Caleb sent over a get-well basket since he doesn't dare set foot in this house when I'm sick (so he doesn't get sick, apparently it makes Hell run very unsmoothly and frankly because I'm a very cranky person when I don't feel well) and I have pretty much worked my way through it. Pretty flowers. Cookies that Christian and Dalt pretty much divided and ate before I could unwrap my tea, complaining loudly that they could put down their fucking cookies and help me get the tea out of the package but the crunching pretty much overpowered my pointless whispers and then I started coughing and Dalton tells me hey Bridget why don't you make some tea?
I resisted the urge to wrestle him into the kitchen sink. fill him with hot water and place him on the piping hot burner but not by much.
Included was a handwritten note on Caleb's very neutral white paper (the color of SURRENDER, I might add) that he hopes I am feeling better quickly and we'll talk soon, probably on Saturday when he has his next round of sanctioned fatherhood. Also, enjoy the tea, since he is thrilled that everyone has given up sour mash and hops and distilled things in favor of steeped tea leaves.
As if he can talk.
Well he can't because I'm still presently suspicious and not speaking to him and every now and then something comes to me and I forget an answer to a question and so I dash off an email to the lawyers and my lawyers call his lawyers and his lawyers call him and usually within the hour I have the answers and half the time I TOTALLY remember what it was anyway and wow, if only I could get paid so much to do so little.
Oh, wait a minute.
But I don't CARE about that right now. I'm sick and I care about the fact that every time I swallow I want to punch a brick wall just to make something besides my throat hurt and my eyes are burning, my head is pounding but really, why aren't we travelling more and how in the HELL did we amass so much stuff after I swear I didn't pack all this stuff when we moved here and suddenly all my fucking shirts have tiny HOLES in them again and how is that happening and what the FUCK will make everyone happy for dinner even though I won't get home until 5:30 and that's only if I remember how to get home from the high school! which! is too close to the mountains! I have the water side of the highway down pat (but not at all) and maybe we'll just skip it and my fucking HAIR is driving me nuts because it's at the in-between stage just below my shoulders but never long enough now and my forehead is so hot I am burning from the inside and I wish Ben could stay home but he really can't anymore and I can look after myself but I miss him terribly and really who's bright fucking idea was it to make him the genius now when I think I liked him simpler and then this tea, this pretentious Tazo whatever stuff in Vanilla Rooibos (which I call ROOB-EE-OSE every single time) is far too sweet but decent quality and is this day over with so I can just go to sleep?
Keep the cookies, the sweet tea, the fever and the crankies. Just let me close my eyes.
Thursday 20 January 2011
Wednesday 19 January 2011
Hey BEN (busy bee, let me distract him, just for a minute).
When I feel (a lot) better soon, the lap dance song for this year is going to be this.
Because it's awesome.
Just like me.
Because it's awesome.
Just like me.
I am burning up, literally on fire with a fever from the inside out which means I am once again quarantined to the house and I am not happy about it at all but too sick to care, honestly. I have resorted to listening to the chickadees outside the window and Army of Anyone on the stereo, and reading Self-immolations through Time.
I reheated some chicken noodle soup of a questionable vintage that I found in the back of the fridge and I'm poking myself with watercolor pencils every fifteen minutes to stay awake.
Worst day ever.
I reheated some chicken noodle soup of a questionable vintage that I found in the back of the fridge and I'm poking myself with watercolor pencils every fifteen minutes to stay awake.
Worst day ever.
Tuesday 18 January 2011
Loco (motive).
Hey everyone,One of the biggest positive changes since the move has been the daily dog-walks.
I got nowhere to go
The grave is lazy
He takes our bodies slowly
And I said please
Don't talk about the end
Don't talk about how every little thing goes away
She said, friend, all along
Thought I was learning how to take
How to bend not how to break
How to live not how to cry
But really
I've been learning how to die
You'll remember the old walks. Every day I contemplated the incredible proximity and danger provided by the train yard at the end of my street. I could reach out and touch the trains as they roared past. I flattened millions of pennies on the tracks. I could have stepped in front of every last one of those trains. I jumped out of my skin dozens of times a day as they sounded their whistles. I lamented the location of the castle in the dark winter mornings when the night train would screech through the west end of the city at a walking pace.
It was possibly the loneliest place in the world and I hated it though I went every single day, sometimes twice.
When there were no trains, the fields were desolate and spartan, deserted and dangerous. What used to be the perfect place for Jacob to let Butterfield off his leash to run circles around us was no place for a small blonde girl alone with her laughable fifteen-pound puppy.
There are no freight trains here.
We walk on a lovingly swept and power-washed sidewalk when we are not on a landscaped evergreen path into the woods. We pass big beautiful new houses, admiring the gardens and outdoor decorations. The expansive front porches and custom-built fences, the slate walkways. The neighbors are mostly around, and they say hello. Other people walking their dogs say hello. Children smile. Sometimes people come out and begin conversations. I almost feel as if I'm in a pageant every time I leave the house. Smile and wave. In the prairies I could shrug into my big heavy but not warm jacket and my not-quite-warm-enough boots and wouldn't see another person for miles in the minus thirty degree average winter day. The trains were my company and they never had anything to say.
This is much better. The boys are so happy there are no trains. And I kept one very flat smooth penny, for luck. Or maybe so I don't forget how lucky I am.
Monday 17 January 2011
The hand went up, his thumb smoothing my bangs across my forehead, revealing my eyes, smoothing my hair back behind one ear and then leaving his hand there while I fell asleep, my cheek against his warm palm. One of the few ways I could ever fall asleep in the camper, with the strange noises that seemed as if they were right on the other side of the wall and the way it would bounce gently in the wind, no shocks left, bald wheels and a rusty hitch lending it all the credibility it was ever going to have.
Cole called it the have-not years. Bridget's hedonism. Ironic because Cole and I never had two nickels to rub together until Batman saw one of Cole's photographs of me and introduced him to people who made a sport out of art, and Cole was exposed to enough high-profile, wealthy people that suddenly his work was in such demand he couldn't keep up and he became an overnight success in such an incredibly strange and esoteric niche that life flew by in an instant and suddenly we were moving and then we were drowning in Cole's madness and the pressure was too much for him and for every dollar they gave him he broke off a piece of his soul and handed it, crumbling, back to them.
Batman had opened the floodgates but he had no idea that blessings are curses too. He was too busy, anyway. When he wasn't flying in and out of town, he was pretending he didn't need to check up on me more than once a year by having Caleb do it on his behalf, only Caleb fed him a steady stream of lies and Batman finally cut him out of the picture and they became adversaries, both siding with Cole, both jockeying for credit for Cole's success.
Cole's success belonged to Cole and Cole alone because whatever Cole saw through his viewfinder he could transfer to print and it stunned me to a fault. It's why I laugh when I look at the Ferris wheel picture Lochlan took and cry when I see the candids that Sam took of me at the first Mother's Day brunch that Jacob held at the church. They can't do with a camera what Cole could do and that's okay because they have other equally significant gifts.
My hedonism was an invention. I was simply a girl afraid of the dark and I knew where to go to feel safer.
Cole called it the have-not years. Bridget's hedonism. Ironic because Cole and I never had two nickels to rub together until Batman saw one of Cole's photographs of me and introduced him to people who made a sport out of art, and Cole was exposed to enough high-profile, wealthy people that suddenly his work was in such demand he couldn't keep up and he became an overnight success in such an incredibly strange and esoteric niche that life flew by in an instant and suddenly we were moving and then we were drowning in Cole's madness and the pressure was too much for him and for every dollar they gave him he broke off a piece of his soul and handed it, crumbling, back to them.
Batman had opened the floodgates but he had no idea that blessings are curses too. He was too busy, anyway. When he wasn't flying in and out of town, he was pretending he didn't need to check up on me more than once a year by having Caleb do it on his behalf, only Caleb fed him a steady stream of lies and Batman finally cut him out of the picture and they became adversaries, both siding with Cole, both jockeying for credit for Cole's success.
Cole's success belonged to Cole and Cole alone because whatever Cole saw through his viewfinder he could transfer to print and it stunned me to a fault. It's why I laugh when I look at the Ferris wheel picture Lochlan took and cry when I see the candids that Sam took of me at the first Mother's Day brunch that Jacob held at the church. They can't do with a camera what Cole could do and that's okay because they have other equally significant gifts.
My hedonism was an invention. I was simply a girl afraid of the dark and I knew where to go to feel safer.
Sunday 16 January 2011
Feet on the ground.
An awareness of standing on concrete. Pavement. Grass. Mud. Hard-packed well-traveled dirt even. I would become consciously aware that I was standing. That I was living. It always seems to hit out of the blue in the two seconds of silence before the next song begins.
Maybe that was how I decided I hated snow. I wanted to be on the ground.
In any case, the feverish disdain for blacker days here that I was warned of a thousand times over has not hit, and I am still cautiously inclined to point out it's the snow and the cold that I can't stand, and really having grown up on a rainy damp coast I'm well-suited to life as a duckling. My feet might be webbed. Water might bead on my hair. I imprint easily, if you have a beard and a smile for me.
My fingers have not split. My hair has not dried out to hay-status. My body has not degenerated into a battleground of hives and eczema and extreme crackled dryness. My mind has not shut down in the cold, bereft for lack of music on the worst days because my phone (any phone) ceases to operate at those temperatures. Instead I can pick out pretty shirts that will show (AKA without sweaters!) and run around the house and porch in bare feet for the entire day if I want and I won't feel a chill. The heat in this house has not made it over 57 and we haven't noticed if it's even on, half the time.
When the dark closes in I light candles and reading lamps and sometimes have a fire in the fireplace. When the rain pours I make sure we have a few backup umbrellas and the other day I laughed out loud when I went to shrug into my winter coat only to realize how warm it was and I went out in jeans, a t-shirt and a hoodie instead. The hoodie wasn't even zipped up. Everyone I met was treated to a whole enthusiastic depiction of the fact that It's January! We don't need coats! Can you believe it! And they shrug and laugh at my excitement and tell me I will get used to it. I practically skip down the road now. You would laugh.
I have mastered driving in night-rain. I have solved most of the problems with wet feet. Instead of extra gloves and sweaters, the children carry extra socks in their daypacks and we buy very good rain boots and umbrellas to keep the rain an arm's length away. I have all but dimissed worries involving freezing to death and I'm almost grateful for the damp air to breath when we aren't well, because dry air has a tendency to bring the colds and keep them in our lungs.
With Ben still very sick it is easy for me to head out in search of juice and soup and cough drops and nyquil without him worrying about me driving on ice and I've already forgotten the description they used to use for when the snow packed down hard and glossy and they would have to bring in the big cats and dumptrucks and carve down to the road level again so that people could actually enjoy brakes when they drove instead of drifting right through stop signs, despite that top speed of five kilometres an hour. Was it gloss? No, I'm pretty sure I would have remembered that.
I believe the snow was weighing me down, frankly. It looks so innocent and beautiful. Special, individually. No two are alike. But then it forms a gang and chokes off the flowers and the life visible for miles and you wear it on your being in the form of layers of wool and silk and gortex and thinsulate and you curse your feet as they slip out from under you and you breath out fog that contains epithets of misery and everyone pretends they are all in this together when really you have been standing on the fringe trying desperately to escape into your head for so long now you can only tell the difference between the place inside your head and the one outside by the presence of snow.
I'm putting snow into its place in my life now. It dusts the tops of the majestic mountains that surround me with a pure white coat of icing sugar. It beckons to come play and then leave it behind again. It's a Bob Ross touch painted with a number five brush dipped in a swatch of titanium white, left to dry on a canvas of fantasy and that's where I'm leaving it today. The lowest low through the end of January is slated to be three degrees and I am jumping for joy.
Maybe that was how I decided I hated snow. I wanted to be on the ground.
In any case, the feverish disdain for blacker days here that I was warned of a thousand times over has not hit, and I am still cautiously inclined to point out it's the snow and the cold that I can't stand, and really having grown up on a rainy damp coast I'm well-suited to life as a duckling. My feet might be webbed. Water might bead on my hair. I imprint easily, if you have a beard and a smile for me.
My fingers have not split. My hair has not dried out to hay-status. My body has not degenerated into a battleground of hives and eczema and extreme crackled dryness. My mind has not shut down in the cold, bereft for lack of music on the worst days because my phone (any phone) ceases to operate at those temperatures. Instead I can pick out pretty shirts that will show (AKA without sweaters!) and run around the house and porch in bare feet for the entire day if I want and I won't feel a chill. The heat in this house has not made it over 57 and we haven't noticed if it's even on, half the time.
When the dark closes in I light candles and reading lamps and sometimes have a fire in the fireplace. When the rain pours I make sure we have a few backup umbrellas and the other day I laughed out loud when I went to shrug into my winter coat only to realize how warm it was and I went out in jeans, a t-shirt and a hoodie instead. The hoodie wasn't even zipped up. Everyone I met was treated to a whole enthusiastic depiction of the fact that It's January! We don't need coats! Can you believe it! And they shrug and laugh at my excitement and tell me I will get used to it. I practically skip down the road now. You would laugh.
I have mastered driving in night-rain. I have solved most of the problems with wet feet. Instead of extra gloves and sweaters, the children carry extra socks in their daypacks and we buy very good rain boots and umbrellas to keep the rain an arm's length away. I have all but dimissed worries involving freezing to death and I'm almost grateful for the damp air to breath when we aren't well, because dry air has a tendency to bring the colds and keep them in our lungs.
With Ben still very sick it is easy for me to head out in search of juice and soup and cough drops and nyquil without him worrying about me driving on ice and I've already forgotten the description they used to use for when the snow packed down hard and glossy and they would have to bring in the big cats and dumptrucks and carve down to the road level again so that people could actually enjoy brakes when they drove instead of drifting right through stop signs, despite that top speed of five kilometres an hour. Was it gloss? No, I'm pretty sure I would have remembered that.
I believe the snow was weighing me down, frankly. It looks so innocent and beautiful. Special, individually. No two are alike. But then it forms a gang and chokes off the flowers and the life visible for miles and you wear it on your being in the form of layers of wool and silk and gortex and thinsulate and you curse your feet as they slip out from under you and you breath out fog that contains epithets of misery and everyone pretends they are all in this together when really you have been standing on the fringe trying desperately to escape into your head for so long now you can only tell the difference between the place inside your head and the one outside by the presence of snow.
I'm putting snow into its place in my life now. It dusts the tops of the majestic mountains that surround me with a pure white coat of icing sugar. It beckons to come play and then leave it behind again. It's a Bob Ross touch painted with a number five brush dipped in a swatch of titanium white, left to dry on a canvas of fantasy and that's where I'm leaving it today. The lowest low through the end of January is slated to be three degrees and I am jumping for joy.
Saturday 15 January 2011
Thrill.
He pulled the hoodie down over my head roughly, still vaguely angry that I failed to remember to bring a sweater. I was in a rush. He made no move to pull my hair out from underneath it. I never did if I knew I would be on the rides. I couldn't stand ponytails and if I braided it it just became kinked-up later and so instead I left it tucked into my shirts and jackets virtually all of the time.
Warmer?
Yes. Thank you.
Good.
Lochlan kissed my forehead and then grabbed my hand, pulling me up the ramp and then stopping and waiting for me to climb into the basket first. I did and he paused, pulling out his little camera and telling me to say cheese. He snapped the picture and then he piled in against me, putting his arm around my shoulders and pulling me in close to him as the bar was secured in front of us. A little thrill ran through me. This was one of my rewards at the end of every evening. The wheel was kept open an extra twenty minutes so that I could have one private ride. So I could enjoy the stars and the weightless drop without being surrounded by crowds. I always had an hour to spare before Cole picked me up.
The wheel creaked forward. Three times backwards, five times forwards and then three times backwards again. I never counted anymore so that I wouldn't have the looming disappointment of knowing it was coming to an end. I never closed my eyes until at least the third trip around the wheel and I never let go of the front of Lochlan's shirt, holding on for dear life as I had every year for five years running because the very top of the wheel never ceased to scare me just a little even though I watched them put it together. I watched the inspections every morning and I trusted these boys with my life.
It stopped when we were right at the top. I knew I had about one minute to take in the stars before it would start up again.
Make a wish, Bridget.
(silence)
Did you? In time? Want me to ask for another stop?
I got it. I'm good.
What did you wish for?
If I tell you it will never happen.
Sure it will, once the wish is loose it comes true.
I wish I could do this every night for the rest of my life.
He squeezed me. Me too.
When we got to the bottom again I asked Lochlan if I could have the picture he took. He shook his head and laughed.
Maybe I can have a copy made for you. Besides, why would you want a picture of yourself?
So I can remember this.
I'll make sure to frame it and always keep it where you can see it whenever you want.
Promise?
I promise.
Cole was waiting in the parking lot when we got off. I walked through the gates, got into his car and we drove away. Lochlan went back to the camper. I would see him tomorrow morning again, so I hardly ever said goodnight. Years later he would tell me that really bothered him, that I never said it.
It still bothers him now, if I forget.
It bothers me that I was right about my wishes.
Warmer?
Yes. Thank you.
Good.
Lochlan kissed my forehead and then grabbed my hand, pulling me up the ramp and then stopping and waiting for me to climb into the basket first. I did and he paused, pulling out his little camera and telling me to say cheese. He snapped the picture and then he piled in against me, putting his arm around my shoulders and pulling me in close to him as the bar was secured in front of us. A little thrill ran through me. This was one of my rewards at the end of every evening. The wheel was kept open an extra twenty minutes so that I could have one private ride. So I could enjoy the stars and the weightless drop without being surrounded by crowds. I always had an hour to spare before Cole picked me up.
The wheel creaked forward. Three times backwards, five times forwards and then three times backwards again. I never counted anymore so that I wouldn't have the looming disappointment of knowing it was coming to an end. I never closed my eyes until at least the third trip around the wheel and I never let go of the front of Lochlan's shirt, holding on for dear life as I had every year for five years running because the very top of the wheel never ceased to scare me just a little even though I watched them put it together. I watched the inspections every morning and I trusted these boys with my life.
It stopped when we were right at the top. I knew I had about one minute to take in the stars before it would start up again.
Make a wish, Bridget.
(silence)
Did you? In time? Want me to ask for another stop?
I got it. I'm good.
What did you wish for?
If I tell you it will never happen.
Sure it will, once the wish is loose it comes true.
I wish I could do this every night for the rest of my life.
He squeezed me. Me too.
When we got to the bottom again I asked Lochlan if I could have the picture he took. He shook his head and laughed.
Maybe I can have a copy made for you. Besides, why would you want a picture of yourself?
So I can remember this.
I'll make sure to frame it and always keep it where you can see it whenever you want.
Promise?
I promise.
Cole was waiting in the parking lot when we got off. I walked through the gates, got into his car and we drove away. Lochlan went back to the camper. I would see him tomorrow morning again, so I hardly ever said goodnight. Years later he would tell me that really bothered him, that I never said it.
It still bothers him now, if I forget.
It bothers me that I was right about my wishes.
Friday 14 January 2011
Prince of hotness.
The bento boxes are actually real.
My plan is to learn to get very good at doing designs and critters and characters out of every day foods since three or more members of my family take lunches with them when they leave in the morning.
Yes, even the big one, who would just be so impressed to unpack his meal at lunch time and find hard-boiled egg bunnies or carrot flowers.
Right? Right? I know! The look on his face. I would pay for it. I'll have to settle for the awkward suggestion when he gets home that I stick to sandwiches cut in half and no Sanrio please, we have no sense of humor after all.
Pft.
Lunches were lacking this week anyway since he didn't work, choosing to suck in all the germs within an eleventy-zillion mile radius and come down with pneumonia and at this point he's relegated to a few delirious hours a day where he proclaims to have obsolete pop songs stuck in his head and lists wildly to the right as he walks across the room. And also? Lochlan's crown as (literally) Hottest Man Alive has been stolen, Ben smashing it down over his own skull as his fevers ranged from 102 to 105 and back again all damned week long.
I have two and a half days to make more tea and soup, fetch more juice, encourage more sleep and generally police the bottle of penicillin that sits by the sink waiting to be opened every eight hours in case Ben forgets, in his delirium. Then he goes back to work. Back to his office where he churns out projects and impresses people so jaded they arrive in shades of green and the cycle will continue again. Back to routine.
Back with tomato roses and cucumber sprigs curled into filigree!
Muhahaha.
My plan is to learn to get very good at doing designs and critters and characters out of every day foods since three or more members of my family take lunches with them when they leave in the morning.
Yes, even the big one, who would just be so impressed to unpack his meal at lunch time and find hard-boiled egg bunnies or carrot flowers.
Right? Right? I know! The look on his face. I would pay for it. I'll have to settle for the awkward suggestion when he gets home that I stick to sandwiches cut in half and no Sanrio please, we have no sense of humor after all.
Pft.
Lunches were lacking this week anyway since he didn't work, choosing to suck in all the germs within an eleventy-zillion mile radius and come down with pneumonia and at this point he's relegated to a few delirious hours a day where he proclaims to have obsolete pop songs stuck in his head and lists wildly to the right as he walks across the room. And also? Lochlan's crown as (literally) Hottest Man Alive has been stolen, Ben smashing it down over his own skull as his fevers ranged from 102 to 105 and back again all damned week long.
I have two and a half days to make more tea and soup, fetch more juice, encourage more sleep and generally police the bottle of penicillin that sits by the sink waiting to be opened every eight hours in case Ben forgets, in his delirium. Then he goes back to work. Back to his office where he churns out projects and impresses people so jaded they arrive in shades of green and the cycle will continue again. Back to routine.
Back with tomato roses and cucumber sprigs curled into filigree!
Muhahaha.
Thursday 13 January 2011
Bento boxes. He said I forgot those too.
Now don't believe she'll never leave again,(Daniel wants me to remind you to not forget to store your pens together. This is critical. Especially if you need a year to motivate yourself to do it.)
I can't forget the words she said back when.
Today I bought myself a new pair of army pants, found out my favorite bakery has a whole! big! bin! by the door of lovely things they made yesterday that didn't sell that will fit in my freezer just fine, and then drove all the freaking way downtown on a moment's notice to pick up a still-sick Benjamin.
And then for Benjamin, and ONLY for Benjamin, I did not resist when he suggested a picnic in the car, since we stopped at a drive-through on the way home because it takes forever to get downtown and home again and we had fifteen minutes to spare before the kids were finished school. If you know me you'll know that I don't eat in my car! Seriously. I threw a fit at Cole in 1999 after we seemed to spend more time in the parking lot of most fast food restaurants than we did in the tiny kitchen of our rental flat and I said I would never do it again. Ben promised it wouldn't become a habit.
This evening I took Ruth up to the high school for her first honour band practice, because she was asked to join. I am very, very proud. I tend not to talk about my children much online, simply because some day they will take a serious interest in reading my archives and I don't want them to think that I mined their lives for blog-fodder (the boys on the other hand, well, they're grownups. It's different.)
My legs fell asleep sitting on the steps by the gym waiting for her and I got to see an incredibly entertaining cross-section of high school drama and I sat there biting my tongue, desperate to tell the two involved that in twenty years so much will have happened that it doesn't matter.
I didn't say anything, if that's what you're wondering.
So it was sort of a long day, in that my knees were asleep for most of it and all of it involved looking after everybody else, which is a nice change from everybody looking after me.
Wednesday 12 January 2011
We got the patina thing from Apartment Therapy too.
Barometer?
It's rowing out. Which is snow mixed with rain, in this house. Making for eleven-hundred pound shovelfuls, and Bridget's little turbo parked in the driveway isn't going anywhere until the snow is gone. Mostly because life is all uphill and downhill here (HA, I made a funny) and frankly hills + snow sort of terrify me and I will scream out loud as I'm driving. I can drown out Pete Steele on my stereo and he's parked posthumously on volume number forty-two, in Bose car-stereo speak. That's VERY LOUD to you without my car stereo, amps under the seats so Bridget gets her full-body sensory musical experience, every time.
Bonham leapt through the snow this morning like a small, furry gazelle with no legs, and wore himself to bits sixty feet down the sidewalk (his legs are six inches long, we got eight inches of snow, so he body-surfed with no one to carry him along, you see), and is now resting comfortably at Ben's feet on the couch. Ben has been sleeping on said couch since six this morning. We woke up at four, realized the power was off (again, what is it with you, Vancouver?) and checked our phones, snoozed until they actually went off, and then he got ready for work, I took the gazelle up the road and then Ben told me over one hell of a barking cough that there was no way in hell he could manage the day and that was that. Third day in a row and that's when I start to worry and so when/if he gets up he's going to go to the doctor because he's been too miserable too long.
I am faring much better. Possibly because I refuse to let it get me but I've got a very raw throat and some seriously exciting and questionable things coming out of my nose that *almost* make me want to show the boys but otherwise I am still holding steady. The massive aches and pains don't seem to kick in until late evening.
Being sick 'adds patina' to the house, I guess. Otherwise we're just glaring perfection in the face of flawed humanity.
Oh, shut the fuck up. I'm kidding. I'm delirious from lack of sleep and the knowledge that this spring, an Anthropologie store is going in on Granville Street and I swear to God you're never going to see me again.
Also I heard Michael Kors is coming. I have a Michael Kors bag but empty it is too heavy to carry because of the latch so if I have to use it I make the boys carry it for me and that looks a little awkward and also it comes back sans lip glosses. That pisses me off.
I'm starving which always makes me weird. Three pieces of (sprouted) grain bread with jam (the closest thing I can find to the Goodhearty bread from Wolfville that my mom discovered and smuggled out of the Annapolis valley for me) and I'm eyeing the clock. I should just eat the damned pretzels in spite of the salt. Fuck the salt when I'm hungry. Feed the Bridget.
She's a monster.
PS I haven't heard from Caleb. I did hear from the court. Everything is duly noted and I could hear audible eye-rolling going on as I was warned to get our acts together because we use up a lot of resources with this whole love-hate-parenting arrangement. Lochlan is cautiously optimistic and terrified and nostalgic and remorseful all at once and secrets loom large. Caleb could respond antagonistically or he could be uncharacteristic. He is not usually unpredictable but I never know.
So I am instructed to hold tight, and I will for the moment. I'm going to go back to my new favorite hobby with Daniel, which is snarking on Apartment Therapy posts. Where they discuss riveting topics like the revelation of using coat hooks for...a coat rack! And microwave 'hacks' like cooking eggs. And my favorite, how to manage your laundry! If those don't make you wonder, these same people extol the virtues of choosing throw pillows, all under $100! (Who buys a $100 throw pillow? Someone who can't figure out how to make an egg in a microwave, apparently.)
This is the apocalypse, my friends, only it's very slow-moving and well-coordinated, with designer fabrics and the word 'hack' sprinkled on everything liberally, like a bad cough.
With that I am out. Places to go, people to molest. Possibly antibiotics to buy. Drive safe.
It's rowing out. Which is snow mixed with rain, in this house. Making for eleven-hundred pound shovelfuls, and Bridget's little turbo parked in the driveway isn't going anywhere until the snow is gone. Mostly because life is all uphill and downhill here (HA, I made a funny) and frankly hills + snow sort of terrify me and I will scream out loud as I'm driving. I can drown out Pete Steele on my stereo and he's parked posthumously on volume number forty-two, in Bose car-stereo speak. That's VERY LOUD to you without my car stereo, amps under the seats so Bridget gets her full-body sensory musical experience, every time.
Bonham leapt through the snow this morning like a small, furry gazelle with no legs, and wore himself to bits sixty feet down the sidewalk (his legs are six inches long, we got eight inches of snow, so he body-surfed with no one to carry him along, you see), and is now resting comfortably at Ben's feet on the couch. Ben has been sleeping on said couch since six this morning. We woke up at four, realized the power was off (again, what is it with you, Vancouver?) and checked our phones, snoozed until they actually went off, and then he got ready for work, I took the gazelle up the road and then Ben told me over one hell of a barking cough that there was no way in hell he could manage the day and that was that. Third day in a row and that's when I start to worry and so when/if he gets up he's going to go to the doctor because he's been too miserable too long.
I am faring much better. Possibly because I refuse to let it get me but I've got a very raw throat and some seriously exciting and questionable things coming out of my nose that *almost* make me want to show the boys but otherwise I am still holding steady. The massive aches and pains don't seem to kick in until late evening.
Being sick 'adds patina' to the house, I guess. Otherwise we're just glaring perfection in the face of flawed humanity.
Oh, shut the fuck up. I'm kidding. I'm delirious from lack of sleep and the knowledge that this spring, an Anthropologie store is going in on Granville Street and I swear to God you're never going to see me again.
Also I heard Michael Kors is coming. I have a Michael Kors bag but empty it is too heavy to carry because of the latch so if I have to use it I make the boys carry it for me and that looks a little awkward and also it comes back sans lip glosses. That pisses me off.
I'm starving which always makes me weird. Three pieces of (sprouted) grain bread with jam (the closest thing I can find to the Goodhearty bread from Wolfville that my mom discovered and smuggled out of the Annapolis valley for me) and I'm eyeing the clock. I should just eat the damned pretzels in spite of the salt. Fuck the salt when I'm hungry. Feed the Bridget.
She's a monster.
PS I haven't heard from Caleb. I did hear from the court. Everything is duly noted and I could hear audible eye-rolling going on as I was warned to get our acts together because we use up a lot of resources with this whole love-hate-parenting arrangement. Lochlan is cautiously optimistic and terrified and nostalgic and remorseful all at once and secrets loom large. Caleb could respond antagonistically or he could be uncharacteristic. He is not usually unpredictable but I never know.
So I am instructed to hold tight, and I will for the moment. I'm going to go back to my new favorite hobby with Daniel, which is snarking on Apartment Therapy posts. Where they discuss riveting topics like the revelation of using coat hooks for...a coat rack! And microwave 'hacks' like cooking eggs. And my favorite, how to manage your laundry! If those don't make you wonder, these same people extol the virtues of choosing throw pillows, all under $100! (Who buys a $100 throw pillow? Someone who can't figure out how to make an egg in a microwave, apparently.)
This is the apocalypse, my friends, only it's very slow-moving and well-coordinated, with designer fabrics and the word 'hack' sprinkled on everything liberally, like a bad cough.
With that I am out. Places to go, people to molest. Possibly antibiotics to buy. Drive safe.
Tuesday 11 January 2011
A place that might surprise you, and a Ferris wheel made of cheese.
(For the moment, I will try to bring closure to one damn thing on this journal.)
I'm pretty sure that Jacob would be rolling over in his grave today, if he was in one, but he isn't, he's in a big copper urn in a little white house in Newfoundland and some of him is in a tiny copper box here on the mantle with Butterfield in one as well. I seem to be collecting boxes with dead things. Oh joy, I've finally become one of those really creepy-
Wait a minute.
I always was vaguely creepy and weird so maybe nevermind.
What I meant to say is that Jacob backed up Ben and forgave him time and time again, when there was positively nothing redeemable about Ben whatsoever. Jacob gave me his blessing to rely on Ben in the letters left for me and Jacob believed that deep down Ben was a good person, when everyone else threw up their hands, blocked Ben's phone number and told him when he finally smartened up they would be happy to be friends again.
Maybe Ben is just coming full circle after an incredibly difficult five years. Maybe Jacob was just better at reading people. Maybe Ben is a trickster, a shaman, a fraud. Maybe Ben and Lochlan are working together on a slow and non-suspicious snail-paced abduction and brainwashing and I am too stupid to understand the difference.
Maybe none of them will ever get along sufficiently to last a week without a punch thrown or a few hours of silent treatment, or a silent mark kept on a lifetime board that holds so many strikes-you're-out that the game has become one of endurance, played through decades and styles and mindsets and plans.
Maybe I am the last of us to turn forty this year (shut UP) and it's simply time things change, because things were out of control.
So far out of control that it has come to this and this is something I can endorse because I tend to agree with Jacob. Ben was never much good at keeping up the charm for long. At worst he's an unruly five-year-old with a truck in one hand and a sunflower in the other and he had big plans to rule the world with his music someday only at best he's one hell of a wild, unruly type with little self-control and no plans for the future past riding out the day. Throw in a case of incurable stage fright, an inability to get along with others in close quarters and hold to big decisions for very long and a heavy hand that belies his incredibly fragile heart and you have a force to be reckoned with. The Dark Side.
Ben needs time apart from people. Down time. Time to unwind. He needs space to spread out and please, don't touch his stuff. Advise him of the best way to proceed and then trick him into confirming the most beneficial choice with you and call it a decision. Don't try to contain him, for there isn't a room that can. Get him off the stage and let him rule the world in a different way, in which his name will become synonymous with great things without him having to sell his soul every night under the hot lights to get it.
Jacob gave me permission to love Ben when all signs pointed to that being a recklessness of the highest degree.
But Jacob didn't make me fall in love with Ben, Ben did. And when no one's looking (better yet, when no one is talking about the last thing Ben ate that wasn't exactly edible like truck tires, ipods or Bridget's watermelon all-chemical lip gloss), Ben does things that continue to surprise.
Like spend years culling favors and keeping friends in order to help another friend and save my life at the same time, in a way I can't tell you about because the Internet remains a stranger sometimes, not a friend.
And now Ben holds the upper hand, in everything. And even Caleb with his threats and history and potential for total ruin can't touch us anymore. None of us. Lochlan is safe. I am safe. The memories are safe, tucked in tightly with the secrets and the grief and I was taken this morning to close another chapter of life that I left open a little too long, page turned down repeatedly, threadbare fibers waging tears between the words, spine cracked on a book that is too hard for most people to read. One I now know by heart, word for word.
I stepped through the threshold into the concrete room and Jacob was standing in the light. Ben entered behind me. Jacob nodded. Tucker, he said softly. Zero, Ben replied. Jacob broke into a gentle grin and my heart strained against the stitches. It's funny how things that shouldn't be are intertwined in a way that everything happens at once or nothing ever happens at all. I would like more of the latter, I think.
Are you sure I have to do this?
I need to go, princess.
Just so you know, I'd like to keep you here forever, but I know I can't.
I think things will be easier for you now. You don't need to come here to spend time with me.
What if things don't get better?
Then you have a willing cavalry to help you.
I love you, Jakey.
I love you, princess. You know where to find me.(Thankfully he did not point straight up. I might have died from cheesiness and a proliferation of flashbacks to watching Highway to Heaven.)
I closed my eyes together tightly. I squished my whole face up in an effort not to cry. When I opened them he was gone. No goodbye. No drawn-out departure. No last chance. I was aware I was holding Ben's hand so tightly my fingers ached. I let go and shook them to bring back the feeling. Ironic. Usually I want to make the feelings go away.
Hey Bridge.
Yeah.
Can we use the garage again now? It's going to snow tonight.
Maybe.
Oh, fuck. I'm going to go move the truck before you change your mind.
I'm pretty sure that Jacob would be rolling over in his grave today, if he was in one, but he isn't, he's in a big copper urn in a little white house in Newfoundland and some of him is in a tiny copper box here on the mantle with Butterfield in one as well. I seem to be collecting boxes with dead things. Oh joy, I've finally become one of those really creepy-
Wait a minute.
I always was vaguely creepy and weird so maybe nevermind.
What I meant to say is that Jacob backed up Ben and forgave him time and time again, when there was positively nothing redeemable about Ben whatsoever. Jacob gave me his blessing to rely on Ben in the letters left for me and Jacob believed that deep down Ben was a good person, when everyone else threw up their hands, blocked Ben's phone number and told him when he finally smartened up they would be happy to be friends again.
Maybe Ben is just coming full circle after an incredibly difficult five years. Maybe Jacob was just better at reading people. Maybe Ben is a trickster, a shaman, a fraud. Maybe Ben and Lochlan are working together on a slow and non-suspicious snail-paced abduction and brainwashing and I am too stupid to understand the difference.
Maybe none of them will ever get along sufficiently to last a week without a punch thrown or a few hours of silent treatment, or a silent mark kept on a lifetime board that holds so many strikes-you're-out that the game has become one of endurance, played through decades and styles and mindsets and plans.
Maybe I am the last of us to turn forty this year (shut UP) and it's simply time things change, because things were out of control.
So far out of control that it has come to this and this is something I can endorse because I tend to agree with Jacob. Ben was never much good at keeping up the charm for long. At worst he's an unruly five-year-old with a truck in one hand and a sunflower in the other and he had big plans to rule the world with his music someday only at best he's one hell of a wild, unruly type with little self-control and no plans for the future past riding out the day. Throw in a case of incurable stage fright, an inability to get along with others in close quarters and hold to big decisions for very long and a heavy hand that belies his incredibly fragile heart and you have a force to be reckoned with. The Dark Side.
Ben needs time apart from people. Down time. Time to unwind. He needs space to spread out and please, don't touch his stuff. Advise him of the best way to proceed and then trick him into confirming the most beneficial choice with you and call it a decision. Don't try to contain him, for there isn't a room that can. Get him off the stage and let him rule the world in a different way, in which his name will become synonymous with great things without him having to sell his soul every night under the hot lights to get it.
Jacob gave me permission to love Ben when all signs pointed to that being a recklessness of the highest degree.
But Jacob didn't make me fall in love with Ben, Ben did. And when no one's looking (better yet, when no one is talking about the last thing Ben ate that wasn't exactly edible like truck tires, ipods or Bridget's watermelon all-chemical lip gloss), Ben does things that continue to surprise.
Like spend years culling favors and keeping friends in order to help another friend and save my life at the same time, in a way I can't tell you about because the Internet remains a stranger sometimes, not a friend.
And now Ben holds the upper hand, in everything. And even Caleb with his threats and history and potential for total ruin can't touch us anymore. None of us. Lochlan is safe. I am safe. The memories are safe, tucked in tightly with the secrets and the grief and I was taken this morning to close another chapter of life that I left open a little too long, page turned down repeatedly, threadbare fibers waging tears between the words, spine cracked on a book that is too hard for most people to read. One I now know by heart, word for word.
I stepped through the threshold into the concrete room and Jacob was standing in the light. Ben entered behind me. Jacob nodded. Tucker, he said softly. Zero, Ben replied. Jacob broke into a gentle grin and my heart strained against the stitches. It's funny how things that shouldn't be are intertwined in a way that everything happens at once or nothing ever happens at all. I would like more of the latter, I think.
Are you sure I have to do this?
I need to go, princess.
Just so you know, I'd like to keep you here forever, but I know I can't.
I think things will be easier for you now. You don't need to come here to spend time with me.
What if things don't get better?
Then you have a willing cavalry to help you.
I love you, Jakey.
I love you, princess. You know where to find me.(Thankfully he did not point straight up. I might have died from cheesiness and a proliferation of flashbacks to watching Highway to Heaven.)
I closed my eyes together tightly. I squished my whole face up in an effort not to cry. When I opened them he was gone. No goodbye. No drawn-out departure. No last chance. I was aware I was holding Ben's hand so tightly my fingers ached. I let go and shook them to bring back the feeling. Ironic. Usually I want to make the feelings go away.
Hey Bridge.
Yeah.
Can we use the garage again now? It's going to snow tonight.
Maybe.
Oh, fuck. I'm going to go move the truck before you change your mind.
Monday 10 January 2011
With the best of intentions and his invisible cape.
Trying something new, because it's been a while.
Trust.
When I hit publish yesterday morning, Ben walked into Caleb's office, holding the key card that gives access to the elevator. The card was still attached to the doorman, who didn't look very happy at all.
Ben let him go and he beat a hasty retreat. He knows Ben. I'm sure the moment he returned to the ground floor he would have called Caleb on his cellphone to warn him there was an angry giant waiting in his office but Ben didn't give him that chance. Ben looked at me and then went barging through the condo, walking right into the bathroom where Caleb was and telling him we were leaving and just stay where he was.
Caleb was too surprised to say anything, I bet.
Ben returned to the study, took my hand and asked me if I had anything else with me. I said no and he pulled me back to the elevator and outside to the waiting truck, still running. He buckled me in, locked the doors and then called Lochlan to let him know we were on the way.
He called Caleb again and told him to have my car brought home too.
We came home and he made no move to go inside. I am sitting quietly. Tears rolling.
You gotta give me some of it.
What?
This part. The hard part. Stop running to him when you feel angry about Jake. This is part of being together, Bridget. You're supposed to come to me.
You have enough to deal with.
And I would rather deal with you and help you than worry about you twenty-four hours a day. That just adds to my problems. Let me help you. Stop putting yourself in the path of a freight train.
Caleb's a train now?
When it comes to you, yes. I think it's time some things change.
That's what he said.
Caleb?
Jacob.
Ben stared at me without a word for so long I started to squirm shamefully under his attention. His face started out positively furious and then I watched as it softened. As he went from monster to lover in the space of two minutes, which was an eternity and then he finally asked.
What did Zero say, exactly?
That I have to let him go now, and that I should stay away from Caleb.
And how do you feel about that?
Well, fuck. I hate that question. That question sent me out of the truck, doors slamming, jaw clenched. Marching back to the house where I stopped, patiently waiting for Ben to catch up and unlock the front door and then once inside, I went straight for the library where I threw myself face down into the pillows on the chair.
Bridget-
I know. He's right, you're right, everybody's right.
I don't want you near Caleb anymore.
Is this an ultimatum? My Ben doesn't do ultimatums.
Yes it is and yes he does. He's just been a lot more perverted and more patient than most Bens.
My Ben isn't patient at all.
Sure he is. Your life up until now is an example of that.
So I've gotten it all wrong.
No. Not at all.
What about Lochlan?
Let me deal with everyone from now on.
You can't deal with them, Ben. If you shut them out Caleb will crush Lochlan and me, by default. Is it worth it?
I have aces in my hand too. Maybe you haven't paid attention to the game.
Why didn't you use them already? Christ, Ben, we've been to hell and back a hundred times now.
I was waiting for you, but, really, Bridget, you're taking a while and sometimes I think you take advantage and really I have had it up to here with everyone else taking their piece of you and leaving me with crumbs. They need to go find their own lives. Caleb needs a new hobby that doesn't involve terrorizing my wife and playing on her weaknesses.
You're going to take Lochlan away from me, too? I have already forgotten about Caleb. I don't need Caleb. I need Lochlan though. This is one dealbreaker I won't indulge in.
No. Just Caleb.
Good luck. If this were possible it would have already happened.
Let me fix this. Once. Just this one thing.
No, sorry. I can't risk Lochlan. And you shouldn't risk me, by default.
And you shouldn't doubt me, Bridget.
What do you mean?
Maybe I've spent the last three years planning. To be sure. Do you trust me?
I had to think about this. For a long moment. Holy fuck. I actually DO trust him.
More than anyone.
Then let me deal with Caleb. The only time you'll see him is when he picks Henry up or drops him off. Okay? I have spent so long saying nothing. I'm done, Bridge. No more.
Okay.
Can you do this, little bee?
Yes.
No more Caleb, no more Cole.
No more Caleb, Cole.
No more Jacob either, princess.
What?
Package deal.
You can't put restrictions on Jacob. I didn't sign up for this.
Yeah, well, princess, I didn't sign up to watch you hammer yourself into the ground squarely between them either.
Caleb will kill all of us. Did you warn Lochlan? Does he know?
I want you to let me handle him. If Caleb contacts you, I want you to direct him back to me. Okay?
Okay.
Nothing else, Bridge. The company will be run by the board. You don't have to touch it.
Okay, Ben.
I love you.
I love you too. What if-
There are no what ifs here. It's okay. Everything's going to be okay, bee. I've been planning this since the day I fell in love with you.
Eight years?
Three, goofy. Okay, maybe longer. And I've had it with him. It's time to move on this.
What if-
Trust me. I love you. And I love Lochlan.
Do you really, Ben?
Sadly, yes. He's pretty hot actually. (Ben grins briefly and I start choking on tears. Laughing and crying at the same time. So pretty.)
It's going to blow up in our fac-
Or it might just all end happily ever after.
You know we won't know that for forty or fifty years.
I can wait, Bridget. I've waited through worse.
What's worse than Caleb?
Jake was. Believe it or not.
Trust.
When I hit publish yesterday morning, Ben walked into Caleb's office, holding the key card that gives access to the elevator. The card was still attached to the doorman, who didn't look very happy at all.
Ben let him go and he beat a hasty retreat. He knows Ben. I'm sure the moment he returned to the ground floor he would have called Caleb on his cellphone to warn him there was an angry giant waiting in his office but Ben didn't give him that chance. Ben looked at me and then went barging through the condo, walking right into the bathroom where Caleb was and telling him we were leaving and just stay where he was.
Caleb was too surprised to say anything, I bet.
Ben returned to the study, took my hand and asked me if I had anything else with me. I said no and he pulled me back to the elevator and outside to the waiting truck, still running. He buckled me in, locked the doors and then called Lochlan to let him know we were on the way.
He called Caleb again and told him to have my car brought home too.
We came home and he made no move to go inside. I am sitting quietly. Tears rolling.
You gotta give me some of it.
What?
This part. The hard part. Stop running to him when you feel angry about Jake. This is part of being together, Bridget. You're supposed to come to me.
You have enough to deal with.
And I would rather deal with you and help you than worry about you twenty-four hours a day. That just adds to my problems. Let me help you. Stop putting yourself in the path of a freight train.
Caleb's a train now?
When it comes to you, yes. I think it's time some things change.
That's what he said.
Caleb?
Jacob.
Ben stared at me without a word for so long I started to squirm shamefully under his attention. His face started out positively furious and then I watched as it softened. As he went from monster to lover in the space of two minutes, which was an eternity and then he finally asked.
What did Zero say, exactly?
That I have to let him go now, and that I should stay away from Caleb.
And how do you feel about that?
Well, fuck. I hate that question. That question sent me out of the truck, doors slamming, jaw clenched. Marching back to the house where I stopped, patiently waiting for Ben to catch up and unlock the front door and then once inside, I went straight for the library where I threw myself face down into the pillows on the chair.
Bridget-
I know. He's right, you're right, everybody's right.
I don't want you near Caleb anymore.
Is this an ultimatum? My Ben doesn't do ultimatums.
Yes it is and yes he does. He's just been a lot more perverted and more patient than most Bens.
My Ben isn't patient at all.
Sure he is. Your life up until now is an example of that.
So I've gotten it all wrong.
No. Not at all.
What about Lochlan?
Let me deal with everyone from now on.
You can't deal with them, Ben. If you shut them out Caleb will crush Lochlan and me, by default. Is it worth it?
I have aces in my hand too. Maybe you haven't paid attention to the game.
Why didn't you use them already? Christ, Ben, we've been to hell and back a hundred times now.
I was waiting for you, but, really, Bridget, you're taking a while and sometimes I think you take advantage and really I have had it up to here with everyone else taking their piece of you and leaving me with crumbs. They need to go find their own lives. Caleb needs a new hobby that doesn't involve terrorizing my wife and playing on her weaknesses.
You're going to take Lochlan away from me, too? I have already forgotten about Caleb. I don't need Caleb. I need Lochlan though. This is one dealbreaker I won't indulge in.
No. Just Caleb.
Good luck. If this were possible it would have already happened.
Let me fix this. Once. Just this one thing.
No, sorry. I can't risk Lochlan. And you shouldn't risk me, by default.
And you shouldn't doubt me, Bridget.
What do you mean?
Maybe I've spent the last three years planning. To be sure. Do you trust me?
I had to think about this. For a long moment. Holy fuck. I actually DO trust him.
More than anyone.
Then let me deal with Caleb. The only time you'll see him is when he picks Henry up or drops him off. Okay? I have spent so long saying nothing. I'm done, Bridge. No more.
Okay.
Can you do this, little bee?
Yes.
No more Caleb, no more Cole.
No more Caleb, Cole.
No more Jacob either, princess.
What?
Package deal.
You can't put restrictions on Jacob. I didn't sign up for this.
Yeah, well, princess, I didn't sign up to watch you hammer yourself into the ground squarely between them either.
Caleb will kill all of us. Did you warn Lochlan? Does he know?
I want you to let me handle him. If Caleb contacts you, I want you to direct him back to me. Okay?
Okay.
Nothing else, Bridge. The company will be run by the board. You don't have to touch it.
Okay, Ben.
I love you.
I love you too. What if-
There are no what ifs here. It's okay. Everything's going to be okay, bee. I've been planning this since the day I fell in love with you.
Eight years?
Three, goofy. Okay, maybe longer. And I've had it with him. It's time to move on this.
What if-
Trust me. I love you. And I love Lochlan.
Do you really, Ben?
Sadly, yes. He's pretty hot actually. (Ben grins briefly and I start choking on tears. Laughing and crying at the same time. So pretty.)
It's going to blow up in our fac-
Or it might just all end happily ever after.
You know we won't know that for forty or fifty years.
I can wait, Bridget. I've waited through worse.
What's worse than Caleb?
Jake was. Believe it or not.
Sunday 9 January 2011
Condemning the already-condemned (AKA The Devil is real).
It was pitch black and cooler than I remember the temperature of the room being when I fell asleep. I slipped down to the bottom of the bed from between my guards as they slept on and shrugged into yesterday's clothes. Buttoning my jeans I saw one guard turn over and then he pulled the quilts up over his head and the soft growl of his snore resumed. Not so much of a snore, actually, more like someone getting a cold. I frowned but kept moving.
I gingerly pulled on my warmest zippered hoodie and took off, down steps, down hallways, lighter than our room by virtue of the lack of window coverings. Down, down, deeper until I hit the stairs that turn to the right and then I was home free. At the bottom of the steps is a frozen sheet of water, once a perpetual rain puddle in the place where I land after hundreds of trips, turned to treacherous ice by the overnight drop in degrees. I keep my hand on the railing until I'm sure I'm not going to wipe out.
I made it. I turn and walk slowly down the hallway today. The ice-puddles are everywhere. I'm surprised it is so cold. My hands are numb and shaking already but I need to keep them out for balance. It's a tightrope without the fall, a line drawn between wrong and wrong.
The door is open again. I either keep a messy grief or he has been waiting hard for me. The iced dead leaves remain curled around themselves along the walls. A light wind whistles down the corridor, echoing off concrete. I feel lonely. None of the boys are here at this hour. No one can convince me this isn't real. Nobody understands why the sadness ever goes away and I never wanted to have to make this trip on a regular basis but it is expected, and the obligations to the dead outweigh the ones to the living every time. All I ever wanted was to bring him back to life and until I figure that out, everything else will have to go away.
Jacob is still sitting on the floor where I left him last. When I step through the door and look around I instinctively know he's still going to be right there, even after six weeks of not coming here.
He has his knees up with his head buried in his arms, resting on top of them. He doesn't look up.
You're hurt.
It's nothing.
WHO DID IT? He breaks out in a roar and I shrink away from him, back toward the door. He looks up finally and stands. I am small in front of him, the top of my head level with his chest. He grabs my arms and I shriek involuntarily and he drops them and meets my eyes. His are sunken, faded blue ringed in black. Betrayal floats in his irises alongside sadness and rage, each one struggling to be on top, drowning the others, taking turns pushing each other under the surface.
I am surprised at his rage.
It isn't rage. He's read my mind.
Like hell, Jacob.
I'm helpless here, princess.
There isn't anything you need to help with!
Was it Caleb because I can get to him.
He gets to you, you mean. And no, it wasn't and no it didn't happen on purpose. It was an accident.
They can't afford accidents.
They watch each other.
That only raises the stakes and puts you in danger. You can't be in that place anymore. You had enough from HIM! Jacob raises one hand to the sky and points at the darkest corner of the room where Cole lurks in frustrated silence. He isn't allowed to talk unless I give him permission.
It isn't like that.
Oh, man, you're just going in circles now. Let me go. I can't help you stuck in here.
I can't do that.
YOU HAVE TO. Keeping me here compounds all of this. You shouldn't be here. I can't do anything from here. This is insanity. Bridget, make something different. It's okay. You can visit the memories but this..this room isn't real and it's not right and it's enough already. Enough.
You don't know anything.
I know your heart, Bridget.
If you knew my heart we wouldn't be here, Jake.
I was really hoping they were strong enough. You have to try something else. Jesus, this can't be happening again.
Get off it! It isn't like that. Just STOP. I can't do this today. I have to go back.
When will you come back?
When I think I need you.
What about when I need you? Six weeks since the last time, princess.
The rage transfers from his eyes to mine and I taste the bitter thrill of victory and his helplessness surrounds me and takes all the air out of the room but I have enough left to let a little bit of the rage out.
Yeah, well, what about when I needed you, Jacob? Where in the hell were you then?
I shocked myself and stumbled backwards, away from him, away from the sudden realization that I'm not magical and keeping him here isn't doing anything for me but reminding me that I am ordinary and useless, that I can't bring him back to life but I can't keep him here.
This isn't working only instead of being sad, I am so angry. Angry at everyone. Angry at myself. Angry at Jacob, who was elevated to angel-status up until this moment. Sainted. An innocent. A victim of my emotional tides and my insatiable need for things no single human being can fulfill and no group of human beings can surmount peacefully.
Hence the injury, as I was pulled violently between them like a rag doll, the threat of my arms ripping away and my stuffing coming out a sure eventuality until the breathless, silent terror on my face halted a moment that never should have happened. They both let go and I careened off one, colliding with the other at a hundred miles an hour. Their arms came back up to catch me but it was too late, their expressions admitting how startled they were at how incredibly out of control we have all become.
My tears and pain did nothing to dilute the treachery and I realized we never place a limit on their selfishness, allowing their predatory instincts to continue unabated, until I became their victim instead of their prize.
Jacob's voice cuts back in, gently now.
Bridget, stay and we can figure this out.
I need to go. They're waiting.
I can help you if you let me out.
I'll think about it, I lie.
I turn and run, stupid fucking door almost tripping me again. Instead of heading back to the stairs, I run in the other direction, toward the endless dark. Toward hell.
The doorman lets me in, aware that I am not dressed properly for visiting, aware that my hair is not combed and I have car keys and nothing else. Aware that I am shaking like a leaf and he reaches in close and presses the elevator buttons for me to give the code that will spit me out on Caleb's floor and then he looks at me questioningly as I shrink away from him, a silent inquiry as to whether or not I am okay.
I dismiss it without responding and close my eyes as doors close and the elevator rises.
When the doors open again, the Devil is waiting, pulling my hands into his fire. They are still ice-cold. He is smart enough not to touch more than just my hands. He tells me he has to get ready for the day and I should wait in the safety of his office, that I could read on his laptop or whatever I wanted to do, really.
That he won't be long.
All of this is a mistake.
I gingerly pulled on my warmest zippered hoodie and took off, down steps, down hallways, lighter than our room by virtue of the lack of window coverings. Down, down, deeper until I hit the stairs that turn to the right and then I was home free. At the bottom of the steps is a frozen sheet of water, once a perpetual rain puddle in the place where I land after hundreds of trips, turned to treacherous ice by the overnight drop in degrees. I keep my hand on the railing until I'm sure I'm not going to wipe out.
I made it. I turn and walk slowly down the hallway today. The ice-puddles are everywhere. I'm surprised it is so cold. My hands are numb and shaking already but I need to keep them out for balance. It's a tightrope without the fall, a line drawn between wrong and wrong.
The door is open again. I either keep a messy grief or he has been waiting hard for me. The iced dead leaves remain curled around themselves along the walls. A light wind whistles down the corridor, echoing off concrete. I feel lonely. None of the boys are here at this hour. No one can convince me this isn't real. Nobody understands why the sadness ever goes away and I never wanted to have to make this trip on a regular basis but it is expected, and the obligations to the dead outweigh the ones to the living every time. All I ever wanted was to bring him back to life and until I figure that out, everything else will have to go away.
Jacob is still sitting on the floor where I left him last. When I step through the door and look around I instinctively know he's still going to be right there, even after six weeks of not coming here.
He has his knees up with his head buried in his arms, resting on top of them. He doesn't look up.
You're hurt.
It's nothing.
WHO DID IT? He breaks out in a roar and I shrink away from him, back toward the door. He looks up finally and stands. I am small in front of him, the top of my head level with his chest. He grabs my arms and I shriek involuntarily and he drops them and meets my eyes. His are sunken, faded blue ringed in black. Betrayal floats in his irises alongside sadness and rage, each one struggling to be on top, drowning the others, taking turns pushing each other under the surface.
I am surprised at his rage.
It isn't rage. He's read my mind.
Like hell, Jacob.
I'm helpless here, princess.
There isn't anything you need to help with!
Was it Caleb because I can get to him.
He gets to you, you mean. And no, it wasn't and no it didn't happen on purpose. It was an accident.
They can't afford accidents.
They watch each other.
That only raises the stakes and puts you in danger. You can't be in that place anymore. You had enough from HIM! Jacob raises one hand to the sky and points at the darkest corner of the room where Cole lurks in frustrated silence. He isn't allowed to talk unless I give him permission.
It isn't like that.
Oh, man, you're just going in circles now. Let me go. I can't help you stuck in here.
I can't do that.
YOU HAVE TO. Keeping me here compounds all of this. You shouldn't be here. I can't do anything from here. This is insanity. Bridget, make something different. It's okay. You can visit the memories but this..this room isn't real and it's not right and it's enough already. Enough.
You don't know anything.
I know your heart, Bridget.
If you knew my heart we wouldn't be here, Jake.
I was really hoping they were strong enough. You have to try something else. Jesus, this can't be happening again.
Get off it! It isn't like that. Just STOP. I can't do this today. I have to go back.
When will you come back?
When I think I need you.
What about when I need you? Six weeks since the last time, princess.
The rage transfers from his eyes to mine and I taste the bitter thrill of victory and his helplessness surrounds me and takes all the air out of the room but I have enough left to let a little bit of the rage out.
Yeah, well, what about when I needed you, Jacob? Where in the hell were you then?
I shocked myself and stumbled backwards, away from him, away from the sudden realization that I'm not magical and keeping him here isn't doing anything for me but reminding me that I am ordinary and useless, that I can't bring him back to life but I can't keep him here.
This isn't working only instead of being sad, I am so angry. Angry at everyone. Angry at myself. Angry at Jacob, who was elevated to angel-status up until this moment. Sainted. An innocent. A victim of my emotional tides and my insatiable need for things no single human being can fulfill and no group of human beings can surmount peacefully.
Hence the injury, as I was pulled violently between them like a rag doll, the threat of my arms ripping away and my stuffing coming out a sure eventuality until the breathless, silent terror on my face halted a moment that never should have happened. They both let go and I careened off one, colliding with the other at a hundred miles an hour. Their arms came back up to catch me but it was too late, their expressions admitting how startled they were at how incredibly out of control we have all become.
My tears and pain did nothing to dilute the treachery and I realized we never place a limit on their selfishness, allowing their predatory instincts to continue unabated, until I became their victim instead of their prize.
Jacob's voice cuts back in, gently now.
Bridget, stay and we can figure this out.
I need to go. They're waiting.
I can help you if you let me out.
I'll think about it, I lie.
I turn and run, stupid fucking door almost tripping me again. Instead of heading back to the stairs, I run in the other direction, toward the endless dark. Toward hell.
The doorman lets me in, aware that I am not dressed properly for visiting, aware that my hair is not combed and I have car keys and nothing else. Aware that I am shaking like a leaf and he reaches in close and presses the elevator buttons for me to give the code that will spit me out on Caleb's floor and then he looks at me questioningly as I shrink away from him, a silent inquiry as to whether or not I am okay.
I dismiss it without responding and close my eyes as doors close and the elevator rises.
When the doors open again, the Devil is waiting, pulling my hands into his fire. They are still ice-cold. He is smart enough not to touch more than just my hands. He tells me he has to get ready for the day and I should wait in the safety of his office, that I could read on his laptop or whatever I wanted to do, really.
That he won't be long.
All of this is a mistake.
Saturday 8 January 2011
Sillies.
This is what we come up lying in bed being goofy on a Saturday morning. Today is going to be an everything BEN day.
So:
We'll have eggs BENedict for breakfast.
Maybe sit on a BENch.
We'll be BENevolent.
We'll say hello to our BENefactors,
Let's do things for our own BENefit.
We'll BENd over backwards to have some fun,
and not get eaten by BENgal tigers.
I'm sure there will be more.
So:
We'll have eggs BENedict for breakfast.
Maybe sit on a BENch.
We'll be BENevolent.
We'll say hello to our BENefactors,
Let's do things for our own BENefit.
We'll BENd over backwards to have some fun,
and not get eaten by BENgal tigers.
I'm sure there will be more.
Friday 7 January 2011
He requested one particular song and I couldn't do it for him. The piano is situated in the glass corner. All windows, the rain just pouring down the glass and I wondered why he was twisting screws this morning and then I saw why. Earrings on the kitchen counter.
Someone I know?
Sophie.
Nice.
I stopped trying to play altogether, getting up abruptly. I thought I saw a flash of amusement cross Caleb's face but it was gone as quickly as it arrived and replaced with what I could only place as guilt or maybe sadness, even. He maintained convention even as I managed to knock over the bench but John jumped a thousand feet from his place at the island reading the paper, having been asked to stick around for an hour in order to take me home. John reacted. Further proof that Caleb isn't human, though he can be prone to devastating emotion. Maybe he just learned that from me along the way.
He asked if I needed anything, a question so loaded with innuendo I broke into a sweat.
I was tempted to ask him for juice in a glass bottle so I could break it off at the neck and jab it into Caleb's wretched, inhuman soul, putting it out of misery for good, but I resisted and said nothing, hands beginning to flutter. I shoved them behind my back.
Would you like to talk about why you're so unsettled today, princess?
No. (There's no way he doesn't understand how I feel about her.)
Good then, because we have quite a bit to accomplish today.
I don't want to be here when she comes back.
What?
I just told you. I don't want to see Sophie.
You won't. I sent her home this morning. I'll courier the earrings out later.
So why did she come here?
She had a meeting and so we went for dinner. Bridget, what is wrong with you?
Nothing.
Is she a rival?
What? No? She can have you if that's what you mean.
Something isn't right with you.
She just..
What is it, doll?
We really need to get some work done. The children will be out soon.
He paused and smiled gently at me, leaving the smile in thin air, bending his head over the stack of invoices between us. Subject closed. A molecule of grace and a reprieve, in spite of his attempt to feign polite ignorance. My feelings about Sophie are none of anyone's business, Caleb included. Hell, BEN included. I can't explain it and so I just don't.
I just don't want Jacob's ex-wife to enter into my life in any way, shape or form, in person or in passing mention. Is that too much to ask? I came to that conclusion last time I saw her and I'm fine with my decision. And you all know how forgiving and permissive I am, so this didn't come easily. Don't make it any harder than it has to be.
Someone I know?
Sophie.
Nice.
I stopped trying to play altogether, getting up abruptly. I thought I saw a flash of amusement cross Caleb's face but it was gone as quickly as it arrived and replaced with what I could only place as guilt or maybe sadness, even. He maintained convention even as I managed to knock over the bench but John jumped a thousand feet from his place at the island reading the paper, having been asked to stick around for an hour in order to take me home. John reacted. Further proof that Caleb isn't human, though he can be prone to devastating emotion. Maybe he just learned that from me along the way.
He asked if I needed anything, a question so loaded with innuendo I broke into a sweat.
I was tempted to ask him for juice in a glass bottle so I could break it off at the neck and jab it into Caleb's wretched, inhuman soul, putting it out of misery for good, but I resisted and said nothing, hands beginning to flutter. I shoved them behind my back.
Would you like to talk about why you're so unsettled today, princess?
No. (There's no way he doesn't understand how I feel about her.)
Good then, because we have quite a bit to accomplish today.
I don't want to be here when she comes back.
What?
I just told you. I don't want to see Sophie.
You won't. I sent her home this morning. I'll courier the earrings out later.
So why did she come here?
She had a meeting and so we went for dinner. Bridget, what is wrong with you?
Nothing.
Is she a rival?
What? No? She can have you if that's what you mean.
Something isn't right with you.
She just..
What is it, doll?
We really need to get some work done. The children will be out soon.
He paused and smiled gently at me, leaving the smile in thin air, bending his head over the stack of invoices between us. Subject closed. A molecule of grace and a reprieve, in spite of his attempt to feign polite ignorance. My feelings about Sophie are none of anyone's business, Caleb included. Hell, BEN included. I can't explain it and so I just don't.
I just don't want Jacob's ex-wife to enter into my life in any way, shape or form, in person or in passing mention. Is that too much to ask? I came to that conclusion last time I saw her and I'm fine with my decision. And you all know how forgiving and permissive I am, so this didn't come easily. Don't make it any harder than it has to be.
I can't write with him breathing down my neck. Wait til I get home again.
They never tell you truth is subjective
They only tell you not to lie
They never tell you there's strength in vulnerability
They only tell you not to cry
But I've been living underground
Sleeping on the way
And finding something else to say
Is like walking on the freeway
They never tell you you don't need to be ashamed
They only tell you to deny
So is it true that only good girls go to heaven?
They only sell you what you buy
Thursday 6 January 2011
Elephants with strawberry blonde curls.
Oh fuck me. Lochlan got my head stuck on Journey again. It's going to be years before I shake this. Just like last time.
He's a very simple guy. He requires blue jeans, t-shirts, a handful of bands: Pink Floyd, Journey, Kansas, Allman Brothers and a couple others, coffee, smokes, a Wacom tablet for painting, his camera, his small but beloved princess and his motorcycles too.
I think that's all he needs. We're on the fence with the beer. Long story maybe not for today.
But I found out this morning his phone alarm is that Journey song and maybe I didn't find out this morning because it's been stuck in my head for a few weeks so I must have heard it in my sleep.
They always played it on the Ferris wheel.
You could curse Lochlan forever for being stuck in the past. You could tell me I'm the ticking time bomb and that he could be the soulmate based on what you've read and you could condemn him for the near-evil that he brings oh so quietly and you could revile him for his bottomless cold logic which isn't nearly as cold or as logical as it seems when you realize it comes from a place of total insecurity and you could fear for his perpetual fever dream state which always leads me to wonder if spontaneous combustion will be his fate some day.
Or you could just let it go, like we do. Leave it alone. Pretend it isn't there because you can't do anything about it anyway. Neither can we.
He's a very simple guy. He requires blue jeans, t-shirts, a handful of bands: Pink Floyd, Journey, Kansas, Allman Brothers and a couple others, coffee, smokes, a Wacom tablet for painting, his camera, his small but beloved princess and his motorcycles too.
I think that's all he needs. We're on the fence with the beer. Long story maybe not for today.
But I found out this morning his phone alarm is that Journey song and maybe I didn't find out this morning because it's been stuck in my head for a few weeks so I must have heard it in my sleep.
They always played it on the Ferris wheel.
You could curse Lochlan forever for being stuck in the past. You could tell me I'm the ticking time bomb and that he could be the soulmate based on what you've read and you could condemn him for the near-evil that he brings oh so quietly and you could revile him for his bottomless cold logic which isn't nearly as cold or as logical as it seems when you realize it comes from a place of total insecurity and you could fear for his perpetual fever dream state which always leads me to wonder if spontaneous combustion will be his fate some day.
Or you could just let it go, like we do. Leave it alone. Pretend it isn't there because you can't do anything about it anyway. Neither can we.
Tuesday 4 January 2011
A thirst for potassium chlorate.
(One of the few requests I can actually grant. Thanks to those of you who asked for this story.)
I met Lochlan three weeks after moving to the neighborhood my parents still live in to this day. I was newly eight years old and we had moved around the Maritimes three or four times by then, summering in Shediac and Cape Cod equally, breathing in sand, exhaling salt air. Settling near Halifax because my father worked there and it was close to my grandparents, who lived down along the south shore of Nova Scotia.
(If I didn't spend my early childhood on the beach, I have spent it in the car, or rather standing beside it on the shoulder of every Eastern coastal highway you can name, dry-heaving because I can't sit in the backseat of a car. I still can't, to this day and Gravol is Bridget's very own roofie cocktail.
Out like a light for days.
Is that a tangent? I'm sorry.)
Anyway, the night I met Lochlan was the night he made his best-ever shot on goal (for a thirteen-year-old boy), knocking me down with the practice ball they were using for street hockey. They were playing a quick pick-up game, sons versus fathers in the waning light of a hot July night during the neighborhood block party. The bonfire licked at the sky at the end of the street just off the pavement where the road turned to forest and the path to the ball field began.
Up until I hit the ground I had been on the sort of high only an Elementary-school student jacked up on ice cream and excitement can manage and I never heard him yell a warning, though afterward I am told his thirteen-year-old voice broke spectacularly and he was teased for the rest of the summer, until that other kid showed up for Junior High with high-water pants on and Lochlan was left mercifully alone, having enjoyed a complete deepening of his voice at that point in late puberty that meant he was well and truly ensconced in teenagehood now and had little use for some kid in grade three.
But for reasons that remain a mystery to me, we were instant friends. He picked me up off the pavement and felt my head gingerly and apologized profusely. By then all of the dads were present, and all the other boys too. He told them he would take me to his kitchen to get an ice pack and they could continue the game without him. He put his arm around my shoulders and pointed out his house and we walked slowly in the dark as kids ran by with sparklers (oh, how I wanted one!) and bubbles and frosted cans of rootbeer and Dr. Pepper and hotdogs with grubby, blackened buns and the last dregs of relish from the jar.
Once in his kitchen, Lochlan promptly forgot about the ice, instead telling me I had cool hair. I was sitting on my long hair, perched on the bar stool by the counter. He poured a couple of glasses of cream soda for us and asked me if I had eaten at the barbecue. I had a hamburger, I told him and he nodded. Good.
After a few minutes I asked if we could go back to the party. I was hoping there would be some sparklers left and I had precious minutes remaining in my wild night of summer freedom. I wasn't about to waste those opportunities. Besides. All boys were always nice to me to show Bailey how awesome they were. I was sure he would be no different.
Lochlan nodded and we left, leaving his house unlocked as people did back in 1979 and he walked me back down to the end of the street and the bonfire, where most of the adults and children had gathered to watch the flames and roast marshmallows. He said goodbye and repeated his apology for hitting me with the ball and then he stuck his hands in the front pockets of his jeans and walked away back toward the boys, who were still enjoying their pick-up game even though it was too dark to find their sticks, let alone the nets.
I burned four marshmallows beyond recognition, ate seven raw ones, and then started to become hypnotized by the flames when Lochlan returned and called me away from the log where I had been perched. I went to him and he produced a lighter and a single sparkler, which he lit and handed to me.
Didn't want you to miss anything, he said.
He lit a sparkler for me every night for the remainder of that summer. Every now and then we'll buy a package for no reason at all and light them and the nostalgia hits all at once, just like a hockey ball to the back of one's head. If you aren't careful it will knock you right over.
I met Lochlan three weeks after moving to the neighborhood my parents still live in to this day. I was newly eight years old and we had moved around the Maritimes three or four times by then, summering in Shediac and Cape Cod equally, breathing in sand, exhaling salt air. Settling near Halifax because my father worked there and it was close to my grandparents, who lived down along the south shore of Nova Scotia.
(If I didn't spend my early childhood on the beach, I have spent it in the car, or rather standing beside it on the shoulder of every Eastern coastal highway you can name, dry-heaving because I can't sit in the backseat of a car. I still can't, to this day and Gravol is Bridget's very own roofie cocktail.
Out like a light for days.
Is that a tangent? I'm sorry.)
Anyway, the night I met Lochlan was the night he made his best-ever shot on goal (for a thirteen-year-old boy), knocking me down with the practice ball they were using for street hockey. They were playing a quick pick-up game, sons versus fathers in the waning light of a hot July night during the neighborhood block party. The bonfire licked at the sky at the end of the street just off the pavement where the road turned to forest and the path to the ball field began.
Up until I hit the ground I had been on the sort of high only an Elementary-school student jacked up on ice cream and excitement can manage and I never heard him yell a warning, though afterward I am told his thirteen-year-old voice broke spectacularly and he was teased for the rest of the summer, until that other kid showed up for Junior High with high-water pants on and Lochlan was left mercifully alone, having enjoyed a complete deepening of his voice at that point in late puberty that meant he was well and truly ensconced in teenagehood now and had little use for some kid in grade three.
But for reasons that remain a mystery to me, we were instant friends. He picked me up off the pavement and felt my head gingerly and apologized profusely. By then all of the dads were present, and all the other boys too. He told them he would take me to his kitchen to get an ice pack and they could continue the game without him. He put his arm around my shoulders and pointed out his house and we walked slowly in the dark as kids ran by with sparklers (oh, how I wanted one!) and bubbles and frosted cans of rootbeer and Dr. Pepper and hotdogs with grubby, blackened buns and the last dregs of relish from the jar.
Once in his kitchen, Lochlan promptly forgot about the ice, instead telling me I had cool hair. I was sitting on my long hair, perched on the bar stool by the counter. He poured a couple of glasses of cream soda for us and asked me if I had eaten at the barbecue. I had a hamburger, I told him and he nodded. Good.
After a few minutes I asked if we could go back to the party. I was hoping there would be some sparklers left and I had precious minutes remaining in my wild night of summer freedom. I wasn't about to waste those opportunities. Besides. All boys were always nice to me to show Bailey how awesome they were. I was sure he would be no different.
Lochlan nodded and we left, leaving his house unlocked as people did back in 1979 and he walked me back down to the end of the street and the bonfire, where most of the adults and children had gathered to watch the flames and roast marshmallows. He said goodbye and repeated his apology for hitting me with the ball and then he stuck his hands in the front pockets of his jeans and walked away back toward the boys, who were still enjoying their pick-up game even though it was too dark to find their sticks, let alone the nets.
I burned four marshmallows beyond recognition, ate seven raw ones, and then started to become hypnotized by the flames when Lochlan returned and called me away from the log where I had been perched. I went to him and he produced a lighter and a single sparkler, which he lit and handed to me.
Didn't want you to miss anything, he said.
He lit a sparkler for me every night for the remainder of that summer. Every now and then we'll buy a package for no reason at all and light them and the nostalgia hits all at once, just like a hockey ball to the back of one's head. If you aren't careful it will knock you right over.
Every now and then I have this urge to tell him to stop being so loud.
You know what's really cool? When I miss Ben during the day I can just put on some of his music and then his voice is reverberating through the entire house, with feeling.
Kind of like when he's home, except with a remote control handy for volume control.
Snort.
Everyone has disappeared back to their lives today so that means I'm back to being really organized, and having six premium plus crackers for lunch every day because I do not have any lunch dates.
Well, that part kind of sucks, actually.
Kind of like when he's home, except with a remote control handy for volume control.
Snort.
Everyone has disappeared back to their lives today so that means I'm back to being really organized, and having six premium plus crackers for lunch every day because I do not have any lunch dates.
Well, that part kind of sucks, actually.
Monday 3 January 2011
I think he would have chosen to be Peter Pan but that one is already taken so I made him Mr. Grin instead.
So how do you deal with it?
Simple, Dollface. I assess risk for a living. So I make sure to minimize the risk factors by living well and consciously.
But you already do all that.
Exactly. That's why no one wanted you to worry.
Do you hear ticking?
Careful, princess, or we'll change your nickname to Captain Hook.
And that was it. With Caleb, it's very easy to gauge when a subject is now closed. I will be able to look back on that moment in around sixty years, if I remember anything at all, and realize he would never bring it up again. Maybe this is just one of the things you come to know after knowing someone for thirty years. Maybe I am simply delusional and we'll do this every morning and I will fret and wring until I know he didn't just check out in the middle of the night until I hear from him each day. Maybe I won't be able to contain him in the concrete room with the others, hell, I'm always stunned to find Cole still there because Cole is virtually unstoppable. Maybe the death-part changes things like that. Maybe I can gain the upper hand with Caleb when he's dead too.
But I doubt it.
His voice cuts into my reverie. He is smiling at me and my blood freezes in my veins.
I can't see you ever NOT being the princess.
Oh. I check my expression and brush past him. We have a well-timed appointment in court this morning with our mediator for a quick check-in or I wouldn't be dressed up. Instead I could be adjusting my black cloud, terrorizing New-Jake and Dalton or out breakfasting with Lochlan, who chose to start his Monday morning at the diner in the village with the children, because if you can have an adventure on a Monday morning, then you should. (Also: Bridget hardly ever buys bacon anymore because she is becoming the cholesterol fairy.)
So is it a bone of contention that Ben chose to construct the home studio but will still be coming in town most of the time to work?
Maybe. I don't know yet.
Distractions, princess.
Right.
It's okay. You feel the same way when you're writing.
I'm well aware of that.
But you hoped differently.
Maybe. Can we please talk about something else?
What would you like to talk about this morning?
How quickly will we be finished this meeting?
All business today? I can't interest you in lunch?
Not today. The children are home, remember?
I remember, but I also figured that since they're in good hands you might be more receptive to an invitation.
I don't think so. But thank you.
Maybe next week.
Maybe. I let him have the hope.
And with that, we're off. A united front with the best interests of the children at heart. I think the court will be pleased to see this for a change. You know, while it lasts.
Simple, Dollface. I assess risk for a living. So I make sure to minimize the risk factors by living well and consciously.
But you already do all that.
Exactly. That's why no one wanted you to worry.
Do you hear ticking?
Careful, princess, or we'll change your nickname to Captain Hook.
And that was it. With Caleb, it's very easy to gauge when a subject is now closed. I will be able to look back on that moment in around sixty years, if I remember anything at all, and realize he would never bring it up again. Maybe this is just one of the things you come to know after knowing someone for thirty years. Maybe I am simply delusional and we'll do this every morning and I will fret and wring until I know he didn't just check out in the middle of the night until I hear from him each day. Maybe I won't be able to contain him in the concrete room with the others, hell, I'm always stunned to find Cole still there because Cole is virtually unstoppable. Maybe the death-part changes things like that. Maybe I can gain the upper hand with Caleb when he's dead too.
But I doubt it.
His voice cuts into my reverie. He is smiling at me and my blood freezes in my veins.
I can't see you ever NOT being the princess.
Oh. I check my expression and brush past him. We have a well-timed appointment in court this morning with our mediator for a quick check-in or I wouldn't be dressed up. Instead I could be adjusting my black cloud, terrorizing New-Jake and Dalton or out breakfasting with Lochlan, who chose to start his Monday morning at the diner in the village with the children, because if you can have an adventure on a Monday morning, then you should. (Also: Bridget hardly ever buys bacon anymore because she is becoming the cholesterol fairy.)
So is it a bone of contention that Ben chose to construct the home studio but will still be coming in town most of the time to work?
Maybe. I don't know yet.
Distractions, princess.
Right.
It's okay. You feel the same way when you're writing.
I'm well aware of that.
But you hoped differently.
Maybe. Can we please talk about something else?
What would you like to talk about this morning?
How quickly will we be finished this meeting?
All business today? I can't interest you in lunch?
Not today. The children are home, remember?
I remember, but I also figured that since they're in good hands you might be more receptive to an invitation.
I don't think so. But thank you.
Maybe next week.
Maybe. I let him have the hope.
And with that, we're off. A united front with the best interests of the children at heart. I think the court will be pleased to see this for a change. You know, while it lasts.
Sunday 2 January 2011
Expected vocations.
Here at the home for orphaned rock stars, wayward artists, those afflicted by romantic Tourettes, sideshow freaks and vaguely clingy but perfectly capable, newly-minted moguls, we have dreams too, you know.
Just because we didn't run the gamut of promising to get in shape, lose weight, spend less, live greener or eat locally or whatever is on those magical lists doesn't mean we don't already do those things, it just means we're decided the disheartening approach of beginning fresh only to abandon efforts and subsequently feeling bad about that isn't the way we want to do things anymore.
Besides, I have another new career. Well, not new, I've just decided to go pro.
Collecting beach glass, full time.
It fits in very well with my other mind-bendingly nonpareil occupations of being the company figurehead (bolted on the front like on a ship, no less), simple affection extractor, wrangler of personal black rain clouds and oh, writing.
So there you have it. Freak show indeed. I think I like the sea glass one the best, because it involves being able to hear the water and absolutely nothing else. It's permission to be silent as long as I stand on sand (Bridget's decompression platform, highly top-secret material, you see), and it's showing off, because I'm really good at it, coming home with damp, sandy pocketfuls. Weighed down.
I clink when I walk into the house now, you can hear me coming a mile away.
Just because we didn't run the gamut of promising to get in shape, lose weight, spend less, live greener or eat locally or whatever is on those magical lists doesn't mean we don't already do those things, it just means we're decided the disheartening approach of beginning fresh only to abandon efforts and subsequently feeling bad about that isn't the way we want to do things anymore.
Besides, I have another new career. Well, not new, I've just decided to go pro.
Collecting beach glass, full time.
It fits in very well with my other mind-bendingly nonpareil occupations of being the company figurehead (bolted on the front like on a ship, no less), simple affection extractor, wrangler of personal black rain clouds and oh, writing.
So there you have it. Freak show indeed. I think I like the sea glass one the best, because it involves being able to hear the water and absolutely nothing else. It's permission to be silent as long as I stand on sand (Bridget's decompression platform, highly top-secret material, you see), and it's showing off, because I'm really good at it, coming home with damp, sandy pocketfuls. Weighed down.
I clink when I walk into the house now, you can hear me coming a mile away.
Saturday 1 January 2011
The part where I'm supposed to make restitution.
Resolutions. Absolutions. Those things we say and we promise ourselves all of it is going to be different.
Aside from a few very specific things I want to look after anyway (and will), I'm going to do something quite out of the ordinary (which I don't think I've ever been in anyway) and not make any resolutions at all.
None. Not a one. Zip. Zero. Go away, thank you.
I'm not feeling nostalgic and sentimental. I didn't hear Auld Lang Syne this year. I haven't managed to wrap my head around a new date to write on cheques and field trip forms and so I will slip into the new year gradually, quietly, when everyone is looking the other way. I'll hold my breath and slip in the back, taking the last empty seat on what will undoubtedly be another year of ups and downs, ins and outs, highs and lows. This is what life is, is it not?
Well, then, there you have it.
Besides, I have a birthday approaching in the spring and it's one of those largish ones that ends in a zero and I'm still wrapping my brain around this news, only the paper doesn't quite fit and I can get it folded over both sides but it doesn't meet in the middle and so I need to find more paper before I can do it properly.
A new year indeed.
So far so good. The changing of the guard with the company will mean little over all. As I said before, it's a t crossed, an i dotted and nothing more and I'm calmer today. I'm a little more rested today too, and it's sunny and cool outside and we have great big plans today and so I'm not going to open dark boxes or worry about shadows or fret and wring today. I'm going to go run in the sand and search for some beach glass and maybe spend the day smiling.
Aside from a few very specific things I want to look after anyway (and will), I'm going to do something quite out of the ordinary (which I don't think I've ever been in anyway) and not make any resolutions at all.
None. Not a one. Zip. Zero. Go away, thank you.
I'm not feeling nostalgic and sentimental. I didn't hear Auld Lang Syne this year. I haven't managed to wrap my head around a new date to write on cheques and field trip forms and so I will slip into the new year gradually, quietly, when everyone is looking the other way. I'll hold my breath and slip in the back, taking the last empty seat on what will undoubtedly be another year of ups and downs, ins and outs, highs and lows. This is what life is, is it not?
Well, then, there you have it.
Besides, I have a birthday approaching in the spring and it's one of those largish ones that ends in a zero and I'm still wrapping my brain around this news, only the paper doesn't quite fit and I can get it folded over both sides but it doesn't meet in the middle and so I need to find more paper before I can do it properly.
A new year indeed.
So far so good. The changing of the guard with the company will mean little over all. As I said before, it's a t crossed, an i dotted and nothing more and I'm calmer today. I'm a little more rested today too, and it's sunny and cool outside and we have great big plans today and so I'm not going to open dark boxes or worry about shadows or fret and wring today. I'm going to go run in the sand and search for some beach glass and maybe spend the day smiling.
Friday 31 December 2010
Like flies (Here, while I'm getting ready for my night).
The company is mine now. Well, mine technically. Outwardly (thankfully) nothing will change. And this hits just in time for year-end which is handy. Really. Get it done before 2011 and he did, a rather important step in this renewed effort to be sure that the things you plan for after you're gone are precisely what you intended.
I hate living like this, but we do.
I stared at Caleb's face for the better part of twelve hours, through the night. We had our war, waged across the marble island of his condo while he shouted and pleaded and I looked for knives to throw and heads to roll. Bowling for psychotic sister-in-laws, outrage for how good they all are at keeping secrets that should never have been kept and spilling ones that have no business seeing the light of day but it keeps leaking in around the edges and we're all fucked and now bad luck is coming to take us away.
Caleb has been trying to head that off with some just-in-case business decisions that I can agree to but on the other hand what happens when I'm not near my wits and flying by the tips of my tights instead? What happens when the sideshow rolls back in and the logic packs up and leaves, terrified of clowns, even more afraid of acrobats and jugglers and their big stupid generous hearts?
I guess we will cross that Bridget when we see her next.
In the meantime we'll do everything we can to protect our collective demons and their big stupid fully genetically defective, faulty hearts. Because sometimes more than good looks and violent romance runs in the family.
Sometimes medical advances prove to be too telling and infarctions leave behind telltale signs that they have paid you a visit and your days might be numbered and they might not and it changes absolutely everything, like it has for Caleb now, and no one wanted to tell me.
Just like death, only it's like you still have something left. Something serious and important and all of it makes the past pale in comparison with the future, which rests with an eleven-year-old girl and a nine-year-old boy now.
And God help us if any of us ever fucking forget that again.
I hate living like this, but we do.
I stared at Caleb's face for the better part of twelve hours, through the night. We had our war, waged across the marble island of his condo while he shouted and pleaded and I looked for knives to throw and heads to roll. Bowling for psychotic sister-in-laws, outrage for how good they all are at keeping secrets that should never have been kept and spilling ones that have no business seeing the light of day but it keeps leaking in around the edges and we're all fucked and now bad luck is coming to take us away.
Caleb has been trying to head that off with some just-in-case business decisions that I can agree to but on the other hand what happens when I'm not near my wits and flying by the tips of my tights instead? What happens when the sideshow rolls back in and the logic packs up and leaves, terrified of clowns, even more afraid of acrobats and jugglers and their big stupid generous hearts?
I guess we will cross that Bridget when we see her next.
In the meantime we'll do everything we can to protect our collective demons and their big stupid fully genetically defective, faulty hearts. Because sometimes more than good looks and violent romance runs in the family.
Sometimes medical advances prove to be too telling and infarctions leave behind telltale signs that they have paid you a visit and your days might be numbered and they might not and it changes absolutely everything, like it has for Caleb now, and no one wanted to tell me.
Just like death, only it's like you still have something left. Something serious and important and all of it makes the past pale in comparison with the future, which rests with an eleven-year-old girl and a nine-year-old boy now.
And God help us if any of us ever fucking forget that again.
Thursday 30 December 2010
Got it.
I can read. It's TONIGHT. Jesus. I possibly need some live-in lawyers to go with everyone else in the house. I can't get the lawyers by tonight. ARGHHHH.
Like a shepherd but with lawyers instead of sheepies.
This is getting difficult. This, in particular.
Another meeting tomorrow. Warning that this isn't over. Would someone please just tell me why he has to make taking every single breath I can so fucking DIFFICULT?
Thanks. I'll be waiting for the answer. I think I AM the answer but whatever, I'd like to hear it from him.
Another meeting tomorrow. Warning that this isn't over. Would someone please just tell me why he has to make taking every single breath I can so fucking DIFFICULT?
Thanks. I'll be waiting for the answer. I think I AM the answer but whatever, I'd like to hear it from him.
My last Christmas present finally made it!
*(This is not the day's post. Just give me a few hours to absorb Eastern Hymns for Western Shores. It's that awesome. Also Bro-Am tee!!! Squee!)
Wednesday 29 December 2010
Musical dirt worship.
Do you know why all staircases descend to the right? So that knights could fight with their swords in their right hands, their dominant, strong hands, while coming down the steps, defending, and infiltrators would be forced to fight with their left. A decided disadvantage.
Oddly enough, both subjects today are left-handed. And hippies, not knights.
The boys are loading up trucks right now. There's a little shift going on in the household. August is moving into Dalton's place, citing a need for more mirror time (this is not even a joke, jerkfaces, August has (okay, had) his own bathroom).
Dalton is moving into my house. In a sense I am trading one friend of Jake's for another. Even though I don't have to give August up, it just won't be the same.
There are a combination of issues that led to this. Beginning with the fact that Dalton isn't used to housing prices here (with a long history of issues related to that subject, frankly) and was on the verge of giving up a six-month investment because he's in a little over his head and refuses help or basic budgeting lessons.
Throw in a little bit of stubbornness on my part and August and I have butted heads a lot lately. He is supposed to easily separate his professional and personal life and he isn't having much luck because he lives with his charges and really I can corrupt him faster than I can hang up the phone. He's as easily charmed as Jacob always was. And he's enough like Jacob that I get to remain mired in some sort of paralysis between the present and the past and that's an unhealthy place for me. When I feel fragile I can just go tuck myself under his arm as he reads and he's the closest living, breathing ringer to Jake there ever was. Right down to the Newfie accent. The mannerisms and the unintentional enthusiastic volume sometimes makes me jump right out of my skin.
But it's okay. It was sort of a surprise that he lived here at all and I have a feeling I got to him during a moment of weakness and now I have gotten to him during a moment of strength and he's standing up to me, taking an opportunity to help fix something important while gaining a little space for himself in the process.
I get to spend the late winter/early spring teaching Dalton the basics of money management, like why paying your mortgage and electric bills before you go shopping for new amps is a good thing. I really hope he's ready for this. I can be intrusive, interruptive and incorrigible.
He says he's totally ready. We shall see now, won't we?
Oddly enough, both subjects today are left-handed. And hippies, not knights.
The boys are loading up trucks right now. There's a little shift going on in the household. August is moving into Dalton's place, citing a need for more mirror time (this is not even a joke, jerkfaces, August has (okay, had) his own bathroom).
Dalton is moving into my house. In a sense I am trading one friend of Jake's for another. Even though I don't have to give August up, it just won't be the same.
There are a combination of issues that led to this. Beginning with the fact that Dalton isn't used to housing prices here (with a long history of issues related to that subject, frankly) and was on the verge of giving up a six-month investment because he's in a little over his head and refuses help or basic budgeting lessons.
Throw in a little bit of stubbornness on my part and August and I have butted heads a lot lately. He is supposed to easily separate his professional and personal life and he isn't having much luck because he lives with his charges and really I can corrupt him faster than I can hang up the phone. He's as easily charmed as Jacob always was. And he's enough like Jacob that I get to remain mired in some sort of paralysis between the present and the past and that's an unhealthy place for me. When I feel fragile I can just go tuck myself under his arm as he reads and he's the closest living, breathing ringer to Jake there ever was. Right down to the Newfie accent. The mannerisms and the unintentional enthusiastic volume sometimes makes me jump right out of my skin.
But it's okay. It was sort of a surprise that he lived here at all and I have a feeling I got to him during a moment of weakness and now I have gotten to him during a moment of strength and he's standing up to me, taking an opportunity to help fix something important while gaining a little space for himself in the process.
I get to spend the late winter/early spring teaching Dalton the basics of money management, like why paying your mortgage and electric bills before you go shopping for new amps is a good thing. I really hope he's ready for this. I can be intrusive, interruptive and incorrigible.
He says he's totally ready. We shall see now, won't we?
Tuesday 28 December 2010
Shack wacky.
I'm very out of sorts today, though Ben has been eyeing me particularly hungrily since I came downstairs dressed and ready to conquer whatever the hell it is I'm supposed to be doing today. I used my new Philosophy vanilla birthday cake shower gel and I smell so delicious you might find me in the corner later gnawing my own arms off after consuming my delicious knees first.
It's that good, yes. I've tried the other ones, this one seems heads above the rest in boy-popularity.
Lochlan is singing Lucky Man (The Verve, not Emerson, Lake and Palmer though on some days, you might be surprised.)and he won't stop and it's sort of beginning to seep into my brain and really I just need a little fresh air (because I ADORE the song) and maybe it's time the Christmas tree was removed because it makes me a little claustrophobic even though the house is huge and I can get away from it and I don't really know...I'm sure it's just cabin fever. Everyone is still too sick to go very far, however.
Some of you have sent in some ridiculously awesome suggestions too, regarding last evening's request for requests. Thank you. Look for them in the coming days because otherwise I will be out in the orchard in the pouring rain imploding. And smelling really good while I do.
It's that good, yes. I've tried the other ones, this one seems heads above the rest in boy-popularity.
Lochlan is singing Lucky Man (The Verve, not Emerson, Lake and Palmer though on some days, you might be surprised.)and he won't stop and it's sort of beginning to seep into my brain and really I just need a little fresh air (because I ADORE the song) and maybe it's time the Christmas tree was removed because it makes me a little claustrophobic even though the house is huge and I can get away from it and I don't really know...I'm sure it's just cabin fever. Everyone is still too sick to go very far, however.
Some of you have sent in some ridiculously awesome suggestions too, regarding last evening's request for requests. Thank you. Look for them in the coming days because otherwise I will be out in the orchard in the pouring rain imploding. And smelling really good while I do.
Monday 27 December 2010
Water wings.
If I owe you any stories, I may have forgotten. You can email me at saltwater princess at gmail dot com and I will do my best to post some catch-up entries. Sometimes I wade too deep into my own words and I dip underneath the rope that divides the swimming area from the drowning area and frankly I'm not sure what possessed me to come to the beach today anyway. It's not even warm out.
Lost my place. Long evening. Not sure what you WANT to read so why don't you just tell me.
For once. While I am open to writing for you, as opposed to writing for myself.
Thanks. :)
Lost my place. Long evening. Not sure what you WANT to read so why don't you just tell me.
For once. While I am open to writing for you, as opposed to writing for myself.
Thanks. :)
Christmas cravings.
The candy canes begin as a lark and quickly because weapons, bitten off and sucked to sharp points, crushed against bone and splinted into glittery mint fragments all over the bed. Pieces stick against my shoulders, in my hair, between my fingers. He is dusted with tiny shards. He is the most exquisite broken glass.
It hurts so much but I am loathe to give up first. Not a chance. I smiled and grit my teeth and he grabs a handful of my hair, pulling my face up, crushing a handful of candy canes with his fist, pouring them into my mouth and nose. I shake my head and lick my lips. I am sticky all over. I can't breathe. I fight for air, pinned down, feeling him eating the crushed pieces off my collarbone. I spread my hands out and try and push the remaining canes off the bed, succeeding only in moving them around, making a candy-cane angel where I lie.
He laughs and finds one last cane still intact, licking it, tracing my lips, leaving behind a cool tingle that distracts me. He holds it out for me to take and I suck on it, I am the queen of lethal Christmas cheer. I am the sugar queen. And he is my minty vampire with one cane hooked in each side of his mouth. Fangs made of peppermint.
I start laughing and it's too late. I'm going to be bitten by the monster of Christmas present and there's absolutely nothing I can do.
Oh darn.
It hurts so much but I am loathe to give up first. Not a chance. I smiled and grit my teeth and he grabs a handful of my hair, pulling my face up, crushing a handful of candy canes with his fist, pouring them into my mouth and nose. I shake my head and lick my lips. I am sticky all over. I can't breathe. I fight for air, pinned down, feeling him eating the crushed pieces off my collarbone. I spread my hands out and try and push the remaining canes off the bed, succeeding only in moving them around, making a candy-cane angel where I lie.
He laughs and finds one last cane still intact, licking it, tracing my lips, leaving behind a cool tingle that distracts me. He holds it out for me to take and I suck on it, I am the queen of lethal Christmas cheer. I am the sugar queen. And he is my minty vampire with one cane hooked in each side of his mouth. Fangs made of peppermint.
I start laughing and it's too late. I'm going to be bitten by the monster of Christmas present and there's absolutely nothing I can do.
Oh darn.
Sunday 26 December 2010
tra·di·tion: \trÉ™-di-shÉ™n\
Definition of TRADITION: A form of relaxation in which the entire household uses the holiday as great excuse to sleep in, stay in pajamas for the entire day, play with presents endlessly, catch up on laundry, claim leftovers (cake is mine, as always) and engage in low-level, inactive past times like watching things, reading things, listening to things and seeking each other out to have low conversations in quiet spaces.
I might even find the energy to light a candle or two but I doubt it.
Maybe later.
Definition of TRADITION: A form of relaxation in which the entire household uses the holiday as great excuse to sleep in, stay in pajamas for the entire day, play with presents endlessly, catch up on laundry, claim leftovers (cake is mine, as always) and engage in low-level, inactive past times like watching things, reading things, listening to things and seeking each other out to have low conversations in quiet spaces.
I might even find the energy to light a candle or two but I doubt it.
Maybe later.
Saturday 25 December 2010
Light bulb.
We are full of turkey, stuffing, chocolate marquise and wine and still laughing after seeing Despicable Me.
The marvel of enjoying a bright Christmas day with temperatures hovering around ten degrees is such an incredible novelty I may never live it down. As does watching Ben expertly carve turkeys like it's something he does every damn day and now listening to Lochlan as he edits the pictures he took today.
Last night I listened to the boys sing for the candlelit service. Every blessing in my life has a name. Every gift I have ever received has a different combination of eye and hair colors, a different voice and a different hug methodology. They are my gifts.
I have been kissed and hugged and spoiled thoroughly. I have been coddled, in generous amounts of help with dinner, and I have been deceitful, in that I spent much of the day with a massive raging fever, unwilling to admit defeat because dammit, it's our first Christmas here and it was going to be perfect no matter what.
It was.
Merry Christmas to you. XOX
The marvel of enjoying a bright Christmas day with temperatures hovering around ten degrees is such an incredible novelty I may never live it down. As does watching Ben expertly carve turkeys like it's something he does every damn day and now listening to Lochlan as he edits the pictures he took today.
Last night I listened to the boys sing for the candlelit service. Every blessing in my life has a name. Every gift I have ever received has a different combination of eye and hair colors, a different voice and a different hug methodology. They are my gifts.
I have been kissed and hugged and spoiled thoroughly. I have been coddled, in generous amounts of help with dinner, and I have been deceitful, in that I spent much of the day with a massive raging fever, unwilling to admit defeat because dammit, it's our first Christmas here and it was going to be perfect no matter what.
It was.
Will you read us a bedtime story?
No.
Pretty please?
The physical appearance of the please makes no difference.
Merry Christmas to you. XOX
Friday 24 December 2010
"The torture of a bad conscience is the hell of a living soul." ~John Calvin
I went outside to cool off for a moment and found him standing on my verandah, leaning up against the siding, looking out into the woods. One hand was in his coat pocket, the other was wrapped around the handle of a large paper shopping bag, stuffed with wrapped presents. I didn't wrap these ones and I was sure I looked after everything. He already dropped off the presents for the children and I. We always exchange something. Besides vitriol, remembrance and bodily fluids, I mean.
What are you doing?
Stopping in to say hello.
We're heading out in an hour, Caleb.
I know. I just thought I would pop in, I won't stay though. You're having a busy day. I just needed to see you. Just for a minute.
Ben's Superman hearing led him outside and he pulled the door behind him.
Caleb.
Benjamin.
What brings you here today?
He changed demeanor before my very eyes.
I'm headed to a few functions tonight but I wanted to drop off a few things I had set aside. I don't have much time so I'll leave these with you. He passed the bag to Ben and shook his hand. Merry Christmas, brother.
You're not coming to church this evening?
We'll see. I'll do my best.
Fair enough. Ben took the bag and retreated back inside to a raucous amount of noise.
Don't, please.
Don't what?
Don't acknowledge my shortcomings, princess.
I had no intention of doing so.
You know, Bridget, they're very lucky. You're a gift. You know that?
I'm just trying to do the best I can.
I don't make things easy for you.
No, you don't.
It can't be helped.
Sure it could. And maybe you would be happier too.
If I made things easier?
Yes.
If you did that I'd be alone. I don't want that.
You wouldn't be. You have everything to offer someone.
Except my heart.
It was never my heart you were after, you just wanted to take what Lochlan had. How does jealousy grow into this?
I didn't count on you.
He whispers the last word and I know our conversation is over. He's not going to give me the satisfaction of seeing him break. Not today. He moves in and wraps his arms around me tightly, kissing my temple, squeezing me hard against him. His coat is rough and I lift my chin up. He presses his head against mine.
Merry Christmas, Bridget. I am in awe of the beautiful woman you have become, in spite of all of us.
I shake my head. I want to fight but he won't. Instead he kisses me full on the lips.
See you tomorrow.
I nod. He is coming for the morning, because we put Henry first. Henry wants his dad there, then his dad's going to be there. Only Henry doesn't know yet. It's a surprise. I can be a grownup.
I can be generous.
I can be really freaking late for dinner. It's an hours drive. Goodnight. Merry Christmas.
What are you doing?
Stopping in to say hello.
We're heading out in an hour, Caleb.
I know. I just thought I would pop in, I won't stay though. You're having a busy day. I just needed to see you. Just for a minute.
Ben's Superman hearing led him outside and he pulled the door behind him.
Caleb.
Benjamin.
What brings you here today?
He changed demeanor before my very eyes.
I'm headed to a few functions tonight but I wanted to drop off a few things I had set aside. I don't have much time so I'll leave these with you. He passed the bag to Ben and shook his hand. Merry Christmas, brother.
You're not coming to church this evening?
We'll see. I'll do my best.
Fair enough. Ben took the bag and retreated back inside to a raucous amount of noise.
Don't, please.
Don't what?
Don't acknowledge my shortcomings, princess.
I had no intention of doing so.
You know, Bridget, they're very lucky. You're a gift. You know that?
I'm just trying to do the best I can.
I don't make things easy for you.
No, you don't.
It can't be helped.
Sure it could. And maybe you would be happier too.
If I made things easier?
Yes.
If you did that I'd be alone. I don't want that.
You wouldn't be. You have everything to offer someone.
Except my heart.
It was never my heart you were after, you just wanted to take what Lochlan had. How does jealousy grow into this?
I didn't count on you.
He whispers the last word and I know our conversation is over. He's not going to give me the satisfaction of seeing him break. Not today. He moves in and wraps his arms around me tightly, kissing my temple, squeezing me hard against him. His coat is rough and I lift my chin up. He presses his head against mine.
Merry Christmas, Bridget. I am in awe of the beautiful woman you have become, in spite of all of us.
I shake my head. I want to fight but he won't. Instead he kisses me full on the lips.
See you tomorrow.
I nod. He is coming for the morning, because we put Henry first. Henry wants his dad there, then his dad's going to be there. Only Henry doesn't know yet. It's a surprise. I can be a grownup.
I can be generous.
I can be really freaking late for dinner. It's an hours drive. Goodnight. Merry Christmas.
Thursday 23 December 2010
Because he's incorrigible, here are Ben's jokes for the night.
How do you know when there's a snowman in your bed?
You wake up wet.
***
What do vampires put on their turkey at Christmas?
Grave-y!
***
What does Dracula write on his Christmas cards?
"Best vicious of the season."
You wake up wet.
***
What do vampires put on their turkey at Christmas?
Grave-y!
***
What does Dracula write on his Christmas cards?
"Best vicious of the season."
Princess flu bug.
I sat down with toast this morning and Lochlan slipped my wedding ring back on my finger without a word. He smiled, kissed the top of my head and Ben said Good Morning to him and poured him a cup of coffee.
Civility in the face of extreme weirdness always makes me so incredibly grateful.
I am burning up. A thousand degrees and my shoulders, knees and fingers ache and I'm loathe to admit that I think I have the flu even though I know I do. Everyone has taken their turn. Even Ben had one hell of a headache and was grumpy the past couple of days and he hardly ever gets sick. Henry is feeling better after struggling all week. Hopefully it's a fast-moving one because I have plans. Lots of plans that don't include curling up in the centre of my giant bed to ride out the worst of it.
I will blame Schuyler. He kisses goddamned near everybody. I'm going to start replacing his toothpaste with antibacterial hand sanitizer.
On that note, goodnight. Can't do it.
Civility in the face of extreme weirdness always makes me so incredibly grateful.
I am burning up. A thousand degrees and my shoulders, knees and fingers ache and I'm loathe to admit that I think I have the flu even though I know I do. Everyone has taken their turn. Even Ben had one hell of a headache and was grumpy the past couple of days and he hardly ever gets sick. Henry is feeling better after struggling all week. Hopefully it's a fast-moving one because I have plans. Lots of plans that don't include curling up in the centre of my giant bed to ride out the worst of it.
I will blame Schuyler. He kisses goddamned near everybody. I'm going to start replacing his toothpaste with antibacterial hand sanitizer.
On that note, goodnight. Can't do it.
Wednesday 22 December 2010
Christmas bonus (AKA pay the lady).
Ben leaves the front door and returns to the table with another envelope. This one is a pale pearl gold with a paper snowflake affixed to the flap. He puts it on the table in front of me and I don't need to see my name neatly printed on the front in Caleb's handwriting to know that it's from him. The color is new, however and so I raise my eyes from the envelope to meet Ben's face.
He nods. Ben just looks tired. Tired but beginning to relax and beginning to run out of patience and I'm not allowed out of his reach for the rest of my life, he says. I only wish he were serious.
I open it. Inside is a cheque for seven hundred and fifty dollars with a note on the memo line that says 'bonus'. A post-it note attached says 'Is this better?'
I stifle a laugh. The formality of this, what I asked for instead of the unwelcome entire legacy of our blended, dysfunctional family makes me feel vaguely silly. But the fact that Caleb wrote it out and had it delivered anyway after I asked for a fair amount based on the work I did for the company means I must be doing something right.
Small victories. Even as he surgically removes the rest of my dignity with his patented incision-free technique.
He nods. Ben just looks tired. Tired but beginning to relax and beginning to run out of patience and I'm not allowed out of his reach for the rest of my life, he says. I only wish he were serious.
I open it. Inside is a cheque for seven hundred and fifty dollars with a note on the memo line that says 'bonus'. A post-it note attached says 'Is this better?'
I stifle a laugh. The formality of this, what I asked for instead of the unwelcome entire legacy of our blended, dysfunctional family makes me feel vaguely silly. But the fact that Caleb wrote it out and had it delivered anyway after I asked for a fair amount based on the work I did for the company means I must be doing something right.
Small victories. Even as he surgically removes the rest of my dignity with his patented incision-free technique.
He pushed his head against mine. He's warm. I am cold on the inside, blood running over sheets of crackling thin ice, breaking with every breath. His hand drops from my head to my hand and he pulls it up between us and slides off my ring. I argue softly but he ignores me. His eyes are flashing, pupils dilated. He puts my ring in his pocket and I watch it disappear. It's a rule I don't subscribe to but I understand.
He bends his head down again and kisses my ear. I lift my chin up and rest it against his shoulder as his arms tighten around me. I whisper things under my breath and he responds with light squeezes. He can hear me. I cannot hear myself. I pull him in against me and he responds by pushing me down, his weight the only leverage he will need. His hands are feeling for the zipper on the side of my dress while his lips crush against mine, biting. Breathing me in. It's dark but our eyes are not adjusting. He gives up and reaches for the hem instead, pulling it up, shoving the fabric out of his way. The dress is between us, the beading digging into his flesh, straps pinning my arms down. He grabs the worst one with his hand and pulls until it rips away and I protest and he immediately covers my mouth. Silence is easier. I am lifted up and pulled in close against the uncanny warmth of his skin. All business now, we aren't going to give away anything here. We aren't going to bow to the whims of the shadows standing nearby, cuff links glinting in the pitch-black night.
His hand comes down from my mouth as he finds his way home and it wraps around my throat. I am helpless now, clinging to the waves of euphoria. It's an eternity. I know that he is close and he presses his head down against mine again and I am already turning blue, clawing for precious air with no strength, held captive with no means to save myself and all I can do is wait for rescue. I am three lifetimes ago and I can hear the calliope and his curls are in my mouth and his breath is hot against my shoulders and finally he lets go and he never fails to land a kiss on my shoulder as he pulls me up. I come back to life.
He whispers loudly that the shadows will fade. He takes his time. Checking to be sure he left no marks. Checking to be sure he left no feelings of afraid or of sad for Bridget to trip over or fall into. Telling himself it's all going to be okay because she can't hear him. He doesn't dare speak any louder.
While I slept on my ring was taken. When at last the shadows stopped watching I lost my mind.
He bends his head down again and kisses my ear. I lift my chin up and rest it against his shoulder as his arms tighten around me. I whisper things under my breath and he responds with light squeezes. He can hear me. I cannot hear myself. I pull him in against me and he responds by pushing me down, his weight the only leverage he will need. His hands are feeling for the zipper on the side of my dress while his lips crush against mine, biting. Breathing me in. It's dark but our eyes are not adjusting. He gives up and reaches for the hem instead, pulling it up, shoving the fabric out of his way. The dress is between us, the beading digging into his flesh, straps pinning my arms down. He grabs the worst one with his hand and pulls until it rips away and I protest and he immediately covers my mouth. Silence is easier. I am lifted up and pulled in close against the uncanny warmth of his skin. All business now, we aren't going to give away anything here. We aren't going to bow to the whims of the shadows standing nearby, cuff links glinting in the pitch-black night.
His hand comes down from my mouth as he finds his way home and it wraps around my throat. I am helpless now, clinging to the waves of euphoria. It's an eternity. I know that he is close and he presses his head down against mine again and I am already turning blue, clawing for precious air with no strength, held captive with no means to save myself and all I can do is wait for rescue. I am three lifetimes ago and I can hear the calliope and his curls are in my mouth and his breath is hot against my shoulders and finally he lets go and he never fails to land a kiss on my shoulder as he pulls me up. I come back to life.
He whispers loudly that the shadows will fade. He takes his time. Checking to be sure he left no marks. Checking to be sure he left no feelings of afraid or of sad for Bridget to trip over or fall into. Telling himself it's all going to be okay because she can't hear him. He doesn't dare speak any louder.
While I slept on my ring was taken. When at last the shadows stopped watching I lost my mind.
Tuesday 21 December 2010
Voted most expressive, much to her dismay.
I can hear the furnace humming quietly, probably because the cold air return is on the wall behind my desk. I can hear the ticking of the dishwasher as it warms the plates, because my desk is in a nook just off the kitchen. I hear a dog barking on a nearby street and Bonham is holding guard by the front door waiting for Ben and the children, who have gone shopping. I am supposed to be wrapping presents while they're gone but clearly I am not.
Today was a little rockier to begin. Not sure if we stayed up too late or it was just excess tension to blow off but we all started off on the wrong foot and I got very frustrated with some things that don't work and made a tearful plea for Ben to quit the mood swings and just fix everything please because I am tired of the pressure.
He is. Working away at it as we speak.
He waited a while to see what I would do but I don't have the capacity for patience anymore, I will go at it the hard way until I just can't manage it anymore and I reach that point where it's fucking stupid and pointless and no more.
There aren't enough hours in the day to fix things and yet there are enough hours to mess things up and break everything and become so frustrated I can't stop the hot tears that ruin my mascara and everyone's smiles in one go. I can't help it, it's been like this for a long time and it takes forever to come out of and really I'm laughing at the same time because it's ridiculous. I am blessed. The complaints would be welcome issues anywhere else and yet I have insurance against anything that goes wrong, so then when it does it will be the end of the world because that's precisely what I insured against, correct?
If only life worked that way, princess.
It should. I've earned it.
Sorry, baby. It isn't possible. It's called life.
Everyone makes it look easy.
They're better actors, that's all. Maybe your gift is that you give people permission to be honest and feel comfortable because you come to them with your heart on your sleeve and your guard already down.
I want to be an actor. Everyone can marvel at my perfection and the ease with which I live.
This is met with long, raucous laughter. I am annoyed.
Stop it, Jake.
I can't help it. You have the most fascinating thought-process.
I don't think it belongs to me, I must have picked it up along the way. I don't know how it works and therefore I can't control it. It's not mine.
It's the honesty, that's all. You never had a poker face.
Then that will be my resolution for the new year.
To learn to lie? That isn't a very good resolution, Bridget.
What would you suggest then?
Start writing again. Do the things that make you YOU.
Too hard.
You think learning the art of deception will be easier?
Works for everyone else.
Oh, Bridget, give up now. You'll never be anyone else.
My loss?
Your gain.
And you say my thoughts are strange.
Today was a little rockier to begin. Not sure if we stayed up too late or it was just excess tension to blow off but we all started off on the wrong foot and I got very frustrated with some things that don't work and made a tearful plea for Ben to quit the mood swings and just fix everything please because I am tired of the pressure.
He is. Working away at it as we speak.
He waited a while to see what I would do but I don't have the capacity for patience anymore, I will go at it the hard way until I just can't manage it anymore and I reach that point where it's fucking stupid and pointless and no more.
There aren't enough hours in the day to fix things and yet there are enough hours to mess things up and break everything and become so frustrated I can't stop the hot tears that ruin my mascara and everyone's smiles in one go. I can't help it, it's been like this for a long time and it takes forever to come out of and really I'm laughing at the same time because it's ridiculous. I am blessed. The complaints would be welcome issues anywhere else and yet I have insurance against anything that goes wrong, so then when it does it will be the end of the world because that's precisely what I insured against, correct?
If only life worked that way, princess.
It should. I've earned it.
Sorry, baby. It isn't possible. It's called life.
Everyone makes it look easy.
They're better actors, that's all. Maybe your gift is that you give people permission to be honest and feel comfortable because you come to them with your heart on your sleeve and your guard already down.
I want to be an actor. Everyone can marvel at my perfection and the ease with which I live.
This is met with long, raucous laughter. I am annoyed.
Stop it, Jake.
I can't help it. You have the most fascinating thought-process.
I don't think it belongs to me, I must have picked it up along the way. I don't know how it works and therefore I can't control it. It's not mine.
It's the honesty, that's all. You never had a poker face.
Then that will be my resolution for the new year.
To learn to lie? That isn't a very good resolution, Bridget.
What would you suggest then?
Start writing again. Do the things that make you YOU.
Too hard.
You think learning the art of deception will be easier?
Works for everyone else.
Oh, Bridget, give up now. You'll never be anyone else.
My loss?
Your gain.
And you say my thoughts are strange.
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