddenly realize I wasn't clear. 

But he knew exactly what I meant. 

I couldn't, not when everyone else already had. I didn't want you to be alone. I didn't want to be alone. But we could be alone together. 

Yep. I don't know what else to say. It's possibly the saddest conversation we've ever had somehow but we put it away and finished our wine and went to bid the kids goodnight as they took off, with more plans still for the evening ahead. 

I say Woah.

Our dancing, James Bondesque Prime Minister won this week and I'm breathing a slight sigh of relief. Still pissed off because 1/3 of the country seemingly couldn't be arsed to get out and vote, even though they had from Easter to the 28th of April to get it done and there are no excuses but it was an amazing and thankful boomerang from the stress surrounding politics and the seeping stress we're absorbing from our neighbors to the south. I feel as if I live far too close to a border now. I used to be a ten hour drive, and then a four hour drive and now it's really easy to just whip down to a southern facing highway and BOOM, signs for the United States pop up everywhere. Trader Joes, oh so expensive, oh so close but nope, Pomme will suffice. Same stuff mostly, it seems though not Trader Joes branded. I don't know. I don't care. I feel somewhat safe again so let's let the politics die back in favour of spring. 

Happy Beltane. 

To celebrate, I smudged myself and then walked the property tucking sunflower seeds under the soil every foot or so. I spread some grass seed on the few bare patches that didn't bounce back after winter. I made Dalton tackle the spiders and sort out cleaning the sauna and the pool shed and we drug everything out and pressure washed it. Well, he did and then Sam came out to help. By then I had retreated inside because the sun feels so strongly now and it almost hurts. The year my newest acquisition is a UV jacket to pop on when I'm gardening or spending a lot of time outside. I don't want faded tattoos because I'm not redoing any more of them. It's starting to hurt, finally. I think I've had my fill, though everyone else says I'm down to do the scary painful parts, having run out of room everywhere else so these parts just hurt. I don't know about that, but I could be done? The list keeps shrinking, the available area grows smaller every year and so the UV jacket is a must. I may order a second one for walks. Something with pockets. 

Things seem more normal, anyway. I'm trying hard to sleep and rest and organize. This morning I had a huge iced coffee from take out (someone always goes in the morning so why make it? No, we don't do gig services for food delivery, we are the food delivery but it's a regular thing that someone heads down to get something), I cleaned all of the windows and watered all of the plants, and then I did the budget (this is a twice a week thing) and organized some drawers and finished with the outside and now I'm going to knit and continue playing catchup with my shows and movies. 

And Demon Hunter has a! New! Song! And I love it! And the sun is shining but the rain will move in this evening and so maybe a swim late tonight and an ice cream sandwich and maybe a sauna first? Maybe a five hour hot tub stint. Maybe I'll just go to bed at four pm. Maybe I'll finish my book (Reading the Curve of Time right now. Local and vintage!). This weekend the big home show and psychic fair is out in the valley and I am definitely going. There's amusements and food trucks and it'll be bad weather which works fine for me, thanks. Otherwise at this rate I'll have to graduate from a UV jacket to a whole portable UV bubble and I'll end up on a British science show. "The Girl who was allergic to the outside" because it's mostly true at this point.

Irritated but caffeinated!

Just a quick side note here as I spend the next fourteen hours manifesting a Big Daddy Carney win for my country tonight. We need the grownups back in charge, in Canada and in the world at large, because according to the newspaper the president of the United States thinks he runs the world, and um, sir? YOU DON'T.  You're actually somewhat of a joke to the rest of the world and don't minimize that thought. The rest of us are out here trying to make the world a better place, trying to fix what's so horribly broken and you, well, go off into the dark never to return. I'm still amazed when bad people soldier on and good people disappear. This is a whole big allegory for Jacob and Caleb but whatever. Today is about politics. 

I'll talk to you about that on the other side though, because this is hardly a soapbox, this little dim, dusty corner of the internet where no one reads because I don't have the patience any more to do anything productive, it seems. I clean and garden and keep fresh batteries in every random shelf clock and game controller and the bills are paid on time and there's a spare of anything you might need tucked away. Your towels are fresh, the green onion roots are trimmed short, the planting pots are ready for seeds and the tops of the ceiling fan blades are dust-free but can I think? 

Sadly no. 

I am going to head out in a couple of hours with PJ and do an apocalypse run. That's when we stock up on things like his favourite pop and toilet paper, medications and MREs. Then we come home and evaluate our stocks and go bags and plans. It's a spring tradition now. He loves to prep and I sleep better at night somehow. Or maybe it's just me letting go of the extreme need to Look After Everyone. Henry will be twenty FOUR this summer. Ruth twenty-six in the fall. The dogs are all gone. The cats are all new and weirdly independent and the boys have all settled into a seemingly content early retirement, something I never expected as it seemed like I would fight through every last moment looking after my Collective all the while they were looking after me too and the only way to manage so many years of extreme stress was to write it out. 

The stress now? It comes and goes, like my writing, sadly. I've spent all of the years since the pandemic trying to organize my anxiety into something manageable. I've got a dozen letters for labels and I'd rather be nameless and unknown. I've got time and money and no need for the complications of either anymore. 

I've got big plans and they involve running away, as ever. Usually that signifies an extreme case of cabin fever, but it's not, it's something else and I don't know what, exactly. 

I'll figure it out and let you know. In the meantime, vote for the good guys. We need THEM to run the world.

Struggle busses and who is watching a Star Wars what?

 If it's been a month it's because of Caleb, who decided the internet is a terrible thing and just shut it off for me. Which. RUDE. Ben and I are caught up and still watching Border Security and I had just started Andor on Disney which is so good and Ben suggested Caleb stop fucking with me for once in his life and as promised, I'm back now. Disney's back, Drudge Report unfortunately is back and what in the hell is happening in the US, other than so many kids around Henry's age being snatched right off the streets and most of them are in the United States quite legally and how terrifying?

So escapism it is! It's the order of the day. I haven't watched a live news report in months. I deleted everything that wasn't entertainment but of course you see things, you hear things, you know things and it's better not to. Henry and Ruth have been happily forbidden to leave Canada for the time being, and we all are, though my favourite Teflon Jesus is headed out of the country shortly here and no one could talk him out of it. I'm sure the next time I see him will be on some documentary about a far flung supermax and I will nod at the screen and whisper told you so. 

I think the boys, lead by Big Brother Duncan are about to tie him up and leave him in the shed until his flight expires and maybe that will work. 

Am I playing? No. I'll shoot out your car tires. With what? I have a shitty crossbow. It was Henry's when he was twelve. I've sharpened the plastic arrows and I can hit a tree at almost seventy feet. I feel like Katniss or Legolas or hell, Artemis on a good day. 

But he's not going and I don't care what he'll miss. 

In other news, we voted, I got to choose crappy local Chinese Food (my favourite) for dinner last night and Easter is a wash. We got some rain, some tomato plants and two hundred and twenty pounds of manure that I added to the gardens today. Lochlan wanted to do it but then he realized if I did it by myself I might sleep someday, ever and so I spent the better part of three hours gardening my little heart out and now it's good and the tomatoes are in pots and will remain where they are for just a few more weeks but I'm way ahead of schedule because why not?

Eight days left and I'm holding my breath until we have a new Prime Minister and hopefully things will iron out everywhere else because it's just getting worse and worse everywhere. 

Makes it hard to be positive but I'm looking forward to tomatoes, and looking forward to lilacs and looking forward to better news, eventually.

Banana bread in the oven and x-rayed coats on the television.

It's been raining since 1955. 

Or so we keep saying. Making a game out of the longevity and endlessness of these rivers in the atmosphere. Driving has become a white-knuckled extreme sport as I hydroplane into town to shop and back up the highway in the dim, soaked to the skin. Listen, I'm not going to lie, I love it. I love the smell of the petrichor, I love the way moss is growing on virtually everything, and I love the tiny warm fairy lights lighting up every room and outside too, on the porch, on the patio and in the gardens to make things cozy and warm. 

The grass is growing and there are big juicy green buds on all of the trees, a smattering of blossoms already on the cherry trees in the orchard and I think I have mushrooms growing on the backs of my boots. The peony shoots are popping through everywhere. It's going to be so pretty.

I bought a whole bag of sour candy tubs from the Superstore today, because rain means reading and reading requires candy. It's a present activity, unlike watching shows, which can be fulfilled while doing other things. Knitting, surfing, walking on the treadmill, talking. I miss a bunch of stuff, but when do I not? I must say, I MOWED right through four seasons of Yellowstone thinking I would finish up only to sadly discover there is another season that's not even on Netflix. I have like four different streaming platforms, I'm not subscribing to any more so I guess I'll have to wait. 

In the meantime, I'm watching Love, Meghan. 

Which.

Well?

I want to like her so badly. I don't know why. I'm a huge royal watcher, I love it when new blood is injected into old tradition, I adore the protocols and the pomp and circumstance of it all and I get that this was touted as a modern-day Martha Stewartesque type show but..but..

GAWD. 

It's awful. I mean it's pretty, in a Chef's Table kind of way, the 'set' is gorgeous, the little snippets of DIY are great if not maddeningly simple and they make everything look easy. What I hate are the fourth-wall breaking, constant reminders that this isn't her house (who would ever have known if they weren't pointing it out all the time?) and the fridge full of pre-measured ingredients. She's trying so obviously hard to be laid-back and chill and competent and is coming across removed and snobbish. Like it's not working and I can't figure out the energy. There are glimmers of hope and then right back to whatever she's trying to be. 

On the other hand, Ben and I are RAPT watching Border Security on Youtube. Never have I ever enjoyed a show this much. See? I'm easy to please. Give me candy, rain and boys. 

Asking for a friend: Any dragons out there for adoption?

Woke up this morning strangled in Lochlan's elbow. The light looks weird. I get up and see that there is frost on the ground and everything is iced up, there is steam on a line at the bottom of the balcony doors and Ben is bundled in most of the blankets on the bed, which explains me waking up early, slightly chilled. 

The papers are doom, gloom and incredulousness. The unhelpful tips from financial institutions (ratehub, I'm looking at you) are so useless, I hope no one bites. 

Build up an emergency fund of six months worth of expenses. Okay, how, when a can of generic store-brand hot chocolate is EIGHT dollars? And also, we should all have this fund already. But then they go on to say to use it to deal with the rising cost of living. Oh, so spend the emergency fund on hot chocolate? Got it!

The next tip to manage your money is to buy Canadian! Right! On guard for thee! But the Canadian generic hot chocolate is EIGHT dollars and the US made an hour from here is FOUR dollars. Gotcha. Spend double. My emergency fund is depleted in three months. Am I doing it right?

A third tip goes on to say we should snowball debt by paying off the big interest rate items first. Ummm, that isn't what a debt snowball is. The snowball comes from paying off the smallest owings first and then rolling that payment into the next biggest one and then boom, you're hitting the biggest thing with more payments and getting rid of it faster. Does it work? Heck if I know. If you have that many bits and pieces of debt that you need a hierarchy for them the smart thing to do would be start a niche porn channel and get that shit paid off. Or better yet, stop buying things you don't need. And if you do need all those things, then...

Marry rich. 

YEESH. 

Maybe I'll start a financial newsletter of my own:

Step one: Be incredibly risk-adverse and hoard all gold (procured from the Rich Man, with my charm) in my cave up in the mountains. 

Step two: Hire a dragon to guard it all. 

Wow, that was easy. Right?

Right?

It's all so stupid.

What else is happening? Oh, the neighbours finally had it with our tattoos and motorcycles and fire and...collectiveness and put their house up for sale. I hope our new neighbours are cool but only a select group can afford this area so odds are someone overseas will loophole it and it will sit empty. Yay. Why can't a nice family move in and we can exchange pie recipes over the garden fence? 

I think I need to move back to Nova Scotia. 

Except I white-knuckled it through the snow and I guess the winter was harder than I thought and it was only two weeks long, so imagine me back in a place where it's winter for nine months straight. 

*Cues up Matthew Good on the car stereo and hides everything with an edge*

Yeah, maybe not. Maybe just a few more years here while I try and glue my head on straight. This stage of my life (menopause, family pets dying, kids growing up and no longer needing me at all, boys busy with whatever boys do) is kicking my ass all over the point and I feel a little bit helpless and a little bit fragile but also a whole lot ridiculous. 

I look around and everyone else is doing great. I know, look closer. My therapist (that would be August) says everyone has the same problems and they also worry. Somehow that makes me feel better. I'm so glad I don't pay him though, because logically I know this already. It just seems weird. August says if I got out more (he snort-laughed when he said it), I would see that I exist in a fish bowl (JUST KEEP SWIMMING), an echo chamber, if you will and I don't know how people deal with anything because I'm surrounded by Capable Men. 

How do I get Capable Woman status? I ask him, never wanting something this badly before in my entire life. 

You already have it. I don't know why you don't see it.  

I can't open my eyes underwater, I point out helpfully, and he laughs again.

A little of everything, AKA nothing.

Inside of a week we went from endless rain and snow to rain and no snow and also an ever-present lingering threat of meaningful double-digit temperatures. Today was supposed to be twelve and it barely made it to eight, and we wore our coats on our lunchtime walk up the road and back again. I finally finished the mending pile, as I was angry about not being able to garden. Not quite yet. The snow's been gone for two whole days, Jesus. 

It's been twenty-four hours since my last meltdown. I fired a kiln full of porcelain goodies today. I plan to make it all pastel and pretty and simple instead of my usual over-complicated plans and glaze for days.  I feel as if this winter and spring is an existential crisis in full bloom and I keep thinking I'm through the worst and then I slide back to square one. 

Lochlan laughs at me in his rueful way. Always one-quarter disapproving and three-quarters encouragement, the whole part that I ignore and we argue about nothing and forget about the fight a minute later. I want to be a cowboy, thanks to Yellowstone but I want Costner's (sorry, John Dutton's) job of telling everyone what to do and being menacing but graceful, and spewing some cute little devastating quotes that stick in Bridget's head for days. We've assigned characters to everyone in the house and it's become hilarious here as we limp towards the end of Season four. 

Will we finish it? Who knows? I had to drop everything and watch the Gabby Petito edition of American Murder. Oh my God. Was Brian Laundry a forty-year-old loser or what? Yes I know he wasn't that old but what a weirdo. Like he wanted to be his own cult but his mommy issues were too great. His parents raised him in their image, I guess. If Henry killed someone I wouldn't help him dig a grave, JESUS ROBERTA. I would drag him down to the station myself. But let's be real, he would probably call me from there, because he does the right thing, which one should. I don't know. Call me a hypocrite if you will. I was up to some insane shit in my early twenties too, but not MURDER. 

Yeah so it's been a fun twenty four hours trying to act natural and even keeled and normal. You know me, those descriptors aren't even on my radar. I did some tax stuff. Ha. Only a little, don't worry. 

I did some spring cleaning. Also only a little. The older I get the more I realize my OCD and my anxiety are both leaps and bounds worse than I ever could have imagined but I'm also high-functioning about it, so there you go. 

I had a nice call today too from Batman, who said I should come over for hot chocolate tonight because while he was shopping he saw maple-flavoured marshmallows and bought some for us to have in our weekly hot talklot (which is what we call it). 

I'll let you know how they are tomorrow.

More fun less regular life.

 I'm visualizing being the luckiest girl on earth today, Manifesting good things into my life, letting my anxieties wash away in a torrent of heavy rain that has turned the ocean into a dull navy blue, a pre-spring grey field of fog and nothingness, a rare time of year in which I don't care how meaningfully the saltwater flows through my veins. It is Schrodinger's ocean today, neither here nor there. Neither alive nor dead. 

It'll be very much valuable tomorrow but today I am attempting to summon a level playing field in which I am evenly matched with my own mind and spirit instead of ridiculously underarmored. 

Will it work? Who knows? If maladaptive daydreaming saw me through the first forty years maybe this will work for the other forty, even though it's exhausting. I don't have a name for it but at least it doesn't have the obvious and overreaching flat stench of chemical calm. 

***

Good fortune finds me. Good things come to me. I have a skill in crafting a beautiful life. I am popular and people love me. I am strong. I am worthy BLAH BLAH BLAH. 

Jesus.

I am sick of myself. 

***

The rains need to wash away all the bad things. All the shitty memories, all the crap we've seen and done, all the crimes of the heart, all the dirt from the trucks, all the sand from the steps, all the chipped paint from around the side door where I so lovingly painted the trim only to pressure wash the siding and blow most of the paint right back off the wood. It's a losing battle on an exposed and harsh spot, however so no big deal. I'll be painting the whole door this spring anyway as I have a metric ton of front door paint left so my plan is to paint all of the exterior doors for fun. 

Painting isn't fun but changing up the house is fun. I repainted some of our feature walls already over the winter because they seemed dark. Now it almost all seems too bright. We bought some new pieces and let some things go. We're ending what doesn't work but worked because good enough. Rarely can you get me to change up good enough for really good but here I am doing it. Surprise. 

The rain is threatening to wash away dreams, roads and fingerprints at this point so I gotta go and make sure the kittens are all cozy and the hatches are battened down. Why this falls to me I will never know. 

The Mourner's Songbook and my grateful ears.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It figures. 

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

The bluest Monday (Awesome. Wow.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Orchard Puppy Squad, established 2025.

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

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

You hangry Peej?

No, just amused, Bee. 

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

What if more come? 

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

One specific kind of apple?

The BEST apple, Locket. 

This makes Ben laugh and then everyone is smiling. 

It's cold. 

Yeah, let's go up.

Fire men.

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

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

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

 

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

Okay, so. 

It wasn't a great time. 

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

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

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

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

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

My nose is running. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

I would have called this Winning Wednesday but now it's Thursday.

Time has become like the proverbial quicksand we were taught to fear and survive, as I scoop minutes and hours into my hands, clutching them against my chest only to have them pour out through and between my fingers like water. It speeds along and I constantly find myself remarking that it's already whatever date and then I light my advent candles and wait for them to burn down to the right numbers so I can look like I have my shit together. 

Ha. If that was all it took I'd be the Queen of Fucking Togetherness.

Maybe I am though. I have finished all of the shopping and wrapping that I can do. Whatever is left on the list is up to the boys. I baked banana breads and chocolate thumbprint cookies. I bought a metric ton of ingredients, including the turkeys this week. I got the stockings done and everything is wrapped and bagged by recipient, I ordered gift baskets and Christmas centerpieces. I subsidized UPS for whatever reason and then one very important package got separated from the rest and got stuck in a snowstorm in Quebec. I got all my stuck mail finally from Canada Post yesterday. I engineered drop off of local gifts that need to go out and I organized the times and dates for big Christmas Dinner and Departure Tourtiere. We will have guests for four days. I washed all the sheets and towels and cleaned and put out bowls of wrapped Christmas candies and chocolates. The lights are lit outside around the clock now until New Years Day.

 Maybe I feel a little less anxious now. All of our extended family have their packages. Everyone is off starting tomorrow night at dinner (INCLUDING SAMUEL) and it's time to celebrate Christmas. Finally.

Struggle Monday.

The anxiety is through the roof today and I'm not sure why. It's a Monday. It's pouring rain. I think I'm ready for Christmas but I could use a few extra small things. I had a whole host of unexpected bills which are leaving me nonplussed as I've kept a very strict budget this year in favour of leaving Caleb a little more removed from my life and it's been going well. 

Just like old times for me and Loch when I would wear three pairs of socks to bed and make canned beans and weiners for dinner and just 'forget' to put the ketchup on the table because I was trying to ration it and condiments are not food. 

No, absolutely not like that at all but those are the sorts of lessons I learned right before my brain finished forming and I was doing household budgets as a teenager and so those are the things that stick and everything else is just fluff. It still feels decadent to buy marshmallow fluff or heck, even relish so I guess that's a good thing. 

We have a heavy rainfall warning and I declined to go food shopping today since I wasn't feeling well this morning. Once I did feel a little better, I swept, mopped and vaccuumed (It's been over two decades and I still can't spell it) and did a few loads of laundry but that was it so now tomorrow I'm going to have to take some of the boys with me to get turkeys. 

I hope there's some left. I've left some things until the last minute but at the same time have I? I'm sure I have time. If not that's okay too. We are nothing if not flexible, whether it comes to condiments or dates on a calendar. 

Let's look on the bright side here. Do a list, Bridget, find the light. 

The days will begin to get longer starting on Sunday. 

We don't live in the Prairies anymore. 

Christmas is a lovely time and this year we're hosting dinner on actual Christmas day which means instead of relaxing I get to cook but it keeps me busy and the day will fly by. We're going to do a whole extra turkey this year because surprisingly, but not surprisingly at all, Ruth's husband can outeat every one of the boys here and it's hilarious and we almost ran out of turkey last year and I loved every second of it. 

Everyone is healthy and coping pretty well. 

(The dread though. It sucks oh my hell whyyyyyyyyy) 

I think I'm going to put a fire on in the fireplace and watch a movie and knit. Maybe open the prosecco early. Maybe not. Maybe get more sleep. Maybe do a whole extra page in my gratitude journal. Maybe look back at two years ago things were changing so fast I couldn't keep up and now that everything's changed I still can't catch my breath. 

Maybe later I'll ask Ben if he wants to go and scream into the void with me (off the cliff). Sometimes that works pretty well. Actually yeah, I'm looking forward to that too.

Thirty-five years on.

 I didn't forget. I never do. In fact, I woke up with the usual sadness, the low-key dread of memories that dates and times remember and won't let me forget, but frankly I wouldn't dare. 

I can't believe it's been thirty-five years tonight since my university in Nova Scotia decided to continue with the schedules and hurriedly put security teams and gates in place and checked our identification and our bags and pockets as we entered the theatre to write our freshman winter exams.

It was a mostly-female university, now peppered with a few males, as they couldn't discriminate, but it was heavy on equality and heavier still on feminism and women's rights and on that night we all cried as we wrote, knowing that only hours earlier in Montreal at a similar university fourteen women had been shot simply for being women.

 Did it force a nationwide reckoning, as one publication proclaimed today?

Did it? Of course it didn't. Will it ever? No. I don't think. We'll still fight tooth and nail for everything, whether it's equal pay or a shred of safety in a familiar space but nothing ever changes. 

It's Taylor Swift weekend too here in Vancouver and women everywhere are celebrating their own voices and finding camaraderie in the shared experience of being a women. I feel like men don't manage heartbreak in the same way and when men sing about it it's a difference you can feel. Maybe I can't put it into words but today I remember the names of the women who didn't get to finish their programs and watch their children grow up and dance to Taylor's music and it makes me weep.They should be here, living and loving life and it's amazing to me that we have all learned, much like in all school shootings before and since, how to live in and around the horror of those who hate.

All caps for Christmas.

 It's December third! The day each year when I give myself permission to go whole-hog on the Christmas season. The baking is underway. I made decadent dark chocolate cookies and have plans to do brownies and banana bread as well. I can only do a about a day or two a week of baking because if it gets too chaotic then none of the baked treats actually make it to the holidays thanks to a house full of predictable men with big appetites, and crafty, clever men who will distract me with charm and affection while the rest carry off entire trays of still-warm cookies and cakes. 

It's maddening and frustrating and I love it. I make decoy treats that they can decimate and then I don't mind so much and can run off with a a huge box to load into one of the freezers in the garage. The locked one no one is allowed into because I don't like surprises. After six or seven locks were cut off in honour of being fair they have relented and let me have a whole freezer to be organized with and the other one is the free for all with frozen waffles and air fryer stuff and a few sacrificial treats, in with the buckets of ice cream. 

We'll never eat right, though I have transitioned over from so many treats to more fruit and ingredients and if you're really hungry a half a bagel with a slice of cheese or a sprinkle of cinnamon sugar is a good alternative to seven chocolate chip cookies. 

Right, Benjamin? RIGHT? 

I have Ali & Theo singing around the clock, doing their greatest Christmas songs like Where Are You Christmas? and Let It Fall, as the world is sleeping on this duo. And Eisley's Christmas songs because they're just freaking MAGICAL.

 I have all of the decorations and outside lights up and done (Thanks to Lochlan and Duncan and Sam and Matt, who breezed in and without asking or directing on my part, emptied the bins that were neatly stacked in the front hall, just in time for Advent to begin and Sam will be too busy to do anything now until Jesus is born and after that he will rest until Easter and do it all again but the countdown will only be like a long weekend instead of four straight weeks and it's easier somehow) and the tree will go up early next week, I hope. 

I'm not doing it. 

I played the boys Paris Paloma's Labour song once and that's all it took to get a huge amount of preemptive help. I've also started to let go of some things that I just did and don't do any more and I feel like some of the work is lifting and I have more time to watch Netflix and knit and sew (holiday romance, true crime and documentaries, if you will, at present. I finished my list of horror movies left over from Halloween that were on my list (NO GOOD ONES JESUS) and so far A California Christmas is still winning, because it had a SEQUEL, City Lights. I also watched Christmas in Rome, Hot Frosty and A Crown for Christmas and Hot Frosty was hilarious but obviously written by someone who hated sci-fi but saw Fifth Element, and A Crown was weird because Danica McKellar is MY AGE and they positioned her as a burdened thirty-year-old and I couldn't help but think that the whole movie was written for Jennifer Connelly and Paul Bettany but someone didn't land the budget and so they went this way instead. 

I'm not even going to talk about the BUY NOW Documentary because it was so bad and once again the onus lands on me to use shitty paper straws and not buy from Shein but ignores the companies and countries using plastic and shipping our 'recycling' to places out of sight. 

Wait, what? 

I'm doing everything I can. I want Amazon to have a 'deliver everything at once' so when I order eight things (saving gas, time and the carbon footprints of multiple stores) they don't bring them in fifteen separate trips. Goddamn. Last night they delivered a single box the size of my Jeep. Inside it was a sole button battery for a ornament that lights up. I tried four different stores and couldn't find that one size so I ordered it. FUCKING SUE ME. I was so mad that it's come to this, but I did spend the past six years with a dark ornament so it's not like I need instant gratification, I just decided this year I would fix the darn thing. But ARGHHHHHHHH.

I have more thoughts if you're interested but the boys aren't which is why I put them here.

The princess dipped in coloured wax.

I just found out this morning that Tony Scherman passed away from cancer last year. We bought a painting on the weekend and I was telling someone about how it was the second time I have walked around a corner and been struck breathless by an artwork on a wall. The only time previous to this past weekend was in 2018 when we went to the Murakami show and I found Poseidon. 

I wrote about it then. 

I feel as if based on his methods and subject matter I could most likely pick out one of his works in the wild without prompting and I'm grateful I was able to see one in person because seeing a photo of them online doesn't do them justice for their light and texture and emotion. I shouldn't have to even say that when it comes to seeing a piece in person versus looking at a photo but also I feel like I do have to say it. 

I navigated all of my anniversaries and I can still smile. I have hauled out the totes of decorations and lights and have thought about decorating but haven't. I haven't shopped.  I haven't baked, Christmas is a month from today and yeah. Time to get to work.

HBD, JT.

Fifty-four. 

Happy birthday, Preacher. 

PJ and Lochlan pour their drinks off the cliff and turn to go back inside. Who drinks these days? We need the few wits we have left. I wish for theirs while I gulp my own, wind howling so loud now all I hear are my drowned sobs, choked back before they can be detected, and the strains of Dire Straits' Sultans of Swing, a song I don't think I know a single word to, and I'm okay with that. The music has been playing softly over the speakers-in the kitchen and patio and the rest of the house is Choose Your Own Adventure, due to screens or books or rest. 

I finish my drink in four gulps (Lochlan always overpours me on November days) and fire the cut crystal glass off the cliff. I'll either cut myself on it in the spring or find the most beautiful pieces of sea glass, worn smooth from former sharp edges. 

Ha, like me. 

I can feel the fire from my throat travelling down into my stomach. My ears are red from the cold. Dire Straits have been replaced by Robert Plant and I sing under my breath. 

Shall I rest for a while at the side?

God. Every song is an IED blowing up years of my life faster than I can make it to safety but I run anyway. I get halfway back to the house and Ben scoops me up and carries me the rest of the way like a little kid. I'd laugh but I don't have any feelings left any more that I can trust.

Bullshit.

Pigalet-

I hold up one shaky finger. A warning. Don't-

I just wanted to see how you-

How I'm doing? How do I look like I'm doing. I'm the only person in the world who can still move while being completely paralyzed-

Bridge-

Please. Just don't. Don't show your face. Don't have that accent. Don't come back around like you miss me when you really...just.. don't. 

But I do. 

Then you shouldn't have jumped. 

Maybe I didn't. Maybe it was metaphorical. 

Then my whole life is a joke. 

It's not, and that's not funny. 

Right. I didn't get it either. But if it was metaphorical then everyone's head is going to roll, starting with mine. 

I never liked those out-loud intrusive thoughts of yours. 

I never liked the ghost of Jacobs Past showing up to fuck up what should be such a venerable, sombre week in the first place. It never rained right through November until you ruined your life, and mine, and all of theirs, too. I turn and stare at the house. I can see Lochlan behind the glass of the patio doors staring at me. I wish he could see Jake. I wish he could save me now. 

I stepped aside-

Right off a ledge. 

Does it matter anymore?

I turn back to stare at Jacob and the wind whips around me, stinging my eyes. Yeah. Yeah it matters. It will ALWAYS matter because I'm the one who has to deal with it and I still can't figure out how.

Nuts.

I think I have the week by the teeth. A good grip, as it were as long as nobody asks me how I'm feeling or what's up or even what's for dinner. 

We stopped at a Dairy Queen for dinner on the way home and I had an ice cream sundae. Not for dessert but just for dinner itself. It seemed like a good idea at the time and I maintain that sometimes we don't need a whole dinner but we definitely need a treat and after a week of rain and bullshit and tears and bullshit and another incoming storm the ice cream won. Easily. 

It's late and so I will be back tomorrow. I promise.

The least favourite countdown.

Is it wrong to sometimes want to disappear and sleep or just travel invisibily for days or maybe weeks on end and then somehow figure out how to crawl out of my own head and rejoin society? Did I want to do that? Should I bother? Or maybe just pick and choose my timeline so I don't have to have mental lists and mental hurdles and mental...moments. I would like to be ignorant, oblivious and dismissive. I would like to dissolve into a pool of coffee and glitter. I want to shake things up but also I want to keep the status quo just fine. I want to appreciate the finer things and the fun moments and the excitement and joy of life but at the same time I want to skip fast-forward through the hard parts. 

Thursday is Halloween. Next Thursday will be Jacob's birthday. I only showed up here because some people asked. 

Maybe it'll all be okay this time. Sometimes it is. Sometimes if I have something difficult to do I promise myself a little reward on the other side like a big Cobb cinnamon bun or a drive to a pumpkin patch or a new pair of jeans from Old Navy. I rarely fulfill the reward part but it helps for some reason. Maybe it will help this time too.

 

 

 

I watched Lonely Planet so you don't have to.

(Disclaimer: This is a big spoiler. Also the only role I've ever liked Laura Dern in was as the lawyer in A Marriage Story so that may cloud this a little or maybe a bunch.)

Okay so. 

I've been a fan of the books forever. I virtually travelled for YEARS thanks to the library before I could travel in real life and the Lonely Planet books were always very informative, fascinating, unpretentious guides to places I could only dream of. I heard they were making a movie loosely-based on the phenomenon a bit ago. Then I forgot about it. 

Then it debuted on Netflix and I thought I gotta see this. 

Ninety-six minutes later, and I can't remember why I thought I had to see this. 

Honestly, with the premise, it had the potential to land somewhere between The English Patient and Eat Pray Love and instead it wound up a hallmark Christmas trope. Struggling boy meets girl. Girl pays attention to him so therefore he loves her. Everyone is hypocritical and magic fixes it all and poof, ends with a kiss. 

Oh my God. Of course. 

Christ on a pancake. Zero character development. Laura Dern breezily pointing out Liam (The Lesser Hemsworth as we call him, even though he's a good actor) has a girlfriend who maybe is becoming full of herself because some people don't handle fame well and huh, sometimes it happens. Laura doesn't think Liam's girlfriend has her shit together and oh well, maybe she should swoop in and steal Liam because he is put out, ignored and unable to commit to following the girlfriend around like a puppy. Why should he? He has his own subplot! The girlfriend is PISSED about it though and sneers at him through the entire movie.

Meanwhile, Laura doesn't have her shit together either and CLEARLY handles success poorly and keeps ducking into closets whining about trying to 'work' and sneaking around being super anti-social until she senses a dick in her vicinity. Then she acts all weird and coy. It works and she gets laid.

And POOF! All brain cells vanish, she has her bag stolen, has a meltdown like a four-year-old, leaving North Africa and Liam too. Because ShE iS a WrItEr. And didn't back up her work. In spite of planning to travel a very long distance, bringing her laptop and being on the cusp of finishing her Best. Book. Ever.

Riiiiiight. This is a bestselling author. What a liar.

But back to poor Liam. Aw. He just had someone actually paying attention to him. Or to his dick, I mean. And now she's gone. Everyone's gone. Girlfriend's gone. He kept some of his morals though. Just enough to keep him from becoming successful as a cutthroat venture capitalist or something. 

Sigh.

I will say the blink-or-you-miss-them location shots of Morocco (FFS Netflix!) and some of the music was pretty neat. Some of it was also pretty bad (end credits) and they travelled for no reason at all, frankly, heading down avenues in the story that didn't need to be there while they bonded without actually bonding. Also I fear there were some important people who were far deeper than our main characters relegated to nothing at all. The brothers who had to fix the car and brought them home for dinner? The woman who ran the whole retreat in the first place? Why such build up and then nothing? Oh wait. It was to set up the story and then to indicate Bonding with a capital B.

But then sexy times ensued! We JUST met. No condoms. No testing. Whatever happens in Africa stays in Africa, I guess. Laura Dern's heavy breathing was loud enough to kill any STDs, perhaps. Liam was not breathing at all which is why he is the lesser Hemsworth to me. He might be dead and that's why he acts so straight-laced in EVERYTHING. Like The Hunger Games.

(Come on, Gale. I believed in you) 

In any case, the neat-as-a-bow ending and ridiculously untenable relationship blooming and hideously-bratty-but-also-not girlfriend left me wondering why they left out all the good parts and left in all the dodgy moments. It's like they let AI make a movie (I despise it when people reference AI but really it was THAT bad) and this movie is what was spit out. 

I'm giving it a solid 2/10 but only for the option to play a drinking game while watching it-take a drink every time there is a tagine pot in the frame.

You'll be shitfaced in seconds. You're going to love this movie.

Maybe I can start a new genre: 'Woman being chased by apex predators'.

Nothing in the world could fail me now.

We did have a belated Thanksgiving with a handful of people rolling up to the kitchen table. I didn't set the dining room table because no one would commit. It's dark before dinner and the rain and the lack of excitement from me was palpable or maybe we all just weren't in the mood. Maybe it was because if I don't make a big deal and begin preparations no one will. I'm not sure if everyone is regularly depressed, seasonally depressed or just oblivious but it's concerning regardless. 

It meant leftovers. Henry and PJ managed to divide them without any fights (or tears) over the next couple of days.

I think the whole continent is sort of holding it's collective breath for the next two or three weeks but also I hate that subject altogether so let's talk about my treadmill videos instead. Did I tell you? We got a new treadmill. It's more me-sized than them-sized because no one wants me outside getting my fresh air fix by walking as far up the mountain as I can go and when I get tired, bored of an inkling of anything at all I turn and walk all the way back down to the ocean. It's been a thing forever and I don't care if it's eight at night. I don't care if it's seven in the morning. Sometimes it's four pm sharp. So the treadmill arrived and I jumped on, fired up a walking video because I can't just stare at the wall and I can't just listen to music so I found a hilarious-to-me genre on Youtube called treadmill walks. 

Oh boy. Where to even begin. You probably knew about these ages ago but I didn't and I told Lochlan without context that I was going to walk the Appalachian trail. 

You mean the Pacific Coast Trail and no, you're not. 

No I mean the Appalachian Trail. I showed him the video and he laughed (with relief I bet) and we dug into what else there was. 

Ultimately the first video I ended up putting on was a walk around the city of Venice in Italy which was somewhat disconcerting because somehow the cameraman found the most perfect, dry, sunny and virtually empty city to film and the whole time I'm thinking Venice never looks like that. 

It made me laugh. I have been a few times now and it always seems to hit the same week the rain hits and the mild flooding and the crowds and the rats and the mold and I'm sure I've written about it before but it's so beautifully tragic it's become a gorgeous memory of choosing terrible vacation plans because that can be a sport, you know. 

(One I can win Olympic gold in.)

Go into everything with low to no expectations and you will be gobsmacked. Sometimes disappointed anyway (look at my efforts with Burning Man) and sometimes you'll even try AGAIN because you're a baby masochist or stupid or both but rats. 

Rats. 

Not a huge fan. I'm not going to jump on tables screaming or anything but I had nightmares they were chewing my hair. I never got warm there. I never really felt safe there. 

So the next video will definitely be the Appalachian Trail one. Unless someone can find me some horror-themed treadmill walks. I must look. That would be amazing.

In other news a total stranger complimented my hair colour yesterday. Not Lochlan's but MINE. We were both surprised but then after he says I told you. It's so unusual. Huh. Yeah. Aren't we all. I pretty much shy away from attention in public anymore. My tattoo suit does a good job of keeping most people away and the few who approach somehow want to be cool by association and will start a conversation, which I indulge and will always find an easy compliment for them because they're usually way cooler than me to begin with. Having tattoos isn't cool, it just means you have money and like to lie on tables in pain while artists leave their beautiful works on you. Sometimes you pick the art, sometimes you let them pick it or tell them an idea and let them run with it.

That's what life is, running with ideas. Let's move. Let's get married. Let's try this restaurant. Let's buy this tiny treadmill so you don't get eaten by a bear. Let's not do the Appalachian Trail in real life but let someone else do it and we'll give them a click like a tip for a job well done. 

Risk your life to maybe be eaten by a bear (or a skinwalker in that region I mean who are we kidding?) and someday Youtube will send you a plaque that says you had a bunch of people watch the thing you filmed. Cool. 

You're cool. I am not cool. I couldn't even do Thanksgiving on the right day or fully utilize the giant treadmill we already own. I can't seem to see Venice on a sunny day and yet I have had far too many conversations with bears to make anyone comfortable and that's how I'm going to keep you.

Light a candle, throw the world away.

I can't sleep. I got up at six and stole PJ's chore list for the day since it was quiet things like laundry and sweeping and I'm cursing myself for being this ridiculous bu also as soon as the final load of sheets goes into the dryers I'm going to go up and run a hot bath and then I'll feel better. The littlest of cats was hogging my tiny island of bed all night and she wouldn't move and I figured she would stretch out and snooze when I left but instead she came with me and now perches at the top of the landing and looks annoyed that I woke her up. 

On the upside it's eight and everything's done for the day. We're not hosting a dinner. I still have an endless headache and I left everyone to the wind. There are ingredients. I don't know what to do but I also don't care. Thanksgiving is my throw away holiday. I either go to McDonalds or I make a huge dinner and go all out but I'm not feeling it at all this year.

I can still be thankful, grateful and beyond blessed. I can also be profoundly irritated and in need of a long winter's nap. A lot of people are wondering why I didn't write, why I haven't caught you up to speed on things, what Caleb is up to (no good, as always but in a wearier way) and why I haven't been more present in the moment. It's like a cycle. I don't know how to explain it. I am feeling defeated a lot lately. I lost my dog in the spring and I can't get past it easily and why should I? He was my companion for sixteen years. I feel like everyone is mean and selfish and unhinged lately and I need a long cry and a longer hug, maybe. Maybe some chocolate and a long drive. Maybe that lobotomy I keep thinking I have gotten and it turns out to be false prophets. Maybe I'm haunting myself. Maybe I'm feeling up for nothing and everything and maybe the perspective is hard to keep in mind. It's okay. I'm human. I'm allowed. 

All I know is it rained a tiny bit and it's going to rain a lot more and I can make life cozy and wait out the feelings until they change again. Like I said, it's a cycle.

The park bench murders.

The trees are turning red and gold and the hot chocolate and pierogie season is well underway now (but not together). We are winterizing the property in advance of cold weather and finished the final thing today. I didn't finish it before. It's supposed to rain for two solid weeks so it was time to get it done.

Now the only thing we leave out are the hoses until just after Halloween. Just in case. People here love to light fireworks in the nieghborhood and you never know when one is going to go rogue. I'll put the hoses away on November first. 

My little bottle of thieves oil smells like dragon's blood. I'm not all that impressed. It's not potent, doesn't do anything and while it smells nice enough, a blend of eucalyptus and cinnamon, there's no magic qualities or extra effort that it puts in that I can see and so I brought it upstairs to throw it in with the mop water next time I mop. Use it up, learn from it, and never buy it again. 

We voted today. They fed my voter's card into a big machine that looked like a zamboni crossed with a work printer. I watched in fascination, received my sticker and went on my merry way. Hoping for things to stay the same in this province so I have to do my part. I made the boys come, and Henry too, because we all have to do this. Henry was excited as always and said he hoped all his friends voted. Me too. They're the future. 

Lochlan and I split an order of chicken McNuggets for dinner and then he went off to have a quick nap and I settled in to make some little blankets with some old yarn. The new cats get cold and we can't have that. Plus I have old yarn and I can see no other purpose for it. I'm going to finish this one while I watch the new episodes of Unsolved Mysteries because no one's bugging me tonight for anything. Perfect.

Resurrection fern.

 Spending the morning being a selkie, as it was pouring rain and I walked up to the mailbox alone to get the mail, in a t-shirt and jeans, no less. I didn't think it was raining that hard but it was and now I am vaguely damp and cozy yet back in the house with the lights lit and Iron & Wine on the google thing in the kitchen. Pod? Screen? Tiny TV? I never know what to call it. It's not a nest, and it's not a home, so it's a screen on the counter and it shows dust in the sunlight and I may get Ben to build a little floating shelf for it so it can be up and away. I'm a big fan of clear counters. 

We've done a lot of work clearing clutter this summer and evaluating things that haven't moved in forever and we got a smaller kitchen table in a brighter wood hue. I'm a huge fan of blonde woods and light shades to offset the dark greens and navies and greys and sometimes you have to mix the two and then you can cover all your bases decorating-wise. What I mean is that-all white with pine is just lovely but not for the entire house. You need to break it up with some lush rich hues and texture. So trade off between the two and amazingly it works well. 

I'm fighting the urge to drive up to the store and buy some salt and vinegar chips. This week I have really minded being a highway away from everything. I used to walk so much more so it didn't matter. There were stores on every block as the kids grew up and then suddenly I chose the ocean over the ease. 

I'm still doing it. I just want some chips today. Also the finale of The Rings of Power is tonight! Thank god. It wasn't good but it was also amazing. How to explain that? No idea.