Because why lie on the floor when supposedly lying on a fake wicker couch is that much better? YEESH.

Did I mention I finished my shopping for the away folks this week?

Amazing. Also I've procured the advent calendars and new Christmas cards (hard to find black ones, y'all) and wrapping paper (Okay it's not black, it's baby blue with little snowmen all over it and it's cute!) and the two cases of tape that we will probably still run out of.

I even have a couple of gifts for Ruth and Henry already.

But I also have far less time than I did before and that's going to make things tougher this year so I'm trying to get it all done in the next couple of weeks or so. We shall see. Next weekend will be very busy and also I'm sick again (this. goddamned. cold) but Lochlan's been really great about delegating, since I never have the heart to.

We even practiced and I still couldn't do it.

Tell him, Peanut. 

Hey PJ? Can you...uh..find a place that makes that yellow curry I love so much? I miss it. 

You were supposed to ask him to get out the patio set for the gazebo. 

But then I won't have room to lie on the floor anymore.

And you wonder why you don't get better. 

You don't get colds from being cold. You get them from germs! Also the gazebo is heated.

Yeah, okay. I raised you. YOU get them from being cold. I can almost set my watch by it. And the gazebo counts as 'outside'.

You hardly even wear your watch any more. 

Don't change the subject. Also, hey, PJ. Want to help me set the gazebo back up? 

I watch the master but I'll never be able to order my friends around. It just feels too weird. Even for me.

A Sea of trouble.

I'm pretty sure true bliss is lying on the floor of a heated gazebo on a cold sunny Friday listening to the Black Holes album by the Blue Stones and eating Kung Pao noodles out of a microwave envelope.

You can't beat that sort of a morning, actually.

But why are you lying on the floor?

Someone put the patio furniture away for the winter.

That was you, Bridget. 

Well, I think we can get it back out. It's twenty degrees. Winter is clearly over.

An apple a day (will not keep you from getting chased into a pool to be tickled).

And I cannot guess what we'll discover
When we turn the dirt with our palms cupped like shovels
But I know our filthy hands can wash one anothers
And not one speck will remain

And I do believe it’s true
That there are roads left in both of our shoes
But if the silence takes you
Then I hope it takes me too

I'm pretty sure being sat on and tickled at the bottom of the pool while he sings Death Cab lyrics at me so loudly and off-key I think I might choke, failing to catch my own breath is a rarity for a random Thursday in late November.

Stop it! STOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOP PLEEEEEEAAAAAASE!!!

And Lochlan stops on a dime, pulling me up out of the rain puddle that found a way to try and fill the pool against Caleb's wishes because it's almost winter.

And so I'm soaked and cold and it's pouring and he's still singing but I don't know the words to this one, I only know it's great, and I wish for monumental payback in the form of holding him down and belting out a Type O Negative or even an Amon Amarth classic in my half-assed growl.

He did make it up to me, slicing up a granny smith apple with tiny slivers of smoked cheese on each and every one, but then he ate half of it. He always eats half of it. We shared the bowlful while we found fresh warm clothes to put on after coming inside and shedding our soaked clothes and then he asked what I wanted to do.

Get a start on Christmas shopping, I said. It might be tough to send things across the country this year.

He nodded. Okay. No music in the truck today though. 

Excuse me? 

It was a song, and I feel like you talking about me singing it made it seem like I was saying those things, and I wouldn't-

Oh, no one thinks you wrote those words, Loch. 

I just mean-

I'm just amazed at how many lyrics you can remember. 

Probably not as many as you, Bridge. 

Oh, I don't know about that. I learned from the absolute best, and that's you for a reason.

Purely disfunctional or really really meant for each other.

Driving down the highway late last night on our way home from dinner and on the stereo comes the saddest song in the world that you'll never get out of your head. That Rihanna/Eminem song Love the Way You Lie that's so stupid-catchy and I'm only an Eminem fan when he's really angry anyway so I know this one so I start singing Rihanna's part and then Lochlan picks up the Eminem parts and when we pull into the driveway it ends.

We've sung the whole song together and I'm not sure now if I should be plotting divorce or instead a world tour.

I'm thinking tour.

All the land, I said.

A moment ago I was sweltering from the inside out day after day and suddenly it's dark at 3:30pm and I have to scrape my car in the mornings, and then sit in it shivering while I wait for the inside of the windows to defog.

PJ has offered, no less than every single morning to have the car warmed up, scraped and ready for me but I like him warm better than cold and I need to keep him that way.

Besides, I'm beginning to think I'm on a roll here. Should I build just enough character in this lifetime I can give it a face and a name and just maybe, I'll get my Jacob back. But don't tell them I told you this or they'll pad the walls of my room with feather-down mattress pads.

Don't laugh. We have a big squared off eight-inch-thick mattress pad on our bed that makes you feel as if you're falling asleep in an actual cloud. Or maybe that's on an actual goose, I suppose since clouds aren't made of feathers.

But that's okay, neither are Bridgets. Bridgets are made of rusted thumbtacks and linty pulls of cotton candy, loose strings of pink yarn and stray tortoiseshell buttons.

Or maybe that was magazine prizes, popcorn boxes, lollipops and dried blood. I don't even know, Lochlan changed it every single time he described me and he would always include some ingredient that surprised and ultimately dismayed me.

(Why do you say these things?

So you don't get full of yourself. 

Well, that's silly, who else would I be full of. I'm Bridget to the very top of my head. 

Yes, you are. 

When I grow up will you start my car for me on cold snowy days? 

I asked him this as we sat in his mother's car in his driveway while on this day he decided I was full of frozen pennies, stuck in a mudpuddle, broken popsicle sticks and one single left mitten.

No, because I hate doing this. I'm freezing. Maybe we can find someone to do it for both of us. 

Huh? 

Like a neighbor or a person who rents a room from us. We'll be landlords.

Oh, I see, like of all the land before us. Like kings. But wait! Why would they do that for us?

Maybe we'll do something for them too. 

Like what? 

I don't know, exactly. I guess we'll have to cross that bridge when we get there. 

We're going to live on the other side of a bridge?

Probably. 

Like on an island? 

There are all kinds of bridges that don't lead to islands. 

But the good ones do. 

It's an idiom. 

I thought it was called an island. 

No, no. The phrase. 

All good bridges lead to islands? 

You know what? You're right. Let's leave it at that, Peanut.)

Hey, PJ? On second though, would you mind starting it for me? I think that would be nice. And I'll bring you home some of that roast beef you like so much from the restaurant.

Stubborn is my middle name.

I think the last straw today was when Lochlan pulled into the parking lot at the restaurant only to find me sweeping up cigarette butts and straw wrappers from the pavement, my jacket wrapped around me, apron sticking out the bottom. It wasn't busy thanks to the observed Remembrance Day and so I was sent to do a lot of random chores today in lieu of waiting tables.

(I also spent forty-five minutes making sure all the forks faced the same way in the bin but no one seems upset about that.)

Alright, that's enough. I'm not going to watch you do that. 

Then go home and wait for me?

I think Caleb's right, Bridget. 

About what? 

You don't need to do this. 

I'm making twenty-two dollars an hour doing 'this'. 

Go inside, give them your apron, tell them that's your notice. 

Go home, Lochlan. I say it gently as the wind whips the hair into my eyes, hands covered in ashes, dignity locked securely in the trunk of my car. I have work to finish.

We are the dead (loved and were loved).

Where do you want to go for lunch, Neamhchiontach? 

For Ramen, actually. Is that okay? 

Of course. 

But we checked and nothing was open that we liked and so we came home and I'll make grilled cheese. It's a frosty cold Remembrance Day today, with little traffic and few people to interact with. Church was empty, so empty in fact that Sam culled in all of the folks who tried to sit unnoticed in the furthest rows, who then ended up right up front and he stood in the aisle, hands on the backs of the benches, and spoke as if he was leading a small meeting and then opted to give a very short sermon, releasing the tiny congregation. It felt a little like it did when the teacher would say we could leave ten minutes early, an unexpected freedom suddenly thrust into our universes to hold in both hands.

Sam went and helped all of the older folks find and put on their coats, and Caleb held out his hand for me, because I didn't take my coat off. I'm cold all the time lately, still stuffed up and coughing some and never ever rested. Ever.

Lochlan slept in. I tried to wake him but he said to pray for him and turned away. He made a sound like a kiss and trusts that I'll find what I need, that someone will bring me, that Sam will keep watch over me once I'm there and that I'll return and he'll be up and dressed, sipping coffee lefthanded the way he does, all but ignoring the world around him in a way that only someone who's lived with a multitude of distractions can pull off. He can fall asleep under a ride full of screaming teens and in a field with fireworks being set off directly overhead with a ridiculous ease that makes me so envious I'm always tinged a shade of green and yet he gets tired so easily now. Life has worn us down. God didn't have any answers for that, he only wanted to take stock of our gratitude for those who fought in the war. My poppy fell off somewhere between the front hall and returning to the front hall today. Not sure why but I usually spend fifty dollars on them because I forget to figure out a way to affix them until I want to take them off my coat but then again this time of year I'm numb and going through the motions.

Remembrance indeed. By the skin of my teeth.

Grilled cheese is ready, Diabhal. 

It looks delicious. Thank you.

Spoilers, spoilers.

I would talk about Caleb's new level of affection since he's come to reside in the main house, as he calls it (not what I call it, oddly) but instead a lot of people emailed me to ask what I thought of Sabrina. 

I don't think I'll finish it. The boys weren't all that impressed, as they are not the target demographic so that's okay, they were far more impressed with that scene in the Delta-V episode of The Expanse when dude hits the shield in the ring at 80000 km/h and his face torques out and liquifies in the COOLEST WAY EVER.

But Sabrina? I was so happy they were portraying witchcraft as an everyday normal activity until they mentioned Satan. And then I was like HUH? and then they kept doing it and mixing up Witchcraft and Satanism and I was like Oh, hell, no. Pick one, they aren't the same, they have nothing to do with each other. Then there was a little Voodoo and I rolled my eyes and decided the show just doesn't get it and I think I'm done.

But it did have promise and all of the actors were amazing.

But damn, someone in the writer's room or at the first read through should have quashed the Satan aspect so hard. Seriously, folks. What the fuck.

In other news, did I mention my Devil is being stupidly sweet? Cause he is.

Think I have this 'self care' thing down now.

I've spent this rainy Friday lying in bed with Daniel, Schuyler, Lochlan and Ben eating brownies and watching Sabrina on Netflix. Does it count?

(I hope it does.)

Warily warily warily warily, life is but a dream.

(I misheard those lyrics once. Lochlan said if I didn't want cavities I should sing Row, Row, Row Your Boat in my mind while I brush my teeth but I didn't know the song, his accent and my ears further messed it up, and it's been a cautionary tale ever since.)

This morning I feel better. I feel victorious and renewed. I feel like I conquered a ghost or a feeling or a day just by avoiding it completely, which seems a trickstery, underhanded, rather shady way of dealing with things, forcing one to shove their true feeling down to the bottom of their very selves where those feelings fester and infect the owner. For ever.

Sam laughs at my descriptions. It's early. Far too early for this and my legs hurt. Not quite, Bridget. More of a coping mechanism using distractions. You still need to deal with the feelings. 

I ask him with my mouth full of toast with honey. Oh yeah? How do I do that? 

As if we've never had this conversation a hundred thousand times before and he just grins softly because he's relieved, sharing in my victory, glad to be over the worst of it. I don't speak too soon, I don't need to knock wood as the beginning of the week was tough and careless, difficult, dark and sharp and yet eventually all good things must come to an end. Today the sun is shining, there's a million and twelve new red leaves on the ground and I need to make the rounds, get my hugs and reassure the boys that I am okay even as everything I do and say tells them something completely different lately.

Lochlan is the most relieved and yet still the most guarded of all. Every time he walks into a room he points at me and snaps You good?

I'm almost afraid to say anything other than Yes.