A hundred shades of blue.

Lochlan had it all planned before I woke up.

I'm taking the day off, he said. We're going to go shopping, see a Bollywood movie and then go for Indian food. 

What are we buying?

I don't know yet but when I see it I will. Maybe....um...chapstick. An Archie comic. Candy. He grins. (When I was very young I loved to go to the drugstore and buy those things. I never bought anything else. Still don't, to be honest.)

Okay. 

Okay?

Sure. Sounds good.

I didn't think you'd want to do any of that. He deflates with relief.

Oh, if you don't want to we can do something else-

Maybe the movie is negotiable but the rest sounds fine. Maybe I'll even get a chapstick too. 

Just use mine. 

Shhhhhhh. I already do sometimes.

Icy slush, up to one's knees (if one is as tiny as me).

Thanks to localized road and parking lot clearing and the fact that the church has a rather steep driveway that was still all ice until late last evening Sam cancelled services for the day and so he staggered over to our kitchen in pajama pants and an Opeth t-shirt (who gave him THAT omg HOT) and blessed the tops of our heads sleepily before staggering back across to the boathouse to sleep.

Not sure how he would have managed had there been actual church today. I guess he would have filled his body with coffee and then he would have acted completely normal, though with a slight tremble with every word or move. It's how I operate so I imagine that's how it would be.

Lochlan and I are up and having an extended coffee date, then as no one else is getting up early since there's nowhere we have to be. It seems our neighborhood is back to the heavy habitual rain I enjoy so much here, which is good. I can drive in rain. Well, not at night I can't (hard to see) but it beats driving in a blizzard or on pure ice.

Tomorrow is Blue Monday but there are only five work shifts to shunt the kids to this week, which is great.

I need to start pulling taxes together for February.

I'd like to start spring cleaning but I need to be motivated first.

I'd like to find a new job.

I need a new coat. I realized a lot of my misery lately stems from the fact that I wear a sixteen-year-old barn jacket that I wore to get from the castle to the stone garage in the Prairies, because my wool coats hurt my neck so much and scarves only go so far and my hair isn't quite long enough to make up the difference as I do leave it tucked in but it's just barely past my shoulders and will be another six months before it doesn't untuck itself when I look around.

(I'm not really into fashion or anything like that. I'm sure you've guessed. Anything spectacular that I own was bought for me in desperation by someone who cares far more.)

Maybe that only makes sense to me, but I'm at that stage of winter where my skin is so dry I want to scream and so everything has to be soft, including clothes, sheets, towels, boys and my environment.

Am I rambling? I am. That's the joy of  Sundays at home. Lochlan just brought me a second cup of coffee so now I get to truly relax and savour it. The first one is always just for courage for the day and since I think I have enough of that now to move forward I guess we're good.

Watching my beautiful redhead read the paper out loud and sip his coffee. I'm so lucky.

I want someone to make a movie about OUR marriage.

Lochlan did not sleep in this morning. I heard the rain around four and turned over to breathe all over his face, and he did his usual move of pulling me up higher, sticking his face into the crook of my neck, wrapping his arms around me and drifting off again. I did too, wrapping my arms around his whole head and didn't wake up until eight but once we were up we were running. It wasn't until hours later that we stopped for lunch and looked at each other thoughtfully, for a moment.

We're getting that printer, he said. It will pay for itself in two years.

It's still super expensive. 

See that tank on the side? It holds one litre. You can fill it with anyth-

HUMAN BLOOD. 

See? I knew you'd come around. 

***

Let's talk about A Marriage Story. The acting was top notch, Adam Driver was incredible. Scarlett is always incredible when she has material to work with (Lost in Translation, Under the Skin, this) but the part I didn't like? The fact that the characters had unlimited budgets with which to get things underway, and the fact that in the end they all lived happily ever after. I didn't like the fact that they blindsided each other with the big stuff while having the little things about each other nailed down, held fast. I didn't like the strange intimacy portrayed by someone doing something as tender as tying a shoelace when they didn't at any point actually have a real deep conversation. I didn't like Laura Dern's loud speech about women needing to be saints, even if it's true because it screamed Supporting Actress Monologue to me, and Alan Alda made me super sad in a way that worked very well, because he was ironically wrong even as he was right.

I guess I'm relieved I didn't see myself in this movie. I guess I'm thrilled to have witnessed a beautiful bit of acting without losing sight of my jaded analytical approach to writing in film and I'm happy to have ticked this one off my list, truth be told. The longer I waited to see it the more I was dreading it, oddly enough.

The spoons were brutal but the weather? Beyond.

I capped off yesterday by driving through an actual, prolonged blizzard in which the horizon fell away from me, followed by the sky and then finally the road, and I made it to my destination by memory, using the track of a small pickup truck far ahead of me for orienteering, and the row of cars behind me for sludgerish haste. I don't think I've ever driven fifty kilometres an hour down the centre of a busy valley highway but I fucking did yesterday. Thankfully by the time it got dark out (oh GREAT) the snow had ended and I could (almost) see the road for the trip home.

I'm never leaving the house again. Actually, I lied. I already did. The sun is fighting to come out and we're supposed to get more snow tonight so we went out and cleaned off all the vehicles and the driveway and a spot up by the gates and the walkways and a good labyrinth for the dog to do his thing in the yard but still have fun and everything is ready.

I even graciously shovelled Sam's steps all the way to his fucking front door. People who are depressed wouldn't bother, right?

Right. I think.

Everybody puts baby in the corner.

Mornings like these I miss running. I miss ducking out of the house in my gear and booking down the street in a familiar path. I don't run here. There's nowhere to go, even if there were enough sidewalks. I don't have enough hearing anymore to risk the road, even against traffic and besides, my knees hate me for it-

So let's go anyway. Caleb arrives into the kitchen to read my brains, placing a kiss hard against the top of my head, rubbing the back of my neck gently. With two of us we can take the trails. 

(I'm not allowed to run alone in the woods anymore.)

Oh my God. DEAL. 

I run back upstairs to get ready. When I come in Lochlan stirs. Come back. He holds one arm up and then it drops in slow motion as he falls back asleep mid-plea. I kiss his cheek and tell him that Caleb and I going running. I don't think he hears me but it's okay, I'll let PJ know too.

I lament not getting new winter runners but the old ones will do. They're not one hundred percent waterproof anymore but maybe feeling the cold seeping up in between my toes is exactly what I mean, considering it's not like I ever wear shoes on the beach, winter OR summer.

And we're off, driving out of the neighbourhood carefully. I wonder if it was a bad idea because of the roads and maybe because the trails turned out to be full of snow far too deep to run in, but good for walking for men over six feet tall. We switched gears early on, coming back out and walking unfamiliar neighbourhoods instead, but thankfully shovelled, fully-sidewalked neighbourhoods. My runners are now encrusted with road salt and dirt and my fever has abated for the time being.

Good?

Good. An hour and a half is lots, as it's still tough going and it's cold and damp, below freezing so we call it a day. Caleb suggests breakfast, a moot point as I adore going out for breakfast. We find a new little place that is less of a hole in the wall and more of a dent, settling in, placing orders after a glance at the menu and being given hot cups of fresh coffee.

How did Jake do it? He asks me abruptly. I check his expression but it's open and concerned. He's not one to turn screws or even invoke He Who Must Not Be Named, as he's loathe to remind me of anything but himself, true to form.

Do what? I ask in my surprise.

Keep your cabin fever at bay. He's the only one, as far as I can tell, who was able to keep it from being such an albatross. 

Jacob kept up a near constant narrative that God was so good we should be endlessly grateful for every little thing we had, that God had provided for us and we were blessed and complaining would be bratty and selfish. So I bit my tongue. He also made such a huge effort to be over-the-top fun, always singing or finding something creative to be doing so it wasn't so serious. He knew how to pull the surface tension of life taut enough that when he broke it it made such a huge impact. He had a good balance anyway. 

That's the frankest you've been. 

Is that even a word-

Bridget, can we do that? 

Make me fearful of complaining about anything lest I get a huge righteous lecture, you mean?

No, break the tension. 

You are. We got out for a walk, we're doing things. It's fine.

You never relax anymore. 

Wow. 

You live with your tongue still bitten, you still hold for our permissions-

Stop. 

Sorry? 

Let's just enjoy our food. I don't want to talk about Jake, I don't want to be psychoanalyzed, I just want to eat my breakfast in peace. 

I can do that for you. 

Thank you. 

But see? Again it was something I had to approve. 

I didn't say anything for the rest of the meal or the drive home. I paid for the food though just to assert my own will. I don't think this is how it's done though.

The Wonderlands.

My green and blue world turned whiter overnight as we've now received the mother of all snowstorms. Muted and heavy, the trees have quieted, taking the waves with them.

The highway is closed. Schools are closed, shops are closed, it seems like the province is closed. The ocean is wide open and grey, roiling just under a coating of thin ice, breaking the moment after it forms.

We're trapped here on the point, just off highway 99, in a blizzard, with an amount of snow I haven't seen here before and it's beautiful and I love it. I can reach up now and hit pause on life.

Just for a little while.

(PJ is making me watch Cooking With Paris and complaining that I don't cook wearing kitten heels and holding a chihuahua dressed in Chanel. When he does, I will for sure, I tell him.)

Maritime language.

Who am I kidding? I tell the girl who lives in the sea.I'm not fierce. I'm not wild. I'm not capable or independent or ready for this year. I keep telling myself I'm going to bite 2020 off in chunks, swallowing them whole instead of vice-versa, but the girl in the sea just mouths my own words back to me silently. She's like a frothy, choppy little mirror, and I don't like the fact that she looks so much like me anyway.

Maybe she has her shit together and can stand in (or stand up) for me. Maybe she can haul herself up on the rocks and up the stairs and drip in through the patio doors, seaweed in her hair, barnacles fixed to her flesh, green eyes diluted a dark teal and they'll never know the difference. Maybe she can fool them all.

But if she's fierce, if she's capable, using the moon to pull her sea in and out at will, they'll know. They'll know it isn't truly me, they'll know she's an imposter, they'll be disappointed, first in me, and then in themselves as they wonder where they went wrong.

This is what happens when you protect your young instead of teaching them how to fight. It's a mistake I won't be making with my own.

***

I need a list because Sam asked for a barometer and then promptly stole the parmesan cheese from my fridge, taking it back across the driveway, promising to replace it the whole way out the side door even as I told him not to worry, I have a new one in there somewhere.

I figured a list of good things was a good plan. 

This week the weather has been awful enough to slow things down a little, or maybe a lot though it's been stressful getting around the highways, which are always closed because people think they can defy physics or something. So I learned to casually use my 4WD on the fly, alone or with others and I feel so proud. It's always been one of those mysteries (like why we can no longer buy the squeeze cheese with the disc cap, the Kraft Squeeze-A-Snak stuff, WHERE DID IT GO?) that I wanted to conquer.

Nothing can't wait, as PJ says. Ah. A double negative. I love it. He is right.

We have cake. And new tattoos. And peaty-delicious-smokey whiskey. Tons of groceries, lots of wood, all the chargers are charged, vehicles are gassed up. We are warm. We are loved. We are together.

We have Sam for a little God, Ben for a little rock and roll, Duncan for his coolier than thou attitude, and Lochlan for his all-round entertainer status and his internal, eternal fire. Caleb for his ice, for his vast knowledge of everything and his unwavering capability in any situation.

We have slept. We have laughed and we hold each other damn-near constantly. We are exactly two weeks into this new year and we haven't kept a whole lot of this viking/wolf energy we said we would bring to it but we have a lot of time left, too.

I point that out, tilted forward, hands on my knees, talking to the girl in the sea but I don't even think she hears me, she's too busy talking right back.

Meghan can be my new best friend. She understands my life.

I'm patiently awaiting the announcement from the Queen as I learn that Harry and Meghan have shipped their dogs to British Columbia. You don't bring your dog until you're good to go so this is fascinating news. I'm also patiently awaiting all of the people with all-season tires who always proclaim the roads to be 'fine' to be at work or wherever and out of my way for safety reasons.

Last night I was given a solid course in using four-wheel-drive on my Jeep as I had to venture out in a snowstorm to pick up Henry after work at like ten. I usually pawn it off on the boys if the roads look bad but I looked out, saw the howling, raging blizzard, plummeting temps and rapidly-accumulating snow and thought, yes, perfect. Now is a good time to do this. 

I did fine. We lived. No problems at all.

It gave me confidence.

This is our annual two weeks worth of West Coast Winter and I'll still be glad when it's over, though Lochlan has been ridiculously patient with my fears, cabin fever and claustrophobia. But at least it's light out later, right?

(You would never know that I am Maritime-born and raised. Jesus Christ. Actually you would, wouldn't you?)

In other news, the laundry is almost finished and I'm about to go out and help shovel. Not your usual Monday but actually it's absolutely a typical Monday, truth be told.

Fucking snow. LOL

The Sun was in my eyes (part one and part doom)

In church this morning and Mr. Sapphire Cufflinks (you know who I mean!) brings me coffee, which is nice because it's cold and I'll be able to miss at least five minutes of the service, as I'll have to pee and need to pick a good time to excuse myself, walk down the aisle, into the vestibule and then down the public hall toward the meeting rooms. There are two bathrooms just to the right when you start down the hall.

I put in my airpods and listen to a song by Woods Of Ypes (okay, two) while sitting on the counter, because the hymn Sam chose for this snowy cold Sunday was an unbearable Christian lament and the coffee turned out to be a great excuse because I'm really picky about what goes in my ears. Any music is better than no music, I always say, but also Driver picks the music. This is my life, I'll be in charge of the soundtrack, church or not.

When I come out, Sam is standing in the hall.

Are you sick?

No? I had an extra coffee so I didn't think I could wait until we get home to pee. 

I was starting to worry. 

I was only gone five minutes. Who's doing the sermon? 

George. He's ready. And you were gone for over fifteen minutes. 

Sorry. In a dreamworld today I guess. 

Let's return? He holds out his elbow. I take it.

Okay. And I want to ask him something but I don't. I don't want to wreck anything or start anything. I feel like he's brand new again and I need him in my life.

I don't have to ask because he answers me anyway. I miss you, Bridge. I miss our late-evening philosophical chats. 

Don't you have them with Matt?

Of course, but he has such a different world view. It's harder and more pragmatic. Yours is kinder, more imaginative. 

That's how I describe Lochlan and I. That's funny. 

Do you think Matt will be my Lochlan?

I think he already is. We walk back into the sanctuary to see Lochlan coming down the aisle. He waited twenty minutes because he knows some of these songs are even longer than others. He smiles when he sees me and I tell Sam at least I hope Matt is a Lochlan for you because it's wonderful.

Saturday lament (with bagpipes, if you please, Benjamin).

We watched It Chapter 2 last night and I'd just like to reiterate here that I remain the World's Biggest Stephen King Fan but only as it pertains to his written words and not to the absolutely deplorably bad treatments or adaptations from book to film. I don't even know at this point if I'm being punked or if they deliberately make everything campy and over the top cheeseball. Am I? Please tell me and I'll shut up, but it seems to me they could make a contrasting achingly-bright and incredibly dark film based on his words and have it be the most sinister and beautiful thing ever made but instead it is compelling story-wise but not that great visually and not even remotely scary. The only time I was scared was when I anticipated the part that was in the trailer, when Jessica Chastain's character visits the old lady.

But I knew it was coming and instead of leaving it dark and chilling they turned it into some brightly-lit, fully-visible slendermanesque moment and man, I was bummed.

Make Lisey's Story into a movie. I fucking dare you.

Better yet, make The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon (My all-time favorite King book) into a movie. But make it good or I'll go to my grave disappointed, and that says a lot because I intend to have a viking funeral.

Girls can't be vikings, Lochlan helpfully points out.

Watch me, I tell him, looking straight ahead. If they can make It Chapter 2 and rake in four hundred and seventy-two million dollars worldwide in revenue, then I'm already a fucking viking. Because we're living in a make-believe world here, clearly.