The holy triad and I'm drunk.

Nice. They're sitting here making jokes about drunk princesses what she will do and I don't even care. I do care about good punctuation, however, so I'm making sure that I'm not spelling things wrong. What I don't care about also would be what people think of the fact that I sleepw ith who I want to. Whatever, fuck off. I'm not your problem. And aren't you lucky for that.

Not here for the ability to make good conversation.

I stood on the balcony this morning overlooking the grounds and the ocean beyond. The water was the most beautiful shade of teal black I have ever seen. The fog was tight and invasive and it was freezing but I stood there anyway and let the rain ruin me. My scarlet slip was glued to my skin, my hair was pressed to my scalp and stuck to my back and I shivered so hard I wondered if I would fall over but I didn't move. Not an inch. Not a deep breath. I just let it take me in and I fell asleep with my eyes open, dreaming of shipwrecks and sea monsters and hard lives carried out along the edge of the unforgiving waters.

Jesus Christ.

Oh, that's a Jacob-remark if ever there was one but it came from Lochlan and I rolled my eyes. He came out with a blanket and put it around my shoulders but I didn't reach for it and so it slid to the floor. I shook my head once and he didn't catch it. Don't interrupt me, I'm escaping right now and I don't want you here but instead he continued to gently berate me only I couldn't hear a word for the competing roar of the surf against the steady downpour of the rain. Drowning in his words. Too small to touch bottom, too paralyzed to do anything about it. I swallow all of the water until the lights go out and everything is black.

This is how I die.

They don't like that and Lochlan could read the words in my eyes because I'm a billboard, everything I think is always clearly visible, just without context or timestamps and so he panicked and took me by the shoulders, turning me away from the water, waiting for my eyes to focus from nothing to his strawberry curls and soft blue eyes. Again with the gentle smiles, the oh my God she is so fucked up why are we persisting in letting her have this independence when she doesn't even know enough to stay out of the rain? look that leaves me happy he is as unsure and anxious and uncomfortable as I am because misery loves company. She adores it and invites it to dance. She bathes in it and kisses it and sleeps with it and dreams about it.

I shook my head again. Blue lips. Wild thoughts. Behave, princess, or they'll take you away from this.

Sorry, what?

What in the hell are you doing?

Thinking.

Can't you think where it's warm?

No?

Bridget, stop it.

Stop what?

This.

If you don't love me, go away. This is what I do.

No, it isn't.

Then you tell me my profession.

You write.

Ha.

Oh fuck off.

I haven't written anything worth reading in forever.

You've been under stress.

A low grade, slow-moving stress. I should be able to outwrite it.

Not when everything is new.

Wait, you're not supposed to be on my side, Lochlan.

I'm not used to being the rescuer.

Just the ruiner.

What?

Nothing.

Is it safe to leave you alone?

Never.

Bridge-

I'm fine. Really. I'm going to have a shower and get dressed and make coffee. Seriously. I'm fine.

You sure?

Yes.

I love you.

I love you too.

Bridget?

What?

What were you really doing?

Just enjoying the view. I missed the water.

Okay, but stay warm and dry to do it. You're going to worry Ben.

Sorry.

It's okay. See you in a bit.

Fine.

He stood there for a few more minutes. Not an awkward silence, just staring openly. I know what I looked like because once he was gone and had closed the door behind him, I went straight into my bathroom to run a hot shower and I met my reflection in the mirror halfway into the room.

Oh.

Lord.

Wow.

I wasn't the only one enjoying the view.

Caleb was sitting in his car in the driveway, with a perfect line of sight to my balcony.

The Dying Tree.

They cover the grass out here, a carpet of dried ivory paper cut out to resemble oak and sometimes maple leaves. Faded from the sun and curled by rain they scatter and come to rest again, sometimes face up so that you can discern different words or phrases, still, if you are very lucky. Otherwise you are forced to decipher what is carved into the bark, descriptions so breathtaking you fall to your knees, sermons and thought transcribed with emotion so thick your eyes water and you make excuses for the lump in your throat, maybe a cough, perhaps just clearing it. It wouldn't be noted, everyone has the same reaction to Jacob's reading tree.

Only Jacob's tree is dying and I didn't expect to come to the clearing and find it exposed to the sun, bare branches with all of the words stripped away so brutally but so naturally too. Because that's what death is, just one more part of life, one more thing we find so different and so sudden. Surprising. Final.

If you need me, I've gone home to get a basket so I can collect all of his leaves. I don't want them to blow away. The wind off the water can be fierce.

Influence.

The earth is MOVING.

Henry comes home from school now and eats five cookies and then goes downstairs and pounds away on the drums for forty minutes every day.

He does not have a light touch. Granted, he is the tallest, heaviest eight-year-old I have ever met so maybe that was to be expected. It's pretty cool actually. He asked me last night if he could live at home for a while after college so he and his band can 'get off the ground without starving to death.'

Next week I'm expecting him to grow a beard sometime between recess and his 8:30 pm bedtime.

Cole would have been so proud, like we all are. My kids are awesome.

Princess crossing.

Another province, another driver's license, and this time my height clocks in at a staggering 1.6 metres.

Meters? I still haven't memorized the centimetres one from the last province. Or inches for that matter.

And for the record, they still got it wrong. Right across the country now. She ASKED me how tall I was and I told her and once again I think my shoes got factored in..oh well.

I'll take it. I didn't think they were going to give me any licence here for a moment or two. I got a little road safety quiz (which they didn't give to Ben, since I think they were just totally intimidated by him and decided to punish me, since before they would even put my changes through I was sent home for my marriage license.) and I completely blew one question, but they passed me anyway because it would be the right answer for everything east of here.

I left with my yellow temporary papers, so there. And I'm going to hold them up and wave them in the air and you might even see them this time! That's how tall I am now, folks.

Snow in summer.

Cerastium tomentosum.

Invasive flowers, gorgeous perennials in the form of tiny white flowers with frosted foliage, and every time I see them I stop and take a picture. I took the picture to the ladies at the garden nursery and followed them all the way to the back where I was introduced to some tiny little boxes full of dirt with yellowy-green bits of moss in them.

They've been cut back. No worries, they grow quickly.

Ironic. We move to the rainforest and I find the neatest flowering shrubs that remind me of the beach because there used to be a half-barrel by the steps just full of this stuff and it was always windblown and beautiful and to this day reminds me of weathered boards and eyelet lace, two requirements for Bridget's beach, along with that famous pale turquoise string bikini that I still have somewhere because it remains Jacob's Favorite Outfit.

He had these flowers, by the driveway just off the road, we just never knew they had a name. Pretty wildflowers. That was it.

Snow in Summer, they're called. Snort. What the fuck. I came here to get away from the snow and now I'm going to plant it all over the place! A carpet of white to cover the green. I don't care if it's invasive either until it chokes off the roses. I have more roses, by the way. These ones are a vintage pink, the shade of the Avon lipstick my mom wore in the early seventies, that coral-pink that looks good with a tan. The lilacs are lilac-colored, of course and really, Ben doesn't seem to mind if all the flowers are pink and purple and white. He chose a cherry tree (for more pink, I guess) and an orange tree (with actual oranges!) and some begonias because he said they remind him of me, and they're an ivory with pale pink inside. Oh please. That isn't what he meant. He said they were breathtakingly, so maybe I get it though they could still die because I'll be so slow to turn this ground but oh, I do love flowers so much and this is the perfect place for endless wild gardens made impossible by the wind.

There's your common thread.

The wind brings everything and then whips it away again. It breathes through my hair and causes you to turn back. It carries the seeds of these flowers and dreams of Jacob who is gone but who resorted to cut flowers because things that are forgotten can't grow, princess and so just enjoy these and let someone else worry about all of that. And Ben took me for so many long walks to see the ones down the street that I carried lilacs the day we got married, even though there was no church, no aisle and no formalities and everyone was horrified because they were ruined the moment they were cut, and dripped their strange little petals everywhere, in our drinks, in my hair, ground into the carpet and yet they are all I want to smell forever and ever because I don't want to smell the roses, I just want to see them. Because roses smell like funerals and Bridget doesn't like those, oh no. Not one little bit and that's sad but they've been ruined that way.

Perhaps someday someone will make me a hybrid of sorts, a rose-lilac combination that looks beautiful, like a rose, but smells of the lilacs. We can call it a Lilose or a Rilac. I don't really care. I just hope it all works out. I'll plant them everywhere, instead of all this snow.

Strange and usual.

Sunday afternoon saw me ducking through the dusty second levels of an antique store in Chinatown. Yes, I found many things and I didn't buy anything, but I know exactly where to go when I'm ready to buy an oversized, hand-carved armoire. I just need to figure out where to put it first. I had one of those What am I doing here? moments when I realized my phone was still muted from the night before and none of the boys knew where I was.

I'm just here, I thought. In a strange city, in a strange neighborhood, upstairs in a strange little cramped store full of red lanterns and golden candles. Surrounded by people who don't speak English and without a dollar in my handbag, just my mastercard and my silent Blackberry.

I returned downstairs swiftly, making my way to the front of the shop, to the street outside where I ran into Ben before I noticed I wasn't actually outside yet. He had followed me and was waiting patiently at the bottom of the stairs, because going up is for small people, and he is like a bull in a china shop in most of these places, a huge beast of a man trying to navigate aisles full of delicate imports piled floor to ceiling, with signs everywhere saying if you break it, you buy it.

Familiarity in a face I have studied for years and in it I see the mirrored expression of wonderment at how we ended up here where everything is strange and new and we have to adjust and change and bend and adapt, almost like a miniature geographical evolution in gentle surroundings, as change hopefully should be but isn't.

Usually it's quick and painful and dark and sudden, like a rollercoaster that dips into a tunnel before shooting out into the sunlight and you swear you'll never ever ever go on it again. Then someone forces you to ride it until you vomit into the grass behind the lineup and they admit they pushed you too hard.

Yes, usually it's like that.

Today we went up into the mountains again. We're trying to fit in tiny afternoons of exploring so we can get to know the area, get to know what there is to do and to find fun and a break from unpacking and putting things away and because we are used to embracing t-shirt weather because we spent too long on the prairies and we're used to having a few weeks only to be outdoors in the sun without seventeen layers of wool and thinsulate between our flesh and certain death.

Habitual, ridiculous.

That doesn't happen here but we were out anyway, in spite of the cool cloudy weather. I have a bit of color in my face. The children are turning brown. Ben even got a little pink to make him less pale and he won't be rocking his vampire completion into this summer and is going to have to plan for something different, perhaps rockstar farmer or tan-pire. I'm not sure which but it makes me laugh.

The boys have gold fever suddenly, a thirst for vacation and a yearning for a huge block of time off just to keep going, keep exploring what's around the next corner or the next bend in the road. Maybe it's a symptom of wanderlust or the hallmark of true nomadism. Maybe it's just to make the strange familiar now.

Maybe I'm crazy and nothing will ever be familiar again.

Maybe I'm just good at playing along and finding neat things in dark places.

Sunday morning and Bridget's brain is still asleep.

Moody boy has his baseball cap on pulled down low over his eyes. Glasses on to read. Band hoodie. Band t-shirt. Jeans from yesterday because he was up first to walk the pup because once Bridget finally went to bed with her sugar-fueled dreams, it was pitch-black-lights-out, didn't move until I heard Ben talking softly to the dog on his way out this morning.

Then he was walking quietly through the room in his bare feet to check me a half hour later. I could hear Henry crashing plates around making toast and watching cartoons and I figured I may as well get up since really, the laundry has to be caught up and I could use coffee and I wanted another wonderful doughnut before the boys manage to eat them all. Though Ben has good restraint. These doughnuts don't provoke the excitement they do for me, since once he was American.

A kiss on mouth brought me fully awake and so I pulled on my robe and ventured downstairs to life.

Okay, here I am. Now what?

A list, a dare and a half-assed plan, or, Days that End in Y.

I have Alice in Chains tickets. And Deftones. And Tool. And Mastodon. My musical bucket list is being crossed off so quickly I get paper cuts trying to hang on to the page while life flings me from one show to the next. Quick, hand me that pen so I can cross these bands off, oh, and this one, and these guys too, okay? Right there, third from the top.

I'm grateful for the pace, frankly. My list revolves around my ever-worsening hearing. I'm playing beat the clock against permanent silence which scares me more than you will ever now. In the meantime, I'm going to continue in my role as the world's greatest music fan. I can claim that, you know. If not, I'll simply go with world's cutest music fan.

That's what brings all these talented boys and their instruments to my neck of the woods anyway, I won't deny it.

Snort.

Not to say I won't travel to finish off my list. Wacken is coming up soon, is it not? I can see myself now, in a field somewhere in Germany in a sea of mosh.

Probably not a good idea, Lochlan says.

Whenever someone says that I have a tendency to go do it, just to be difficult. I mean, think about it, all the speed metal one princess can handle and a trip to Europe besides. See some old friends, make some new ones.

It gets no better than that.

Posted before and you probably missed it like I did. And I posted it.

I know. Progressive metal, alternative rock, blah blah blah, as long as the lyrics are poignant I don't care if it's music made blowing across the top of a bottle of soda. Granted I tend toward the heavier because it's mad and Bridget needs music that feels for her. But every now and then something out of left field just gets jammed in my head and I'm stuck on it for months. Remember REM? Right. Like that but not annoying.

This.

(this band has a Ben involved and also (formerly) a Chris and a Rob. Assume nothing. But beards! Assume beards, they have good beards. Snort.)