Let me tell you about this day.

I'm sitting here tonight with bare feet dangling in front of a wide open window, enjoying the lights. Watching people work and make dinner and watch tv. No one seems to close their blinds here. It's entertainment for urban dwellers maybe. It is akin to apartment living for me, since in a strange way you are never alone and suddenly I find myself seeking crowds and strangers to talk to and I'm stopping for conversations with people because it's nice to have the company. The children are much the same way, shouldering a new kind of mature confidence, making their way without a hint of shyness or uncertainty. I wish they could be the sort of naive barefoot hooligan that I was as a child, without the sophistication that they seem to possess now to the point where I find myself chasing after them, reaching out to grab Henry's hood so that he doesn't get so far ahead of me that he'll end up on the wrong side of the skytrain/seabus/elevator doors.

Phew. That's an all-day job.

And...who am I kidding? These are our children. It stands to reason they will not miss a moment, and are introspective and alert and clever to the point of astonishment from those around them who stand seven times as worldly. What am I supposed to do? I can't turn back time. I can't change the life they have led thus far. We just keep going.

Today was the mother of all days off, that's for sure.

When I opened my eyes the city was already coming to life. We left the blinds open the night before. All white bed. So luxurious. A slow morning. No alarms, no concrete plans, just some ideas bantered around in the weeks before. This was the first no work day with no horrendous pressure since possibly last fall. We managed to see and do so much my legs ache like the dickens and I'm just now making us our late afternoon coffee (it's after nine) because once we did get going it was tough to stop.

I found the sky train interesting, as well as the sea bus. Louis Vuitton and the yacht club were quite amazing too. Boats. Incredibly luxurious boats. I could live there quite easily. I sometimes feel like I was two different mixes poured into one princess mold and shaken up so hard every now and then when I find a hard little ball of unblended mix I like to savour the sheer purity of it.

Sometimes those little bits taste like French designers and American yachts. (I'm sorry, I can't help it. The other bits all taste like dust bunnies and bent bobby pins and homemade chicken soup.)

They argue something awful these days too, those two princess-mixes and I can't seem to make peace for everyone. I can't seem to figure out who to side with. I can continue on this path, and the kids grow up city-friendly and capable and worldly and somewhat spoiled but without abandon, or I can choose the other path and raise two perfect humans with wonderful childhood memories and happy animals and a life that defines washing a car as turning on your hose and working for the next hour and getting wet instead of passing someone your keys and a crisp handful of bills and reading the newspaper while they do it instead of you.

Yeah. It is a choose-your-own-adventure novel, princess edition and I'm too tired to read the last part so I'm purposefully going in circles, trying out different actions and alternate endings. It's going to be a big surprise and frankly, Bridget only likes the good surprises and I'm rambling, am I rambling? I have no idea.

I just know that when I was walking along the path this afternoon, a voice very close to my ear (but on the inside of my head, not the outside) said, breathe deeply, princess. You know that smell. That's seaweed and you are home.

I know that voice.

He came with me.

And Ben noticed before I did.

Sea level.

We're here.

At last.

Way up high in the sky in a place that is floor to ceiling windows. All windows everywhere and if I walk in a circle I can look at the ocean and the mountains at the same time and then I can peek out the other way, towards the Coach store, L'Occitane and Tiffany's. I plan to visit all of them tomorrow.

It wasn't as smooth a trip as I had hoped, with more than a few heartbreak-generating bumps in the road and some very close near misses and a whole lot of Oh-my-fuck-what-are-we-doings but we're here and we brought the sun and you can buy milk in glass bottles and I walked through a bamboo forest and Ben already took me to the gigantic Tom Lee music store. Figures.

It's pretty amazing. Here I can dress how I want, as long as I have a sweater for the ocean breeze and an umbrella for the freaking two-minute giant raindrop-carrying rainstorms. Here I can laugh at the weather where we used to live, because it's twenty degrees warmer today.

I've been here before, and still as we were walking this afternoon, I said to Ben, why the heck did we live where we lived when there are places like this out there?

He just smiled.

I think he's happy now that we're here and I know we're happy that we're here and right now my list of things to do just tomorrow is as long as my arm plus my leg plus my other leg and then continued in the memo app on my Blackberry and I'm sure tonight will bring some sort of epic sleep that will revisit the dead and then everything will be complete.

I'm totally wired.

And Ben is a prince, an honest to goodness, card-carrying prince.

Everything is gone.

Wtf. This house is huge. Don't know how I feel right now.
~via BlackBerry.

Progress

Three-fifths done. Everyone has tattoos and they're singing musicals. It's a bit surreal.
~via BlackBerry.

Moving day!

It's Monday. Truck is here. Busy bees!! One whole hour sleep. Place your bets to see when I crash. :) xox b
~via BlackBerry.

Still packing!

Odds are I'm updating via Twitter. Be nice and follow me please. In 12hrs this is all a memory.
~via BlackBerry.

Saturday update, the boxed chaos edition.

Garage and workshop are all cleaned out. The last of three loads of laundry are in the dryer and then I can fold all of it. I am on my second giant cup of coffee and I have a pounding headache. On the upside? NINE HOURS OF SOLID SLEEP last night, something I haven't seen since around last Halloween.

I packed more dishes, more clothes and more guitars today. Ben did the outdoor, freezing cold and heavy things. The children walked the dog and went to the store for me for bread. For chocolate bars too.

Do you think the headache is from too much sleep? If so, I will embrace the pain. I wish every night was that effective.

No music today. There hasn't been time. Up until now I've been alone and I packed the stereo and I couldn't reach the network (and the music from my computer) because it just wouldn't work properly (Lochlan has since fixed it) so I figured out how to drag the tiny(forty songs) music folder on my laptop into VLC and it would play a loop and then I would have some soothing company for a bit but it's okay now because I have Ben home and he has open arms for me and very long hugs and even longer kisses and he's taking over the hard parts and keeping everyone super calm and instead of rushing around he is pacing us and reminding me to sit down and finish my coffee. To go to sleep already. Not to worry. You don't have to do everything, Bridget. Not anymore.

He's like a giant, bearded Xanax.

It's awesome.

But I am out of coffee now. I ate a granola bar. Now I have to go and fold laundry, put it all away and then start pulling it out again. We're almost through here.

Also awesome.

More than you realize.

Hallo, Ben.

Show your face
Living in the shadows like you got no name
Enough to make a little girl go insane
Be my guest to let it out tonight
It's okay
I know all about the little games you play

He's here.

Thank fucking God. I swear I was ready to just curl up and die. Three months was three lifetimes, I'm a cat. I believe I have around two lives left.

That isn't quite right.

I'm actually a book on a shelf and some days I'm a biography and other days horror and sometimes a Harlequin romance. Sometimes I'm an instruction manual in a language you don't understand and other times I'm a page ripped out of the back of a minigolf score book.

Ben says I should say I'm a porkchop sandwich. Boys are weird. That's okay though. This princess is pretty weird too.

Today we ran around like headless chickens. Well, first I woke up and smacked the snooze alarm and then turned over and saw Ben sleeping there. It wasn't a dream. He is real. He's home, even though home is temporary because we move in mere days and home seems to be all boxes and bare walls.

We went and looked all of the important things that required both our presences and we went to McDonald's too. We walked the dog and stopped for coffee and Ben drove and so I didn't have to and I talked and he signed for things and then he lifted things and I told him where to put them down. I made a schedule for the rest of the week and he only added a couple of things.

He is very sad to be leaving this house and I'm being protective of his feelings because he didn't have the past three months here like I did to make his peace with leaving it. If I had any faith that it would hold together I would have had it picked up and moved with us, or rather, we would have still flown out and the house could have traveled slowly down the highway, bookended by signs proclaiming 'caution: wide load'.

But it wouldn't. I could see it shift slightly and crumple onto itself, windows blowing out and porches collapsing.

That cannot happen. Instead we sold someone a lot of colored glass and wood and character and we're going to go look for a new castle and hell, yes, I will write about it because Ben listened and since he is my number one fan I will tell it as it happens because he listened, I said. Are you listening? I asked to leave here. I said I was done. Done with the memories in fingerprints long faded against paint I could never change. Done with walking into rooms and seeing Jacob sitting in chairs we don't even have anymore. Done with very high tiny windows that can't be sufficiently cleaned and done with the endless sparrows that sit on the branches outside my bedroom windows and make so much damn wonderful noise.

Done. Bridget's done. Time to run, plan escape and have some fun.

I can't do it anymore. I'm not a Prairie girl but I gave it eight years and frankly though I love the big open sky and endless flat fields of sunflowers and canola I need that ocean bookend to help me find my way.

Whatever that is.

No, I know what is is. It's having the water to navigate by. It's smelling the salt air constantly to keep alert and awake. It's healing. It's fucking Bridget, baby. All the way.

Things may get sporadic posting-wise, though we have wi-fi the whole way to the west coast, we probably won't have time or energy left to think, let alone post. I said we, didn't I?

I have a helper now. He's home. He's big and he's silly and he's funny and he's hot as a five-alarm fire and he's going to throw in some suggestions and maybe I'll follow them and maybe I'll rebel but maybe we'll share the page every now and then. Maybe we'll start having fun now.

You get to come too. As usual, just don't ask so many questions.

Awake on my airplane.

This is seriously not a day to have Filter songs stuck in my head but as usual I have no choice in the matter. It can always be worse.

The neighborhood looks like hell. This city is second to none in clawing back to a decent summer from a spring that is all mud and garbage. I want to wash my face because my skin feels awful. I want to powerwash the entire property top to bottom but instead I'm going to walk away from it in less than a week, with the rotten leaves still protecting the gardens and mud all over everything.

I still remember the week we moved in and heading outside to dig up the begonias to keep indoors in pots over the winter because I didn't know they were a hardy variety that would survive this zone. I had a ball. Playing in my own garden was cathartic. I could rip out all the plants if I wanted, because it was mine now. While I did that Cole was exploring and he found a stack of glass inserts that go in the screen doors in cold weather. We put them all up and suddenly we were warm.

We learned this house the hard way and I'm leaving one single skeleton key and no instructions whatsoever, because it's fun.

Oh pish tosh. I left the alarm manual. We didn't even get that much. Oh and new appliances, since I'm still a little bitter that the stove stopped working Thanksgiving weekend. It's a chance you take and I'm still glad we took it.

And I had high hopes of coming in here and regaling you with more Jacob-stories because the emails from yesterday show me you're still in love with him too and you like the stories I share about him and frankly, there are millions I never told, but might someday soon. Only not today because today I am hit and miss with tears and over sixty boxes in and today we crossed the threshold of packing around living to living around packing, because I am no longer comfortable with the lack of space and everything being taped shut. It's just not great but in thirty hours the biggest longest nightmare is over, because Ben will be home. And he won't be going back alone this time.

And boy oh boy does Bridget need a hug.

All that you can't leave behind.

When the doorbell rang I remember feeling that little undercurrent thrill that jolted through me every time Jacob was within reach.

Cole threw open the front door and Jacob was standing there in the porch, smiling. He looked around and then ducked through the doorway and smiled at me.

This your castle, princess?

All teeth, he was. All big smiles and hands and unruly blonde waves and the beard that only served to picture-frame his whole presence in blonde.

Cole laughed in a forced way and offered to show him around. He nodded and they disappeared down the hall to the basement steps first, because all proper men in this house have to verify the existence of the workshop before they'll spend a moment here otherwise. This one had shelves and places drilled to stand rows of screwdrivers and a huge worktable built right in.

I waited outside in the backyard, watching the kids run on their grass, enjoying the fenced-in safety of the yard.

Soon a hand touched my back, completing the circuit of electricity, making me jump. I turned and smiled in the cold sun, for it was October and it seemed warm until you realized you were slowly freezing solid.

Teeth again and those pale blue eyes. Jacob approved.

You going to be happy here?

He said it in a low voice and frowned suddenly.

Yes, like you said, it's my castle. I love this house.

What if nothing changes?

Then it will become my prison.

Cole came outside then, and I watched Jacob's face transform into forced joviality, his expression hard. I'm sure Cole never missed a thing. He would tell me about it later and he did.

Jacob's hand went away but he covered it by rubbing my shoulder. Cole smiled with his wicked cold eyes.

I think she'll be happier here, don't you think, preacherman?

If we all make an effort, yes.

(Oh, tension. Bring me a knife and I'll slice enough for each of us.)

Nothing changed and Cole didn't have much time here after all. He died less than a year after we moved in. And then Jacob moved in and eighteen months later Bridget's unhappy drove him to disappear too and finally Bridget's unhappy led the universe to alter course in order to protect everybody and that's why we are moving west again.

Surprisingly Ben, the dark horse finisher and outside longshot (or longshit, as PJ so lovingly calls him) has lived here the longest.

That's good, don't you think? I think it's good. I think it says a lot for us. I think maybe we'll be okay. Instead of being imprisoned by memories and held captive by long hard winters, extreme weather and total darkness we'll be made lighter. We'll have a chance to live instead of living around and through the memories when given tiny, brief chances to do so.

I remember also the day that I told Ben that Jacob was moving in. That I was moving on with my life because I deserved to be happy, didn't he think?

You're not going to be happier, Bridge. Somehow I just see things getting worse before they get better.

Instead of seeing that as prophetic I instead chose to chalk it up to Ben's jealousy and I dismissed the comment, letting it hang between us, a privacy curtain that would serve to drive a wedge we left in place until years had passed.

I won't make that mistake again.

Ben comes home in two more sleeps and he is nervous about the move, while I become more and more excited. He's a funny guy in that he's moved enough in his life that it triggers a sadness that he works hard to cover with being brusque and difficult but I'm sure it's bringing up everything he's ever felt that makes Ben who he is.

He's mine, that's who he is. And soon we'll be living life on our own terms with the mountains and the sea as a backdrop and the warmth to insulate us from the past. We have all the character we'll ever need to build, we're going to live.

Chapter three. It begins now.

Careful, Scarlett.

Off in the night, while you live it up, I'm off to sleep
Waging wars to shape the poet and the beat
I hope it's gonna make you notice
I hope it's gonna make you notice
Someone like me

Duncan (non-resident beat poet) sent me his Kings Of Leon CD late last week and told me to give it a chance. I was hooked from the get-go and have had it on the stereo on heavy rotation all weekend as I pack. Now I have stopped for the day, since I'm up to forty boxes done and really have progressed to the large scary wardrobe boxes which is funny, we don't have nearly the amount of clothes needed to fill five of them but I plan to throw in skis, scooters and possibly bicycles and see what happens.

I'm still concerned that some of these boxes are incredibly heavy thanks to all of the hardcover books but really I think maybe that is an issue more to do with tired princesses and hazardous curved wooden staircases than anything else. I now carry stacks of books down to the main level, rather than trying to fill the boxes upstairs and bring them down.

Tonight I'll put the hot water bottle on that spot inside my back where the pain just tears me a new scream if I lie funny and then tomorrow I'll do it all again. I think I'm good at this. I also think when we buy a house in Vancouver I'll just buy paper plates and all new clothes and call it a life and unpack nothing.

Right now I've got turkey and potatoes in the oven because I need some comfort food and this was from some plan to cook a big dinner and not doing it. I have no idea but it smells good.

I just wish someone else would have made it so I can sleep.

So I walk upon high
And I step to the edge to see my world below.
And I laugh at myself while the tears roll down.
'Cause it's the world I know.
It's the world I know.

Today it's taken me the better part of the day to pack Cole's paintings and photographs, and Jacob's letters and journals. It's a beautiful day to be wrapping memories in clean packing paper and tucking them securely into cartons so I can bring them with me.

I just noticed this.

Holy COW.

We're moving.

(Yes, I realize we're almost three months into this knowledge, but we made it. *I* made it.)

Woohoo!

Seriously.

Ben, hopefully is somewhere in the Pacific Northwest forging my medal as we speak. I hope it matches my crown, because coordination is paramount.)

I will make his here before we leave.

He earned one too.

The food replicator must be in there somewhere.

Looking at houses in Vancouver tonight online. The first few things I can see are that it's raining in almost every photo, every house has more bathrooms than bedrooms, and they all come with dishwashers.

What is this machine...a dishwasher?

I'm guessing it's a portal to another dimension. When you close the door and hit the switch you are transported into the future, where your dishes are already clean.

Unbelievable!

(I'm sad to report the people who bought my house can take over wondering what those two switches do in the front hall. I have no idea either, perhaps they also trigger access to other dimensions. Good luck!)

She looked right into my
eyes and said to me
The hurt that you try to hide is killing me
You drink a thousand lies,
to freeze the past in time

I've tried to fill this silence up
But now it's back again

See the pain in my eyes
see the scars deep inside
My God, I'm down in this hole again
With the laughter I smile
with the tears that I cry
Keep going down this road called life

Look out.

You don't want to be here right now. She'll turn around slowly, curls resting gently against her shoulder blades, eyes bleeding black all over her alabaster skin. The fear that turns your blood to ice will be no match for your curiosity and you stand your ground in front of her. After all, you are looking down at her and she must lift her lashes to meet your eyes.

She won't. She looks straight ahead now. Wooden doll, charred and blackened and thrown under the shed out back because you didn't mean to.

Oh, but you did.

There are few secrets that can't be told and fewer dreams that can't be destroyed with a whim. She bides her time, you see. Standing still in order for you to witness the horror but smiling gently and with a sinister intent because she knows things you will find out later. She knows her own whims can destroy you in a completely different way. She doesn't mean to be bad, it isn't her fault that everything is black. Somewhere along the way it got darker and darker until her pupils expanded and she could see again. She has that gift, you don't so don't even try.

Just stay there, let it wash over you. Know what it's like. Feel what she feels. Cry like she cried. She isn't crying today and that's why today will be worse for everyone else but not so bad for her.

It's deafening
it's deafening
this silence inside me

Ten-second eclipse.

Eclipse teaser trailer.

Stephanie, stop borrowing from my archives.

PS Team Edward all the way. Team Jacob seems like sacrilege. Besides, in this house we love vampires.

Snort.

Give me a BREAK.

I found the drum keys. I know where everything is in this house and soon I won't be able to find a thing. Today is breaking down the drum kit and hopefully getting the hotel arranged and more boxes to pack. Toys and books, toys and books. It's endless.

And Power 97 keeps playing Just Breathe by Pearl Jam. It's a sign. I love this song. I am trying to listen closely.

OH! And speaking of signs and songs, HELLO new music video!!!!

You're welcome. Warning, it's sad and beautiful.

JUST LIKE BRIDGET.

Need a miracle.

No luck today. I try to arrange the words just so but they all pour out in a scream. Maybe tomorrow.

Tomorrow will probably be worse.

Ha, I am having a real hard time with your optimism. Maybe you should WALK A MILE IN MY SHOES and then tell me to calm down. I need drugs. Drugs and someone else to do this because I really don't think I can pull it off without casualties. Watch as she explodes before your very eyes just out of sheer stress.

It could happen. Stay tuned.

Shhhh.

calm.

breathe.

calm.

breathe.

calm.

breathe.

calm.

Benjamin, I can't lift these boxes.

I'll be waving my hands
Watching you drown, watching you scream, quiet or loud
And maybe you should sleep
And maybe you just need a friend
As clumsy as you've been there's no one laughing
You will be safe in here
you will be safe in here

The thrill this week in grade three is to pull your mouth open wide with two fingers and say things like "puck" and "apple".

Sigh.

In grade six the trend is to decorate your jeans with memories written in sharpie, a la Sisterhood of the traveling pants. I may join that one. I already lead the threes in swearing so I think I have elementary school covered tenfold.

We are surrounded by cardboard boxes, markers, packing tape and lists. Contracts to print and sign, calls to make, addresses to change, hotels to book, flights to organize, pets to calm, children to reassure and...

...one princess sitting at a scrubbed table with a borrowed glass full of cheap white wine, near tears and near smiles at the effort in place to relocate many lives all at once, and memories too.

It rained all day today and I can see the tops of my lilac bushes again. I scraped away the ice in front of the garage door so that I don't have another session of stars and sparrows, flat on my back on the cement floor of the garage, wondering how I got there.

I'm favoring myself physically because if I hurt myself or pull anything I won't be able to pack. Time is at a premium right now, I am writing tonight from the dinner table, on precious batter power while Henry finishes his homemade pizza in the dining room and Ruth is long gone, off to watch television while she waits for us to be ready to head outside to walk the dog. Once I get the children organized and in pajamas playing Warcraft with Ben across the miles I will finish the calculations for my taxes and call them in tomorrow. Then I can put all of that away and concentrate on coordinating this move. Which sometimes seems so very easy and straightforward and other times becomes unbearably complicated and impossible.

But I have done so much. And I'm going to list the things because I could use a little pep talk with my contraband wine:

1. I refinished a hardwood floor.
   
2. I painted several rooms, top to bottom.
3. I mudded and finished a newly gyproc-sheeted room.
   
4. I hired a realtor and sold a house (almost forty showings in four days).
   
5. I hired a mover.
6. I had my car repaired and negotiated a free rental car for the duration.
7. I kept the three of us safe.
8. I lived without Ben for almost three months, no small feat for someone who is afraid of everything and who only breathes or sleeps in his arms.
   
9. I kept my computer alive. There's no resuscitation order on this thing. It clearly wants to die. I need to give it permission and I don't plan to do that for a bit yet.
   
10. We made brownies. They ruled the universe. Then we tossed the rest of the baking supplies.
    

I can't wait to call the airline and find out there's some screwy thing with bringing the pets. I can't wait for the car to be damaged on the rail to British Columbia and I can't wait for a host of new street names to pronounce and the mile-long list of donair and ramen joints Ben is going to to take me to so I can sample food in a foodie city for the first time ever. Does Pacific spiney lobster taste as good as Atlantic? What about the scallops? What about the Thai? The Thai has to be good and I'm never sure if what I learned to love here was authentic or just bastardized quasi prairie-Thai.

I will soon find out. Two weeks from tomorrow.

Oh, Jesus Christ. Bring more wine then, I have work to do.

Eight is enough.

There's a little white porch
And you wanted it so
Can you let me go down
To the end of the road
In the black and the white
A Technicolorful life
Can I stand by your side?
We can make it alright

Ben took that picture in the post below. I am still landlocked quite tightly but the countdown is on. Give or take a little we're down to less than twenty days remaining. Ben will be home in just under two weeks and we'll wrap up life on the Prairie and get the hell out, but I'll save the malevolence of goodbye for the final few days, if my laptop is still functioning then. The house is sold. The truck is booked. The lawyer is booked. The neighbors have been told. I've been saving out keys and taking things down. The suitcases are all over the dining room floor and the table pushed out of the way.

Here we go, Bridget.

Here we go, boys. Take our hands and never look back at this place, or I swear to God, I'll claw your eyes out.

Ben sang to me the other night. He played Tangerine and when I finally went to sleep I wasn't crying. Almost into the single digits now and finally I figured out how to destroy whole blocks of time Godzilla-princess style with movies and books and throwing myself into whatever else I am doing with one hundred percent attention and effort, instead of the usual fifty-fifty. Half a shot, merely a chance, and not a sure thing. Like the game of Capture her Heart. You won't get how it works but three of them figured it out in my life and that's enough for me.

There was no Hyde this time. The stress is starting to shift to semantics and plans that don't hinge so heavily on outside influences and finally it feels like reality instead of incarceration. Pair that with the clocks going ahead this coming weekend and a less-frigid round of weather as of late and I have officially clocked out of here with eight full winters under my belt.

Eight.

Eight.

When the fuck did that happen? Nevermind, it won't happen ever again. He promised.

Just nevermind. This chapter will be dealt with later as I see fit. Not today. It's a nice day today and I don't want to ruin it. Though I could ruin it if I think too hard about Ben's eyes, or Ben's arms, or Ben's beard, or Ben when he breathes and I hear it sometimes. It's one of my favorite things in my entire life and I'm counting the days now until we're a force to be reckoned with instead of two completely lost individuals foundering around in far-apart locations trying to do the best we can. Of course it's been good enough, but it isn't GOOD enough. Got it?

Sometimes you can just tell when a new chapter is going to be better than the previous one. I don't know how that happens, but it does. Sometimes it even happens to me.

One, two

She's coming for you..

Three, four, on the twenty-eighth floor...

Wait. What the fuck?

Two bits (losing my credibility completely).

Could someone please tell me where I put the box full of cellphone chargers, headphones and assorted cases? I've looked and I can't find it. I NEEEEEEEEED it. My headphones! I neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed my headphones. Argh.

In other notes, I really need to get a bigger microSD card for my phone. There is never enough space for the songs.

And just because this is calm before the next storm, I'm going to do something totally awesome here and post the list of songs in my OHW folder on my Blackberry. That's One Hit Wonders. Even though they aren't, they're just random songs I love and want to have handy but I don't want the whole albums on my phone. Get it? (If you are the author of one of them, don't be offended. The whole albums are on my computer, but the SD card is very tight, packed full, okay? And I love you.)

Don't laugh if you see something weird. All of them are a good offset for Tool and for Ben's stuff. Trust me. These are the songs that you find when you open up the glove compartment in Bridget's head and reach far back into the dusty corners.

1. Toto-Africa
2. Trust Company-Downfall
3. Thirteen Senses-Into the Fire
4. Matthew Good-Strange Days
5. Train-Drops of Jupiter
6. Iron and Wine-Night Descending
7. Matthew Good-In a world called catastrophe
8. Black Crowes-She talks to Angels
9. Wide Mouth Mason-The River song
10. Black Crowes-Remedy
11. Garbage-A stroke of luck
12. Hudson River School-The Great mistake
13. Spin Doctors-Two princes
14. Incubus-Drive
15. Iron and Wine-Each coming night
16. Collective Soul-The world I know
    
17. Sting-Fortress around your heart
18. Foo Fighters-Come alive
19. Neverending White Lights/Dallas Green-The grace
20. Foo Fighters-Times like these
21. Hawksley Workman-Striptease
22. White Zombie-More Human than Human
23. Slipknot-Vermillion Part 2
24. Bee Gees-How Deep is your love
25. Death Cab-Transatlanticism (the whole album, so it's probably in the wrong place)
    

It could be worse. In PJ's OHW folder we found Kelly Clarkson, Wilson Philips and MC Hammer.
And I won't tell you about what was in August's because he would come home and tickle me to death.

On second thought..

Night-doubt.

Oh ominous place spellbound and unchildproofed
My least favorite chill to bare alone
Compatriots in place they'd cringe if I told you
Our best back-pocket secret our bond full-blown

Tonight I was swinging gently on the swing that is tied to the tree with two heavy ropes. A weathered grey board beneath me, my toes only graze the ground if I stretch my legs out far. I was watching the stars as they lit in the sky and then I noticed how frayed the ropes were. Once knotted securely to the strong branch, I could see that they were unraveling to the point of it being dangerous to continue to swing at all.

But I didn't move.

A little of the euphoria is beginning to cloud again and the fear makes a campaign to return. What if someone steals our mail? New bank cards and tax receipts are at stake. I suppose our identity gets stolen or some funds from our bank account. All of it will be replaced. What if there is nowhere to stay when we arrive and someone drops the ball and the condo isn't ready for us? We find a hotel.

Jesus, Bridget, you really need to get your mind off things.

What if the plane crashes? Then nothing else can go wrong, now, can it? What if the movers lose my car/our furniture/everything we own? Then I guess you get a wad of cash to spend on new things. New things you have always wanted like a custom-painted fiddle, nicer clothing and a couch you can sleep on that still fits through a doorway. Maybe a stacking washer/dryer because they take up less room.

Simple things for a simple girl, because she over-complicates things so very badly.

Snap! And Bridge drops an inch on the swing as more stars come to light in the ever darkening backyard. You can hear her if you listen closely. She is singing songs she heard on the radio today, and today she is wearing a useless evil eye bracelet, or maybe it isn't useless but she would like a detailed report of that too if you have information for her.

What if it's awful?

How can it be awful, princess? We've got the ocean, the mountains, the forest and the mild easy living you have craved through eight arctic winters.

What if it's too expensive?

Then you write more and crawl back up to your post as the author who has these big dreams but puts them at the back of the shelf behind the mental obstacles for safekeeping. Words that are destroyed are merely letters after all.

What if I get homesick?

For what, exactly? Eight years, princess. Eight years and we still can't believe you did it.

Where does Jake go?

Where I always go, pigalet. With you.

What if Ben is difficult?

I promise, beautiful, no more Mr. Hyde.

They (everyone) feel the same way. Maybe everyone hides it better. I never had a poker face. I would see a handsome man or tell a lie and the action would be evident in my expression, colored in as a blush to a admission that I was all heart. Completely heart and nothing else. No mind, no guts, no brains. Just heart. A girl-organ, all red and pulsing with valves meandering off into different directions and blood squishing through your fingers as you hold me and feel me beating.

Too fast. And it won't slow down until I conquer all of the current fears and invent the next round to swing from, some of which will bring my swing crashing to the ground. But only if I let them. I may, but I may not. After all, it's dark out. No one will see.

I am a magnet for all kinds of deeper wonderment
I am a wunderkind
I am a Joan of Arc and smart enough to believe this
I am a princess on the way to my throne

Destined to reign, destined to roam

Composers in absentia.

Just a little reminder when things get so very hectic I tend to take to Twitter. Button to your left and in this post below. Don't be a lurker though, it's nice to have followers and I will follow you in return if you say hello.

Why I like Twitter so much I'll never know. But I do. It's painless and quasinonymous and....

...there's a picture of me on my Twitter profile and for once I'm not hiding behind a BlackBerry/sunglasses/boy. Ben took the snap last night during our webcam chat. So that is me from my bed at two o'clock in the morning. If you look closely you can see my striped over-the-knee socks. I was cold.

More later. I thought you needed a treat because you've been very good readers putting up with my non-existent, positively undigestable word arrangements during this chaos. Thanks for that.

Henry asked tonight if Ben missed his glue stick guitars.

It only took me a minute to figure out what he meant. He went on to tell me he likes it best when Ben plays glue stick songs after dinner at the table...instead of plugging in the electric ones. The electric guitars are so much louder. The acoustic guitars are better for dining rooms.

Sometimes I agree. :)

But only sometimes.

Sold.

It was a beautiful letdown
When you found me here
For once in a rare blue moon
I see everything clear

I'll be a beautiful letdown
That's what I'll forever be
And though it may cost my soul
I'll sing for free

The house.

It sold.

Time moved so slowly and suddenly it's moving so fast and the grass is greener already, because it must have been so simple to mindlessly sing along to the radio while I painted and scraped and plastered and cooked and cleaned and now suddenly I'm trying to coordinate a cross county move with children and pets and Ben flying in and flying out and moving trucks and utilities and I don't have an address and I need an address don't I? and things are going to move so fast I can already hear the wind rushing in my ears so it makes it very hard to catch the actual words and I still need to do our taxes and my laptop is failing because fourteen months is the charm curse and did I tell you about when my barely a year old car broke down earlier this week and had to be towed away and and it was the straw that broke everything? but I didn't write about it, I just tried to go through the steps to make it better and I put layer after layer of tape and glue and then more tape and then paper with more glue and then some tape and prayers too and I held it together and I forced myself to eat a little and sleep a little and hug the children and I made a bravery-mask to wear when I talk to Ben and to my parents and it only failed a little when I spoke with the car dealership and the poor tow truck driver who wow, got an earful and I'm sorry but he didn't seem to mind all that much and now I have my car back and someone is so very excited to have their own castle now and I have put aside a stack of papers that go with each of the new appliances I chose for this house and a ring full of skeleton keys and deadbolt keys and maybe I will have some flowers in the kitchen on their closing day so they will have a house that starts them off in the most positive light I can manage.

And we will be gone and it's a good thing because even though I weathered that storm there are still miles to go, yes, Mr. Frost.

And right now I still have a backpack with family pictures on DVDs and our very-valuable stuff that can't be packed and Jacob's letters. It's sitting by the door and I have the children's coats ready and the kennels for the animals and I've got my mask ready to put back if I need it but really it's so nice out today and I'm really really hoping that with my split and bleeding fingers crossed, dried from the cold and scraped raw from the effort, that Bridget is through the hard part and onto the glory now.

Steady.

Hi internet, bye internet. I needed my bravery song today. See you tomorrow.

Welcome to the planet
Welcome to existence
Everyone's here
Everyone's here
Everybody's watching you now
Everybody waits for you now
What happens next
What happens next

Welcome to the fallout
Welcome to resistance
The tension is here
Tension is here
Between who you are and who you could be
Between how it is and how it should be

Maybe redemption has stories to tell
Maybe forgiveness is right where you fell
Where can you run to escape from yourself?
Where you gonna go?
Where you gonna go?
Salvation is here

I dare you to move
I dare you to move
I dare you to lift yourself up off the floor
I dare you to move
I dare you to move
Like today never happened
Today never happened
Today never happened
Today never happened before

Here, just take your schadenfreude. Maybe tomorrow something will go right. I've got nothing left here at all.

The other poet waits at stage left.

Hi, go away. I fell out of the wrong side of the bed and you're going to pay for it. My pockets are empty.

Monday morning brings balled-up fists, bottom lips wedged between teeth and bitten raw, and love letters from Lochlan. Ben's beautiful face is still in my mind from video calls and subsequent brief dreams last night, a day hellbent on taking place in spite of four hours sleep. I have coffee and cinnamon-sugared hot cereal in front of me and I have already crossed off most of today's list, which means with any luck I can do taxes later.

See what I did there? Mentioned luck again. I've been fresh out for years but old habits die hard.

Think positive, princess.

About what, Jake? The house? That course of action will jinx me a little more. I'm superstitious. Assume, and you're be made an ass of. Predict and you will ensure failure. By not preparing for the worst you will embark on a Pandora's box of alternate endings and curse yourself for the rest of your breathing days.

I don't want to get my hopes up if there are no hopes to be had. Better to steel myself for the possibility that I may be here right through my birthday in May than to assume I won't and shoot karma in the head. Fucking bitch that she is to me, no matter how hard I try.

I'll walk the tracks in my proper black shoes, black tights and a black dress and I will sing sad songs under my breath as the dog walks along oblivious, sniffing at the thistles, head up into the wind. I'll let my hair blow around my face in a halo of tangles and I'll stop talking again.

I'm rather sure it's inevitable. This is the kind of luck I have.

Lochlan thinks life would be less difficult if I would simply step further from the musician and closer to the artist again. If I would pick a permanent Dr. Jekyll over the inevitable Mr. Hyde even though cold shoulders come in all heights in this universe and selfishness rules the day. He would be here. He would be here.

Sure he would.

Lochlan is the fair-weather boyfriend and I'm not as young and naive as I once was the day he told me I was so impossible it would never work.

He was right, but not for those reasons. He is the impossible one. The hot and cold, knows-better, doesn't have time for bullshit logical Lochical pretty boy, the man who carries around Pink Floyd lyrics on the tip of his tongue and playing on his mental radio because the second you turn it off he becomes someone who just won't listen to reason and I don't know exactly what kind of defect that is but I suspect it's not a whole lot different from my rather insane set of useless self-soothing attempts.

Everyone has their problems. I'm not going to become one of his.

I'm happy with Ben. Yeah, that guy. The one so underground these days it's as if he's vanished altogether. Home for five days and gone for five days again and it feels like a thousand years and I still cry myself to sleep with his last-worn t-shirt clutched in my hands.

Two of you guessed properly this morning and that freaks me out. The other twenty-three guesses were so far off base I found it highly amusing to consider those possibilities while I laced my boots for the near-dawn walk I take with the dog. As long as the odds still favor me I'll keep writing about him, about us. If they tip I am done.

I don't run anymore.

I don't write anymore.

I don't eat or sleep.

I don't relax and I stopped taking deep breaths after I did something weird to my back and suddenly all through January I couldn't breathe properly. It hurt. I walked a very fine line and thankfully it has gone away a little but I would keep the pain if it meant I could just calm down for five whole minutes instead of a white-knuckle trip through everyday pedestrian things that everyone else blindly conducts as though they were entitled to it and more.

You're not, I'm so sorry. And as usual I deleted the dozens of emails that arrived while I slept because I don't entertain guesses for Ben and I don't care what you think of my words, my life or my boys. Nor do I care to read your reviews of my skills as a mother, wife, homeowner or journalist. I just don't. Save your breath and do what you do best: keep reading.

Just shut the fuck up. I really can't take anymore. Lochlan, that goes for you too.

The party line for the afternoon will be Bridget's just angry that I can't make it back today.

Indeed. Whatever helps you sleep at night, baby. I'll be on the tracks if you need me. In this fucking endless wind.

Not jinxing, just saying.

(Firstly, Lochlan didn't come home. He meant to. Things happen.)

It's been a busy couple of days. A busy couple of months, really, and I know I haven't given much to this place but no worries, my head is full. There just aren't enough hours in the day. I haven't stopped. It's been eight weeks. I have not stopped.

Just know that my hard work is paying off, and the luck of the boys is holding.

The feedback on the house is promising. I need some luck this time around.

The castle has had thirty-one showings so far, and we have DAYS left. DAYS. This is unreal. Keep your fingers and toes crossed.

We won the hockey game, the kids and I crashing through doors and collapsing on the living room couch in time to see the final period and all of the overtime. We cried when they played the anthem, just like the rest of the country.

Go Canada, indeed. We've set records in what we do best, conquering winter.

I have been here chipping ice away from my garage door, cleaning up vomit from a puppy that is surprisingly carsick and vomit from a child who just had enough yesterday and couldn't do anymore. I've been mopping floors and dusting like mad almost around the clock and have been living out of a tiny sportscar that I really don't like driving at all, let alone in winter. I don't even know how to drive through whole large sections of this city, you know that? It's not my thing.

And now we're going to make a pizza and eat on the couch and see if we can see the boys on the television, because they are at the closing ceremonies tonight (!) and they have snowglobes to bring home for us and funny things because when you go there is an audience participation kit that you are given. I am excited for them, and they feel guilty because of me.

And it's okay. Because you know what? I'm excited for me. I am trying to think positive and I'm getting really close to getting out of here for good. This week will tell me more and in the meantime, I will keep cleaning and hoping.

And maybe even writing a bit. If I am lucky.

Which...well, things can change, right?

Pretty-boy Floyd to the rescue.

Can you stand up?
I do believe it's working, good.
That'll keep you going through the show
Come on it's time to go.

Find a penny...and realize it's the one from your pocket from yesterday, came through the wash.

Jesus Christ.

Hi.

Remember me? I'm Bridget. And I could come in here and wipe my wet boots on the doormat and weave you a wonderfully funny stupid story about how five minutes into the very first showing of my first house I realized I couldn't do this repeatedly and so I signed the two cats up for a weekend sleepover with the vet.

On the way there the puppy barfed all over the front seat of the car.

On the upside? One down, and quite a few more to go.

The dog is going to hate my guts by the end of the weekend. I will hate his too. We'll be even!

(I still love him but he is way more work than a child so next time someone tells you that, know that they lie.)

Meh, and we're off again. But my house looks DAMN good and I'm even sick. So there! This is that moment where you stare into the face of adversity and scream,

IS THAT ALL YOU'VE GOT?

Indeed. It's enough. Fuck off now, bad luck.

It's that time again.

Dance, internet! (here, PJ, one for you!)

And little ones, sleepytime now.

Goodnight.

A beard and a macbook pro.

Ben has gone again, and my brief vacation from the anxiety of being without him has returned with a jolt of electricity so prolific I heard the snap when the doors closed behind him at Departures.

Fuck all of this.

Someone buy this house so we can leave.

I know I'm jumping the gun. Everything is ticking along nicely and such and it's far too early to worry but if you know Bridget you know she'll pick and choose her worries until they are gone and then move on to the next ones. So right now the worries are "sell house" and "ohmyfuck, you've gotten sick", since Ben brought a west-coast cold with him and left it for me to enjoy. I couldn't speak this morning and still I managed to dissolve into the helpless cries that probably make him feel like the biggest jerk in the universe for leaving and yet we are both fully aware that there isn't any better way we could have done this and now we just have to be patient. With any luck at all the longest stretch is past and now comes the rush. Soon, anyway. Eventually.

I have no date for the next trip home. I don't like that one bit. Again, there is no point in booking him home again until we see how the next week or two plays out.

The silver lining in this is perhaps I don't have to work so hard anymore. I can keep chipping away at cleaning, and buy healthy groceries and easy meals for the kids and I and continue to chase after the Himalayan cat with the scissors because she will be less work with less fur and walk the dog more because it will be warmer and hope and pray and fret and miss and cry and fear everything and okay...yeah, it will be like the last three times he was away.

On a hilarious and not even uniquely surprising note, he inspected my little sports car and found that my sort-of functioning block heater WASN'T WORKING AT ALL. There's character building for you. I spent the winter here in Extremecoldville plugging my car in dutifully and it wasn't doing a damned thing. Oh my FUCK!

It works now.

What a difference, too.

That will become part of the big story years from now when this is funny instead of a huge fucking tragedy of biblical proportions. I'm sorry, I call them as I see them and this blows from coast to coast. And I was a total shrew. I told Ben I would be spoiled when I get to the coast. That I'm never shoveling or painting again. That I'm going to sleep in on the weekends and have my nails painted by someone else and I won't lift things or put myself out for any reason at all.

He laughed and said yeah right, princess.

Because I was never the kind of girl to be able to understand how people can pay forty dollars to have someone else file their nails or how they could simply refuse to do things they can damn well do themselves and if they just would put out a little effort they could accomplish so much and now I see it's so much easier and lazier just to say no and for some reason they aren't judged for that.

I just do it. I get it done and then I am sort of amazed that I pulled it off and looking for a break that when it comes, I probably won't take it, although I am finding a lovely gift in reaching out with one finger and stopping the world every single day at three-thirty or four o'clock and pouring myself a cup of coffee to enjoy. Then I lift my finger off the world and it spools up to resume the previous speed of ohmyfuckgetonwiththings.

And yet, Ben promised me that I will be spoiled. He is keeping a list of places he will take us when we get out there. First sights and first meals, first evenings out, first day trips and first overnight trips away from the city. This from a man who can't remember to buy shampoo. It touches me that he wants us there so badly and it gives me hope that he misses me just as terribly and heartbreakingly as I miss him.

I've white-knuckled life through the better part of the last two months without him, and it's the one thing that I never wanted to experience. I've had enough. There's been enough misery and worry and stress and difficulties. There's been enough sad. I want to be excited about moving but currently I am held prisoner by the real estate market and until a shining angel of mercy signs on an offer I will wait, not all that patiently, for things to change. I will wait for him to come back and I will daydream and night-dream about him until that time.

Had I known how this would feel I wouldn't have entered into it at all but since I'm here what else can I do? Make lemonade. Whatever. I hate lemonade in the wintertime.

I miss him already. You really won't ever understand how much.

Seven.

That's how many hours are left.
~via BlackBerry.

Waking up bitten.

He's gone again. Thank God.

No, not Ben. Ben is still here. I mean Caleb.

He thought it fine to fly in and ruin all the fun of the toxic twins, casting his customary cold grey edge to everything that was formerly warm and/or safe. He thought I seemed to be descending back towards the low end of the metronome and I was. The ticking stopped. I rested with no beat and I think it's more like a mild undercurrent of white-knuckle hysteria and he thinks it meant it was time for a lesson from Satan, reminders of how the behavior of tiny blonde wisps of panic should play out.

Or else.

Ben and I would have been perfectly fine not to have hell recreated in the night but when do I ever get a say? I will never be given a chance to refund iniquity and vice as they pay dividends that allow us to live like kings and princesses and paupers in gold-lined paper houses. The light is artificial, the warmth contrived.

What Satan doesn't know is there's an army forming to the south of my future love paradise and it's as heavily-subsidized as his reprobation against Bridget. Because people who actually love me without conditions are running out of patience for his extravagant display of obsession for me. Once again I'll just put my head down and they can all fight it out above me. Eventually someone with a cooler head (Lochlan) will step in and ensure that the children and I are returned to the collective focus but not before everyone has re-staked their constantly shifting property lines in what seems to be a fairly fluid neighborhood.

Who am I kidding? I'm sure he knows. I'm sure he feels the pressure. Maybe time is running out and that's why he felt he had to interrupt our reunion with the ugly reminders of the way things are. Maybe he did indeed want to spend a day with the children and Bridget is just a lovely x-rated side benefit who struggles just enough to be fun but still flinches enough to make things difficult.

I won't change and I doubt he will either. All signs point to the army being both a blessing and a whole new kind of curse. A kind of curse where you go from eyes wide shut to eyes wide open and you jump and hope for the best.

Ben won't let me fall. If there is one thing he has always done, it's hang on, no matter what. This story isn't over yet. Not by a long shot. Paper houses don't hold up and eventually all luck has to change.

Struggling just to get enough words to arrange at all.

Somewhere around my bony shoulders and tired soul, anticipation is singeing the edges of the fear-paper that coats the walls of my life presently. It's such a tiny surge I'm not even sure I'm ready to acknowledge it just in case my mind is playing tricks on me. I will wait patiently for it to bloom and continue my slow pace, one foot in front of the other, out of this place. Slowly and with a heavy heart because I am so conflicted.

Spring is coming. Right?

Right? Please?

I love having Ben home. The past two days he declared to be no-work days. Tomorrow we'll finish off the little things I couldn't manage on my own but otherwise driving, eating, working, sleeping, all of it so much easier with him here at home. Even though it's less home right now. Keeping the children calm and reassured and informed and healthy. Keeping everything running smoothly in the face of chaos.

I have two days of him left and then he's gone again and I will fall down the darker well and stay there and contemplate horrible thoughts in my usual horrifyingly bemused fashion. However, I have found a comfort looking up toward daylight, scratching the days into the cement walls in the part where the water doesn't drip down and I know rescue is eventual (ha, prove it). Sometimes panic supersedes logic and sometimes it doesn't. I'm working on it but really I'm not having any luck writing, relaxing or being reasonable anymore.

I just wish Ben could stay because I really don't think I can do this much longer. The well is cold and it's dark and it's just not a happy place for Bridget. Ben's arms are my happy. He is my breath.

Bridget is not a happy girl otherwise.

Cross your fingers and say a prayer if you will. Sure there are worse things in the world and oh, dear, the problems of the rich. I'm not rich and I've never been rich. I know people who are and I talk about them too much. What I do know is that I have never sold a house before and I really really need this to go well. Smooth and quick, gone on the first try, don't let the sale fall through. That much, please, and in return I will pray for you.

Because sometimes I do.

Post two, because I don't have enough to do.

Every now and then I see you dreaming
Every now and then I see you cry
Every now and then I see you reaching,
Reaching for the other side
What are you waiting for?

Six and a half hours left until Ben-time and my brain just wants to continue to sabotage me and as usual my luck isn't holding at all.

On the upside, the house is presentable at last. Or as much as I can do anyway, if you could have witnessed the immense frustration this afternoon as the dirt-sucker thing I can't spell EXPLODED on the staircase. Right, the one I had just spent three hours polishing because it has three feet of wood trim on the walls around it.

Exactly.

I don't know what happened but I got the mess cleaned up and then I drug out the ladder once again and tried valiantly to do a couple of up-high things I'm afraid I'll forget to ask Ben to do because when I see him (this will be the third time since Christmas) everything kind of goes right out the piano window anyway. I couldn't do them so I wrote it down. We'll be up early anyway, so we'll get it done in the morning. Tonight I just have to put away the laundry, make dinner and then wait. I could also be doing some touch up things but really, I know how loverly my old OCD issues can flare up and thankfully I can override them now.

If only I could do that with all the other bad feelings that ricochet around inside my head. Ah well, I suppose it's nice to keep some dreams on hand, isn't it?

Light bright.

Every time the radio plays Pour some sugar on me I envision the pole dance I would perform if...my beautiful house had come equipped with a pole.

(Well, I had the strobe light..)

Ben comes home IN! TEN! HOURS!

Yay!

Sunday? Don't phone, I plan to barricade myself in his arms and sleep all damn day long. Why not tomorrow? Tomorrow sucks. They're coming to take the pictures for the listing. No, I will not be posting the link. Seriously you people.

Go think about Bridget pole dancing instead. You know you want to.

Dreams of gold.

Certain members of Team Canada (GO, boys!) at the 2010 winter games have some interesting names, don't they?

Let's see, there is Duncan, Drew, Chris, Dan, Patrick, John, Corey, Mark and Ben in addition to the other boys....

And since I pointed out that all of my boys made their way to Vancouver in the weeks after Christmas, part of a new collective endeavor that will see them all work together for a while, my readership has been positively rife with speculation.

Stop that. Stop it right now.

I don't do that anymore. I wasn't going to say anything at all but it's reached ridiculous proportions in my inbox and I really felt like I had to....be vague and uninformative. So there you have it. Don't expect replies and remember you have no right repeatedly emailing me for a response when it's an invasion of my privacy. Come and enjoy the words or the misery and then go away again, okay?

I like you in the dark. Better you than me.

(Besides, the guesses are forever entertaining. My favorites are always going to be the ones where you think I am the 'cutie' in Death Cab.)

And sometimes one gets desperate.

Down down down to the tunnels under the hill, the cold wind following me as I run, prepared this time in my gear that breathes but keeps me warm until I am warm enough to relax a little. Counting strides, counting breaths I focus on the numbers until I realize I have run right past the door and I have to turn and go back. I grab the wheel and turn it hard and pull and slowly it creaks open.

Inside the dust motes float in the air and that single beam of light from somewhere high above highlights the center of the room.

Jacob turns around and folds his wings casually behind his back. He smiles, his big white chiclet teeth competing with the radiance all around him.

I've missed you, princess.

I open my mouth to respond in kind and instead all this....noise comes out. An unholy cry that won't end and then when it finally does stop the tears are rolling and I can't catch my breath. I'm shaking, covered in goosebumps and completely shattered and he takes a step toward me and then stops abruptly. I hold my arms up like a child. He won't move though.

Please, Jake.

I can't, Bridget.

This time when I open my mouth the rage comes out. Loud and long, all the pent-up frustration and anxiety and pure fear that I run on these days, finding the energy in emotions instead of in sleep or food or habit. That's a bad kind of energy but I can't seem to turn it around. I know what I need and it isn't there.

It just isn't here.

Ben comes home in fifty hours. I really hope I don't self-destruct before then.

Night forty.

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the spaces between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.
~ Maya Angelou

The Good Sport.

I am:

• exhausted.
• covered with paint.
• aching and in pain.
• missing Ben so badly I burst into tears every ten minutes.
• sick of planning life around dog walks.
• starting to clean rooms, windows and light fixtures.
• jealous that other people aren't going through this.
  
• worried about how long it will take the house to sell.
• frustrated with phone calls that I don't have time to answer.
• forgetful as always.
• afraid of the dark.
  
• unshowered today, and I don't know how that happened.

I won't:

• give up.
• stop moving.
• pretend everything is okay when it isn't.
• stop worrying until it's over.
• be okay.
• quit.
• stay up all night, just very very late until it's safe to go to sleep.
• let tomorrow go by without getting that shower.
  
• let everybody down.

That last one, that seems to be key. I don't know if I'm succeeding or not but I'm still trying. I'm just really sore, incredibly discouraged, and completely overwhelmed. So if you want to put aside your derision and just have a little ounce of understanding, I am going to put my head down for just a little while and cry.

Sweethearts.

Look what just came! I have the most amazing husband in the whole wide world.

He is in Vancouver right now, and I am not. Gorgeous flowers make it a little easier. So does chocolate. Like the pink sparkly rockstar heart? I sure do.

Thank you, baby. I love you.

Where's Bridget?

I'm in this video. Have fun looking, it's like Where's Waldo? but with Bridget.

Painting is going swimmingly (sarcasm abounds). I can't feel my arms anymore. Blissful numb, I call it. I hope it goes away soon.

Back to work. More when I have time. Currently I am fresh out.

Paint the seconds.

We stopped time
To chase these truths

Tell it to move
Feel like climbing the walls
Useless messengers haste
Rushing to arrive

Balanced at the very top of a rickety wooden ladder she paints, holding the can in one hand (half-full, so heavy) and the old tired brush in the other. It's precarious, you see and she yells along with Chevelle on the stereo while she contemplates quitting altogether, or maybe doing it all after dark so she will at least have the gleeful ambiance of night to keep her company.

Whoops, a significant wobble and her eyes get wide for a split-second. She braces bruised knees covered in black tights against the wall, sensible black shoes for horizontal travel strapped tightly to her feet. Plaster dust on her plain black dress and a black tie in her hair to keep it off her neck while she works.

See these streams of color
They threatened it's too magical
That you still need to grow

The sooner we enter
The sooner we'll blend
Ease into another endless abyss

Every second she worked. I quit I quit I quit I quit. But she never slowed down, never stopped, never managed to put down the brush until the work was actually done and then she climbed slowly down the ladder again, the splinter from the day before cutting further under her skin, her knuckles white against the Pollack-splatters of previously chosen colors and she cursed the air until she was returned safely to the ground.

Her shoulders and knees ache and she is tired now. But it's finished and that's all she wanted for today.

Break a finger on the upper hand.

Today was spent chipping away at the list and now the perseverance is wearing thin and the list grows long like the light left in today, so I'm going to quit while I'm ahead and have a cup of coffee now and breathe for a few minutes before I dive into the dinner/dogwalk/kid-bath minirush of early evening. Four to about eight is a whirlwind in which the minutes tick by at a dizzying pace. I can't keep up, hell, I can't even keep track and suddenly the house is plunged into dark and quiet again and I am alone with my thoughts once more. That should not be allowed to happen, because my thoughts are like a bad date, they barge right in and then I can't get them to leave and I feel threatened and helpless. It's better just to keep moving and then drop. Get up and do it all over again.

Dear radio, please stop playing New Fang. I'm pleading on aching knees here. Please, vultures, release a new single.

I am sticking to this list because if I stray from it everything becomes so overwhelming I start to sink into the ground when I walk, stiletto heels first, though these days I live in my old pink camouflage converse all-stars. High tops, yes. A ridiculous small size of course because I have little feet. A wonderful feature when you have to tip-toe over five-hour-old varathane on a ninety-seven year old floor because you left a bunch of things in your bedroom, which is on the other side of that freshly-painted floor. Sigh.

So far so good. I am running a list for Ben too, because in nine days he is home again. The big white bird will spit him back into my arms for more time and it's already sorely needed but I'm beginning to have some hope that I am not stuck here forever. Sometimes it seems like it, especially when it's dark and cold.

On that note, we're up to three minutes, twenty-five seconds of extra daylight each day. It's now light out from about seven-thirty to well after six each night which is an absolute godsend of a different sort. I'm not unaware of the five weeks remaining in the winter but five weeks isn't insurmountable now, is it?

Depends on who you ask.

Speaking of others, Ben is doing well. I like it that he tells me of the harder parts and what he does to counteract them. Then I can try the same tricks and fail but at least I come away with knowing what makes him tick a little better. You would think after this long that I would know everything but I don't. Do we ever? Does he know everything about how I am? Well, of course he does. Sigh.

So much for that argument. In any case, absences do get easier and time heals all whatever. I'm numb, more likely. Numb and better within that numb to the point where the keening panic became a wooden ambivalence that leaves splinters behind when you try to run your hand across it. Self-preservation is an amazing mechanism and I am lucky to have it an any form at this point. A gift horse with a rather large and endless mouth, but I'm not looking into it, I just take what I am given and say thank you.

I read a quote yesterday about the school of hard knocks and I can't remember what it was. It might have been on Travis Barker's twitter. No, shoot. It was on someone's twitter. Twitter moves fast but it's like company you don't have to sit up straight for. I will keep looking for it, it was a great quote and I laughed and then I agreed with it. Twitter is always open on a tab now. The entertainment value is limitless.

And my mom made cookies and sent them to us, which just about sent Henry into spasms, he loves his Nana's chocolate-chip cookies and I always like the letters and stories and pictures she puts into them. Those boxes are my mom's version of Twitter, I think. Pretty cool. Thank you, mom.

I must go. I need match a paint color before I lose the light. Tomorrow's Thursday and there will be eight sleeps left and Vampire girl can sleep again, for a short while.

Vampire boy will be here keeping watch, and that is what I'm living for these days.

10 minutes to spare.

I have nothing for you except for sixty-odd messy sneezes and a very sore shoulder.

But the last floor is finished. Okay, not finished but good enough, which is the new motto around here lately.

Hideously tired and uninspired. Come back tomorrow, okay?

Homing angel.

This is the part where Ben gets eaten by the big white bird again.

He's gone already. The plane has taken off and with any luck his guitar and assorted musical amplifications will meet him at the baggage claim upon landing. If not he will use the insurance cash to buy something louder. He is not concerned in the least and only had the coffee-soaked blip of nerves this morning once settled in at the gate for the endless wait to board.

It was an amazing weekend. We did no work. Well, we did some, but mostly we organized the next visit, which is only eleven sleeps from now, because this weekend that just passed was the most exciting surprise, the best one, I think, and I am so happy he was here. We mostly spent the weekend in each others arms, staying up late, cuddling, snuggling, having family time and generally since it was not the first time he's come back, somehow it was easier to handle overall, though I still have moments this morning where it feels like the end of the world. We watched It Might Get Loud, which easily slid into my top ten movies of all time. Easily.

Over the course of Ben's next trip home the house officially hits the market and I'm now going to organize getting everything ready, cleaning, packing some of the valuables and things people don't need to be distracted by and I have to slap a coat of paint in the back porch and finish one floor upstairs. I'm not doing anything else. I will be content to let the rest go.

Upon first inspection the realtor told me flowers and a tablecloth would be nice, and wash windows and light fixtures too.

That's it?

That's it, she said.

Gosh, aside from the daunting task of washing the windows I hope someone buys it. I'm tempted to bury St. Joseph out there in the snow to help things along. I may not be catholic but I love relics and this house is a big one. Cross your fingers for me, I could use some luck for a change.

Ben is still in the air, his St. Christopher medal anchored around his neck for a safe flight, his hands full with the memories of holding us to keep him comforted for this next round of days apart, soon to be spilled onto the strings of his favorite strat, turning tactile memory into musical notes, turning pain into something good.